by Day Keene
Wally grinned at him. “This is a special occasion.”
“What’s special about it?”
Wally inclined his fat head at me. “Nelson and Miss Mason were married last night.” He managed to make it sound dirty. “In Tijuana.”
Cooper let Wally draw him a short beer. I poured another double. Automatically.
Cooper lifted his glass. “Good luck, Nelson. I hope you both will be very happy.”
For some reason it struck me funny. I hope you’ll be very happy. From Avarillo. From Meek. And now from Sheriff Cooper. Like so many empty-headed purple parrots. What the hell? A guy didn’t get married with the intention of being unhappy.
I gripped my glass so hard it cracked, cutting my palm in a couple of places. I laid the broken glass on the bar and wrapped a napkin around my hand. “Another glass, please.”
Wally gave me another glass. “Hadn’t you better go easy, fellow? You’re drunk as hell right now.”
I felt nasty. I talked the same way. “You telling me how to run my life?”
“Far be it from me,” Wally said. He moved off down the bar to serve a customer.
I poured rum in the fresh glass. I knew what would happen if I drank it with only three bites of steak in my stomach. I drank it.
Sheriff Cooper pushed his white Stetson back on his head. “You’re a pretty heavy drinker, aren’t you, son?”
“When I’m ashore.”
“How long are you staying ashore?”
“From now on.” I meant it to sound funny. “Why should I work? I own half of a prosperous tourist court now.”
It came out flat. With nothing funny about it. Cooper said, “Oh, I see.” His tone was disapproving.
The rum was taking a good bite now, magnifying the clatter of dishes and the voices in the bar. The stool was beginning to revolve. I started to set him straight. In no uncertain language. But before I could, Corliss came out of the kitchen. She looked cool and fresh and sweet in a white nylon uniform like Cora’s, with a big purple parrot embroidered on her left shoulder.
Standing beside the stool, she squeezed my arm. “Hello, honey. The steak all right?”
I said the steak was fine. “What you doing in the kitchen?”
Corliss said, “One of the girls quit without notice. So I’m giving the cook a hand.”
Cooper took off his hat. “I hear you and Nelson were married last night. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Corliss said.
There was a slightly breathless quality to her voice. The white uniform hugging her body made her look innocent and untouched.
Sheriff Cooper hoped Corliss would be happy. He hoped we both would be happy, and left.
Corliss sat on the stool beside me.
I said, “I’m sorry about last night.”
Corliss played with one of my fingers. “Forget it, Swede. You were just emotionally overwrought.” Her eyes were worried. “But you’ve got to stop this drinking. We’ve too much at stake. What did Sheriff Cooper want?”
I tried to tell her, my tongue thick in my mouth. “He said he jush—” I backed off and tried it again, slowly. “He said—”
The rum hit me then. In the back of the head. Like the smash of a winch handle. My tongue filled my mouth. The bar tilted at a crazy angle. I was afraid the rum bottle was going to slide off and spill on Corliss’ uniform. To keep that from happening, I made a wild grab for the bottle and the stool went around and around and I wound up flat on my back on the floor with the blue-nosed tourists in the booths tch-tching and Corliss sobbing:
“Oh, Swede. Oh, my darling!”
I was lying in a mixture of broken glass and rum. I tried to get up and couldn’t. Wally came around the bar, apologetic. “I should have refused to serve him.” He got an arm around my shoulders and lifted me to a sitting position. “Geez. He drank a pint in ten minutes. On an empty stomach.”
Corliss continued to cry.
Then Meek crawled out from somewhere, out of the baseboard, possibly, and he and Wally and Corliss walked me out of the bar.
Sheriff Cooper was kicking one of his tires thoughtfully. As we passed him, Cooper said, “I was afraid that was going to happen.”
“Where do you want him, Mrs. Nelson?” Wally asked.
Corliss sobbed, “In my cottage.”
She opened the screen door. Wally and Meek carried me inside and dumped me on her bed.
Meek gave his opinion as he unlaced my shoes. My shoes thudded to the floor. “You know something, Mrs. Nelson? Mr. Nelson acts to me like a guy with something on his mind.”
Corliss said fiercely, “Get out of here. Both of you.”
“Whatever you say, Mrs. Nelson,” Wally said.
The spring on the screen door screeched, then twanged. I could hear water running in the bathroom. Then Corliss sat down on the edge of the bed and wiped my face with a towel that had been soaked in cold water. She unloosened my tie. She unfastened the top button of my shirt, her fingers trembling.
“I love you, Corliss,” I told her.
Corliss cried even harder. “Then why are you doing this to me?”
I tried to explain. I couldn’t. All that came out of my mouth was words, while the hurt stayed locked inside me. How explain hunger, a hunger for something you’ve never known?
You’re born in a small inland town. Both your parents die when you’re a kid. You run away and go to sea when you’re fifteen. You’re big for your age. You lie. When you’re twenty you’re six feet two with hands like picnic hams. You weigh two hundred pounds, every ounce of it muscle and leather. You’re blond, with light blue eyes. Eyes that go back to some big Swede in armor.
Women like you. And all the women you meet are the same. In Lisbon, Suez, Capetown. In Mozambique, Kimberly, Leopoldville. In Colón, Rio, Lima. In Boston, San Pedro, Seattle.
“Hello, sailor. Lonely?”
Three little words. A password and a passport. Drop your anchor and climb aboard. You’re always welcome, sailor. As long as you have money. An escudo, eight shillings, ten pesos, a few francs, a handful of kopeks, a Hershey bar, a package of cigarettes, five dollars.
And sometimes it’s for free. A few laughs. A few drinks. A good line. With married dames, cheating on some guy who loves them.
But all the time you know there’s another facet to sex. You stand watch with your thoughts on a bridge. Under the stars. Night after night. For years. On oceans all over the world. Just you and God and the helmsman awake. In the middle of a phosphorescent sea stretching out to all hell and Judgment Day.
Somewhere there is one woman. A woman who’s fine and clean and good. The woman who is going to be the mother of your children. And her love is going to wash the slate. Her love is going to make you as clean as she is. Maybe you’ll live on a farm. Maybe you’ll live in town. Maybe you’ll run a highway tourist court. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but that you’re together.
You meet her. The woman. The dream. Under adverse circumstances. But you know her the moment you see her. You’ve come into port at long last. The sailor is home from the sea. You marry the dream. It’s yours now, for keeps.
Then there’s a certain look in her eyes, a certain false enthusiasm when she comes into your arms, a certain professional adeptness. And you begin to wonder.
Which is it? Your own goddamn dirty mind? Or her?
Corliss sobbed, “Have I done or said anything to hurt your feelings, darling?”
It was difficult for me to breathe. The rum had undermined the front legs of the bed, making it tilt at an angle. “No,” I said. “Of course not.”
Corliss lay down on the bed and pressed her body close to mine. “Is it because of Jerry? Because of what he did to me?”
“No.”
She whispered in my ear. “Because of what we had to do to him?”
“No.”
My left hand was resting on her hip. Corliss played with my fingers a moment. “Don’t you like the way I make love? Don
’t you like to love me?”
I raised myself on one elbow. I said, “For God’s sake, Corliss. Please.”
Corliss kept on playing with my fingers. “I asked you a question.”
I pressed my face against hers. “Yeah. Sure. You know I’m crazy about you.”
“Prove it,” Corliss said. “Prove it.” Her mouth hovered over mine. “Prove you love me, Swede. Or are you too drunk?”
“I never get that drunk,” I said.
The walls of the cottage faded out. We were back on the cliff again, all the mad magic of the night intact, Corliss no longer pretending, every bit as passionate as she’d been the first time.
She had reason. I’d just killed another man for her. The man I’d hoped to be when I’d told Ginty good-by and bought a ticket for Hibbing, Minnesota. I loved her. I’d never loved any woman as much as I loved Corliss. I would always love her. It was Corliss and Swede from now on.
But no one needed to tell me. I knew. So she drove a green Cadillac. So she owned a two-hundred-thousand-dollar tourist court named the Purple Parrot on U.S. Highway 101, just north of San Diego. It wouldn’t change a thing if she owned the highway.
My love was a high-class tramp.
Chapter Thirteen
It was two o’clock the next afternoon when Sheriff Cooper dropped in again. He had Harris and a third man with him, the third man a stranger to me.
“Hi, mate,” Cooper said.
I touched the visor of my cap. “Hi. Don’t tell me Corado had a relapse.”
“No. I’m not here on his account,” Cooper said.
Wally turned the radio on the back bar to a whisper. The sudden silence hurt my ears.
Cooper pushed his white Stetson back on his head. Then he took it off and wiped the leather sweatband with his handkerchief. “No,” he repeated finally. “As I told you last night, the chances are you won’t even have to stand trial on that score. Or were you too drunk to remember that, Nelson?”
I said, “I remember it distinctly. That’s why I was a little surprised to see you again so soon.”
The five of us were alone in the bar. Harris sat on a bar stool facing me. “Yeah. Corado is doing fine. We’re more interested in Wolkowysk.”
I played it dumb. “Wolkowysk?”
“You don’t remember him?”
I looked at Sheriff Cooper. “Oh. You mean Jerry, the barman up at the Beachcomber. He came back to work, huh? He confirmed what the rancher told you.”
Cooper returned his hat to his head. “No.”
I asked, “No what? He didn’t come back to work or didn’t confirm it?”
“Neither,” Harris said. “He’s dead.”
I timed it to say it with Wally. “Dead?”
Cooper nodded. “At least, that’s the assumption. He’s been missing for two days. And this morning two surf fishermen found what was left of his car at the foot of a cliff about ten miles up the road from here.”
I said, “I’m a son-of-a-gun.”
Wally shook his head. “I had an idea something like that might happen.”
The man with Cooper and Harris leaned one elbow on the wood. “What do you mean by that, bartender?”
Wally explained. “On account of the condition he was in when he was in here the other night. I’d been checking the books with Miss Mason — Mrs. Nelson now — see? And when I came back to the bar around two-ten, maybe two-fifteen, Mrs. Meek is hopping mad, bawling even, because Wolkowysk is in here stinking drunk and won’t let her close up the bar.”
“What’s your name, bartender?” the man asked.
“Wally. Wally Connors. Why?”
“Let’s just say I’m interested. You got a record, Connors? You on the book anywhere?”
Wally was indignant. “Not me, mister. And I’m in good standing with the union.” He insisted on showing the man his paid-up card.
The man didn’t seem much interested. “Let’s get back to Wolkowysk. What made you think something might happen to him?”
“I told you,” Wally said. “Because he was so drunk. I said to myself, If that guy is driving — oh, brother.”
“I thought that according to California law you aren’t supposed to sell to intoxicated men.”
“We don’t. As soon as I see the condition he’s in, I raise hell with Mrs. Meek. But she said she only sold him three drinks and she thought he must have taken goof balls with them.”
“That checks,” the man told Cooper. “How was Wolkowysk acting when you came in, Connors?”
Wally spread his fat palms on the bar. “Confidentially, between us, not like a gentleman should.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Wally confided, “He was making not proper suggestions to Mrs. Meek. Offering her money to go out in his car with him.”
I began to get a better picture of what had happened. Wolkowysk had built up his yen on Mamie, then taken it out on Corliss. I was glad I’d killed the bastard.
Wally continued indignantly. “I tell him nice, see, it’s after two o’clock and will he please leave so I can close the bar. And he stops picking on Mrs. Meek and begins to cuss me.” Wally grew even more indignant. “Not only in English. In Polish or Russian, even.”
“Then what happened?”
Wally straightened to his full six feet of blubber. “I stand his talk as long as I can. Patient, a gentleman, see? The customer is always right. Then I get a bellyful and I grab him by his collar and his trousers and I throw him out on his ass. Why? Did I do wrong?”
The soft-spoken man laughed. “No. That was about all you could do. What time was this, Connors?”
“Like I say, after two. Maybe two-fifteen.”
“You saw him get in his car?”
“No. I don’t pay any attention. I locked the front door, told Mrs. Meek good night, and went to bed.”
“How about you, Nelson?” Harris asked. “Did you see Wolkowysk Wednesday night?”
I looked at Harris over a fresh-poured glass of rum. “Why should I have seen him?”
“They’re saying along the highway that Wolkowysk was sweet on your girl.”
“My wife.”
“Your wife, then.”
A drop of sweat zigzagged down my spine. I wondered where I’d slipped up. If I had. “Why, yes. Come to think of it,” I admitted. “I did see him. Earlier in the evening. After I got back from posting bail in that Corado affair. He was at the end of the bar with three other men.”
Sheriff Cooper said, “You didn’t tell me that last night.”
I grinned at him. “I was drunk. Remember?”
“You spoke to Wolkowysk?”
I told him the truth. “No. I wasn’t even sure it was him. He looked like I remembered the bartender at the Beachcomber looked, but I’d been pretty high there, too. Even if I had been certain it was him, I doubt if I’d have spoken.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I had talked to him and the Corado affair does come to trial, some vote-hunting D.A. would probably have accused me of bribing him to color his testimony in my favor.”
“Where do you come in on this sailor?” the soft spoken man asked me.
I sipped at the rum in my glass. “That’s a long story.”
He leaned against the bar. “Go ahead. Tell it, mate. I’ve got all the time in the world.”
My head ached. My collar was too tight. He was law of some kind, important law. It was in his voice, his bearing. His eyes were shrewd, evaluating. He smelled like a fed to me.
“You have a right to question me?”
He said, “I have.” It was a flat statement.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Then I gave him as much as I thought was safe, as much as he could find out elsewhere.
I told him how I had been paid off after three years in the islands, how I’d intended to head out Minnesota way but had gone on a drunk instead and wound up at the Beachcomber, where I had got into a crap game and a brawl with a Mexican Fancy Dan.
“You damn near killed him,” Harris said. “Those fists of yours are lethal weapons, Nelson.”
I ignored Harris. “After the fight I was sitting in a booth when Corliss — that’s the new Mrs. Nelson — came in on some business of her own and spotted me. She sensed how drunk I was. She figured I probably had a roll on me, a roll that I’d worked hard for. She knew I’d be clipped if I stayed where I was in my condition. So she played the good Samaritan. She waltzed me out of there, drove me down here in her own car, and had Wally put me to bed in a vacant cabin so I could sleep it off without some tart taking me.”
Wally nodded. “That’s right. Corliss is all the time doing nice things like that for sailors.”
“Why?” the soft-spoken man asked him.
Wally shrugged. “Who can understand a woman? Can I? Can you? Maybe because her first husband was a sailor. A lieutenant commander, I understand. He went down with his submarine. It could be a memory, like, to him.”
“I see,” the man said. He looked back at me. “This Beachcomber is a dive?”
“I guess you would call it that.”
“Then how come your wife happened to drop in?”
Wally leaned his fat palms on the bar. “Excuse I should say it, mister.” He made certain there were no customers in the bar. “But that Wolkowysk was a sonofabitch. And Mrs. Nelson didn’t just happen to drop into the Beachcomber. She went there to give Wolkowysk hell.”
“What about?”
“On account of he was telling it all up and down the highway,” he leaned over the bar and lowered his voice, “that she would do it for twenty dollars. Another guy had dropped in just that evening. And Corliss was sore as hell. When she left here she told me she was going to have a showdown with Wolkowysk and if he didn’t promise to keep his dirty tongue off her she was going to Sheriff Cooper and have him put under peace bond or something.”
The man asked, “What was Wolkowysk’s grudge against Mrs. Nelson? Why should he want to embarrass her?”
Wally told him. “On account of she went out with him once. To a dance in Manhattan Beach. For the cancer fund, see. And Wolkowysk got fresh coming home and she told him where to get off.”
The man with Cooper and Harris drummed on the bar, then looked back at me. “And that’s all you know about Wolkowysk?”