A Flash of Green

by John D. MacDonald

  He glanced at each day’s newspaper. The things he had always covered had been divided up among several people. When they weren’t by-lined, he could almost tell by the style who had written them. The paper constantly, stentoriously hailed the new era of prosperity which would enhance the area, courtesy of Palmland Development.

  On his table was the carton Brian had dropped off, containing the junk from his desk drawers at the paper, a long accumulation. He did not open it.

  Once, when he answered the phone, it was his sister Laura.

  “I’ve been trying and trying to get you, Jimmy. I thought maybe you’d come here. I thought, being in so much trouble, you might come here.”

  “I was going to. I just haven’t gotten around to it.”

  “I wrote you a note for you to phone me. Didn’t you get it?”

  “I’ll stop by and see you pretty soon, Sis.”

  She lowered her voice. “Sid has been worse this week and I don’t feel right leaving him here alone, but I was going to come out there. I’ve been worried about you, Jimmy.”

  “Everything is okay.”

  “You lost your job, and nine out of every ten people in the county think you ought to be ridden out of here on a rail, so things must be real good for you. Real real good. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Are you looking for a job?”

  “I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

  “Jimmy, you sound so kind of blah. Are you facing up to things? You’re the kind who always needs a push. You’ve got a wonderful education. You should get away from here. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I don’t want to sound cruel, but there’s one thing I won’t have you doing. I won’t have you coming here and moving in on us, not unless you can pay your way. If you could, it would be a help, but I don’t see how you’re going to find any kind of a job around here. Jimmy, you come on into town and talk to me tonight.”

  “I’ll be around to see you pretty soon.”

  “We have to talk.”

  “Sure, Sis. We’ll talk it all out.”

  On Thursday, the third day of August, Brian and Nan came to the cottage at sunset. They had to sprint to the door through a hard rain that began to come down just as they had parked.

  “You given up answering the phone?” Brian asked.

  “Too many weird calls,” Jimmy explained.

  “They should be dying out by now,” Brian said. “After all, they won.”

  “Look at this place!” Nan said, staring around. “If I can borrow a shovel and a wheelbarrow, Jimmy …”

  “Don’t bother with it,” he said.

  She gave him a questioning look. “I am going to bother with it. In fact, dear, it almost pleases me. You’ve always been such a Mister Neat, it made me insecure when you visited our cruddy little nest. I’m glad to see there’s a little slob in you. You guys go sit on the porch and watch the rain while I housewife this shambles.”

  Brian and Jimmy sat on the rear porch. Brian said that at last he felt Borklund had stopped suspecting him of any complicity in what had now become famed as Wing’s Forthright Editorial Policy. Brian began telling him of the changes on the paper, the new assignments, the foul-ups on the things Jimmy had always covered. He stopped abruptly and said, “I get the strange idea you’re not tracking.”

  “Go ahead. It’s very interesting.”

  “Sure. Sure. What are your plans?”

  “I’m sort of formulating them, Bri.”

  “Nothing definite?”

  “Not quite yet.”

  “Then I’ve got something for you. A coincidence. I tried to check it out with you but I couldn’t get hold of you this morning, and I couldn’t get away to track you down.” He handed Jimmy a business card. “Scott is an old friend. And Jacksonville isn’t too bad of a place to live. He’s looking for a guy like you, Jimmy. It’s a newsletter thing. The Southeast Investor. He’ll pay a hundred plus expenses at first and work your tail off. He’s got so many other things going for him, if he can find somebody who’ll work out, he wants to give them the whole load, on a percentage of the net basis. It’s a leg-work problem, plus good clear prose, with a captive analyst to give it the financial slant. It’s made for you, boy.”

  “Interesting,” Jimmy said.

  “He flew back this afternoon. He’ll be expecting you to be in touch.”

  “He just happened to drop in?”

  “Just like that,” Brian said with a wide, innocent stare.

  “You’re a good man, Haas.”

  “You’ll go ahead with it?”

  “It’s something to think about.”

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “These things die down,” Jimmy said.

  Haas looked at him in astonishment. “Lots of things do. Everything does, in one sense or another. But be a little realistic, for God’s sake. You put a big crimp in Elmo’s plans. He’ll never be anything more than small time, but he’ll always be as big as you can get in this county.”

  “I made him a noble speech. At the moment I almost believed it. He acted kind of sad and martyred, as if a pet hound had bit him.”

  “You bitched Elmo and you betrayed the business community and spat in the face of progress, and I don’t think you could get a job washing cars in Palm County. Maybe you could get it, but I doubt you could keep it.”

  “I might be able to think of something.”

  “Why should you be anxious to stay here, anyhow? What is there here for you? Who is there?”

  Jimmy smiled. “There could have been somebody, but I messed that up pretty good too.”

  “She asked me about you. She phoned you. She thought you’d left. She was surprised you’re still around. A lot of people are.”

  “She still at the bank?”

  “They moved her back out to the front desk, even. Sometimes I can’t figure this damn town. She got up on her hind legs and talked to an unfriendly mob. She didn’t let the situation rattle her. Same as Tom. So they’re a couple of folk heroes. All of a sudden nobody is very mad any more. The heat is the common enemy. The purge of the degenerates has ended. But nobody is making room for you, boy. Don’t count on that much amnesty.”

  The rain had stopped. Nan came out onto the porch. Soon it was time for them to leave. Brian had to go back to the newsroom. Jimmy thanked Nan for the cleaning job, forcing enthusiasm into his voice. Brian said they’d have to play some chess soon. Nan started to go out to the car with Brian, then sent him on ahead.

  “You’ve done some taking care, Jimmy,” she said. “You’ve done it when I was desperate.”

  “I was glad to.”

  She studied him. “Our turn now, Jim.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Are you? I’ve been watching you. It reminds me of me, a long time ago. After I got out of the hospital. The body was mending fine.”

  “I tell you I’m all right.”

  “I kept telling people that too. But I didn’t want to even wash myself or brush my hair. You sleep a lot, don’t you?”

  “I’m between jobs. That’s natural, isn’t it?”

  “You can’t read because you can’t keep your mind on it. You stare at television, but the minute it’s over you can’t remember what it was about.”

  “Can anyone?”

  “Don’t make defensive jokes, Jimmy, please. You’ve had a serious shock, or a series of them. You’re disturbed. I know the symptoms. I know them so well. You should see somebody, you know. Somebody who can help you.”

  “I don’t know what makes you think I need any help.”

  “Sooner or later you’re going to realize you do, and the sooner you realize it, the easier it will be to get over it. If you won’t go see anyone, at least force yourself to … to stir around a little. Your world is getting smaller and narrower every day. You’re putting up more walls every day. Try to break that pattern, Jim, please. For me. As a favor to m
e … and Bri. You’re our friend. You know that. We love you. Try to do what we want you to do—for us if you can’t do it for yourself.”

  “I keep telling you, I’m …”

  “Please, Jimmy.”

  He shrugged, forced a smile. “Okay. I’ll stir around, even if it does spoil my vacation.”

  On the following day it seemed much easier to stay at the cottage. He took a rusted spinning reel apart, cleaned it, oiled it, reassembled it, then felt so exhausted he took a long nap. After the nap he wrote a long letter of inquiry to Brian’s friend in Jacksonville, telling himself there was no point in phoning or seeing the man before he knew what the working arrangement would be. In the late afternoon, with a sense of accomplishment, he took a huge bundle of laundry to the commercial end of the key and left it off. He drove over into the city intending to stop and see his sister, and then suddenly found himself slowing down for the turn into his own driveway. He went to bed early and slept late.

  On Saturday afternoon he forced himself to drive to Kat Hubble’s house. It took an alarming effort of will. His mind kept presenting a hundred plausible alternatives. He was able to make the final three hundred yards only by telling himself that she would not be home. But her car was there. He stopped in her driveway. As he hesitated, deciding to back out again, she came around the corner of the house, a garden trowel in her hand, a look of question on her face. She halted abruptly when she recognized him. He willed her to turn on her heel and go back out of sight. She flushed, then came slowly toward him, unsmiling, the flush fading to pallor.

  He got out of the car. “Hello, Jimmy?” The greeting was a question.

  “I’ve got no business coming here. Brian said you asked about me.”

  “I wondered about you. I phoned you. I guess I wanted to tell you … we appreciated what you tried to do, even if it didn’t work.”

  “Regards from the committee.”

  “Not exactly.”

  She turned and moved into leafy shade. He followed her. Spots of sunlight made quick patterns on her hair.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m all right.”

  He made a clumsy gesture. “About that other. I wanted to tell you something, Kat. It wasn’t … all planned out, anything like that. It was wrong, but it wasn’t from thinking about it and … waiting for a chance.”

  “I know that.”

  “Sometimes people do things that have no chance to turn out right.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t calculate everything you do!”

  “Dear God, don’t plead with me, Jimmy. What do you want me to say to you? What is there I can say? It comes into my mind sometimes, and I push it out. It makes me feel annoyed, irritable. It’s like when you go to a party and you are trying to be nice, and you pull some terrible social error, so bad you can’t ever explain it to your hostess. We’re adults, aren’t we? We were tense and tired and upset, and we did a silly meaningless thing out of some sense of bravado, I guess. I’m not overwhelmed with guilt, you know. And there’s no reason you should feel any either. I just feel … sort of ordinary and trivial.”

  He pulled a leaf from the pepper hedge and rolled it into a moist green ball. “Is there any starting place left?” he asked, not looking at her.

  “For us?” She sounded startled. “But why?”

  “Why not?”

  “No, Jimmy,” she said, her tone gentle. “There’s no place to start because there’s no place to go. What we used to be to each other, that doesn’t exist any more, does it? And whatever new thing we tried to be, that didn’t turn out to be much of anything either. And you shouldn’t look at me like that, because I think you’re trying to kid yourself a little, to make a justification. I don’t hate you. Or myself. I just think any relationship would be … sort of dreary. It would be like wearing an albatross, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Don’t you see that it doesn’t fit? I’m too terribly P.T.A., dear, and you don’t have enough self-esteem. We can’t adjust ourselves into anything, you know. We can’t neaten it up like a bad movie, because we can’t change ourselves or each other, and we’re both a little too wise to try.”

  “You’re right, of course, but I didn’t want to admit it.” He smiled at her.

  “Jimmy, you look pretty terrible. You look puffy. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve got a good job lined up in Jacksonville.”

  “That’s wonderful! When you get all settled, write me if you want to.”

  “I’d like to, Kat.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Pretty soon, I guess.”

  “Isn’t it definite?”

  “Oh, it’s definite. Yes. A good job.”

  She hesitated and put her hand out. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. And to you too.”

  She winced slightly. “We need some. We haven’t had much lately, have we? We haven’t had much at all.”

  After he left her, he drove to the mainland and turned south on the Bay Highway. From the mainland road he looked out across the bay through Turk’s Pass, and saw the dusky orange disk of the sun balanced precisely on the far clean edge of a purple sea. He drove slowly down through Everset and then through the twilight ranch land. He turned around in a ranch road, and it was night when he entered Everset again.

  In the middle of the village he turned left toward the commercial dock area, and as he made the turn he had a strange feeling of inevitability. He felt as if a time of waiting was over. Barlow’s Towne Tavern was doing a good Saturday night business. The old cars and the pickup trucks were lined up in front of it. Inside, the juke was loud, and the sweaty weight of people had overpowered the air conditioning. There was a smell of fish and labor, beer and perfume. The juke thumped against the shouts and the laughter. He pushed through the crowd, smiling, looking directly at no one. He found a single vacant stool at the far end of the bar. He ordered a shot and a beer. He smiled directly ahead at the bottle rack, and he could hear the change in the kinds of sounds the people were making. He could feel their eyes. He ordered a second shot to go with the rest of the beer.

  A man he did not know pushed in beside him and stared at him. The man was short and heavy, with a wide weathered face, sun-bleached brows, little pale eyes. “What the hell you doing around here, Wing?”

  “Having a drink.”

  “You know where you are?”

  “Barlow’s. I’ve been here before.”

  “Tell you where you are, you silly shit. You’re right in the middle of Bliss country. There’s anyway ten people here kin to Elmo. And the rest of us know he’s the finest man ever walked the earth. He got my brother set loose from Raiford one time when Lonny had to get home and he’p care for his sick wife. Ol’ Barcomb over there, Elmo he’ped him buy a boat when his old one got tore up in the hurricane.”

  “Nice fella, that Elmo.”

  “By now everybody in this here room knows who you are and they know you told a lot of stinking lies about the only man ever come into county government to he’p his own kind. Wing, you lost your damn mind?”

  The last question was a shout. Barlow appeared suddenly on the other side of the bar and said, “Slack off, Walker. Nothing happens in here.”

  “Harry, you don’t give a damn who you serve, do you?” Walker asked. He walked away, thick shoulders hunched.

  Barlow leaned across the bar toward Jimmy Wing. “Could be you should git up and git, friend. There’s some went off to bring some others.”

  “I like it here.”

  “You’ll be all right here, inside, I gahrn-tee, but leaving is the thing. For leaving, a couple deputies might be a good thing.”

  “Would they come if they knew?”

  Barlow thought it over, his forehead deeply wrinkled. “Come to think on it, maybe not. But I sure wisht you’d go someplace else, or anyways try, bef
ore they get steamed up too damn much.”

  “Another shot and another beer, Harry.”

  Barlow hesitated, sighed. “Guess it would be cruel and unusual to refuse a man all the pain-softener he can hold.”

  The flavor of the place continued to change. More men arrived. The women left. The juke was stilled. The stool beside Wing was empty. From time to time there was a low muttering of voices. Bar business was good. They were waiting for him with all the heavy patience men can learn from the sea.

  “Let’s just take him on out,” somebody said in a complaining tone. The others hushed him.

  Jimmy Wing could feel no effect from his drinks. At times his throat would feel constricted and the back of his neck would feel icy. But it would go away, and he would feel capable of making bad jokes. He would manage something very flashy, agile, gallant. He would flee the lumbering pack, wearing the sparkling, infectious grin of the hero, disappearing like magic into the hot dark night, leaving an echo of his jeering laugh.

  He picked up his change with great care. He left a tip for Harry. He turned slowly on the bar stool and looked at them. Several faces were familiar. He smiled at them all and nodded his head several times.

  “Elmo Bliss is a monster,” he said, articulating loudly and distinctly. There was no answer. “He is a smiler. He is a thief. He does cheap favors for meatballs like you, so you vote for him and pack his pockets with money. It’s a good thing you love him so dearly, boys. I fixed his wagon. He’s going to be your neighbor for the rest of his life.”

  He made a sudden dash for the door. He felt as if he was running in slow motion. They were coming after him, but it did not feel like pursuit. It felt as if he were leading them. Just beyond the door his arms were grabbed. There was a man on each side of him. The power of their grip made him gasp. It took the strength out of him. He felt as if he were a ridiculous rag doll.

  Then they were trotting him along, around the side of the building and down a narrow dark area. He heard the sounds of their feet, and heard them panting as they jogged along with him. They were in grass, and then on boards, and then up against the back wall of something that stank of fish.