Home is the Sailor (5 page)

Her smile was enigmatic. “Have I something against men?”

I finished the last of the sandwiches and washed it down with rum. “And how come you warned me this evening not even to stop at the bar?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied. And moved off to fill the glasses of the four whispering men.

I picked up the almost full fifth of rum from the bar and walked across the highway to the beach.

The sea was restless, churning, throwing up a fringe of white spume on the beach, like lace on the bottom of a woman’s panties. The sea. The biggest tease of them all. Promising everything, giving nothing. With a million lovers. Including me. I would be glad to be rid of her.

I sat on the sand and drank from the neck of the bottle.

In the morning, Corliss had said. Maybe after we’d got our license in Dago. A hotel. A motel. Anywhere. In the best suite in the best hotel in San Diego. Swede and the future Mrs. Nelson. Or maybe we’d drive up to Los Angeles. And afterward we’d lie in the sun and laugh. Between kisses. We’d laugh and laugh and laugh. Because we’d found each other.

I drank, wondering what marriage would be like, thinking of the responsibility I was taking on. This wasn’t a tumble in a hotel room. This was it. For keeps. And such a funny way for a man to meet his wife.

Two of the cars in front of the bar pulled away. I sat a long time, until the bottle was empty. Then I threw it into the sea and walked back across the highway.

The Venetian blinds and the door of Corliss’ cottage were closed. She sounded as if she were crying. Or maybe it was only the wind. I considered knocking on her door. But she’d told me:

“Now quiet, Swede, please. I don’t want Wally or Mamie to know until after we’re married.”

The wind tugged my cap from my head. I picked it up and walked on, weaving slightly, feeling like a fool. Corliss would laugh when I told her in the morning.

Mamie, or someone, had made my bed. I took off my coat and shoes and lay down, riding a gentle swell, feeling good, wishing I had another bottle.

The moonlight shining through the blinds formed silver bars. I hoped marriage wouldn’t be like that. I hoped I wasn’t making a mistake. But how could I make a mistake with Corliss?

I lay listening to the sea, smelling the nicotiana, remembering the men in the bar, wondering if one of them was Jerry, trying to identify a small sound buzzing through my brain.

Then I realized what it was: a soft squashing sound, a small
plop.

I wished Corliss hadn’t killed the bee. At least, not the way she had. Slowly. Without compunction. Seeming to enjoy what she was doing.

I dreamed a woman was crying. Then I wasn’t so certain I was dreaming. I sat up and turned on the light. Corliss was sitting in the easy chair by the bed, crying softly to herself, as if her heart would break with her next breath.

One of her eyes was swollen shut. She was still wearing the yellow dress, but both the skirt and the bodice of it were shredded.

I said, “For God’s sake, what happened to you?”

She continued to sob.

I looked at my watch. I’d been asleep an hour. I got to my feet, with a fifth of rum in me, still plenty drunk. “I asked what happened to you.”

Corliss continued to cry in detached sobs. Each sob a ripping sound. As if it were torn out of her chest. Then she began to rock in the chair. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

I knelt beside her. “Honey—”

She pushed me away from her. Agonized. “No. Please. Don’t touch me. I — I thought it was Wally, come back for something he’d forgotten. That’s why I opened the door. Then he — he — he—”

She screwed up her face to scream. I slapped her, hard. Then I tried to hold her, to keep her from trembling. Corliss twisted away from me. Her face wasn’t pretty any more.

“No. Don’t touch me,” she sobbed. “I don’t want any man to ever touch me again.”

I got a glass of water from the bathroom. She drank it, gagging and coughing, spitting it all over me. Then she began to rock again.

I knelt beside her. “You mean someone—?”

She nodded, her mouth twisted in a bitter crimson smear. “Jerry. That awful barman from the Beachcomber. Where I met you. I thought it was Wally coming back. I — I unlocked the door and let him in. Then he — he — he—”

I didn’t recognize my voice. “He what?”

Corliss, got to her feet. She shouted the words in a whisper. “What do you think? He did it to me twice.” She sank back in the chair and began to sob again. “In my own bed.”

I staggered away from her into the head and was sick. When I came out I’d never been more sober.

“Why didn’t you scream for me?”

She made a hopeless gesture with one hand. “What good would that have done? You were drunk.”

“For Wally, then?”

“He had a gun. He said he’d kill me if I screamed.” Corliss stopped sobbing and looked at me, through tears. “Do you know what it’s like? Do you know what it means to a woman to be forced against her will? Do you know what she goes through mentally and physically?”

I said, “For God’s sake, Corliss. Please.”

She continued to whip at me. “No. You’re a man. You can’t know. You can’t realize the shame, the utter degradation.” Corliss struck out blindly. “You’re beasts. All of you.”

I wrapped my arms around her. “Where is he now?”

She kicked at my shins. “What do you care? You’re just another man.”

I slapped her, harder this time. “Where is he?”

She sobbed, “On my bed. Passed out. With his gun under my pillow.”

I yanked the screen door open and padded barefooted across the grass to her cottage, Corliss running beside me, trying to cover herself. “What are you going to do, Swede?”

“Kill the sonofabitch,” I told her.

The light in her cabin was on. I could see the barman from the Beachcomber through the screen door. He was the same lad I had seen in the bar. He was lying on Corliss’ bed, snoring, his clothes piled neatly on a chair, is if they had a right to be there.

I yanked him off the bed, then knocked him to the floor with a hard smash to his mouth that made blood spurt. “This is it, you bastard. Get up and take what’s coming to you.”

He knelt on all fours, shaking his head like a dog. Then he got to his feet. He was drunk, but not sodden. He acted more as if he was drugged; as if he’d mixed goof balls with his drinks or maybe smoked a few reefers to get up the courage to do what he had done.

He was thinking and moving in slow motion. He looked from me to Corliss. And spat blood in her face. “You bitch,” he said thickly. “You would.” It was an effort for him to speak coherently. Three of his front teeth were loose, bobbling in bloody froth when he talked.

He sat back on the bed. His right hand slid under the pillow and came out with a .45 Colt automatic. It was an effort for him to lift it. He pointed it at me, while time stood still. “And as for you, you big Swede—”

From behind me, her voice throaty and strained with passion, Corliss said, “Hit him. Hit him, Swede. Hit him as hard as you can.”

I hit him. Before he could pull the trigger. Making a hammer of my right hand. Putting all my hate and revulsion behind it. The blow caught him on his left temple. His head plopped like an overripe melon, and the whole left side of his face caved in.

The blow knocked him off the bed to the floor.

Corliss opened her mouth as if she were going to scream, then closed it. A peculiar look came into her face. Her upper lip curled away from her teeth.

“You’ve killed him, Swede.”

I stood breathing as if I’d run a long way, sweat beading in the hair on my chest, trickling down. I rubbed my right hand with my left. One of my knuckles was broken. “Yeah. I’ve killed him.”

Corliss opened the screen door and looked out at the sleeping court. None of the lights in the cabins had come on. She closed the screen, then shut the inner door and leaned against it. She was breathing as hard as I was.

“He’s dead. Jerry’s dead,” she panted.

I could smell her across the room.

“Yeah. He’s dead.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She said, “I’m glad. He got what he had coming to him. But what are we going to do, Swede? I mean about him.”

My knees gave out, suddenly. I sat on the arm of a chair, a lump of ice forming in my stomach, trying not to look at the man on the floor.

“There’s only one thing we can do.”

“What?”

I told her. “Call Sheriff Cooper. Explain just how it happened.”

She screamed the words at me in a whisper. “And you think that he’ll believe us?”

“Why shouldn’t he?”

“He’s the law. He’s trained to be suspicious. You’re already out on bail. For having hit another man too hard.”

It was hot in the cottage with the door closed. My whole body was drenched with sweat. I missed the smell of the flowers. I missed the cool swish of the sea.

Corliss left the door and reached up on a high shelf for a partly filled bottle of rye. Her torn dress gaped as she stood on tiptoe.

“You want a drink, Swede?” she asked me.

I shook my head at her. “No.”

“You’re sure you don’t need one?”

“I’m sure.”

She put the bottle back on the shelf. “Oh, Swede. This
would
happen now. What
are
we going to do?”

My throat was a vise, squeezing the words. “I told you.”

“You mean call Sheriff Cooper?”

“Yes.”

Corliss crossed the room and stood in front of me. “No.”

“Why not?”

Her voice was fierce. “Because he won’t believe me. He won’t believe us. He’ll take you away from me and lock you up.”

My throat continued to strangle my voice. “So what have you to lose? I’m a man, remember?”

Corliss moved in closer and pressed herself against me. I stopped trying not to look at the man on the floor and tried not to look at the breast peeping from her torn dress. In agony. Wondering how low a man could get. Wanting her as I’d never wanted any other woman. After she’d just been forced to lie with another man, and I’d killed the man who had done it.

“Go away. Please,” I begged her.

She said, “You’re bitter, Swede.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

She pleaded with me. “But you mustn’t be, darling. Please. I was excited before. Ashamed.” Corliss cupped my face in her hands. “We have our whole lives ahead of us.”

“After this?”

“Yes. Even after this.”

I slid over the arm onto the seat of the chair to get away from her, to keep from making Corliss hate me for life, with a dead man for witness.

“Get me a cigarette. Please.”

Corliss found a pack on the dresser. She lighted a cigarette, then sat in my lap to share it, the soft warm pressure of her body adding to my torture. She knew, she had to know, she couldn’t help but know what I was going through.

She sucked the cigarette to a glow, then put it between my lips. Her words and her thinking were staccato. “No, I’ve made up my mind.”

“About what?”

“About us.” Her body seemed stroked by some inner fire. “We can’t go to the law. We
can’t.
You hear me, Swede?”

I said, “Why can’t we go to the law?”

Corliss cupped my face in her hands again and kissed me. For a long time. It was a sweet kiss, without passion but filled with promise. “Because I love you, Swede,” she said finally. “Because even after what has happened, I want you, physically, every bit as badly as you want me. Because we aren’t going to let this ruin our lives. Because we’re going to get married in the morning just exactly as we planned.”

I tightened my arms around her waist. “But, Corliss—”

“Yes?”

“Maybe Cooper will understand. After all, there’s a law against what Jerry did.”

Corliss took the cigarette from my fingers and puffed on it. The light went out of her eyes. “Can you prove that he did it?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Just exactly what I said.” She spaced her words. “Can you prove it?”

“No,” I admitted. “But—”

Her laugh was short and bitter. “Can I prove it? No. It’s my word against a dead man.” She began to cry again. “I know what Sheriff Cooper will think.” She made a little short-armed gesture of distaste. “And Harris, that dirty-minded deputy of his. Every time he comes here he feels me with his eyes, doing with his mind what Jerry did with his body.”

Her reasoning seemed twisted somehow. But it was difficult for me to think coherently. I wished I’d accepted the drink Corliss had offered me. “What will they think?”

Her swollen left eye was completely closed now. Closed too tight to let tears escape. “They’ll think I was being bad with Jerry. And you caught us. They’ll think you fought over me.”

“But your dress?”

“Anyone can tear a dress,” she sobbed. “I could have torn it myself.”

“Your eye, then.”

Her voice was a little silver hammer pounding at me. “You could have hit me as well as Jerry.”

That much was true. I thought a moment. “But if we don’t go to the law, what can we do?”

Corliss looked at the man on the floor without pity, the way she had looked at the bee in the car. “We can get rid of his body.”

“How?”

“Hide it.”

Both of us were panting again. I said, “That’s easier said than done. Where would we hide it?”

“In one of the caves.”

“What caves?”

“In the mountains above Malibu.”

I shook my head. “That’s out.”

“Why?” she demanded.

I told her. “Because bodies in caves are always found.”

Corliss got off my lap and paced the floor like a tawny caged cat. “Then somewhere else. Figure out something.” She threw the words at me. “You’re the man I love. You say that you love me.”

The cigarette was burning my fingers. I snuffed it out. “I do.”

Corliss stopped pacing and faced me. “Then do something about it. Do you
want
to go to jail? Do you prefer that to marrying me?”

I caught at her hips with both hands and tried to pull her to me. “You know better than that.”

Corliss twisted her hips free, leaving only the feel of her in my hands.