A Flash of Green

by John D. MacDonald

He sat in a wicker chair. A big fan by a narrow window turned slowly back and forth, hesitating at the end of each arc, stirring the moist night air. He thought of what Shannard had said about Nan, marveling that what had happened to her hadn’t destroyed her. She had been the exceedingly pretty daughter of a Palm City couple. Her father had been a city fireman. Nan McMay had started winning beauty contests when she was fifteen. She had been a frivolous, vain, uncomplicated child. At eighteen, after placing third in the Miss Florida competition, she had run away to New York with a photographer, planning to become a model. After two grubby years in New York she had the good fortune to meet a very decent boy who wanted to marry her. After she met the boy she broke up with a strange unsettled man with whom she had been having an affair. She and the boy came down to Palm City to be married. The man she had walked out on had been annoying her. He followed her to Florida. On the eve of the wedding he broke into her parents’ home, shot and killed her parents, the boy she was going to marry, a younger sister, a younger brother and himself. Nan was not expected to live either. The bullet he had fired into her had done extensive abdominal damage before lodging against the spine.

  Five murders and a suicide would have been given national news coverage in any case, but because the unbalanced man had termed himself a poet, and because Nan had been a winner of beauty contests, and because the suicide note they found on his body made it plain they had lived together, it was given exceptionally lurid and breathless coverage, spiced by her old publicity shots and by his “poetry.”

  After she recovered, guilt should have destroyed her. Heartbreak should have destroyed her. Public disapproval should have destroyed her. She should have killed herself, or gone mad, or disappeared. But she instead suffered the homely miracle of becoming an adult. She could never become a whole person. Torture had burned away all trivial things, but had also seared what was left. The radical surgery necessary to save her life had obviated any chance of children.

  A year or so after she had stolidly, quietly put herself back together, she had started seeing Brian Haas, and they had married. It was, as Shannard had said, a mating of survivors, the way two travelers on a lonely journey might join together to share food, hardship and shelter. But any closeness which endures, no matter how guarded it may have been in the beginning, creates its own necessities, confirms its own new image, establishes its vulnerabilities.

  Jimmy Wing knew he had become more of a friend of the marriage than a friend of either of them as individuals. He was a factor in the relationship, one measurable aspect of the balance they had achieved. From Bri, and with Jimmy’s help, she had learned the art and pleasure of good talk. And from Nan, Bri had learned of the aspects of life which need not be complicated by introspection—a long walk, a swim, a picnic beach, making love. She soothed him and he made her feel alive, and so convenience became slowly transmuted into necessity.

  She was receptionist-bookkeeper for a dentist in one of the offices in the building in front of their apartment. On their combined salaries they lived quietly and comfortably. Their sole extravagance was The Itch, a stubby, shallow-draft Bahamian ketch of great antiquity and, except for a temperamental auxiliary engine, great reliability.

  She brought him the coffee and sat on a bamboo hassock near the tiny fireplace and said, “It’s so damn airless tonight. Did you hear the thunder a while back? I could see the lightning out over the Gulf. It’s crazy not to have any rain this time of year.”

  “What do you think started him off?”

  “God knows, Jimmy. Anything or nothing. I’ve been going over the past week or so. I can’t think of anything specific. How has he been down at the newspaper?”

  “Perfectly okay.”

  “I just hope he didn’t drive out of town. I’m glad you stopped, Jimmy. I wouldn’t want anybody else here. I couldn’t talk about it to anybody else.” There was a look of wryness in her smile. “Whenever we need you, you seem to show up. I guess that’s the best kind of friend there is.”

  “All I’m doing is drinking your coffee, Nan.”

  “That’s all you have to do. If you came in here all terribly concerned and full of warmth and pity and so on, I think it would start me crying. Isn’t that a hell of a thing? And I’d cry because I’m more mad than anything else. I’m mad at him and I shouldn’t be. It’s like he can’t go very long having things be right. He has to spoil them.”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “No. But it’s as if it was on purpose. For the last year things have been pretty good.”

  “I know.”

  “Better than either of us deserve, I guess.”

  “Could that be part of it, Nan? He spoils it because he thinks he doesn’t deserve it? Self-punishment for guilt.”

  She shrugged. “Everybody feels guilty. It took me a long time to find that out. It doesn’t matter how big or how little the thing is they feel guilty about, the guilt seems to add up about the same. And not everybody is a drunk. So where does that leave you?”

  He smiled at her. “Interesting proposition, woman. No matter what I do, I won’t feel any more or any less guilty?”

  “You can’t do things you aren’t capable of doing.”

  “What if my capacity changes?”

  “Nobody’s ever does, really. Anyhow, that’s Bri’s theory. He says you can change your stripes in a lot of ways that don’t really count very much, but when it comes to sin, everybody has a built-in limitation.”

  “So nobody can ever corrupt anybody?”

  “Only if they’re ready. Or, I guess, terribly young, so young they don’t know what’s happening.”

  He did not reply. Suddenly he did not care to follow that line of speculation any further. It was making him think about Gloria, and he did not know why. It was always easier not to think about Gloria. The wall-to-wall floor covering was of pale gray raffia squares. He put an imaginary knight on the square nearest his right foot and, using the knight’s eccentric move, marched it to the square nearest her bare feet, then over to the kitchen doorway, across to the foot of the narrow staircase, and back to the original square where it had begun.

  “Jimmy.”

  He looked at her and saw the tears standing in her eyes. “Yes?”

  “I can’t afford to lose much more, you know. I can’t afford to lose this now.”

  “You won’t.”

  “It scares me. I didn’t want to ever have anything again I could give a damn about. I don’t really know how I got so far into this. I didn’t want to. Now, instead of thinking about him, I’m thinking about me, what I can stand, and what I can’t stand.”

  “Now, Nan.”

  “I just wanted to … to sort of watch, and not be a part of anything.” The tears began to spill.

  Over the sound of the fan he heard a car outside. She got up quickly and hurried to the door. He followed her out.

  “We got him,” a man said.

  “Thank God!” Nan said.

  “It’ll be easier getting him out this side, Joe.”

  Jimmy Wing hurried to help the two men with him. Brian Haas was a big man. He was semiconscious, incapable of standing. They got him out of the car, supporting him on either side. The light from the apartment illuminated his face. It had a mindless slackness. The long scar down his left cheek seemed more apparent in that light. He smelled of whiskey and vomit and made a mumbling, droning sound. They got him into the house and up the narrow stairway.

  “Where was he?” Nan asked. “Where’s our car?”

  “He was down at the end of Sandy Key, down at Turk’s Pass,” one of the men said. “He drove into the sand and got stuck. He was lying in the sand beside the car. We’ll get it back to you.”

  They offered to stay, but Nan told them she would manage. They arranged for someone to come and stay with him the next day while she was at work.

  After the men had left, and Jimmy and Nan had gotten Brian to bed, he went into a deep sleep. She touched a red abrasion on his chin and said,
“Somebody hit him or he fell. Can you cover for him tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Can he make it back by Saturday, though?”

  “He has Saturday off this week. He’ll feel like death tomorrow. But he’ll be able to make it all right by Sunday noon … if this is the end of it … if he’s gone as far as he has to. He’ll claim it’s all over. But I won’t know. I don’t think it will be over. It would be too quick.”

  “I’ll stop by tomorrow, if you think it would be a good thing to do.”

  “Call me first, Jimmy. I’ll be running over here every little while. I’ll know how things are. I wonder how much he had.”

  She walked out to his car with him. “Thanks for letting me know. Thanks for stopping by. Maybe it will be all right. Maybe it’s just one little slip, Jimmy, this time.”

  Six

  ON FRIDAY at a few minutes after five, Colonel Thomas Lamson Jennings opened the meeting of the Executive Committee of Save Our Bays, Inc. The meeting was held in the large living room of Colonel Jennings’ bay-front home. The colonel was in his middle sixties, a lean, emphatic and totally bald man, whose height of forehead and steel-framed glasses gave him a scholarly look. But he was sun-blackened to the hue of an old copper coin, agile, tough and muscular. Kat had seen him in old swim trunks, stalking the mud flats with a throw net, tireless as any Calusa Indian who had stalked the same flats long ago. And she had seen him in the full heat of the midday sun, working with a peasant diligence in his garden beside his Chinese wife, Melissa.

  The colonel looked up from his notes and coughed to quiet the random conversation and said, “I guess we can get started. This is all there’ll be. Eight of us. I might say that this is perfect attendance for all those in the area. Four are in the north. I’ve asked Melissa to sit in and take notes for the minutes. Anyone object? All right, then. I’ve had a busy day tracking down the facts in this matter. I do not have all of them yet. I went into action on the basis of a tip telephoned to me. I can tell you this much. A land syndicate has been formed calling itself the Palmland Development Company. The five majority partners are Burton Lesser, Leroy Shannard, Doctor Felix Aigan, William Gormin and Buckland Flake. The syndicate may include many other local businessmen, but on a basis of merely token participation. They have an option on the Cable estate property fronting on Grassy Bay. They will soon petition the Board of County Commissioners for a change of the bulkhead line and approval of the purchase from the Internal Improvement Fund of eight hundred acres of bay bottom. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, we are right back where we were two years ago, except that this time we may expect a tougher fight. As these are local men and local business interests, we can anticipate a strong endorsement by the Chamber of Commerce, the Merchants’ Association, service clubs, civic groups, et cetera, et cetera. From what I heard today, we can expect the petition to be presented quite soon. We are most fortunate to have received a little advance warning. We can expect that the date for the public hearing on this matter will be set when the petition is presented, and that we will not be allowed very much time to prepare. We must organize the strongest possible opposition to this move, beginning immediately. I have roughed out a staff plan, but before I present it for your consideration, I would like to have some opinions from the floor.”

  Major Harrison Lipe stood up. He was a round little man with a fierce leonine face, a careful mane of snowy hair, a stance so erect he seemed in danger of tipping over backward. He was always in some stage of painful sunburn, blistered, puffy or peeling. His tone was stentorian and oracular. “Tom, though I am not familiar with the geology of this area, I do know that when the first … excuse me, ever since the first human feasted his eyes on the glorious beauty of Grassy Bay, untold generations have been entranced by its beauty. And once it is despoiled, it will be gone forever. In a few cynical months the dredges and the draglines can undo the glories of ten thousand years. Furthermore …”

  “Harry!”

  “… experts have assured us that this is one of the most unique breeding grounds for shallow-water fish in the entire …”

  “Harry!”

  “… west coast area of Florida. And—what is it, Tom?”

  “Harry, I respect your sentiments. We all do. In fact, that’s why we’re here. You performed so well the last time, Harry, I hope you’ll take the same job again. It will be up to you to coordinate all the hobby groups and conservation groups in the area. Boating, angling, waterskiing, skin diving, garden clubs and the bird people. Locate their current officers, get the petitions written up and signed, and see that they come through with a maximum turnout at the public hearing. Form your own special committee as you did last time, Harry, picking anybody off the membership list you think you can use. Will you do that? We’re all pleased and all grateful, Harry. Thank you. Mr. Sinnat? Were you about to say something?”

  Dial Sinnat did not stand up. He had one brown, hairy, muscular leg hooked over the arm of the chair he was in. He was a hard, handsome enigmatic man in his early fifties. His coarse black hair was just beginning to gray at the temples. Kat remembered how surprised she and Van had been when Di had jumped into the fight two years ago. He had not explained his motives until after the fight had been won. On a late night beside his pool he had said, “It isn’t atomic energy that’ll do us in, buddies. It’s sexual energy. Procreation. Billions of new bodies corrupting God’s world. In their history books they’ll read how once a man could walk all day long and not see another human or a house or a machine, and they won’t be able to imagine how it was. There’ll be oceans of squirming people, from sea to sea, fellows. So we kept them from gobbling one little bay, one little crumb, and it felt good, but it doesn’t mean much. How long have we been sitting here? Two and a half hours? There’s ten thousand more mouths in the world than there were when we walked out of the house. Rejoice, buddies. Mankind is on the march, heading toward that golden day when there’s nothing to eat but each other.”

  Now Dial said, “Just thinking, Tom. This sounds rougher than last time. The clue is that option on the Cable property. Martin Cable has to be a convert, it would seem. He’s the executor. How big a piece is it?”

  “A little over six hundred feet of bay frontage, running from the bay to Mangrove Road,” Colonel Jennings said. “And we can expect, this time, that Ben Killian won’t be neutral.”

  “As it’s a local operation,” Dial said, “he’ll have to go with his advertisers. I’m beginning to think we ought to try to lean hard on something we didn’t give much attention to last time.”

  “Such as?” Jennings asked.

  “Maybe we ought to develop some statistics to show that it won’t help local business a damn bit.”

  “I don’t think I follow you,” Jennings said.

  “They’ll have statistics. Eight hundred new houses at umpty dollars apiece initial investment and umpty dollars a year upkeep and maintenance, and eight hundred new families in the area spending umpty dollars a year with the local businesspeople. They gave us that jazz last time, those Lauderdale hotshots. I think we could develop statistics out of St. Pete, Clearwater and Sarasota to prove that all a big development does is bring in more butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, so that after all the dust settles, everybody has just about the same gross business they had before. In fact, they might be a little worse off, because residential areas never pay back in taxes the cost of the services they require, particularly in Florida with this homestead free ride on the first five thousand of assessed valuation. Industry is the only thing which takes up the slack in the tax billing.”

  “Could you get to work on that, Dial?”

  “Better if it comes from some local businessman, Tom. I unloaded the family firm up in Rochester twenty years ago, took my capital gain and ran. I spend a couple of hours a day in the biggest crap game in the world, buying a little here and selling a little there, but I’m considered a playboy type, possibly because I am. Some yuk would question me from the floor and ask me if I’d
ever met a payroll. I have, but it was too long ago. But I will see if I can find a convincing pigeon for you. This thing may be spread so wide it will be tough, but somebody is sure to be annoyed at being left out, and not in a very good position to capitalize on a big Grassy Bay development. I’ll look around.”

  “Splendid!” Jennings said. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d line up the Power Squadron people and the Yacht Club people as you did so well the last time.” He made a check mark on the pad fastened to his clip board, turned over another sheet and said, “And you, Morton, will you operate just as you did the last time?”

  Morton Dermond sighed in a somewhat dramatic way and said, “I shall rally all the forces of culture. Yes indeed. But it is tiresome, isn’t it, to have to go into the same little act all over again.” There was a slight stir of disapproval in the group. Dermond was a big waxy young man, apelike in construction—barrel torso, short thick legs, long meaty arms, a head dwarfed by the neckless span of the solid shoulders. His black hair grew low on his forehead, and his beard was a blue shadow on the pale solid jaw. He had a light, flexible voice. He wore lavender slacks and a coral sports shirt. A ruff of springy black hair erupted out of the V neck of the sports shirt. Dermond was a museum director, lecturer and art historian. For the past several years he had been the Executive Director of the Palm City Art Center.

  “It may be tiresome, but it is important,” Jennings said.

  “Of course it is,” Dermond said. “But I could agitate my people a lot easier if we had some kind of vivid new approach. I mean, some of them may actually yawn this time. I realize that out here in the hinterland it is really difficult to come up with truly creative ideas. Personally, I can’t imagine anything more grim than eight hundred new dreadful contemporary houses. All those tricky white roofs, blinding you. They’ll look terribly modern for the first twenty minutes, but in no time at all it will just be another dreary middle-class slum, littered with tricycles, glass jalousies, ceramic egrets and plastic lawn furniture. They’ll cram those tiresome houses in there, with no privacy whatsoever, and fill them with dreary fatuous little people, and then we’ll be just one step closer to utter mediocrity.”