The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

  In memory he jumped ahead to that moment when, in the shadows of rusty iron, he had finished burying it deep in the dryness of the drifted sand, and with great care had smoothed and swept and patted the surface until he could see no trace of his efforts.

  Only much later, two days or three, he had fought the pain of the burns and the illusions of the fever by trying to estimate if there was as much there as she had said there would be. The fact of two denominations made it difficult to figure it out. Finally, scratching on the dirt with a twig, he figured out what would be in the case if every wrapped bundle contained only fifties. No matter how carefully he worked the arithmetic out, it came to $525,000.00. But at least half the top layer had been bundles of hundreds.

  Finally his fever-dazed brain found a possible answer. On the bottoms of the other stacks there would be bundles of twenties and tens. And it had been merely accident that the stack he had examined had been made up of all fifties and hundreds. He decided the sensible thing to do was go up, dig it up, count it all—when the sun was lower, and when the pain wasn’t so bad.

  The nurse told him it was time to go to sleep. She tried to help him to the bathroom. He said he could manage. She hovered close to him. When he came out she had cranked the bed down, plumped the pillow, tidied the bedding and turned it back into that cool and exact triangle shape of hospital welcome. She reminded him that after midnight, until eight when Nurse Chappie would be back on duty, he would have no special nurse. She pinned the call button to the sheet near the pillow. She took pulse and temperature, gave him the mild nightly barbiturate. She said goodby to him, saying that she had been taken off the case beginning tomorrow. He thanked her. When she settled herself into the armchair, the only light in the room was the cone of her reading lamp shining down on her knitting. The wool was pale gray. The needles ticked as steadily as a clock, and he heard from afar the long hollow mournful whonk of a large vessel signaling as it left Nassau harbor.

  Fourteen

  CORPO HAD PROPPED her up on the narrow bed, almost to a sitting position. He had put his best white shirt on her, folded a blue bandanna diagonally, knotted it around her small waist as a belt, folded the cuffs of the shirt back until they were at her wrists. He had combed her hair in a way that looked quite good to him, gently fashioning it over the shaved and bandaged place.

  He had cleaned up several areas of the littered room, stacking the things in boxes he had saved. On an upended crate beside the bed were some of the brilliant red blossoms of flowering air plants in a small glass jar.

  He could not tire of looking at her. Her eyes were sea green, with little flecks of amber near the pupils, her skin flawless where it was neither burned nor bruised nor abraded. He liked to lean close and look at those eyes, and the way the little dark lashes curled, and the way the pale hair of the eyebrows was laid so neatly and cleverly, the blonde head hair springing so vitally from the white scalp where the curve of the gentle forehead ended. She had small even teeth, a narrow upper lip and a full protruding lower lip, and a small cleft in her chin. All the neatness of the way she was made reminded him of birds he had picked up, freshly killed, the feather patterns and the down of the soft underside.

  He sat on the broken chair near the foot of the bed and admired her. She went on and on and on, in a light sweet breathless voice, her expressions changing often. She was by far the prettiest thing he had ever seen.

  “And you sure are a talker, Missy. You sure do go on and on.”

  He could not understand much of it. Sometimes the words didn’t fit together in any way that would make sense. It didn’t seem to matter whether he was there or not if she felt talky. She talked to a lot of different people. Sometimes she’d seem to be talking right to him, but when he moved off to the side she’d keep talking to the place where he’d been. She’d doze off. Sometimes it would be a good heavy sleep. Other times she’d toss and twitch and whine. She’d get all sweaty, and he’d wipe her face off.

  He liked it when she’d laugh. It would make him smile and sometimes laugh with her. She had a lot of different kinds of laughing. Sometimes like a tea party, and sometimes teasing, and sometimes a real belly-buster, deep and hearty for such a little mite of a thing.

  It began to seem to him as if he was getting to know the folks she was talking to. She’d wait and listen to them answer, and she’d nod, and he’d find himself straining to hear what they were saying to Missy. There was Stel and Roger and Mister Bix and Carrie. Then there was Captain Stan and Captain Staniker which could be the same one. There was a Mary Jane, and Jonathan and Sam, and other people she didn’t say often enough for him to remember.

  Sometimes when she was talking real clear and straight, he would put his hands on her shoulders and give her a little shake and say, “What’s your name, Missy. What do these folks call you?”

  But she would keep carrying on as if she hadn’t understood a word. She talked about fish and reefs, and whether she ought to go back to the Island Shop and buy that blue sweater. A couple of times she just sat there and cried, not making much noise about it, but he just couldn’t stand it and he had to get out of there because it like to broke his heart hearing it. He went down to clean some fish and in a little bit he heard her tea party laugh a couple of times. He shook his head in wonder, and decided he’d boil her up a nice thick fish chowder for her supper.

  Once he got angry enough to try to join in. Missy was talking in a whispery little voice to the one called Stel, trying to get Stel to stop crying. He figured it out from what she said that Stel had a game leg, and the one named Carrie was being mean to her. Missy didn’t seem to care much for Carrie either. So he said it was a pretty sorry person that’d pick on a little gimpy gal, but Missy went right on without hearing a word, and it all turned into nonsense words and she fell asleep all at once, leaving him with the idea that it was a good thing Captain Stan was being especially nice to that Stel, because she sounded like somebody who could use friends.

  It tired his head trying to sort out all those people. And he was beginning to feel impatient with her for not getting better faster. Those heavy sweats and the moaning in the sleep made him nervous.

  He had the uneasy idea he ought to go right on over to town and get the Lieutenant. But then they’d put her into the hospital. But hospitals had that funny thing about what to do when your head was hurt. They might never let Missy go. There was another thing too. The Lieutenant might get upset about the girl being there on the island with him all this time. And the people in those candy houses over there would get real puckered about it, and get dirty ideas. No use trying to explain to them there’d been just that one little slip, and he was sorry it happened, his hand just reaching out that way for a little feel of that pretty, dainty, little titty. If that hand got away from him again, he was going to go down and lay it on the fish cleaning block and whack a couple fingers off it with the axe.

  They wouldn’t even try to understand he was busier right now than he’d been when he was building the place all by himself. It was so hard to keep track of all the things he had to do, he kept falling behind on one thing or another and racing around trying to catch up.

  What with washing out the bedding, scrubbing the place, burning the trash that piled up on him, patching up the place where the night bugs could get in to pester her, he still had to keep track of the nurse chores.

  He’d boiled the boat sponge clean, and when she made a mess, after he’d put the bedding to soak, before he’d slip her into the fresh sheets, he had to swab her off clean and nice again, using the sponge and soap and warm water, keeping his head turned and going by touch so as not to look at her, then drying her nice with the soft toweling. Good thing the brief rains had been heavy or he’d be short on water.

  Food was a real problem too, getting something down her that would give her some strength back. A can of chili looked just too dark and heavy for a sick missy, so you thin it down with powdered milk. Put the spoon to her little mouth and she’d op
en up like a baby bird, and that was the way to get the pills into her too, stuff them into those first few spoonfuls. When she got all she could handle, you couldn’t get the spoon past her teeth and she’d make a tired whiney sound and roll her head back and forth to get away from the spoon.

  Had to watch her back to see how it was coming, and the last time he greased her it looked fine, except for two little bad spots left on that sunk-in little white butt, to be pinched open and scrubbed clean and covered with the medicine.

  Then he had a name for her. She was talking to that Jonathan and said, “Leila Dye. Leila Dye. That will be funny after all the years of being Leila Boylston, huh?” Celebrate, he thought, with a good chowder for her so thick you could stand a spoon in it, plenty of chili powder and that spic sauce to give it some life. Stir a whole damn tin of that Aussy butter into it to start her fattening up. Count every little rib she had. Fever melts it right off them every time. Never thought she’d be as much as nineteen. Boylston girl, with a teacher fellow to get married to. Teacher, don’t you sweat too much. Ol’ Corpo’s fixing her up fine, and she’ll live right here with him until she’s dancing and laughing and singing the whole day through, and then she’ll let you know how it’s time to come get her, and you can let on to that brother Sam she’s in good hands.

  While fishing he was taken far off, and came slowly back into himself to find that he was drifting through the Inlet, out toward the breakers, holding a rod with an empty hook. He started the motor on the skiff and came home, and coming around the last turn, saw the strange boat under his place, couldn’t fit his mind around what he was supposed to know, because it had been there before and he couldn’t remember why. Then he remembered the girl all of a sudden, and why he’d gone out. He yanked open the bait well lid and saw four good fish, enough, thank God, and couldn’t remember catching them. He squeezed in beside her fancy boat, moored the skiff, ran up to take a look at her. She was out of the bed and on her side on the floor sound asleep, her head in a corner. He clucked and went over and felt of her, and was pleased to find out she felt almost cool to the touch for the first time. He lifted her easily, put her back on top of the rumpled bed, tugged the tails of the shirt down to cover her decently. He went down with the cook pot, cleaned the fish and cut them into chunks and dropped them into the pot. When he carried it up, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, and he said, “You feeling a lot better, Missy?”

  “But you can’t expect me to be absolutely useless, darling! It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve done some of Sam’s work at home for ages, and I’m a whiz typist, and pretty dang good at speedwriting too, and certainly somebody in Montevideo needs typing in English. So all I’m asking, darling, is for you not to get all proud and stuffy, and write to them and just ask them to fix up the permissions and things I’ll need to earn any money down there … What difference does that make? When we have babies I’ll stay home. Darling, it’s a tiny, tiny apartment, and you’ll have long hours and I’ll go slowly mad. Do you want me wandering the streets or something?… Certainly I like to be alone with you, Jonathan, but I also like to be with people too.”

  “Sorry I asked,” Corpo mumbled, and spiced the fish generously, added water and powdered milk and set it to boil. When he looked over at her, she was on her feet, tottering feebly across the rough flooring, her hands held out for balance. He dropped the spoon and hastened toward her.

  “Did anyone see Jonathan?” she asked in a higher voice than usual, thin, plaintive—a little-girl voice. “Did anyone see Jonathan? I have to talk to Jonathan. It’s about Mrs. Staniker. It’s about Mrs. Mary Jane Staniker. She scared me awful. Her hair is wound up in the fan. Her face is like plums and her tongue is sticking way out and her eyes are bugging way out and her lips are like sausages. I got to find Jonathan. I thought it was firecrackers. For a joke. Jonathan!”

  He caught her by the wrist as she started to run. She wheeled toward him, and he knew that she saw him. She looked at him, and her eyes were different. They saw him. They went wide. She stared down at herself, looked wildly around the room, and then began screaming and screaming and trying to yank free of his grasp. She was much stronger and wirier than he could have guessed. He tried to keep her from hurting herself. In her struggles she fell, and kept trying to crawl away from him, her screams dwindling to tiny rasping squeaks. Suddenly she seemed to faint. He put her back in the bed. She lay on her back, snoring softly, her mouth sagging open. She felt hot again.

  After he had stared at her for a little while, he looked until he found his mirror and propped it in its place on the two nails over the sink. He studied himself for a long time, slowly combing the beard with his fingers. He looked around the room.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” he said softly, and went to the box where he thought there was a good chance he would find the razor and the soap stick and the little scissors he’d need to chop it short enough to shave and to chop his hair close enough to grease it and comb it.

  That Wednesday night, down on the port bunk aboard the Muñequita, Corpo felt mildly disconsolate. Nice how much of that chowder he’d gotten down her, and she’d cooled off some. But she’d been talking to a mess of people he’d never even heard of before, waving her hands some, giggling and smiling and bobbing her head. And he’d wanted her to look right at him once more and see there was nothing to be so scared of. Think he was a wild man or something. A good beard keeps the bugs off. Man had a right to shave or not shave. But she hadn’t been able to see him. She was looking past him mostly, making him feel as if there was a room full of people behind him. “My name is Leila Jane Boylston and I am eleven years old, and I like tennis and swimming best,” she had said in her little-girl voice.

  He heard the rain coming, moving across the mangroves, hissing more loudly as it approached. It was a good rain for ten minutes, leaving the air washed clean when it ended.

  He told himself that it was no good. She had gotten a little better and now she was worse. It went that way a lot of times. They’d get hit bad, so bad it wouldn’t look as if there was any point in trying to get them back to the field hospital. The corpsman would plug up the holes as best he could, put on plenty of sulfa powder, squeeze those ampules into the casualty’s arm. Before the morphine took hold, they’d sometimes brighten right up, ask for a butt maybe, look around, and then all of a sudden they’d go. Just like that. Life filled a man up, and when it went out, he sagged like a kid’s balloon losing a part of its air. But slower. The dead would just dwindle and flatten, and their uniforms would look too big; and if the outfit had been saddled up without a break for a few days, the whiskers would look artificial, little wires poked neat and careful through the silent skin. Every dead knew it couldn’t happen to him. Even if the whole platoon was wiped out, he’d be the one left. It’s what they had to think or they wouldn’t be there at all, and if they were, you couldn’t get them to keep moving. If any one of them ever knew his odds were no better and no worse than anybody else, then how in hell could you get him to take the point? How could you get anybody to work their way along a hedgerow close enough to lob grenades into a machine-gun position with a good field of fire? After a while you got to understand that it was exactly the same with the krauts, and they could do the things they did, the damned fine soldiering, because theirs was just the same dream, each one of them accepting the idea of a wound, maybe a bad one, and pain that could be bad, but not accepting that final listening-look some of them got and the shrinking down into a still thing smaller than the clothes it had worn. If you kept them on the move too long, then the ones who had all their springs and strings pulled a little tighter than the others; they would start to figure it all out, start to know that what kind of luck was coming up for them, good or bad, had not a damn thing to do with who they were, or what they thought, or how they felt. Then they had to make do with the idea of being nothing. Just something moving and breathing in a bad place. That’s when they’d flatten out and try to work their way down into the safe, bl
ack, warm ground and never stand up again. They gave it a word. Combat fatigue. What it really was was the knowing of it, finding out you were some kind of a bug, killing other bugs, and if God paid any attention at all, it was more like he’d look down and shake his big sad head and say, “What the hell are they up to now?”

  Right there toward the end, he thought, before they busted my head, I had me some workers. Ever’ one had been through the mill, got over believing he could depend on some kind of magic, knew that the onliest way to have any personal luck was to give it a chance to work by being as quick, smart and sly as a weasel. Slide like a snake through every little fold in the ground. Bust every place that even smelled like a sniper would like it. Ears to hear the incoming mail before it made any sound at all, like a dog whistle. But I was losing them too. One at a time. Something always happens you can’t count on. And then I lost myself. Knew I was getting hit. Glad it didn’t hurt. Felt like somebody hitting you with a stocking full of sand. Sort of a jar, and then a warm running feeling where the hole was. And then it just winked out. Like back in the rest area when the movie film would break. All of a sudden nothing except a white light on a white screen.

  And that boy upstairs there, that fresh meat from the repple depple, he never had time to get smart.…

  Corpo knuckled his eyes and shook his head in a familiar disgust with himself. Sergeant, if you’re getting so you can’t tell a pretty little girl from a dumb recruit, them candy people are sure to God going to haul you off in the funny wagon.

  He crawled out of the cramped forward section of the Muñequita and straighted up on deck, snuffing the clean night. Wrap her up and tote her down here and use this fine boat and run her down to the city pier. Or wait a bit, do all you can, then make her up a nice box out of the good boards you’ve been saving, pretty her up, say the words, and bury her deep and neat and quiet. And take this fine boat out on the first misty night and let it loose with the tide moving out.