by Farris, John
"We come a little early," he explained.
Doremus helped him out. "I'm all right," Mills said. "What happened to Chuck?"
"Passed out." They both started around the car toward the fallen deputy. Doremus saw the smoke around the Chevelle then. He took a step in the direction of the other car, hesitated. Craig Young stumbled out of the hovering gray smoke, came straight at them. For a few moments the red streaks of paint on his face hid the fact that he was bleeding from the left temple. But he had held on to his knife somehow.
Doremus centered the muzzle of his automatic on Craig's heaving chest. "Throw it down," he said softly.
Craig stopped abruptly, looked at the two men with suspicion. He raised the knife a couple of inches, threateningly. Doremus calmly thumbed back the hammer of the Colt.
"What the hell," Mills said, staring. "Where's his clothes?"
"Brave warriors don't wear clothes. Right, Craig? Oh, your Aunt Helen's OK. You only got her in the shoulder. Now let's put the knife down and play some other game for a while; this one's been a little hard on everybody."
Blood dripped from Craig's left cheekbone. His lips parted and he showed his teeth. Doremus noted that he had shaved off the manly moustache. Without it his face looked thinner, flayed to the bone. Doremus could almost see Craig's heart beating through the ridged wall of his chest. The blood seemed to be flowing more profusely from the wound at his temple. Doremus felt a tug of pity for him, wondering at the same time if Sheriff Washbrook had seen something like this just before he was killed.
"One more time, Craig. The knife." He had the unhappy feeling that he was going to be forced to kill Craig, and he was already planning how to do it with a minimum of distress. At that range he knew he could not miss the heart, and Craig would be dead in the blink of an eye. But weariness befuddled him; for a couple of seconds the barrel of the automatic dipped.
Craig jumped at them, screaming, and hurled his knife. It hit Enoch Mills butt first over the left eye and he went over backward as if he'd been slugged. Instead of following the knife and charging, Craig whirled and made for the limestone cliff across the drive. Doremus aimed the automatic reluctantly. Then, as Craig began climbing, he put the Colt away and helped Mills to his feet.
"Where's he going?" Mills said, fingering the sore spot on his forehead.
"I don't think he knows. Up. Out, maybe. But he won't make it."
They watched silently as Craig continued to climb, frantically. They could hear him grunting, scrabbling with his fingernails. Small rocks rained on the blacktop. He was thirty feet up, looking pale and fragile against the cliff, when he began to falter. He pressed in, gripping the rock with every inch of his skinny body. The wind was troubling him. They heard him cry out, unintelligibly. Then he went on.
"I don't know if I can watch it," Mills muttered. He hauled Chuck off the paving, carried him to the Pontiac, which was tilted over a flattened tire, and put him in. Then he took his CB radio off the floor, tested it. Doremus stayed where he was, looking up. It was harder to see Craig now, but he could still be heard; each agonized breath cut through the dull sweep of the wind.
And then he came down in a shower of soft broken rock, came down like a featherless bird, arms outflung, still reaching for the last handhold. He hit the asphalt drive feet first, at a slight angle, collapsed, his head bounding as it struck an instant later. He lay still and foreshortened and the stripes of red war paint gleamed in the light from the Pontiac.
Doremus heard a grating noise and looked at the Chevelle. There was still smoke around it, as from burned brakes. The right-side door had opened and he saw a pair of hands, a straggly blonde head. She came crawling determinedly out, stood up, wobbled, leaned against the roof of the Chevelle. She looked at the splintered fence and the rubble at her feet and then toward him, blindly. Doremus wondered how he could have forgotten all about Amy.
"Would somebody please help me?" she asked in a timid voice.
He was there in plenty of time to grab her before the wobble could get any worse.
Chapter 17
The soft sound of the sea uncurling against the narrow strip of sand beach a few yards away from the honeymoon cottage awakened her, as it usually did, shortly after dawn. She floated, delightfully, for another ten minutes between sleep and full awareness before edging out of bed.
The air conditioner was off but there was a slight chill in the bedroom and she remembered it had rained during the night. She stripped off the filmy trifle of a nightgown in which she had slept, letting it drift to the rumpled king-size bed. She looked with a trace of a smile where Doremus had slept for a few hours before the thought of uncaught fish out there in the sea had raised him and sent him stumbling off in the black of night with half-opened eyes. She shook her head at this unshakable dedication and went into the bathroom for a five-minute shower.
Afterward, smiling to herself, she chose light-blue shorts and a bright Jamaica-print blouse, dressed, slipped her feet into Italian sandals and went out on the porch. The sun was behind her, its heat not apparent yet, but the sky had turned blue. The precisely clipped grass of the lawn and the fronds of the two palms were still beaded from the rain. Out on the placid water there was a long low boat with two men in it. She thought she recognized her husband and smiled again.
A tall, white-coated waiter came down the walk, carefully balancing a breakfast tray on his head. He stepped onto the porch, put the tray on a glass-topped coffee table. "Good morning, mum."
"Good morning, Jonas."
"How's the sunburn today? Not so bad, I see."
She looked down at her peeling thighs ruefully. "Much better. I thought I could take sun very well, so I'm afraid I was careless."
"Oh, mum, Jamaica sun is fierce all the year round. But you luckier than other ladies; some actually go to the hospital from the sunburn. You have plenty more time to enjoy your stay."
"Yes," she said, her eyes returning to the boat, which was now shorebound. "I am luckier than other ladies."
He finished setting the table with crisp linen and laid out their breakfast, then went striding back to the hotel two blocks away, the now empty tray under his arm. She poured a cup of hot coffee for herself, stood with a hip against one post of the porch, watching the boat come in. When the two men were close to shore and she could see they had a catch, she ran past the little emerald-shaped swimming pool and went down to the beach. Doremus, wearing boat shoes, swim trunks and a straw hat, was in the water, helping the guide beach the boat.
"What have you got?" she said, and he flashed a smile.
The guide, whose name was Freddy, bobbed his head excitedly. "Shark, mum. Shark."
Water lapped over her toes and she took a hurried step back. "What?"
"Mako shark," Doremus said, reaching into the boat for it.
She peered closely at the mako, and was disappointed. It resembled pictures of sharks which she'd seen, but it was only about three feet long. "Aren't you supposed to throw back the babies?" she said.
Doremus laughed. "This is as long as they get. Want to see his teeth?"
"Ecch. Wait, let me get the camera. Even if it is a baby I want a picture." She ran back to the house, scooped up the Polaroid someone had given them as a wedding present, paused to pour her husband some coffee and ran back to the beach, arriving out of breath. She made them both pose with the shark. Then Freddy put it back in the boat and pushed off from shore.
"Tomorrow," he said cheerfully, "I find us a whole school of bonita."
"I'm counting on you, Freddy." They went leisurely back to the cottage, and his arm was around her waist. "I thought you were sleeping late today," he said chidingly.
"Every intention; but there's something about the sound of the ocean; it can pry you out of the warmest bed." She nipped a kiss into his neck, pleased with the salt taste of his red-brown skin. In a week's time he had tanned marvelously, while she had been forced to sit on the porch in the shade, recovering from the folly of her initi
al day in the sun. He was also filling out, she noticed with satisfaction. There seemed to be some padding over his ribs. She pinched to make sure. He rubbed fish odor into her hair and she ducked away hastily, began uncovering their breakfast. There was a plate of fresh tropical fruit—papaya, melon, pineapple—two platters of ham and eggs, a large basket filled with muffins. And one little plate had two letters on it.
"Mail," she said, and sliced the envelopes open with a butter knife. She was reading when Doremus came back from washing up. He bent over nonchalantly to kiss a bare and somewhat flaky arm.
"Who's that one from?"
"Helen," she said.
He yawned, cracked his jaws, poured another cup of coffee.
"How's everything back in The Shades?"
"Normal," Amy said, absorbed in the letter. As she was reading, a wisp of shadow crossed her face. She put the letter down beside her plate and stared off toward the water. A man on horseback came along the beach, disappeared down the line of cottages.
"Something?" he said, after a while.
"Oh . . . no, it's all right." But she left the table and stood with her back to him.
"Peggy's all right, I hope."
"Yes, fine. They're all fine. They had a picnic the other day. The three of them—Helen, Peg and Peter. Helen says Peter is talking quite a lot now, when he forgets himself. That's usually when he's around Peg. When they're together they're in their own little world." Amy's head dropped slightly. "And we're . . . in our own little world, and I've forget about it, all of it? Am I going to be haunted the rest of my life, am I always going to get the shakes when I think of . . . Craig?"
Doremus put his napkin down thoughtfully, got up, guided her to the ornamental couch. "No, you aren't," he said. "Keep in mind that it's only been five months. Some kinds of shock don't wear off in a hurry. What you went through was the equivalent of a particularly nasty combat operation. There are men alive today still having nightmares about World War Two. Give yourself a little time, Amy. In our little world."
She nodded, but she was still tense. He put an arm around her, which brought a smile. She leaned gratefully against him. "I have the peculiar feeling that I was supposed to die. Sometimes at night I'm absolutely sure that I don't deserve this life, that I don't deserve you. I'm absolutely convinced it's all going to be snatched away after a short trial period."
"Try to get you away from me," he said.
"I love you so very much, Doremus. I don't think you're ever off my mind. When you're out there in the dark fishing I get a little scared. Now it's fine. Now I feel even a little bit brave and confident. But I don't like for you to go away even for an hour. I'm talking like a—"
"A wife," he said. "What happened to the appetite?"
She looked at him sheepishly. "I've got a stupid question, as long as I'm in this mood. Then I'll shut up forever. Doremus . . . what made you pick me? I was sure you were in love with Helen. I thought I recognized all the symptoms. I had made up my mind. Amy's Blue Period. You were going to marry Helen. I was going to join the Salvation Army or something. Then, out of nowhere that afternoon, 'I think it's time to get married, Amy.'"
"Very romantic of me," he said, his lip curling. "As long as we're opening up, let me say I was scared stiff. I thought I was too old for you. I expected withering scorn."
"Anything but a blubbery face and a very delighted girl in your lap. Too old! When you're a hundred and nineteen I'll be a hundred and one. But you didn't tell me yet. Helen is a damned good-looking, mature and thoughtful woman. She has style and serenity. What did you want with me? It wasn't sympathy, was it?"
"Sure."
"Oh, thanks a lot!"
"I was feeling sorry for myself. Tossing in bed at night like a sixteen-year-old virgin. Fumbling around. Not eating right. I was very sorry for myself because you were on my mind, Amy. As you are now, as you always will be. And Helen wasn't."
She looked closely at his face, then nodded. "That simple, hey?"
"That's all there is to it. I loved Amy Lawlor and I'm glad I was man enough to tell her. Now I'm hungry enough to eat two breakfasts instead of one if you don't get over to the table before I do. And then I think when I'm chock full I'll wander down to the hotel and send a cable to Nelson in Chicago telling him that it'll be my pleasure to represent his fine detective agency in the city of San Francisco and to wire me a couple of thousand dollars care of Barclay's because I'm on my honeymoon and I want to treat my bride to a trunkful of new clothes. And then I think we ought to get in that little Ford out there and—"
"Whoa, whoa," Amy said quickly, kissing him. He held her very tightly and for quite a long time, and one of the tall hotel waiters walking by turned his head at such an angle he almost lost the tray he was toting.
"On second thought," Doremus said with a vague smile, "I think I'll forget about the breakfast for now, and I can always send the wire this afternoon. Or some other time."
"Or some other time," Amy repeated, and obediently followed him into the shady cottage.