Jeff’s car came and I drove it a couple of times that summer when the four of us went out together. It was low, long, pale gray and powerful. It had power brakes, power steering, power seats, power windows and startling acceleration. It rode so smoothly that it would be up to seventy before you were aware that you were speeding. When I went back to my own car after driving that monster I had the feeling that I was sitting nine feet off the ground and all the fenders were chattering. I must say that I looked forward to driving that thing all the way to Florida.
Actually, we did not see as much of the Jeffries that summer as I had thought we would. They belonged to the country club and we didn’t. On the hot days Jeff would go right to the club from the office, and Stella would be there by the pool waiting for him. I expected Linda to start her annual campaign to get me to join, but she didn’t. She was very easy to get along with that summer. She sang when she worked. She took sunbaths in our small back yard. I had made a frame for her and tacked striped canvas on it so she could have privacy. She sunbathed in the nude, oiling herself heavily so as not to harshen her skin, until she was the same even golden tan from head to toe.
I remembered one Saturday when I was working in the yard and she was in the small canvas pen sunbathing. I walked over and my footsteps were soundless on the grass. She lay on her back with little joined white plastic cups over her eyes. They made her face look most odd. I thought she was asleep, and then I saw that she had a cigarette between her fingers. She brought it slowly to her lips, inhaled, held the smoke in her lungs and then slowly blew it out. I wondered what she was thinking about. The plastic shielding over her eyes gave her such a secretive look. Sweat stood in tiny droplets on her brown skin. Her body was of such perfection, there under the sun, that it wasn’t like looking at a nude living woman. It was strangely like looking at statuary, at something very ancient and very perfect—something brought forward to this era out of a crueler past.
I had the odd feeling that I did not know her at all. It was much like the times in high school when I had stared, flushing, at the curve of her young breast, unable to look away, caught not by lust but by mystery. And throughout my nighttime imaginings of her during those young years I had thought deeply and forlornly that this special mystery would never be for me—that I would never content myself with lesser flesh and thus would go through life tragically alone.
I spoke her name and she removed the white plastic cups and squinted up at me and said, “What? What is it?”
She was Linda again and I went back to my yard work. I know now what she was thinking as I stood watching her, and I have come to believe that evil radiates its own special aura so that when you are receptive to it, you can feel a brush of coldness across your heart.
But that day I shrugged it off, not recognizing it for what it was. I was merely Paul Cowley, a mild man who grubbed away at the crab grass—a man of average height with a narrow introspective face, sloping shoulders, no-color hair that in the past year had thinned so much on top that under the fluorescent bathroom light I could see the gleam of my scalp under the sparse hair. I knew what I was. I was a worker, with a dogged analytical mind, and hands that were clever with both tools and figures. I had outgrown my boyhood dreams of triumph. I knew my place in my known world, with my work and my home and my restless and beautiful wife.
I now know that that Paul Cowley was a fool, and it is of such fools that you read in your tabloids. They believe they walk forward on a wide safe place, whereas in truth it is an incredibly narrow walkway, high over blackness.
THE HEAT CONTINUED FOR TWO WEEKS AFTER Labor Day. It turned cool then and the leaves began to change. I put my fishing tackle in order, bought traveler’s checks, bought the sort of beach clothing I thought I would need. I worked long hours at the office, determined that my desk would be absolutely clear on the day I left. I knew there would be enough of an accumulation by the time I returned.
The last days seemed to drag. At last it was Friday, the twenty-second. I said good-by to the people in the section and said good-by to Rufus. It seemed odd to be taking off after the summer was over. I left my address with Rufus—Route 1, Box 88, Hooker, Florida—so he could contact me if necessary. He said he hoped he wouldn’t have to.
On Friday evening Jeff and Stella brought the big car over. Their stuff was all packed in it, and ours was ready to load. Jeff brought our plane tickets for the trip back and I gave him a check. They would arrive at the Sarasota airport at seven-twenty on the evening of the twenty-seventh. We should arrive at the key on the twenty-fifth, and that would give us time to get settled before running up to Sarasota to get them. They took my car when they left, and my garage door key. They would use my car and leave it in my garage before they left.
Linda and I loaded the car and went to bed. In the morning we closed up the house, got an early start, had breakfast on the road. We arrived in Hooker on Monday evening at five o’clock. The trip was uneventful. The car drove easily. Linda was uncommonly quiet during the trip. We had no difficulty finding rooms at pleasant motels as there were not many people on the road at that time of year. We drove from the crisp bite of fall back into summer.
Hooker was a small sleepy town dotted with the crumbling Moorish palaces of the old boom of the twenties. Its streets fanned optimistically out into the palmetto scrub, tall weeds thrusting up through shattered asphalt. It was still and hot and there were a few dusty cars parked on the wide main street. I parked in front of Jethro’s Market and when I got out of the car two large black lethargic mosquitoes landed on my forearm.
Lottie Jethro was a vast faded young woman, with a cotton dress stretching tightly across her abundances. She gave me the keys and said, “You go right on out this road. It runs along the bay and then you come to a sign points west says Verano Key Beach. Get out onto the key and turn left, that’s south, and go about a mile and you come to a little sign says Cypress Cottages, and that’s it. You’ll have to try the keys because I don’t know which is which. But they’re both alike. The fuses on the electric is unscrewed. You got to screw them in. There’s fresh bottles of gas there for both, and just the one pump house, here’s the key. There’s a sign on the wall telling how you prime the pump.”
The screen door banged and Linda came in after me. She had changed to shorts for the last day’s travel. Some men in the back of the store stopped talking when she came in.
“I thought we might as well pick up some groceries now,” she said.
“We got a good line of frozen meats and groceries, lady,” Miss Jethro said.
I bought cigarettes and some magazines and some insect spray and repellent and looked over the fishing tackle while Linda completed her purchasing. I had to cash a traveler’s check to pay for everything. We drove about six miles south and found the sign and crossed a frail wooden bridge onto the key. The road down the key was a sand road, the hump in the middle so high that it brushed the differential. We passed two houses that looked closed. The sun was settling toward the steel blue Gulf. Sometimes the road would wind near enough so that we could see a wide expanse of pale beach and lazy waves that heaved up and slapped at the sand. Water birds ran busily along the water line, pecking at the sand.
“Pretty nice,” I said.
“Yes,” Linda said.
The two cottages were about a hundred feet apart. I asked her which one she wanted and she said it didn’t make any difference. I parked by the southerly one. I unlocked the door and we carried our things in. We unlocked the other one and looked it over. They were alike. The key was narrow there, and there was a long dock out into the bay at the back, and a rowboat overturned on the bank near the dock, above the high tide mark. The pump house was not far from the dock. Both cottages were of cypress, weathered gray. They each had two bedrooms, a living room with furniture upholstered in a vicious shade of green plastic, small gas heaters, gas stove, fireplace, refrigerator, tiny kitchen, a screened porch about ten by ten on the front looking across the sand road
toward the Gulf.
I got the electricity going in each cottage, got the pump started, and then drove the car over to the other cottage and unloaded the Jeffries’ things, trying to put them where I thought they would want them. In addition to the usual luggage, they had packed a new badminton set and a gun case. I opened the gun case to see what Jeff had thought he would use. It was a Remington bolt action .22 with a four power scope. It looked new and it looked as though it would be fun for plinking at beer cans.
Linda had the food put away by the time I got back, and had started unpacking our bags. When we were through we took a walk down the beach. The big hot red sun was just sliding into the Gulf. About four hundred yards south of us was a big house with hurricane shutters over the large windows. Almost an equal distance north of us were four small beach cabins that were deserted and badly in need of paint.
“We’re certainly alone here.”
She didn’t answer me. With darkness came more mosquitoes. We took refuge on the porch. Linda made sandwiches. I plugged in our new portable radio and we listened to Cuban music from Havana. The waves made a soft sound on the beach. I couldn’t stop yawning. I went out and moved the car around to the bay side of the cottage so there’d be less chance of salt spray damaging it. When I went to bed Linda was still listening to the music.
WHEN I GOT UP IN THE MORNING, LINDA WAS gone. I put on swimming trunks and went out on the beach. I could see her on the beach, far to the north, a tiny figure that bent over now and then to pick up shells. I was on my second cup of coffee when I heard her under the outside shower. She came into the kitchen in a few minutes wrapped in a big yellow towel, her soaked bathing suit in her hand. “That water must be eighty degrees!” she said. “And there were big things out there, sort of rolling. I’ll bet they were porpoises.” Her eyes were shining, and she looked like a child on Saturday.
I picked up a burn that afternoon that was still uncomfortable when we drove up to Sarasota on Wednesday to meet the plane. It was a small plane that brought them down from Tampa International. It was dark and Jeff said that I better keep right on driving because I knew the road. They said they had a fine trip down. They said it had snowed a little at home on Sunday but it had melted as soon as it hit the ground. Jeff seemed boisterous and exuberant, but I thought Stella was rather quiet. Linda spent most of the trip back turned around in the seat telling them about the layout. We all seemed a little strained with each other, and I guessed it was because we were all wondering how it was going to work out, four people taking a vacation together. It could be fine, or it could be a mess.
Jeff was awed by the primitive condition of the key road as shown by our headlights and by the lurching of the big car. I drove them up to their door with a flourish, and Linda went in first and turned the lights on for them. She had turned on their refrigerator the previous day, and stocked it with breakfast things.
They seemed pleased with the setup, particularly Jeff. That surprised me a little because, as with Linda, I thought he would be more likely to be enthusiastic about a more civilized environment. When they were settled we went over and sat on their porch and talked for a while. Stella said she was sleepy but not to go yet. She went in to bed and the three of us talked some more.
That evening was the last time that the four of us were what I would call normal with each other. It all started the next day. It started without warning and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it, or Stella could do about it. Here is exactly the way it happened.
At about ten o’clock we were all out on the beach. We had two blankets and towels and a faded old beach umbrella I had found in the pump house. I remember that I had a program of dance music on the portable radio. Both Stella and I had to be careful of the sun. Jeff had a good tan. Linda, of course, was browner than anybody. Our voices sounded far away and sleepy, the way they do when the sun is hot.
Linda got up. She stood there with her shadow falling across me. I thought she was going to go in swimming. She said, “Come on, Jeff.” I thought she was asking him to go in with her. But her tone of voice had seemed oddly harsh. Jeff got up without a word and the two of them walked down the beach, headed south.
I don’t think I can explain exactly why it created such an awkward situation. Certainly Linda and Jeff could walk together, as could Stella and I, should we want to. The four of us were, I thought, friends. But it was the manner in which they left us. Linda’s tone had been peremptory, autocratic. Jeff had obeyed immediately. It spoke of a relationship that I had not suspected. Had it been done in a normal way, they would have said something about walking down the beach, and coming back soon, and don’t get too much sun—like that. They just left.
Though you could see up the beach a long way to the north, you could not see far to the south. The big house south of us was on a sort of headland, and beyond it the beach curved inward and out of our range of vision.
Each time I looked they were further away, walking steadily. Then I looked and they were gone. Now this is also hard to explain. Their action made me revert to the way I had felt about Linda many years ago. She had walked off, out of reach. She was back with the beautiful people. I was again the Paul Cowley who worked after school and knew so few people in our class.
I could not help glancing at Stella, wondering how she was taking it. She wore heavy sun glasses with tilted frames and very dark lenses. Her eyes were hidden behind them. I thought of any number of inane things I could say, but in the end I said nothing.
After a time Stella got up without a word, took off her sunglasses and watch, tucked her pale hair into a white bathing cap and went down to the water. She swam far out with a lithe power at odds with the frail look of her body. I watched her float out there. After what seemed a long time, she swam slowly in and walked up and sat in the shade of the beach umbrella, arms hugging her knees, looking out to sea. Our silence with each other was awkward. The longer Jeff and Linda stayed away, the more awkward it became. I thought back over the relationship between Jeff and my wife. There seemed to be nothing to justify what they had done—rather, the way they had done what they had done.
A quiz program started and I turned off the portable.
“Well, Paul,” Stella said quietly. She came originally, I believe, from Hartford. Her voice had that flat quality, that special accent that women who come from that area and go to exclusive finishing schools acquire.
“I… what do you mean?”
“You wouldn’t ask if you didn’t know. She could have had a sign painted, I suppose. Or branded his forehead. I don’t think she could have made it any more obvious.”
“I don’t think it’s that way.”
“I don’t think it’s any other way. I didn’t want to come here. I did at first and then I didn’t. I tried to talk him out of it. I could have talked to walls or stones.”
“Now, Stella.”
“Don’t sound soothing. Please. We’ve got ourselves a situation, Paul. A large one. It isn’t pretty. I guessed at something of the sort… but not so blatant.”
“We’re all friends.”
She turned the dark lenses toward me. “I’m your friend, Paul. I’m Jeff’s friend, I hope. Not hers. Not hers, ever again. She made it plain enough. I should pack now. That would be smart. But I’m not very smart, I guess. I would rather stay and fight.”
She picked up her things and went to their cottage. At noon I picked up my things and went in too. I sat on the porch and read and finally they came down the beach. They separated casually in front of our place and Linda came in.
“Long walk,” I said.
She looked at me and through me. “Wasn’t it, though,” she said, and went on into the house.
The was the beginning. That was the way it started. Linda and Jeff were together whenever they pleased. It would, perhaps, have been better if I could have gone to Linda and demanded an explanation, if I could have shook her, struck her, raged at her. But, with Linda, the roots of my insecurity went
deep. I tried to use reason.
“Linda, we planned to have a good time down here.”
“Yes?”
“You and Jeff are spoiling it for the four of us. Stell is miserable.”
“That’s a bitter shame.”
“Last night you two were gone for three hours. Not a word of excuse or explanation or anything. It’s so… ruthless.”
“Poor Paul.”
“Haven’t you got any sense of decency? Are you having an affair with him?”
“Why don’t you run along and catch some nice fish again?”
“I can’t get any pleasure out of anything I do, the way you’re acting. I just don’t understand it. What am I supposed to do? What’s going to become of us? How can we go back and live the way we did before?”
“Do we have to, dear? Goodness, what a fate!”
It wasn’t like her, not to get angry and shout and stamp her feet. She was… opaque. I think that is the only possible word. It was acute torture for me. I felt helpless. There seemed to be a cold precision about what they were doing that baffled me. Sometimes I felt the way you do when you walk into a movie in the middle of a very complicated feature picture. The story is incomprehensible to you. You seek a clue in the actors’ words and actions, but what they do serves only to baffle you the more.
One morning I watched Jeff and Linda on the beach directly in front of our cottage. He had a carton of empty beer cans. He had the .22 and he would throw a beer can out as far as he could. He would shoot and then instruct Linda. He put his arm around her bare shoulders to get her into the proper position. I could hear the snapping of the shots over the sea sound, and once I heard their laughter. I sat and watched them and felt ill. When Linda wandered down the beach and Jeff stayed there, shooting, I went down to him. It was the first time I had been alone with him since it had started. When he looked at me his face was very still. “Hi, Paul. Want to try a shot?”
Border Town Girl Page 10