Home is the Sailor (8 page)

Hell. I hadn’t even been smart enough to get on a bus for Hibbing. On the other hand, if I had, I wouldn’t be marrying Corliss.

I walked back down the beach to the Purple Parrot and across the highway to the drive. Corliss’ door was still closed. The blinds on her windows were drawn.

I flipped a mental coin trying to decide whether to go back in the bar and see if I could persuade the heavy-set waitress to sell me a couple of drinks before legal opening time, or try to get a few more hours of sleep. I decided to try for sack time.

The screen door of the office was open. I could hear Mamie crying inside. Meek was pruning a climbing rose with a jackknife. As I came abaft he turned and faced me.

“Just a minute, mate.”

I stopped and looked at him. “Yes?”

He gripped the jackknife like a dagger. “Look. I know my wife was in your cottage a couple of times the other day. I know you’re a big, good-looking joe, the kind dames go for.”

“So?” I asked him.

“So keep away from my wife from now on.”

I told him the truth. “I haven’t the slightest interest in your wife, friend.”

His face was blue with cold. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his sweater. “Sure. That’s why you were holding hands in the restaurant just now. So I’m warning you. See? Stay away from Mamie.”

I got a little sore. “Or what?”

Meek told me. “Or I’ll stick a knife in you.”

I doubled my fist to hit him, then unclenched it. He was too little for me to hit. I was apt to crack his head like an eggshell. Like I’d caved in Jerry Wolkowysk’s head.

The thought made my breakfast turn over.

“O.K.,” I said and walked on.

It was ten when Corliss woke up. It was noon by the time she was dressed and ready to leave for L.A. Her eye looked better than it had when I had kissed her good night. It was still badly puffed, but she’d hidden the discoloring with a good cold cream and powder job. Her sunglasses hid it completely, but every time I looked at her eye I felt better about Wolkowysk.

As we pulled away from the court I asked her how she’d slept.

She said, “I didn’t sleep at all until I’d taken three seconals.” Her lower lip quivered. “It all seems like a bad dream.”

I said, “I’m afraid it wasn’t. I killed the guy and we dumped him. Now it’s fifty-fifty if we beat the law.”

Corliss was indignant. “But think what he did! Certainly that’s against the law. Certainly I had a right to have my future husband defend me.”

I used the lighter to touch off a cigarette and offered her first puff. “I tried to point that out last night. Remember? I wanted to call Sheriff Cooper. But you wanted no part of the law.”

Corliss smoked in silence for a mile. Then she moved closer to me on the seat. “I’m sorry, Swede.” She sounded like a contrite little girl who’d just kicked her playmate’s lollypop into the dust. “I’ve got you into something awful, haven’t I?”

I took the cigarette back. “Anyway, it’s done.”

I was still keeping my speed down and glancing in the rear-vision mirror from time to time. I didn’t want a cop to pick us up before I got rid of the rug.

Corliss laid her hand on my arm. “You still love me? You still want to marry me?”

I patted her hand. “I still love you. I still want to marry you.”

Both statements were true. I’d meant what I’d told Ginty. I was through with the sea. I’d spent eighteen years afloat. And what had it got me? Twelve thousand dollars in cash, which I’d been ready to blow on one last binge. A busted nose, broken in a brawl in Port Said over a Berber wench I wouldn’t have spat on if I’d been sober. A bedding acquaintance with tarts all over the world. In Lisbon, Suez, and Capetown. In Bremen, in London, Murmansk. In Colón, in Rio, in Lima. In Yokohama, in Macao and Brisbane. Starting from scratch every time I shipped out, while other men my age had homes and families. It was time I sent down roots. It was time I stopped spending life as if it were only money. I realized my breathing was labored. Besides, I wouldn’t really feel safe again until Corliss and I were married.

The police could pound on me until both of us were pulp without getting anywhere. I could take it. I knew. I’d been through a lot of fish-bowl sessions. It was different with Corliss. A few hours under the light with smart cops shooting questions at her in relays and she would get hysterical and tell her whole life story. But a wife couldn’t be forced to testify against her husband. And Corliss was the only person in the world who
knew
I’d killed Wolkowysk.

Her fingers bit into my arm. “Are you as frightened as I am, Swede? Do you feel sort of sick to your stomach?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

She looked back at the wicker basket on the jump seat. “Then why did you have Cora prepare a picnic lunch? I can’t eat a thing. It would choke me.”

I said she’d find out why I’d had the lunch packed in a few minutes, as soon as we came to a suitable stretch of beach. I glanced sideways at her white face. “Now you tell me something, honey. We’re in this thing together. We have to be truthful with each other, don’t we?”

“Of course.”

“Then tell me this. And remember the cops may check and I’ll have to know where I stand. How well did you know Jerry?”

Corliss folded her hands in her lap. “I told you last night, Swede.”

“Tell me again.”

Tears trickled out from under her sunglasses. “I went to one dance with him. In Manhattan Beach. For the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. I had to fight him all the way home in the car.” The tears rolled faster. “Then, to get even with me, he told it all up and down the highway that I was bad. That I’d do it for twenty dollars. So I went to his place to raise hell. And there you were. Drunk, and hurt, and bloody, but grinning at me. And I forgot what I’d gone there for.”

I handed her my handkerchief. “O.K. That’s fine. Stop crying. Just so I know.”

Her voice was small. “Say you believe me.”

“I believe you.”

I found the kind of beach I wanted just above Oceanside. The highway ran close to the ocean. There wasn’t a house for a mile in either direction. I pulled off the highway on the lee shoulder of the road and helped Corliss out of the car. Then I carried the wicker hamper and a blanket to the beach.

I spread the blanket on the sand and told Corliss to set out the lunch I’d had the heavy-set waitress pack. She thrust out her underlip in a sullen pout but did as she was told. While she was spreading the lunch on the blanket I gathered a big pile of driftwood.

The tide was out. I laid my fire well down on the shingle where the incoming tide would cover and dispose of the ashes. When it was burning well I went back to the car for the rug. Before leaving the court I’d soaked it in gasoline, rolled it into a tight bundle, and wrapped it in newspaper. A dozen motorists saw me carry it from the car to the fire.

“What’s that?” Corliss asked.

“The rug we wrapped Wolkowysk in.”

The color drained from her cheeks. I thought for a minute she was going to faint.

I dropped the rug on the fire. Then I sat down on the blanket beside her and made her take a big drink of the rum-laced coffee in the vacuum bottle. The color came back to her cheeks. She snuggled her hand into mine. I ate a ham sandwich with the other. For the sake of the folks driving by. While we watched the rug burn.

The back of it was rubberized and smelled worse than the cotton, but the wind was blowing offshore. To the folks in the passing cars we were just a sailor and his girl picnicking on a cool day, with a fire to keep us warm.

Back in the car again, Corliss said, “I’m glad you thought of the rug.”

I said, “So am I.” I wished I could do as much for the wheel of Wolkowysk’s car.

The closer we got to L.A., the colder and darker it got. I rolled up the windows and turned on the heater. Corliss rode with her thigh pressed to mine. I could smell the perfume of her hair. It made me think of her hair on the cliff. I began to want her again, driving into Los Angeles through the smog on U.S. 101.

Corliss was as nervous as I was. She picked at the buttons of her coat. She twisted on the seat. I could see her lips move, telling imaginary beads every time we passed a police car.

We came into Anaheim in back of an Ohio car. At the second intersection its driver signaled a right-hand turn from the right-hand lane, then turned left in front of me. I had to stand on the brake to keep from ramming the bastard.

A parked radio car roared off after the foreign license. I drove on, shaken. Corliss began to knead my right thigh in a nervous gesture, setting me on fire.

I snarled at her. “Don’t do that.”

She spat back, “Why not?”

I said, “Because if you do I’m going to pull over to the curb, and the passers-by will be shocked.”

Her lower lip thrust out. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“If I burn for it,” I told her.

She believed me.

I parked in a three-hour zone on Spring Street. Corliss’ eyes were still sullen. She said, “We’re nowhere near the license bureau.”

“First the rings,” I told her. “It so happens the Nelsons only marry once, and we always do it right.”

The sullen look left her face. Her lower lip quivered as though she were going to cry.

“If you cry I’ll slap you,” I told her.

Her lower lip continued to quiver. She pressed the back of my hand to her cheek. Her voice was small. “With love. From me to you.”

I found a small jewelry store up the block. The lad who owned it took one look at my uniform and, brushing the clerk aside, insisted on waiting on us himself.

“An engagement ring and a wedding band. Right, mate?”

I said, “That’s correct. For cash.”

He dipped back of the counter and came up with a black plush tray of rings.

The one Corliss said she liked best was eighteen hundred dollars. The wedding band came to three hundred more. It was a trifle too large for Corliss’ finger, but she insisted on having it, saying the engagement ring would keep it on.

I counted the cash on the counter, plus the tax, and we were out on Spring Street again, me grinning all over my face. The jeweler had put the rings in small satin-lined white boxes. Out on the walk I took the boxes out of my pocket and reached for Corliss’ left hand.

She put her hand behind her. “No. Not now, Swede. Please.”

“Then when?”

She said, “When we’re married, stupid,” then took the sting out of the name by kissing me. “That is, if you still want to marry me.”

I made a fist and rolled my knuckles across her thigh. Brutally. Hurting her. Making her wince. So there would be no misunderstanding.

“What do you think?”

Corliss knew what I meant. For a moment Spring Street faded out and we were back on the lip of the cliff in the moonlight and fog with the Buick dying on the rocks beneath us. Her upper lip curled away from her teeth. A strained look came into her eyes. She ran her hands over her breasts as if they hurt her.

“I think we’d better look up the license bureau,” she said.

We had to wait in line at the bureau. Corliss gave her name as Mrs. John Mason, twenty-three; occupation, tourist-court owner; married status, widow. I signed on as Swen Nelson, thirty-three; occupation, seaman; unmarried. Both of us white Americans born in the U.S.A.

Then the matter of V.D. clearance came up. The clerk asked for our certificates. I told him we didn’t have any. He said he was very sorry, but he couldn’t issue a license until we had taken a blood test and suggested we go to one of the laboratories that specialized in giving them. I asked him how long it would take to get a certificate.

He said, “It usually takes three days. But sometimes they come through in two.”

Corliss asked, “How about San Diego? Would we have to have a certificate there?”

The clerk said, “It’s a state law, miss.”

In the hall Corliss thrust out her lip in a sullen pout. “You promised to marry me. Today.”

I was as disappointed as she was. I blew my top. “What the hell do you want me to do? Fly up to Sacramento and get a special dispensation from the governor?”

I might have saved my breath. Corliss didn’t even hear me. She repeated:

“You promised to marry me. Today. I won’t wait three days. I won’t.”

Her lower lip stopped protruding and quivered. She began to cry without sound.

I could sense hysteria building in her. The last thing I wanted to happen was for her to go to pieces and some bighearted cop to stop and ask what was the matter.

“All right. I’ll think of something,” I said. “We’ll still get married today.”

Corliss looked at me suspiciously. “Where?”

I told her the truth. “I don’t know.”

I walked her out of the building and into the first bar we came to and ordered a double rum for both of us while I considered the situation.

Women.

It seemed inconceivable, but after what had happened on the cliff, our getting married meant more to Corliss than the fact that we might be tagged for killing Jerry Wolkowysk. Now she had given herself to me, she wanted to make it legal. Or maybe she was thinking of Wolkowysk. Maybe she wanted me as tightly bound to her as I wanted her tied to me.

I asked, “Why are you in such a hurry to get married, baby?”

Corliss sipped her rum. Her brown eyes were thoughtful now. “For one thing, I may be pregnant.”

“Three days won’t make much difference.”

“It will to me,” she said. She bit at her lower lip. “It could make all the difference in the world.”

“You mean that?”

“I do.”

It could be so. Some women are that way. I had been told. Corliss wasn’t just another tramp. This time it was for keeps. For both of us. And she had wanted it to be beautiful.

I moved over onto the same side of the booth with her. “All right. Let’s do this proper. Will you marry me, Corliss?”

She said, “Stop kidding and think.”

I said, “I’m not kidding. Will you marry me?”

“When?”

“Today.”

“Yes.”

I took one of the ring boxes from my pocket and slipped the solitaire on the proper finger. In the light from the lamp in the booth it looked like a two-carat tear, if a tear could catch on fire.