A Flash of Green (52 page)

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m all right.”

He made a clumsy gesture. “About that other. I wanted to tell you something, Kat. It wasn’t … all planned out, anything like that. It was wrong, but it wasn’t from thinking about it and … waiting for a chance.”

“I know that.”

“Sometimes people do things that have no chance to turn out right.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t calculate everything you do!”

“Dear God, don’t plead with me, Jimmy. What do you want me to say to you? What is there I can say? It comes into my mind sometimes, and I push it out. It makes me feel annoyed, irritable. It’s like when you go to a party and you are trying to be nice, and you pull some terrible social error, so bad you can’t ever explain it to your hostess. We’re adults, aren’t we? We were tense and tired and upset, and we did a silly meaningless thing out of some sense of bravado, I guess. I’m not overwhelmed with guilt, you know. And there’s no reason you should feel any either. I just feel … sort of ordinary and trivial.”

He pulled a leaf from the pepper hedge and rolled it into a moist green ball. “Is there any starting place left?” he asked, not looking at her.

“For us?” She sounded startled. “But why?”

“Why not?”

“No, Jimmy,” she said, her tone gentle. “There’s no place to start because there’s no place to go. What we used to be to each other, that doesn’t exist any more, does it? And whatever new thing we tried to be, that didn’t turn out to be much of anything either. And you shouldn’t look at me like that, because I think you’re trying to kid yourself a little, to make a justification. I don’t hate you. Or myself. I just think any relationship would be … sort of dreary. It would be like wearing an albatross, don’t you think?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t you see that it doesn’t fit? I’m too terribly P.T.A., dear, and you don’t have enough self-esteem. We can’t adjust ourselves into anything, you know. We can’t neaten it up like a bad movie, because we can’t change ourselves or each other, and we’re both a little too wise to try.”

“You’re right, of course, but I didn’t want to admit it.” He smiled at her.

“Jimmy, you look pretty terrible. You look puffy. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ve got a good job lined up in Jacksonville.”

“That’s wonderful! When you get all settled, write me if you want to.”

“I’d like to, Kat.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Pretty soon, I guess.”

“Isn’t it definite?”

“Oh, it’s definite. Yes. A good job.”

She hesitated and put her hand out. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. And to you too.”

She winced slightly. “We need some. We haven’t had much lately, have we? We haven’t had much at all.”

After he left her, he drove to the mainland and turned south on the Bay Highway. From the mainland road he looked out across the bay through Turk’s Pass, and saw the dusky orange disk of the sun balanced precisely on the far clean edge of a purple sea. He drove slowly down through Everset and then through the twilight ranch land. He turned around in a ranch road, and it was night when he entered Everset again.

In the middle of the village he turned left toward the commercial
dock area, and as he made the turn he had a strange feeling of inevitability. He felt as if a time of waiting was over. Barlow’s Towne Tavern was doing a good Saturday night business. The old cars and the pickup trucks were lined up in front of it. Inside, the juke was loud, and the sweaty weight of people had overpowered the air conditioning. There was a smell of fish and labor, beer and perfume. The juke thumped against the shouts and the laughter. He pushed through the crowd, smiling, looking directly at no one. He found a single vacant stool at the far end of the bar. He ordered a shot and a beer. He smiled directly ahead at the bottle rack, and he could hear the change in the kinds of sounds the people were making. He could feel their eyes. He ordered a second shot to go with the rest of the beer.

A man he did not know pushed in beside him and stared at him. The man was short and heavy, with a wide weathered face, sun-bleached brows, little pale eyes. “What the hell you doing around here, Wing?”

“Having a drink.”

“You know where you are?”

“Barlow’s. I’ve been here before.”

“Tell you where you are, you silly shit. You’re right in the middle of Bliss country. There’s anyway ten people here kin to Elmo. And the rest of us know he’s the finest man ever walked the earth. He got my brother set loose from Raiford one time when Lonny had to get home and he’p care for his sick wife. Ol’ Barcomb over there, Elmo he’ped him buy a boat when his old one got tore up in the hurricane.”

“Nice fella, that Elmo.”

“By now everybody in this here room knows who you are and they know you told a lot of stinking lies about the only man ever come into county government to he’p his own kind. Wing, you lost your damn mind?”

The last question was a shout. Barlow appeared suddenly on the other side of the bar and said, “Slack off, Walker. Nothing happens in here.”

“Harry, you don’t give a damn who you serve, do you?” Walker asked. He walked away, thick shoulders hunched.

Barlow leaned across the bar toward Jimmy Wing. “Could be you should git up and git, friend. There’s some went off to bring some others.”

“I like it here.”

“You’ll be all right here, inside, I gahrn-tee, but leaving is the thing. For leaving, a couple deputies might be a good thing.”

“Would they come if they knew?”

Barlow thought it over, his forehead deeply wrinkled. “Come to think on it, maybe not. But I sure wisht you’d go someplace else, or anyways try, before they get steamed up too damn much.”

“Another shot and another beer, Harry.”

Barlow hesitated, sighed. “Guess it would be cruel and unusual to refuse a man all the pain-softener he can hold.”

The flavor of the place continued to change. More men arrived. The women left. The juke was stilled. The stool beside Wing was empty. From time to time there was a low muttering of voices. Bar business was good. They were waiting for him with all the heavy patience men can learn from the sea.

“Let’s just take him on out,” somebody said in a complaining tone. The others hushed him.

Jimmy Wing could feel no effect from his drinks. At times his throat would feel constricted and the back of his neck would feel icy. But it would go away, and he would feel capable of making bad jokes. He would manage something very flashy, agile, gallant. He would flee the lumbering pack, wearing the sparkling, infectious grin of the hero, disappearing like magic into the hot dark night, leaving an echo of his jeering laugh.

He picked up his change with great care. He left a tip for Harry. He turned slowly on the bar stool and looked at them. Several faces were familiar. He smiled at them all and nodded his head several times.

“Elmo Bliss is a monster,” he said, articulating loudly and distinctly. There was no answer. “He is a smiler. He is a thief. He does cheap favors for meatballs like you, so you vote for him and pack his pockets with money. It’s a good thing you love him so dearly, boys. I fixed his wagon. He’s going to be your neighbor for the rest of his life.”

He made a sudden dash for the door. He felt as if he was running in slow motion. They were coming after him, but it did not feel like pursuit. It felt as if he were leading them. Just beyond the door his arms were grabbed. There was a man on each side of him. The power of their grip made him gasp. It took the strength out of him. He felt as if he were a ridiculous rag doll.

Then they were trotting him along, around the side of the building and down a narrow dark area. He heard the sounds of their feet, and heard them panting as they jogged along with him. They were in grass, and then on boards, and then up against the back wall of something that stank of fish.

“Now make him last,” somebody said softly, “or there’ll be some people getting no turn at all.”

The world slipped abruptly, and hammered his face. He was lifted and jounced, he was danced and dandled as the thuds landed, the sky burst and rocked, as his mouth swung loose and his heart flapped free. He bounced to their gruntings and tried to laugh, but they gave him no time, and the world turned gray and slowly moved away from him, like a holiday ship leaving a small broken wharf.

Twenty-five

BY JANUARY
, as the new tourist season began to approach its peak, the Grassy Bay fill was beginning to take shape. The drag lines waddled above the shallows, atop the dikes they built as they moved. The big dredges worked around the clock. By the outlets of the big pipes, where the dredges spewed their black foam of water and bay bottom, the gulls and the children herded, to snatch the living shells and the small fish.

The value of all property in the area zoned commercial went up in anticipation of the new community which would be built upon the marl.

On a cold day in late January, Jimmy Wing walked out of the hospital into the tug and bluster of a northwest wind. He carried a small canvas airlines bag. As he started walking slowly toward the corner where he could catch a bus, somebody called his name. He turned and saw Elmo Bliss in a pickup truck. Wing hesitated and then went to the truck. Elmo leaned across and shoved the door open for him.

“Get on in here, Jim.”

He got in out of the wind and pulled the door shut. Elmo gave him a cigarette.

“You waiting for somebody?” Jimmy asked.

“Waiting for you. I heard you were getting out today. They didn’t keep you long this time, boy.”

“Not so much damage this time.”

“Turn so I can see you better. Damn if you haven’t got your face messed up for good. Jimmy, God damn you, what are you trying to do to me?”

“I’m not trying to do anything to you, Elmo.”

“You trying to prove something?”

“I don’t really know.”

“What you’re doing isn’t making any sense to anybody. You should know by now you go down to Everset and bad-mouth me down there, you’re going to get the ass knocked right off you ever’ time. Twice you went down there and twice you got half killed and put in the hospital. Then you went to Jacksonville and I thought we were shut of you. But you have to come back and go down there again and get whipped again. Why didn’t you stay in Jacksonville?”

“I got homesick, Elmo.”

“You can’t get no suitable kind of work here.”

“Why are you worried about me, Elmo?”

“Don’t you know I could have had you killed, you silly bastard?”

Jimmy Wing shrugged and sighed. “A lot of people knew that, Elmo, knowing how I cut you down to county size before you got a really good start. And so a lot of people were watching to see if I turned up missing. Then they’d have known I was on the bottom of the Gulf or down on the floor of some swamp. But if you let me walk around loose, the idea could get around that I’d
done you no real harm. People would begin to say I’d made the whole thing up.”

Elmo’s voice went up a half octave. “But I was
fixing
to let you walk around loose, Jim boy! But you keep going down to Everset where they vote strong for me, and people are thinking it’s me getting you beat half to death every once in a while.”

“Then you’re not really worried about me, Elmo. You just don’t want me keeping the memory green.”

“What the
hell
do you want, Jim? I got Darse Coombs run out of the area. People are forgetting fast. I want they should have a chance to forget the whole damn thing. What the
hell
do you want me to do?”

Jimmy Wing turned his battered face toward Elmo. He laughed abruptly and harshly. “This is pretty funny, Commissioner, or whatever the title is these days. You’re a big man. A good business, a big family, big house, lots of weight and muscle. And I haven’t got a car, a house or a job. Why should a big man like you have to ask me anything? People like me, you can buy us or scare us, can’t you?”

“You wouldn’t stay bought, boy.”

“Think you can scare me?”

Elmo studied him for a moment. “I think I could have, last summer maybe. But now I got an idea it can’t be done. A man has something he can’t stand the thought of losing, that man you can scare. What I want to know is, are you going to go look for any more trouble?”

“I just don’t know, Elmo. I just couldn’t say right now. It may happen like this. I’ll get another little job like the last one I had. Rough carpenter work, or kitchen help, so I can give my sister something toward my room and board. And some night I may go home and sit and start thinking about just how much of a cold-hearted son of a bitch you are, and then I might get the urge to
get on a bus and go down to Wister or Everset and give a few speeches around about you.”

“But you don’t really know?”

“Not at the moment, Elmo.”

“A thousand dollars cash money would take you a long way from here.”

“I tried going away and I didn’t like it.”

“You want a foreman job? I can break you in on foundations, forms and finishing and block work.”

“I tried working for you one time, remember.”

Elmo banged his fist against the steering wheel. “Damn you, Jimmy Wing, you force my hand. I can’t let this go on. You got folks laughing at me. There’s other people trying to talk too much just because you get away with it. Now, you know I can’t stand for that. I thought of two ways to stop it. One way, I spread the word nobody touches you, no matter what you say. But I thought that over, and I don’t like it. You’d keep right on talking.”

“Probably.”

“So I got to do something that actual turns my stomach to think on it. But you’re forcing me into it. I know you have nothing to do any more with the people you were close to. But they must mean
some
little thing to you. The very next time you get yourself put in the hospital making a fool out of me, you just take a look around and you’ll see some familiar faces under them bandages. For a starter it will be Haas and his wife and the Hubble woman, and maybe Mitchie McClure. And if you don’t learn from that, the list will be longer the next time.”