A Flash of Green

by John D. MacDonald

  Jimmy stood up and said, “So it worked both ways, didn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You got hers, and I got yours.”

  Leroy nodded very slowly. “Yes indeed, you can say that you captured my attention, James. Permanently.”

  Nineteen

  PUBLIC NOTICE

  NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, pursuant to Chapter 58–1855, Laws of Florida, and as amended by Chapters 59–1811 and 60–1866, Laws of Florida, that the Board of County Commissioners of Palm County, Florida, sitting as the PALM COUNTY BULKHEAD LINE AUTHORITY, will hold a PUBLIC HEARING at 8:00 P.M. on the 26th day of July A.D. 1961 in the Palm City Municipal Auditorium, Palm City, Florida, upon the application of: the Palmland Development Company for the: PURCHASE OF SUBMERGED LANDS: ESTABLISHMENT, CHANGE AND LOCATING OF THE BULKHEAD LINE, within the area of: Grassy Bay, lying in Section 8, Township 20 South, Range 15 East, Palm County, Florida, and more particularly described in map and addendum appended to this PUBLIC NOTICE, being a parcel containing 833.24 acres, more or less. A permit for DREDGE AND FILL will not be considered at such Public Hearing. All interested persons may appear and be heard at the time and place specified. Written comments filed with the Clerk of said Authority will be heard and considered.

  AUGUST C. MAKELDER

  Chairman of Palm County

  Bulkhead Line Authority

  C. L. ARLETTER, Clerk of

  Palm County Bulkhead Line Authority

  By: J. Z. WINSLOW, Deputy Clerk

  PUBLISH: July 12, 1961

  The morning papers for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were packed with ever more glowing accounts of the glorious future which Palmland Development was making possible for each and every resident of Palm County, present and future. At midmorning on Friday, Kat Hubble went across the street with Jimmy Wing for her coffee break.

  “I am so damn mad!” she said.

  “I’d say you look pretty mad too.”

  “Wait till we sit down, Jimmy, and I’ll tell you and I wish I had an hour instead of ten minutes.”

  After they had ordered, she leaned across the small table toward Jimmy and said, “You’ve got to do something about that horrible newspaper!”

  “Like what?”

  “Tom has phoned Mr. Borklund and Ben Killian and he can’t get any satisfaction at all. He has carbons of sixteen very good letters to the editor, all opposed to the bay fill, and they haven’t published a single one of them. Mr. Borklund says they’re getting so much mail they can only print a representative selection. Hah! Like this morning’s paper. Five in favor and one opposed, and the one that opposes the fill is from somebody I never heard of, who sounds totally insane. And another thing. Mr. Borklund won’t handle a perfectly legitimate news item. They did publish our names and addresses to make it easier for everybody. Do you know, we’re getting absolutely foul phone calls, all of us? Day and night. The phone company can’t do anything about it. The sheriff won’t do anything about it. Our telephone campaign has absolutely collapsed! The people we call up say hideous things. Most of our workers have quit. We can’t keep a sticker on a car five minutes before somebody rips it off. We can’t get anybody to put our posters up, and when we do, they get all ripped and scribbled. Darn it all, Jimmy, this is outright, horrible persecution, and everybody pretends it just isn’t happening.”

  “Whoa now, Kat. Slow down a minute. Who phones you?”

  “Women who yell. Sometimes men who whisper. That’s worse, I guess. If you want to phone me, Jimmy, let it ring once and then hang up and dial again immediately. That’s what I’m telling my friends. And that’s the way we get in touch with each other. Otherwise I don’t answer. And I don’t dare let the children answer any more.”

  “What do these people say?”

  “Filth, Jimmy. Absolute filth. They call me a dirty Communist slut and so forth. A lot of cars went by my house last night, blowing their horns. This morning there was garbage all over my lawn. Same thing at Jackie’s house and Doris Rowell’s, Tom’s, everybody’s. I’ll be damned if anybody is going to intimidate me, but they certainly are making life unpleasant. Yesterday and this morning it’s spread to the bank. This afternoon they’re moving me to the Trust Department until this is all over. What’s happening to people, Jimmy?”

  “They’ve gotten worked up.”

  “Somebody has organized all the nutty people in the county.”

  “I’ll see if I can get the county road patrol to check your house at night, Kat.”

  “I don’t want that. I want some publicity about what’s happening to us. Don’t you see, they’re overdoing it. And if all the decent people who are in favor of the fill could understand what’s happening, it might turn them against it. Another thing, Jimmy. Golly, I wish I had more time. Tom Jennings talked to old Mr. Hotchkiss. He has fifteen hundred acres on Grassy Bay, on the mainland, just north of Turk’s Pass.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “He’s got two thousand feet of bay front, and rather than see Grassy Bay ruined, he’ll sell the whole plot to Palmland for twelve hundred dollars an acre. That’s way under going prices. They could dig canals into it and make a big development out of it without taking over any public lands.”

  “He’s offered it to Palmland?”

  “Yes. And they’re not interested. They’d rather steal the land. But the important thing is to get it into the paper, and we can’t even do that, so the people will know there was an alternative. Can you try to get it in, Jimmy? Can you get some of this other stuff in? Honestly, every day I read all that guff in the paper with your name on it and it makes me sick.”

  “You don’t get to see the things I’ve tried to slip in.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I have to face certain facts of life, Kat. I can refuse to keep writing up the big stream of flack stuff Costex keeps throwing at us. So somebody else writes it. And maybe they fire me. Then I’m in a position where I can do no good at all.”

  “Which seems to be exactly where you are right now.”

  “Not because I want to be.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Please try to do something. I promised Tom I’d beg you.” She scowled at her watch. “Thirty seconds more.” She spooned ice into her coffee. “Oh, by the way, who was the gorgeous chick you were seen with in Tampa the other morning? Heavens, Jimmy! You don’t have to look that guilty!”

  “Just one of those celebrities we newspaper types interview. Who reported me?”

  “A girl coming back from vacation. She said it was a showbusiness type in a wrinkled orange dress and platinum hair, about six foot seven. Who was she?”

  “I was just doing a favor for a friend, putting her on a plane.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “You act as if you think I’m being jealous. Good Lord, Jimmy! If it’s none of my business, you’ve gotten your point across.”

  “But I was just …”

  She jumped up. “I do have to run, dear. Try to help us, please.”

  Jimmy watched through the drugstore window as she hurried back to the bank, a redheaded woman, slender, agile and intense, a woman with the marks of life and marriage and loss in her face, a woman who, in comparison with the vivid Miss Prindergast, would look subdued, understated. But he knew he could never want anyone as badly as he wanted her.

  He knew that in order to get a story into the paper he would have to make some special preparations. He visited Sheriff Wade Illigan. Using Kat’s system, he phoned Jackie Halley, Tom Jennings and Major Lipe. Then he phoned Elmo Bliss at his office, told Elmo what he planned to do, and suggested that Elmo phone Burt Lesser, and then Ben Killian. Ben, he assumed, would speak to J. J. Borklund. After a fifteen-minute wait he phoned Burt Lesser, saying that he’d heard Burt had a statement to make. When Burt made it, Jimmy heard some of his own words repeated back to him. He wrote it up with great care:

  “Mr. Burton Lesser, speaking as President of the Palmland Development Company and in behalf of the
other partners in that enterprise, has expressed concern about the harassment being inflicted upon the officers and directors of Save Our Bays, Inc., a group actively opposing any change in the bulkhead line in the Grassy Bay area.

  “Mr. Lesser stated to a Record-Journal reporter that support of the Palmland Isles Project is so overwhelming, the public hearing should result in a unanimously favorable vote. He said he and his associates are grateful for the support of every public-spirited citizen of Palm County, but deplore the activities of those who have been expressing their attitude by telephoning harassment of Save Our Bays members, and miscellaneous acts of vandalism committed on and around the private property of those members. He said that he has suggested to Sheriff Illigan that County Police protection be given the executive members of S.O.B., Inc., and the vandals be vigorously prosecuted if apprehended.

  “Save Our Bays, Inc., is the only Palm County organization thus far to have taken a public stand in opposition to the bay-fill program.”

  He made a suggested head—PALMLAND CONDEMNS VANDALS—and took the copy sheet to Borklund’s office. Borklund scanned it, initialed it, spindled it. He leaned back. His glasses caught the light and reflected the palm fronds outside his window.

  “You puzzle me these days, Jim.”

  “How so?”

  “You seemed so much more clever two years ago. This time I’ve blue-penciled forty clumsy attempts to sneer at Palmland, so clumsy you might as well have underlined them to save me the trouble. Brian has been much more subtle. He’s even slid a couple of things past me that Ben chewed me out for.”

  “I’m probably turning into a dull fellow.”

  “Are you? This little item you just gave me is slick. Very, very slick. How did you get it?”

  “On the phone, from Lesser.”

  “And you knew it would be all cleared by the time you got it to me. Funny how it got arranged so nicely. When I suggested we print something, I got turned down. I couldn’t seem to get my point across. I said that if you miss a punch once in a while, it looks like a more honorable fight. You still win just as big, but it looks better. This will make the S.O.B.’s feel better, but it does them more harm than good. So I sit here wondering why you should do them more harm than good. Could you possibly have a piece of Palmland?”

  “I think it will be tragic to fill Grassy Bay.”

  “But I have the strange feeling they’re going to fill it.”

  “You mean you have a sort of a hunch?”

  “Get the hell out of here, Wing.”

  Haas was in the newsroom. Wing went over and sat on the corner of his desk. “What is your opinion of a free and impartial press, Mr. Haas?”

  Brian smiled at him. “It works on the valve theory, Mr. Wing.”

  “Would you explain that, please, for the benefit of our viewers?”

  “Of course. When gas chambers are used to get rid of excess population, they have to employ a man to turn a valve. Right? Now, this man may not be in favor of gas chambers, and he may get very low pay for valve-tending, but he has to face up to a personal dilemma. It’s such unskilled labor that if he refuses to turn it, somebody else will. This is known as facing reality, otherwise known as the facts of life. He can’t merely pretend to turn the gas on, because when the chamber doors are opened again, they would discover his defection. Right? So all he can do is just turn it on a little slowly, and not quite all the way. This is known as learning to live with reality.”

  “God, Bri! Was that off the cuff?”

  “Not exactly. It’s sort of a short summary of the lecture I gave Nan yesterday. I lecture her every day now. Free association. The doc recommended it. It’s supposed to be a form of therapy, to release the tensions which are supposed to build up and drive me to drink. I think it’s asinine, but I’m going along with it.”

  “We never got to that chess session, you know.”

  Haas’s smile was unchanged. “We’ll have to do that some time, Jimmy. I’m too busy lecturing these days.”

  “When I popped off the other night, it was because I was …”

  “I’m not sore at you, Jimmy.”

  “Well … I’m glad you’re not.”

  “But I owe you a straight answer, I guess. I’m still a little precarious. After I get my feet braced, we’ll get acquainted.”

  “Acquainted?”

  “Yes. There’s some things you’ll have to tell me about some day. I’ve detected some contradictions. You could turn out to be a very interesting fellow.”

  Wing stared at him. He did not trust himself to say anything. The concealed anger made his knees feel weak as he walked away.

  Late on Saturday afternoon, Kat phoned Wing at his cottage and said, “Are you terribly busy? Tom gave me a chore, and I sort of need moral support, Jimmy. If you could spare an hour or so?”

  “I can take a break. What is it?”

  “Something’s wrong with Doris Rowell. Tom went out there this morning and she wouldn’t talk to him. He wants me to try. I’ve always thought she’s sort of creepy. You know? Would you pick me up? I’m at the Sinnat house.”

  “Half an hour?”

  “Wonderful, Jimmy! Thanks a lot.”

  She was out by the pool when he drove up and parked. The pool was full of children of assorted ages from the Estates. As Kat came smiling toward him he looked beyond her and saw Natalie teetering on the end of the diving board, yelping, as Jigger Lesser bounced high at the middle of the board, trying to jolt her off.

  As he opened the door for Kat he said, nodding toward the pool, “How is young love progressing?”

  She gave him an odd look. “It’s their business, Jimmy.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

  As he drove off, she said, “You sort of sneered when you said it, Jimmy. I didn’t like that.”

  “It isn’t exactly Heloïse and Abelard, is it?”

  “Are you cross today? To them it is, Jimmy. That’s exactly the point, isn’t it? I’m not going to classify it as a physical infatuation or love or whatever. And I’m not going to sneer at it or snicker at it. Love isn’t dirty unless the people involved believe it is. And they don’t. I don’t want to quarrel, Jimmy.”

  “Neither do I. Not with you. Any trouble last night?”

  “Rotten eggs against the front of the house. But I wasn’t there to enjoy them. I paid Gus Malta to hose them off this morning. The kids and I are staying at the Sinnats. It was Natalie’s idea. There’s a lot of room. I’m glad that thing got into the paper this morning. Did you get it in?”

  “Yes.”

  “But none of those letters have been printed yet.”

  “I don’t think they will be, Kat. I’m sorry. They’re too sane and reasonable. Just like the Hotchkiss land story. They’d spoil the image of the group of crackpot bird lovers. You said Doris Rowell wouldn’t talk to Tom?”

  “He wanted to know who’s coming to stand up for us at the public hearing, and she wouldn’t tell him a thing. He’s very upset.”

  As they turned into Doris Rowell’s driveway, Kat made an exclamation of dismay. “Just look at it!” she said. The yard was littered with trash and garbage. There were splats and stains and drippings on the front of the house. The mailbox was broken, and a car had ripped up thirty feet of the hedge.

  “Do you think she’s too scared?” Kat asked.

  “Let’s find her, if she’s here.”

  She did not answer the front door. They walked around the house. There had been a heavy rain early Friday evening. Her skiff was tied to the dock, full of water, the lines taut. Wing called and there was no answer. They went up onto the porch.

  Kat grasped Jimmy’s arm suddenly, startling him. He saw the direction of her startled glance and turned and saw Doris Rowell. She was in the dingy kitchen, visible through a narrow doorway, sitting at a kitchen table, doing something with her hands, then lifting a hand to her mouth.

  Jimmy rapped on the screen door and said, “Mrs. Rowell? May we come
in and talk to you? I’ve got Katherine Hubble with me. Mrs. Rowell?”

  He turned to Kat, shrugged, pushed the door open and went in. Kat followed him back to the gloomy kitchen. Doris Rowell’s face was shiny with sweat. She wore a torn shirt and khaki trousers, damp with sweat. There was a heaviness of body odor in the still air of the kitchen. She sat at a table covered with oilcloth in a faded flower pattern. In front of her was half a loaf of bread, the paper peeled away from it. There was a dish of butter, softened by the heat, a big jar half full of red jam, a knife on the butter plate, a tablespoon in the jam. The area in front of her was littered with crumbs and splatters of jam, as was the front of her white shirt. A ring of jam bloodied her mouth, and there were crumbs on her chin.

  Jimmy felt Kat move closer to him as he faced Doris Rowell. Her motions were slow, but steady and unending. She would spread a slice of bread with butter, drop a puddle of jam onto it, fold it once and lift it to her mouth. She consumed each slice in three spaced bites, shoving the last one in with her thumb. The sounds of breathing and mastication were audible. She seemed to look at them, but her eyes were so dull, her glance so devoid of any impact of awareness, he could not be certain she knew they were there.

  “Mrs. Rowell, Tom wants to know about the people you’ve lined up. Mrs. Rowell!”

  He asked twice. She did not answer. Suddenly Kat went swiftly to the woman’s side and grasped the heavy wrist, kept the sticky hand from lifting to the mouth. “Please, Doris!” she said.

  “Numuny ummun.”

  “What did you say?”

  Doris Rowell swallowed. “Nobody is coming,” she said distinctly. “No one at all. You can tell the colonel that.” Her voice was without regret, without emotion of any kind. The hand tried to lift but Kat restrained it.