The Drowner

by John D. MacDonald

  Midway through the first game she knew she was in trouble. She had one clean miss of the ten pin and two splits she had been unable to pick up. With the self-knowledge of the natural athlete, she knew that the flaw was in her concentration. Too many random things were intruding—the look on Gus’s face just before Mister Sam had slid him down the hall, the way Mister Sam looked and acted, the chance Gus would make trouble.

  She pushed everything out of her mind except the clean mechanics of the delivery, and the variable geometry of the maple pins. Her team sagged with her and they lost the first game by over eighty pins. She had her first frame on lane eleven in the second game. She decided to adjust to the alley by giving the ball a little more speed, but without losing control at the top of the backswing. As it went down she saw it would be too thin, but at the final instant it ducked into the pocket and the picture strike cleared the lane completely. She spun and jumped into the air, clapping her hands, beaming at her teammates. She put four strikes together, and ended with 211 for the second game, which they won by sixty pins. They won the third game by forty pins, enough for the match, and she computed her average for the evening at 184.

  Linda had to hurry home. So the four remaining teammates went to Ernie’s Place for the usual Po’ Boy sandwiches. Alma’s boy picked her up there. Jeanie and Stephanie kept trying to pump Angie about what had happened between Mister Sam and Gus Gable. She concealed her irritation with them. There was no reason for them to know anything about it. They just worked there. They didn’t know what loyalty meant, really. They just wanted something to talk about.

  Stephanie had brought Jeanie in her car. Angie walked out with them as though to get into her little gray Renault and go home, but as soon as they drove out, she went back into Ernie’s and went to the phone booth and called Gus’ office number. It rang eight times, then ten. As she decided to let it ring fifteen, Gus answered.

  “It’s Angie, Gus. Angie Powell. I thought you’d be working.”

  “You mean you know why I’d be working.”

  “I guess so. One of the things I wanted to say, you should have most of the files upstairs before three tomorrow.”

  “Who’s taking over?”

  “I couldn’t tell you that, Gus.”

  “I swear to you, he was like a crazy man! There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Throwing me … literally throwing me out! You were there. Did you ever see anything like that in your life?”

  “Never, Gus. Never. Honest, he hasn’t been himself since she died.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “But he’ll be himself again a little later on.”

  “Too late for me, though.”

  “That depends.”

  In a more cautious tone he said, “What do you mean by that, Angie?”

  “I shouldn’t be talking to you at all.”

  “So?”

  “But you’ve been so much help to him. I know he needs you.”

  “Sure. Try to tell him that.”

  “I did try to tell him that.”

  “Thanks, Angie. Keep trying.”

  “I guess it’s more like it’s up to you. I mean if you want to work for him after what he did.”

  “I want to work for him. I don’t get hurt feelings that easy, believe me.”

  “Well … I have some ideas.”

  “Like what?”

  “You sound eager enough, Gus. But I couldn’t tell you like this, over the phone. And I don’t feel right about seeing you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Somebody might see us together. And that wouldn’t look right if Mister Sam heard about it. The state he’s in, he might not understand at all that I’d see you only to try to help him. I don’t give a darn about you, Gus. You know that. I just want for Mister Sam to have the best possible help in his troubles.”

  “Nobody has to see us together.”

  “And you wouldn’t tell anybody you were meeting me.”

  “No.”

  “Then have you got any ideas?”

  “You could come to my place, maybe?”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t do that, Gus.”

  “Sam wants to see me. He phoned. He sounds meaner than ever. He hasn’t cooled off a bit.”

  “What does he want to see you about?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Did you agree to see him tonight?”

  “No. He’s just not ready to talk sensibly. If you’ve got any ideas on how to handle him, truthfully I would appreciate it with all my heart.”

  “I have to go on home now because Mama always waits up. But I could sneak back out again. If we could just ride around a little bit in your car I could tell you what I think. Maybe it would work and maybe it wouldn’t. Anyhow, if a little after midnight, you could park over on Tyler maybe, next to the furniture place that burned down, it’s just back across lots for me.”

  “I know where you mean. Angie, I do appreciate this.”

  “Maybe there’s nothing I can do, Gus.”

  “But to tell the truth I am pleased by your willingness to try.”

  “It’s just that it’s best for Mister Sam.”

  “Of course, dear.”

  As she was walking out of the place Ernie stopped her and said, “You know my kid sister, Pam. Well, she got admitted to Gainesville the way she wanted, but now she’s got the idea she should go to business school, and I was wondering about that place you went to in Orlando, Angie.”

  Angie Powell gave the problem her complete attention. “Gee, I don’t know as it would be so good, a girl not having a place to stay, like I was at my aunt’s.”

  “You think she’d get much out of it?”

  “I guess it would be how hard she wanted to work at it, Ernie. I mean they can teach you if you want to work at it. I went there first to learn nursing.”

  “I didn’t know that, Angie.”

  “Oh sure. I was going to be a medical missionary. I was good on the class work, learning the anatomy and all, but it turned out I got a weak stomach. Anything bloody and I’d fall over like a tree. So I changed to secretarial.”

  “But it’s a good school.”

  “Sure is, Ernie, that is if you want to work.”

  “I don’t know as Pam wants to work at anything. Say, I got the twin speedometers checked out and I can hold it right on the button now. How about coming out Sunday? We’re going to set the gates up and run slalom all day long.”

  She looked at him sternly. “Ernie, you know better than that!”

  He snapped his fingers. “Sunday. I forgot, Angie.”

  “Any other day you can make it, Ernie, real early or after work.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  She drove home. The pavement was dry but there were puddles in the gutters. She put her noisy little gray Renault in the back yard and went in through the kitchen carrying her bowling kit. Her mother sat in her reinforced chair at the kitchen table pasting green stamps in booklets. Mrs. Powell was a huge woman, almost as tall as Angie and grotesquely fat. The flesh of her ankles hung over the sides of her shoes. Her small and bitter mouth was tucked back behind her pendulous cheeks. Her nose was small and thin. She had the same odd and beautiful eyes as her daughter, an unusual lavender-blue, but her lashes were stubby and the whites of her eyes were muddy. In spite of her weight, Mrs. Powell was an active woman, participating in every aspect of church work, full of rancor and suspicion, responding with a notorious violence to every fancied slight, mercilessly castigating a sinful world. Her subdued little husband, Jimmy Powell, had worked behind the scenes in the post office for twenty-six years.

  Mrs. Powell looked at her daughter from head to toe with a vivid animosity. “I can tell you, Angela, it is a thankless job for me to be head of the committee on clean reading and spend a whole afternoon like I done today weeding out the naked Communist filth down to the court house newsstand and then have you prancing around alone in the nighttime in a little skirt halfway up to your crotch.”
/>   “Oh, Mama, please. I’ve told you and told you that …”

  “You always tell me that when you go swimming you wear considerable less. And I suppose if you went walking and come onto a nudist camp, you’d strip everything off and parade yourself around jaybird naked just because everybody else is. I tried to raise you a decent Christian girl, and you go a-flaunting your body around raising dirty thoughts in the minds of men.”

  “Mama, I can’t be responsible for what other people think.”

  “And you come in here twenty minutes late, talking sassy to your mother, and how am I to know you haven’t been out squirming around in the bushes, doing the devil’s work, abandoning yourself to the pleasures of the flesh?”

  “Mama, I went to Ernie’s with Alma and Jeanie and Stephanie and had a sandwich like always, and maybe we talked a little longer than usual.”

  “A lot of dirty talk?”

  “Mama!”

  “I know what those office girls are like. Don’t you tell me!”

  “We won, Mama.”

  “Again? That’s wonderful, dear.”

  “I got two-eleven in the middle game, and Jeanie did better than she ever did before.” She yawned, muffling it with her fist. “I’m pretty tired, Mama. You don’t have to worry about me.” She went around the table and kissed the great slab of cheek. “I’ll never in my whole life do anything to make you ashamed.”

  “You’re a good girl, Angie. It’s just I worry about you. The devil waits around every turn. A man will say sweet words to you, but if you should listen, you soon find out that the only thing he ever did have on his mind was to get you over onto your back and have his dirty way with you. That’s the way the world is, ever since we were flang out of the Garden. I’m not a selfish woman. I’ve told you a hundred times I can get along having no grandchildren on account of it would mean selling you off into the vile bondage of marriage where a woman has no rights at all and is turned into a soiled vessel for the brute pleasure of some dirty-minded man, crying herself to sleep night after night after he’s shamed her and sickened her.”

  “You don’t have to worry, Mama. I’d rather be dead.”

  “That’s my sweet Angie.”

  Angie Powell showered quickly and did her exercises in her cotton pajamas and went to bed. After fifteen minutes she got up and went silently to the open door of her mother’s room. She listened for a full minute to the cadence of the soft rumbling snores. She paused outside her father’s closed door, but could hear no sound. Back in her own room, she changed quickly and silently to her gray twill coveralls and blue sneakers. She tied a scarf around her hair, shoved a pair of cotton gloves into her pocket and went out her bedroom window. She lowered herself to the grass. The screen was hooked at the top. She let it swing silently back into place. She stayed in the shadows. To get through to Tyler Street, she had to cross the playground of Southwest School.

  As she was skirting the playground, she had a sudden hearty impulse, and after making certain she was not observed, she went over to the swings, grasped the slanted pipe support, took a deep breath, and then went swiftly up, hand over hand. When she neared the top of the inverted V, she reached out and snatched the other support with her right hand, then hung there for a moment, feeling the good pull of the muscles across her back. She let go, dropped, landed lightly, sitting on her heels for a moment, fingertips against the ground for balance.

  She stood up. She stood with her legs apart, hands on her hips. She felt all rared back within herself, high-chested and immune. She had her Joan-feeling, the stake, the smile, the armor, the curved pattern of the flames. And it was mixed with the red mare-feeling, the one that made her arch her back and stick her buttocks out. Neat hooves to chop the meadow grass, and a small pleasant sweat of exertion, and the ability to shiver any portion of the roany hide to dislodge the hungry fly.

  Gus was parked in the driveway near the blackened shell of the furniture store. He was standing beside the dark car. She saw the red glow of his cigar. It amused her to circle him and come up behind him and stand there for a long time, just looking at him. She touched him on the shoulder. He bleated and leaped and whirled and gasped, “Jesus Christ!”

  “Apologize to God,” she said sternly.

  “What?”

  “That was blasphemy, Gus.”

  “Oh. Well. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “God, I’m sorry. Amen. I can tell you sincerely, Angie, you nearly stopped my heart.”

  She saw a late car coming down Tyler, and she moved to keep Gus’ car between her and the moving car until it had passed.

  “What’s the matter with you, Angie?”

  “I told you. Suppose somebody told Mister Sam I saw you tonight?”

  “I suppose. How do you handle Sam? He does his share of cussing.”

  “Not in front of me. Not ever. He knows it irks me.”

  “Well, did you say we could drive around?”

  “Come to think of it, we could just as well talk here. I guess I’d feel better. Let’s walk around in back.”

  Far across the flat marshy land behind the cinderblock shell, she could see the moving lights of traffic on Route 27. A pile of lumber covered with building paper was stacked five feet high against the rear wall of the building. She jumped lightly up and sat and gave Gus her hand. He climbed up with the aid of a cinderblock on edge.

  He sighed and said, “I can tell you in all honesty, Angie, I’ve never felt so terrible about anything in my life. I mean it was always a business relationship and nothing social on the side to speak of, but after five years you get the feeling there is a relationship aside from business. I have had no one lay hands on me in violence since I was a schoolboy, and the shock of it made me nauseous all day. Even allowing for a great tragedy coming into his life, it seems that he would do a thing like that … with more taste, not in front of you and a stranger.”

  “I guess you made him awful mad, Gus.”

  “It was a business thing, but he took it in a personal way. I don’t know what makes you think you can make him feel better toward me.”

  “If I can’t, what will you do?”

  “Angie, I just don’t know. I keep thinking I have to think of myself. How can I survive in my business with people knowing about it? Like a damn fool I went downstairs, bleeding, and so confused I told the people in my office what happened. It’s all over town. How can I hold onto the clients I’ve got left? What I could say, Sam wanted me to do something crooked on this tax compromise and I refused and he threw me out.”

  “That would be a lie, Gus.”

  “I’ve got a business to protect. How much should I protect a man who slides me out the door? And I’ve got to think of the Jacksonville contacts too. I can do a good job for my clients, because I’m respected. He should have thought of all these things before he laid hands on me. If you can fix it, it will be good for Sam and good for me.”

  “I have some ideas, but I have to know a little more about what you quarreled about.”

  Gus bit the tip off a fresh cigar and spat it into the darkness. “He wanted me to do a perfect job for him without telling me the whole story. If he’d told me, would I have to find out my own way? Then he gets sore. Was she some kind of a princess or something?”

  “Gus. Was he really sore because he thought that after you found out, you might have told somebody else?”

  “Truthfully, I swore up and down I had not so much as opened …” He stopped and turned his head and looked at her. “You sound like you know a lot about it already.”

  “Maybe I find out things my own way.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I wondered why you spent so much time going back over those old personal records. You wouldn’t take them out of the office, and you’d work on them when Mister Sam was on trips. You made out it was part of the tax case, but you were looking back before the years they were interested in. And you wouldn’t take them down to your own off
ice. It just seemed funny, Gus. You ran tapes and threw them in my basket. And you wrote figures down and balled them up and threw them in my basket. I wondered if I ought to speak to Mister Sam about it. You acted sneaky, Gus, I swear.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  “I saved those tapes and pieces of paper and they sure puzzled me, Gus. Then one day I got it figured out. You were taking everything he took in, and then subtracting the taxes he paid and subtracting all the estimated personal money you figured he spent, and subtracting the net worth off the balance sheet, to find out if there was something left you didn’t know about.”

  “You’re a bright girl, Angie.”

  “You know, I don’t think I would have got onto it if you hadn’t said something funny to me a month ago. You said it like a joke and then you looked at me real close, but it wasn’t a joke, was it?”

  “What did I say to you?”

  “Why, Gus, you should remember! You said I was about as good as a bank except I didn’t pay any interest. I just didn’t know what in the wide world you were talking about. Later on, that’s what started me thinking about cash money, and figuring out that’s what you were looking for. But you hadn’t figured out where it was. Next chance I had, I searched all through Mister Sam’s apartment. You know what I found? A suitcase in the closet all packed, and him without a trip in sight. Clothes to last quite a spell, Gus. But no money. Then something else scared me.”