Go to the Widow-Maker (102 page)

Grant never did know just when it got around to the point where Orloffski brought up the cache of whiskey which he had discovered on the island, on the island of North Nelson.

Somewhere in there Ben came down to talk to him. He did remember that. Good old Ben.— “You mind if I talk to Ron?” he asked Bonham quietly. “In private?”— “Sure, hell, why not for Christsake?” Bonham grinned. But he gave it somehow the feeling that Ben was his enemy.— “Thanks,” Ben said, Ben in his old Middlewestern accent. He took Grant forward, almost to the bowsprit—“Lucky sent the wire,” he said. Grant nodded. “I figured.”— “She asked me for the money to pay for the plane,” Ben said. “I told her I’d give it to her. But that I wanted to come down talk to you first”— “You don’t have to,” Grant said. “I’ll give it to her myself.”

“Are you
sure
you know what you’re doing?” Ben said. He then began a long rambling, and painful, effort to tell the story of the year he had spent away from Irma, right after they themselves had gotten married. It was all very inarticulate and pretty incoherent, Grant thought with that crystalline drunken clarity his mind sometimes achieved when loaded. The upshot of it all was that Ben had studied and studied and analyzed finally in himself that it was all really because he had been terrified of the
responsibility
of marriage and all that it entailed, and he thought that maybe that was Grant’s problem too. It was all so far from the truth that Grant found it almost laughable, although he did not laugh, and then he suddenly found himself telling Ben the whole story, incredibly. He had never thought he would ever tell anyone, the flirting with Jim Grointon (“But Lucky flirts with everybody,” Ben interjected, “it’s her nature, it’s her style, it don’t mean anything.”), Jim Grointon’s proposition to her in the Morants (“Christ, everybody—every
fool
—propositions
Lucky
!” Ben said.), Jim Grointon’s offer to
marry
her she had even told him (“But she dint take him up on it, did she?” Ben said.), and finally that horrible, horribly terrible ‘spaghetti dinner’ night, when she had not waked him,
inconceivably
had not waked him. She
had
to have cuckolded him. Though she claimed, said,
shouted
that she didn’t, hadn’t.

(“And where were you then, Ben old fren, old buddy, with all your big offers of help?”— “I’m sorry about that,” Ben said, “we shouldn’t have taken that trip, but we didn’t know.”)

Well, all that didn’t matter. What did that part matter? That was all just horse-shit. No, the way he saw it, she
had to
have cuckolded him. She just
had
to have.

“Well, maybe she didn’t,” Ben said. “Have you thought of that. Maybe she’s tellin the truth?”

“Sure,” Grant said. “And do you think she’d tell if she had? Shit, man.”

Ben did not say anything for a moment. “Well, you know I don’t know anythin about what all the men Irm might have slept with while I was gone that year,” he said finally. “And I’ve never asked.”

“Come on! This isn’t the same. Aint the same
at all!
I was right
there! Asleep!”

“You know, I once wanted to write a book about that time, a novel I mean, with me and Irm,” Ben said thoughtfully.

Grant stared at him incredulously, and then suddenly giggled. “Why not a play? Make it a play. Then we could collaborate.”

Ben’s eyes brightened. “Gee, that’s a great idea!” he said. “You mean you really would?” Then he remembered his serious role. “—Anyway, it’s Lucky we’re concerned about right now.”

“It sure is,” Grant said.

“But are you
sure?”
Ben said seriously. “Are you really
sure
?”

“You damned right I’m sure. Why else wouldn’t she have waked me up?”

“Maybe she just did it to hurt you,” Ben said. “Because of uh because of that Mrs Abernathy thing.”

“And maybe she just screwed Jim Grointon for the same reason,” Grant said sharply.

“Listen,” Ben said slowly, and seriously. “I want to ask you something. Something maybe very serious. Take your time and think it over. Before you answer. Do you think that maybe it could all be in your head?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, do you maybe think that just maybe you’re goin through all this torment about Lucky cuckolding you with Jim because of your own guilt over havin cuckolded Hunt Abernathy all those years with Mrs Abernathy?” Quickly he raised his hand. “Think it over. Take your time.”

“Hunh,” Grant said.

“Just think it over,” Ben said. “Do you think it might maybe be that? Or even
partly
that?”

Grant did think, for several minutes. “Let me say this,” he said finally. “I would say that it might be that, might very well be that—
if it were not for that one night when she didn’t wake me up.
Because, see, she had lots of other opportunities to cuckold me with Grointon. (Christ, she even told me she had a kind of hots for him,” he put in parenthetically, “for Christ’s sake!) And she could have, lots of times. Like in the Morants. Or at the hotel. But I never thought she did, never doubted, never even considered that she would.
Till that one night.
So I don’t think your bright idea’s the answer. You see what I mean.”

“I see,” Ben said. “But it’s still something to think about.”

“It sure is,” Grant said. “How much are you charging me, Ben?”

“I’m only trying to save you something,” Ben said. “You’ve got somethin very precious there in Lucky.”

“She’s got something very precious—She
had
something very precious there in me,” Grant said.

“I know,” Ben said quietly.

“And she
threw
it away.”

“Well,” Ben said, “do you expect everything in life to come to you without paying for it. You’re too big, too important, too
much,
not to know better than that. Are you too big and too important to even be willing to indulge in a little education? You refuse even to educate, teach a little? Of all you claim to know about life?”

“She fucked him,” Grant said.

“Maybe not. That aint for sure,” Ben said. “But if she did —and I aint
sayin
that—maybe she’s sorry. Maybe she learned something. Something about where the real importance lies. In things. That’s sort of what happened to me. That time.”

“I can’t stand the thought that she could do that like that,” Grant said. “I just can’t stand it.”

“But maybe she
didn’t
,” Ben Spicehandler said kindly. “There’s always that possibility. And then look at what you’ll be throwin away. Look, you’re a little drunk. Come on back up to the hotel with me, and go to bed. There’s always the chance that she might cancel it, the wire.”

“There is,” Grant said. “And she can cancel it any time. Any time she wants to. But I sure as shit aint gonna
ask her to
!”

“That’s as much as admittin that you want to keep her,” Ben said.

“I don’t know whether I do or not, Ben, that’s the truth.”

“Then come on back up with me,” Ben said, “and see how it goes then.”

“No,” Grant said. “No, I won’t I’m going to stay here and have a few drinks with the boys. I think they understand more about women than you do, Ben.—What’s that old saw?” He laughed. “That they say out in our country, Ben: ‘He’s a hell of a guy around the poolroom, but he’s a son of a bitch at home!’” Grant laughed again. The spectre! The spectre! That damned spectre! Faceless spectre!

“Don’t ever say I didn’t try,” Ben said.

“I’ll never say you didn’t try, Ben,” Grant said.

He walked back aft with him, to the opening through the lifeline railing against the wharf, and slapped him on the back as he stepped off the ship, then went on back to the cockpit. They were still talking about women they had fucked.

He never did remember just when the subject of the whiskey cache came up. He did remember that when it did, Bonham growled, grinned, and accused Mo Orloffski of tailing him, ‘shadowing’ him. This was because the whiskey cache was located at South End, which was the route Bonham took when he went in his roundabout way to the hotel and Cathie Finer’s room, apparently.

Orloffski only grinned. “What the fuck?” he growled back in his brutal way. “I got as much right to prowl around this fuckin island as anybody else has, aint I?”

It was by prowling that he had found the whiskey cache. It was located in the ‘cellar’ of the new not-quite-finished luxury hotel that was being built, and was almost finished, down at South End. They used the word ‘cellar’ in quotes because to dig a real cellar on a sand island like this would be to have it seep itself full of water in a week. So the ‘cellar’ was above-ground, and what was more was closed only by an old makeshift wooden door and a padlock because the final door itself had not yet been mounted on. Orloffski had peeped in through the one barred window and seen the whiskey cache, and it was
enormous.
The owners, the new American syndicate, had apparently been shipping it in for quite some time for their gala opening which everybody aboard hoped would put the Greens, the entire clan of Greens, out of business.

They were all drunk. By now. And it did seem like a boyish prank. Then. But Grant remembered that it was Orloffski who really first suggested it. Orloffski, the thief. Orloffski, the kleptomaniac. Orloffski, who in fact had once stolen Grant’s old Exacta V camera. It was Orloffski who suggested it, and he was high, high, high; high as a kite over the idea. He looked exactly like a man hot after a broad.

It would be easier than anything for them to go up there right now, in the middle of the night, crack the old rusted padlock, and just help themselves to a couple, to a
gang
of cases? No one would ever miss them, there were so damned many. There were only a few workmen actually working on the final interior work up there right now. You fix the padlock back so it looked locked, and who would know? who would pay any attention? They could stow the several cases of whiskey in the bilge under the sole in the schooner. Who was going to search them? especially if they didn’t notice the door, or lock, had been tampered with?

It seemed like a great idea. Bonham was all for it, and his eyes glittered stormily with acquisitiveness. And Grant thought why the hell not? It was no worse than stealing equipment from the Navy. Or Army. To steal whiskey from a rich corporation was not dishonorable. More, it was even honorable. A sacred duty, almost. The old-timers in the Navy had called stealing gear “decorating yourself.” And it appealed in him to that same gnashing, grinding, screeching thing he carried now that had made him want to, have to, shoot that shark. The big shark.

He did not remember getting up there, though it was quite a long walk down the heavy sand of the beach and then inland up through more heavy sand to the deserted brand-new hotel itself. They hadn’t yet laid the walks for the tourists. No, he didn’t remember getting there, but he did remember Orloffski tearing off a good near-half of the door. In his excited enthusiasm Orloffski pried too hard with the little crowbar they had brought from the schooner’s lazarette, and the rusty old padlock was a lot stronger than it looked. The result was that he broke away a good portion of the old half-rotten wood, lock and hasp and all.

That was when the arguments started. Orloffski was for going ahead anyway; he was, in fact, nearly rabid. Bonham was not so sure. Grant himself said he would go along with whatever Bonham decided. Finally the acquisitivesness, the rich greed, in Bonham at all that whiskey just lying there, that beautiful whiskey, just lying there for the taking, decided him in favor of going on with it anyway.

They took five cases. Staggering bulkily down through the heavy sand Bonham carried a full case under each arm. Orloffski also carried a case under each arm. Grant could hardly manage to carry one case in both arms, and even then fell to his knees a couple of times in the deep sand. What if his goddamned wife could see him now? he thought with a kind of crazy exaltation. Finally they reached the beach itself, at the water’s edge, and put them down to rest. The plan was to get the ship’s dinghy and row them to the ship.

Perhaps it was the long struggling climb down through all that heavy sand that sobered him up, but when he put his single case down on the hard sand at the water’s edge and sat down on it to rest his arms, Grant was suddenly sober, sober enough to realize what it was they were doing, what they had done.

Despite the offensive and ubiquitous Greens, this island was part of a British Protectorate, and it was British administrated, and there was a British Administrator, a white British Administrator from England, who was the law on this island. The Law. That was not the same thing as bucking heads with the Greens, who were objectionable in any case, and who also in any case had nothing to do with the new luxury hotel. No, that was not the same thing at all.

“I think we better take it all back,” he said bluntly. After he got his breath back. “I think we should. I really mean it.” And then the arguments really started.

Orloffski was dead set against taking it back. He came up with and developed a list of excuses and reasons as to why they could get away with it that was as long as a tall giant’s arm. He seemed almost beside himself in his enthusiasm for going ahead. Bonham and Grant listened to the end, all three of them sitting on one or another of the disputed cases of whiskey, gesticulating back and forth at each other over this point or that. In the end, after Orloffski’s spiel, Bonham appeared still undecided.

“Since you busted the whole door,” Grant said, in rebuttal, “somebody’s sure to see it tomorrow. Early. They’ll know that it was us. And they must certainly have an inventory of the number of cases. They’ll search the ship. And don’t think they won’t look in the bilge under the sole, either!”

“We can be away from here by dawn,” Orloffski sneered. “So who cares. You think they’ll send the British Navy Coast Guard after us? Fuck off!”

“No,” Grant said, reasonably. “No, they won’t do that. But the
Naiad
will never be able to put in here again on any future cruises. I can pretty well assure you that. Al?”

“That’s right,” Bonham said thoughtfully, and drunkenly. “And this is a good place to bring hired cruises. On the other hand,” he added, “there’s a lot of other places we can go, too. Thousands.”