The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

  “But it wasn’t like I thought,” he said.

  “When it’s for real, it never is, Olly.”

  She saw the obscure shell road and made her turn. It was a mile and a half south of the turnoff to her house. She drove slowly until the headlights shone on the palm bole she’d had Oliver place across the road when they had driven out, hoping it would discourage any lovers or fishermen who sometimes used this road to drive down to the shoreline.

  He got out and lifted the end of the log and walked it out of the way and got back into the car.

  “Remember what comes next?” she asked.

  “I sail you back and leave you off at your place and bring the boat back here and drive home. Tomorrow I hitch a ride over and walk in and sail the boat up to Dinner Key.”

  She put the car in gear and drove ahead slowly. “And if they question you, you don’t know anything about anything.”

  “Oh God, Crissy! I—I can’t even stop thinking of how—heavy he was.…”

  “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Believe me, darling, you won’t worry about it at all. Everything will come up roses.”

  As she neared the end of the road she looked to see if the headlights picked up any gleam of metal from parked cars, but the area was empty. They had found the place while sailing. She slowed and parked near the foundations where an old frame house had burned down years ago. She parked on a slight down slope. Headlights shone on his sailboat tied to the small remaining section of an old rotten dock. She turned the lights off and got out. The wind from the west was still blowing gently, moving the mist that was coming off the water.

  They went down to the sailboat. She said. “Oh, here’s the car keys. Wouldn’t that be great, to go off with them.”

  He put them in his pocket. He leaned and put the case aboard. He said, “I—I’m sorry I couldn’t do …”

  “It’s over, dear. It’s done. That’s all that matters. Darling, before we run the sail up, would you look at the main sheet there near the transom on the port. There seems to be a turn of the jib sheet around it and it could get jammed in that roller thing. The flashlight is in that little …”

  “I know.” He stepped aboard. She followed him. He got the flashlight and knelt, peering at the lines.

  “It looks all right to——”

  At that instant she stabbed the muzzle of the single-shot 22 rifle into the socket of his right ear, pulling the trigger as she did so. It made a quick, hard snapping sound. He dropped and the light went out and he began a savage thrashing down there in the bottom of the boat. She backed quickly and sat on the dock planks and pulled her feet out of the way. Elbows and knees and heavy bones thudded against the bottom of the sailboat. He made the effortful grunts of combat. The boat rocked, swaying the tall naked mast back and forth. There was a quivering drumming sound of unseen arm or leg against some solid part of the boat, a muscular tremor faster than she would have believed possible. Then there was silence. The small rocking stopped, the mast motionless. The breeze from the west held the hull a few inches away from the dock, affixed by bow and stern lines. She slid aboard cautiously. He was face down, head toward the stern. She wrapped his right hand around the action of the rifle, pressing the fingers against the metal. She wrapped his left hand around the middle of the barrel, thumb toward the butt. Then she placed the weapon down, butt toward the stern, close beside him, pushed his thumb through the trigger guard, pressed it against the trigger.

  She took the little packet of scratch paper out of the hip pocket of her slacks. It was slightly damp. The last draft of the note. Floor plan of number ten. She worked his wallet out of his hip pocket, put the packet in with the few dollar bills he had, and replaced the wallet. She became aware of acrid odors of urine and excrement. She freed the bow line first, as Oliver had taught her to do under such circumstances of wind and mooring. As the bow swung slowly out, she ran the mainsail up and belayed the halyard around the cleat in the way Oliver had taught her. She freed the stern line. The boom swung to starboard, and she let off on the main sheet, and, other hand on the tiller, her feet braced near his back, she sat and sailed northward up the shoreline, staying well enough out for the mist to hide her from anyone on the shore, yet not so far out she would fail to see the corona of the outside floods she had left on against the mist. She came upon that haloed light sooner than she had expected. The only sound was a gurgle of water around the transom and rudder, a faint rattle of halyards against the stick.

  She went by the lights and, staying well out, brought it around, close hauling it, pointing it close to the wind, peering into the mist, rehearsing the things which had to be done quickly. When the dock appeared she found she was too far out. When she turned toward it, she turned right into the eye of the breeze. The sail flapped. She thought, with a touch of panic, she would not have the momentum to reach it. She scrabbled, caught the boat hook, leaned and caught the edge of a dock piling. As she pulled the stern in, the breeze caught the close-hauled mainsail, heeling the boat and almost breaking her hold. But then she was able to grasp a dock line in her right hand. She put the case up on the dock. She found the loop and slipped it over the tiller. She let out on the main sheet until the boom was angled far enough out to port. She wedged the sheet into the safety cleat, stood quickly and scrambled onto the dock, banging her knee painfully against the edge of it. She rolled and looked out and saw the Skatter moving out into the mist. The rattle and gurgle died. The mainsail was a tall blur and then it was gone. It would go aground, she was certain, on the western shoreline of Eliott Key.

  She snatched the case up and moved swiftly, limping slightly, into the shadows of the shrubbery near the foot of the stone stairway. She waited and listened and watched, and then moved quickly from deep shadow to deep shadow, moving behind the flood lighting. Dressed in the dark clothes, she walked quickly along the terrace to the sliding doors to her bedroom. She had left the draperies a foot apart. She looked into her bedroom. It gave her a strange feeling to see, in the glow of the night light, the woman shape under the light blanket, blonde hair snuggled into the whiteness of the pillow. She put the case down, lifted the corner of the mat outside her door, took the thin spatula, slid it through the crack and lifted the catch free. She put the kitchen implement in the waistband of her slacks, rolled the door open, picked up the case and edged through, into the bedroom coolness, into the place of all her scents and lotions and fabrics. She yanked the draperies shut, reached through and locked the sliding doors again. Took three slow steps and fell to her knees, and then rolled slowly onto her side. She pulled her knees high, tucked her head down, held her clenched fists between her breasts. After each long slow exhalation she felt a clenching and tremoring of her belly muscles, somewhat like the residual quiverings after orgasm. She felt the texture of the rug against her cheek and temple. She smelled her own sourness, a sharp pungency of nervous sweat.

  At last she got up very slowly. It took a great effort. She took care of the case first, rinsing the glasses again, drying them on one of her soft towels before putting them back into the rack on the bar. She rinsed the Thermos. One sliver of ice was left. She reached in through the wide mouth and dried the inside carefully and put it back in the compartment under the bar. She replaced the bourbon bottle and soda bottle and bottle opener in their customary places. She put the overnight case in the luggage locker in her dressing room.

  After her long, hot shower, and after she had toweled her hair to dryness, used her array of sprays, astringents, lotions which were so ordinary and comforting a part of her bedtime routine, she put on a short nightgown and turned her bed down. She took the pillow she had used for the torso, the rolled bath towels she had used for the legs, the wig and wad of toweling she had used for the head, and put everything away carefully. She had had to go out onto the terrace a half dozen times and come back in and pat and plump and adjust until the shapes of round hip, dip of waist, shoulder, sprawl of legs had looked real to her. She rolled up the damp soiled c
lothing she had worn. She spread the slacks on the floor, put the shirt, bra, pants, socks and boat shoes on them, and rolled it all into a tight, stubby cylinder and tied it with twine, then remembered the kerchief and got it and stuffed it into one end of the cylinder. They were all old, all ready for discard. She put the bundle in the back of her closet and washed her hands.

  She unlocked the inner door, drifted silently through the dark house and put the spatula back into the kitchen drawer and went back to her bedroom, leaving the inner door unlocked. The intercom master was fastened to the wall just inside the door to the dressing room. She depressed the button under the designation Apt, pressed the speak bar and said in a drowsy voice, “Francisca? Francisca?”

  She released the bar and waited, and just as she was about to try again, the girl said, “Yes? Yes? Yes?”

  Crissy frowned. There was no teaching her not to put her mouth so close to it and speak so loudly.

  “Sorry to wake you up, dear. What time is it, anyway?”

  “From—uh twelve in the night is maybe ten minutes later.”

  “Is that all? I had to get up and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. I took a hot shower and that didn’t help a bit. If I take another one of those pills, I’ll feel terrible tomorrow. Would it be too much trouble to bring me some hot cocoa, and maybe some crackers?”

  “Oh, no! No troubling!”

  “Just put a robe on, dear.”

  “Soon, soon,” the girl said in her high, happy voice.

  Crissy opened the draperies to the same gap as before, opened the inner door a few inches, turned off all but the night light and the bedside lamp, then rolled and turned and tossed until the bed lost its too-fresh look.

  Francisca knocked and came in with the cocoa and crackers on a small lacquered tray. She wore a quilted robe in a lurid shade of bright lime yellow. Crissy hitched herself up, put another pillow behind her back and reached for the tray.

  “Thank you, dear. This is pretty silly.”

  “No is,” Francisca said firmly.

  “Did he come by and collect his sailboat? I tried to see but it’s too misty to see the boat basin.”

  “Is gone.”

  “Did he give you any trouble?”

  “Oh, no! Never see him.”

  “You don’t have to wait for the tray, dear. Go on back to bed. I think this will do the trick.” She put her fist in front of a wide yawn. The girl said goodnight and went out and closed the door quietly.

  Just as she was lifting the cup to take the last few sips, Crissy began a violent and uncontrollable trembling. Cocoa spilled on the front of her nightgown and on the top sheet. She put the tray aside quickly, and when it kept on and on, she went across to the bar and poured a half tumbler of dark rum. She had to hold it in both hands. Her teeth chattered against the thick rim. Once it was down she was almost certain she would lose it. But then her stomach accepted it. She turned off the light and curled up in her bed in the same position as when she had lain on the floor.

  The trembling stopped like something slowly running down. While she was thinking about getting up and taking a pill, she fell off the edge into sleep.

  Twenty-two

  AS DUSK BECAME NIGHT, Mrs. Mooney had begun to fight a familiar battle with her conscience and with her desire.

  After she had fed the three old dogs, she turned the lights out in the house. She plodded from room to room, muttering to herself. From time to time she would climb the stairs and go into her bedroom and stand at the window overlooking the row of rental cottages and see through the leaves those fragments of yellowish glow from a light in Number 10, a light in that Mr. Stanley’s bedroom shining through the pale worn shade.

  The logic of it was beyond question. With such dense shrubbery, the cottages had a lot of privacy. And on a night so hot, there could be but one reason for pulling the shades down.

  She had fought it and won the other night. But tonight it was stronger. Like a terrible gnawing. It was so unfair that it should keep going on and on into these years when she thought it would be over, when she would have rest and peace.

  She roamed the dark house, muttering her complaints, and explaining how terrible a thing it was, telling it all to Mr. Mooney, years in his grave now, reminding him that it had begun way back even when he was still alive, and how he had caught her at it once and given her the beating she deserved, told her they could send her off to jail, told her she was an evil woman, and even after she had promised she would never do it again, he had been nasty-polite to her for weeks.

  She turned the television set on and sat to watch it, then found herself roaming back and forth across the living room in the pallid flickering light of the horses running, the men shooting and shouting.

  The next time she went upstairs she avoided looking out the window and instead went to her big desk in the corner and turned on the desk light and opened the big scrapbook atop the litter of old invoices and receipts.

  The three old dogs had already gotten into her bed for the night, and they lifted their heads to look at her, their eyes glowing in the reflected lamp light. She turned the pages, and looked for a long time at the clippings about her marriage to Michael Mooney on the Fourth of July in the center ring of the Coldwell Brothers Circus in Topeka, Kansas. Mr. Mooney had one of the best small-circus dog acts in the business, and she had worked the act with him, had done clown on the side, and had sewed a thousand costumes for the dogs during all the circus years.

  All gone now but the three old dogs, all of them single-trick puppies, all eagerness, in the last months before it all came to an end. All gone but Jiggs and Tarzan and Maggie, fat and going blind.

  Maybe, she thought, Mr. Stanley had been taken sick and it would be an act of Christian charity to go check on him.…

  And remembered that she had told herself exactly that same thing back in April when that same Mr. Stanley had taken a cottage for just one night. When their car had local plates and they checked in alone, for an overnight, you knew what the rascals had on their minds.

  If I hadn’t slipped that last time, she thought, it wouldn’t be gnawing so terrible now. Maybe it wouldn’t count as a separate sin, but as a part of the sin of the last time.

  She closed the scrapbook, reached and turned the desk light off, hit the closed book with her fist. The mind kept making up the shiny, easy excuses to make everything seem all right, and afterward you knew the reasons were dirty, but by then it was done and you were eased and you could say never, never, never again; you could say it was over forever.

  She wondered if that Mr. Stanley had noticed how it had unsettled her to have him show up again. Usually you never saw them again. Her heart had bumped and her hands had been shaky. He was one of the ones who had to share the blame of it, leaving the lights on for it instead of liking darkness for it like decent folk.

  As she went slowly down the stairs, sliding her hand on the bannister railing, she wondered if it would be the same one, the tall blonde woman with the beautiful slender tan body, but a very strong woman for all the slenderness, a match and more for the hammering brutishness of him.

  Held out this long, you have, she thought. So heat yourself up a mug of warm milk and drink it down and go to your bed like a decent-minded widowed dwarf lady, with three old dogs depending on her. It’s late, Little Maureen. Somewhere around ten or later even. Drink the milk and kneel by the bed and pray to God to take away the gnawing and burning because you are too old now for evil.

  “Never again!” she said aloud. She bit the inside of her mouth, tasted blood, groaned, trotted into the dark kitchen and folded the little aluminum stepladder she used to reach the dish cupboards. In her cotton housecoat, carrying the ladder, she slipped out into the dark, hot night and threaded her way in her hump-backed stealthy crouch along familiar paths that led behind the cottages. Moving swiftly and breathing shallowly, she set her ladder up under the lighted window and climbed it and stood upon the top of it, hands against the siding for suppo
rt. She put her eye to the narrow opening between the shade and the framing of the window screen and looked into the room and into the tumbled emptiness of the sagging bed. Disappointment was as sharp as toothache. She saw a pattern of light on the floor which indicated the bathroom light was on across the hallway.

  With an anxious agility she climbed down, folded the ladder, and trotted around the rear of the cottage and, as she set it up under the lighted bathroom window, she had a vivid, sweet, dizzying memory of that pair two years ago and more, ah, how they’d sloshed and strained in the suds, and all the while the girl, plump as a little dumpling, squealing and giggling, had teased the poor rascal shamelessly, giving him such little samples he was near out of his mind with the need of it, a torture Mr. Mooney would not have permitted for an instant.

  She climbed up the ladder and put her eye to the opening and stood tiptoe tall so as to look down into the tub. She stopped breathing for two long seconds, then turned and stepped off the top of the little ladder into space. The tilt triggered the old reflexes and skills of the clown years, and she jacked her knees up, tucked her head down, rolled her right shoulder under, and relaxed her body completely at the instant before impact. She rolled over and back up onto her feet, gave a little hop to regain balance, and then leaned against the side of the cottage for a moment, feeling dizzy. Poor old Little Maureen, she thought. One little rollover makes her all shaky inside.

  She folded the ladder and raced back to her house along the overgrown paths, the leaves brushing at her. The number to call was in the front of the phone book. “Miz Mooney talking,” she said in a voice like a contralto kazoo. “I got one needs help bad and needs it quick, in my number ten cottage. Maybe he’s breathing, maybe not, anyway in a tub so blood dark I can’t see if it was wrists he cut. What? Sonny boy, there’s no way in hell you can find it unless you stop talking and let me tell you where my place is. So kindly fermay the boosh and get your pencil out.…”