Chapter 15
I COULD ONLY AFFORD the luxury motel for one night. The next morning I drove into town and rented a one-room efficiency apartment for ten dollars a week in the cheap waterfront section. I told myself I was taking temporary quarters. Soon I would talk Nell into going away with me.
But I made little headway with Nell. We saw each other irregularly as the days followed one another. But she refused to commit herself to our going away together.
I began to drift into a kind of lethargy of living from day to day, drinking a lot, more than was good for me, I suppose. I slipped into a kind of limbo. My main concern was to stay out of my father's reach-and the realest moments to me were the stolen ones Nell and I shared.
Sometimes she came to my room. At other times we met elsewhere. Often we took crazy chances. One night she telephoned me.
"Mark, honey, Fred's asleep. He was tired when he came home tonight and went to bed early. He's sleeping like a log and I know he won't hear me leave. I'll meet you down at the boat."
Fred had bought a cabin cruiser.
"What if he wakes up and finds out you're gone?" I asked, not particularly caring if he did.
"He's a sound sleeper. If he does wake up I don't think he'll think anything about it if I take the boat. I sometimes take it out at night. It'll be all right, honey."
Minutes later I was dressed in swimming trunks and a bulky old gray cotton sweatshirt. I got into my jalopy and drove to Nell's part of town. I parked a block from her home and walked down the levee to the beach where the water lapped along the sandy shore. All along here were private docks and marinas belonging to the wealthy homes above the levee. Presently I came to the boat stall where Fred Turner kept his cabin cruiser. Nell was already on board.
I jumped from the dock to the swaying deck. I heard the slapping of small waves against the boat and the muffled thud of the prow nudging the dock at the mooring. Nell gave me an eager hug. She was wearing the briefest of bikinis. Moonlight turned her body into silver.
"Hurry, Mark," she whispered. "Help me get her untied."
I jumped back to the dock. I cast off and, as the boat drifted by, jumped back aboard. Nell was at the wheel.
She pressed the starter. The big engine under the deck whined and growled, settled to a steady rumbling. The cruiser moved out with a smooth powerful surge. Within minutes we were far out in the bay. The lights of town became dots in the blackness behind us. Nell handled the big boat skillfully. She must have inherited a feel for the sea and for ships from her father, I thought. I looked back at the phosphorous gleam of our silver wake. The night air was cool and salty.
Nell cut the engine when we were far enough out. The boat wallowed gently in the waves. Nell turned to me. Our lips met in the darkness and we clung together silently. Then she led me to the cabin below. With eager fingers she helped me shed my sweatshirt and trunks. There seemed to be a strange urgency about her tonight.
"Hurry, hurry, baby," she kept whispering."
Next we were on one of the bunks. Nell kissed me hungrily. She made low, guttural sounds in her throat. Tonight she was more than the instigator in our love-making-she was almost an aggressor. She virtually fought her way to a sobbing, moaning release.
She fell against me, panting.
After she caught her breath she whispered, "Love is good with you, Mark. It's always been so good-"
I held her in the darkness. For some reason tears rose to my eyes.
"Yes, Nell." Why were our meetings so often tinged with sadness? "Nell, when are you going to leave Fred and come away with me-so we can be together all the time?"
"Soon, Mark, soon."
"That's what you keep saying."
"Be patient a little longer, Mark. I have to get more money together and fix things so Mom and the kids will be okay. But soon we'll go. I promise."
We lay in each other's arms, gently rocked by the motion of the boat. Nell snuggled her face against my shoulder.
She whispered, "Tell me how it will be, Mark-when we leave together."
"We'll never be apart. v We'll go somewhere where there's big water-one of the seacoasts. We'll sleep together every night and we won't have to sneak around and be afraid. Every day when I come home you'll be there waiting for me."
"Will we have a nice home?"
"Sure-a swimming pool-the works. We'll have everything. Most of all-we'll have each other."
"Yes, and children-we'll have children, too, won't we? I'd like to have children. It would be so exciting for you to get me pregnant. Maybe we could have two girls and a boy. Or would you rather have two boys and a girl, Mark?"
I grinned in the darkness.
"I don't care. Maybe two of each."
"All right, then. Two of each."
We were both silent.
Then Nell whispered, "Please don't stop talking, Mark. Tell me more about how it's going to be."
I told her what she wanted to hear. There in the gently swaying boat, in each other's arms, we could tell each other the impossible was really all going to happen some day....
The next morning I got up and went down the waterfront to the shrimp packing sheds to see if anything was doing today. I had been earning a little money by working intermittently in the packing sheds. The pay was small and uncertain, not enough for me to survive on for any length of time.
Most of what I was living on at the present was coming from Nell.
She insisted that Fred gave her plenty of spending money and asked no questions about what she did with it. She pressed money on me. To know that I was partly living off Fred Turner made my stomach squirm-but I had little choice if I wanted to continue hanging around Nell.
The shrimp sheds were all idle this morning. I hung around the waterfront for a while talking to men I had come to know. I thought I might get a job as a header on one of the shrimp boats-but so far nothing along those lines had developed.
Near noon, I wound up in one of the waterfront haunts, a small place where many of the shore characters spent their time. About all you could say for it was that the beer there was cold and the jukebox not too deafening. An enormously fat woman ran the place.
The sign over the door said fat's place-cold beer.
I had money in my pockets, some that Nell had given me last night before bringing the boat back to shore, so I was in no immediate financial bind. I put a handful of quarters into the jukebox and relaxed in a booth with a cold beer. As I sat I thought about my college friends. School would be out for the summer vacation now. I wondered where they were.
How many would recognize me right now? I was beginning to look like a waterside bum. Dressing up around here made no sense. I wore a faded old sports shirt, cotton slacks, sneakers without socks. My complexion had taken on the ruddy tan that comes from exposure to the water, sun and wind. I could have used a haircut and a shave.
I couldn't seem to work up enough energy to spruce up, except when I expected to meet Nell. It was easier just to hang around at Fat's during the day and drink beer until I lost track of time and place, and finally to stagger the few blocks down the wharf to my pad and tumble into bed. Half the time I couldn't remember how I got home.
Today was shaping up along familiar lines. And then, about two in the afternoon, I looked up and saw Fred Turner. Fred stood near the bar, chewing on a two-dollar cigar and looking the place over. I was surprised to see him there. This was a hangout for shrimpers and dock workers and considerably beneath Fred's social stratum.
He stood there, his eyes squinting until they became accustomed to the gloom of the saloon. Then he spotted me in a rear booth and started walking toward me. I realized that his sole purpose in coming here had been to find me.
He knew, of course, that I was in town. He had seen me around the waterfront on several occasions. We had exchanged strained, unfriendly greetings. He had asked me to drop around to see Nell and had obviously not meant it. I had managed to thank him without choking, and had promptly forgotten the invitation. I had no intentions, either, of giving him reason to become suspicious about Nell and me again and take her off on another trip. If he really had suspected anything the last time. I wondered if I could fool him if he were actually suspicious. Stupid he was not. A man didn't get to be the big wheel in the shrimp business by being stupid.
He grunted his bulk into the booth across the table from me. He took off his forty-dollar Stetson, laid it on the table, took out a handkerchief and mopped his damp, balding head. I felt myself grow tense and on guard as I waited to hear what he had to say.
He munched on his cigar and his piggish little eyes, half buried in their pockets of flesh, scowled at me. The summer heat was hard on a fat man. His shirt was soaked and his face was greasy with sweat.
He said, "You know, Nell's real cute when she thinks she's outsmarting me. The fact is that I'm' always two jumps ahead of her." He took the cigar out of his mouth, cradling it between the second and third fingers. I saw the gleam of the expensive diamond ring on his little finger. He rolled the cigar between his fingertips. He was still looking at me. He said, "Take that business with the boat last night. She thinks I don't know she took the boat out"
I felt a warning prickle run up my spine. He was looking at me closely.
He said, "Nell don't really get by with anything. Sometimes I just let her think she does."
I thought, You ugly fat bastard. I'd like to bust this beer bottle across your head....
But I said nothing. I was waiting to see what he was driving at. With a guy like Fred you could never be sure.
He leaned back, still looking at me speculatively and thoughtfully, as if sizing me up. Suddenly he adopted a paternal attitude.
He said, "You know, Mark, you're a real nice boy. I mean you look nice and you've got manners. You come from a family with class. Anybody can see that. Since we're related, you might say, by marriage, I want to give you a little advice. I'm a few years older than you and I've seen a little bit more of life, so you listen to me. I know you youngsters don't like to take advice, but it don't ever hurt to listen to somebody a little older than you. I found that out some time ago."
He sucked thoughtfully on a front tooth, his eyes retreating even more in their fleshy beds, as if drawing a closer bead on me.
He went on: "What I mean is that a nice young boy like you with a whole lot on the ball hasn't any business hanging around this crummy waterfront, turning into a lush." With a grunting, ponderous movement he reached into his hip pocket and took out a fat wallet. His thick fingers counted out some bills. "Now-I don't know for sure what happened between you and your folks. I don't want to pry into your affairs but I've talked to Nell about it a little bit and I get the idea that you had some trouble with your daddy. Now, I think you ought to get on the bus today and go on back home." He put the bills on the table and shoved them toward me. "There's a bus leaving out of here at three-thirty this afternoon. You get on the bus like a good kid, Mark. Before you know it your draft number's going to come up and you'll have to be in the army. You want to get some education before that happens. Go on back to your folks and to college where you belong."
He had made his little speech. The jukebox was playing one of the popular ballads. Across from me Turner was breathing heavily the way fat men do. I slowly picked up the bills. I turned them over looking at them.
Then I folded them into a neat wad, leaned forward, stuffed them into his shirt pocket and said, "Go to hell."
For a moment he simply sat there, breathing strainedly, stertorously. His face turned red as sluggish blood surged through his veins. His eyes became glittering slugs of metal.
In a voice that rasped with anger he said, "Boy, you're heading for some serious trouble."
I was full enough of beer to feel cocky.
"Listen, you fat bastard. I'm sick and tired of everybody running my life for me. At home it was my father and my big brother. Now you want to take over the job. All of you can go take a running jump. From now on I do whatever I please."
"You've just cut yourself a large slice of misery, son," he whispered. "You could smart-mouth at home to your father-that's one thing. What you're getting into here is entirely another. I've tried to give you a fair break-which is a lot more than I'd do for anybody else. I'm doing it only because you're blood kin to Nell." He got to his feet and picked up his hat, towering over me like a heavy black shadow. His voice was a low, rasping whisper. "I don't know what's going on between you and my wife. But I've got a pretty good idea. Now you be on that bus out of town this afternoon or you're going to wish you'd never seen this town."
He walked out of the beer joint. I sat there, mad and disgusted. He didn't scare me even a little bit. The bus deadline came and went and I sat there, drinking more beer. Finally, late in the afternoon, I left Fat's and walked home.
When I neared my pad I saw a familiar red convertible parked outside. I went upstairs to the dumpy little hole where I lived. I found Alice Rawson. She looked chic and tanned in a summery blouse and Bermuda shorts.
I said, "I'll be damned."
I could tell by the expression on Alice's face that she was surprised and more than a little dismayed at my appearance. I apologized for not having shaved. I could see no point in apologizing for being drunk.
"How did you know how to find me?" I asked.
She blushed. "I-still seem to find it hard to get you out of my system. I phoned your family last week. Your mother told me you were living down here. She gave me this address."
My father's reach was longer than I had thought. I had not been in touch with anyone at home. He must have had me traced-I didn't bother to wonder how or why.
"How about the guy you were dating in college?"
She shrugged.
"It's over. I couldn't very well date him any more-after that little goodbye scene in your apartment-could I? He and I were actually through even before that. We just couldn't seem to make it-you know?"
She made the last two words a question.
"I know," I found myself replying, somewhat to my own surprise.
Alice and I seemed to share a deeper understanding than I had imagined. I should have guessed that that last bit between us in my apartment at college would never have happened if she had even then been serious about the other guy.
She looked around my present hovel, at the unmade bed, the stack of magazines on the floor, the dirty dishes in the sink, the streaked, fading wallpaper, the dirty floor. Her eyes came back to me. They were sad.
She said, "You're a mess, Mark."
"Tell me something I don't already know." Tears filled her eyes.
"Mark, why are you going off the deep end like this? You've turned into a first-class bum."
"Second-class," I corrected.
"Don't joke. This isn't funny. Your mother sounded worried about you when I talked to her on the phone. I can see why."
"Everybody's worried about me." Alice looked angry.
"Your cousin Nell is behind this, isn't she? You can't get her out of your system, can you?" Her voice became bitter. "I hate her because of what you're doing to yourself on account of her-and at the same time I envy her. I envy her for the way you love her. No wonder she won't give you up. It would be hard for any woman's ego to give up a guy who keeps insisting on throwing his life away on account of her."
"Alice," I said angrily. "Damn it-"
"Oh, I know. We're going to have another fight." She stood up and paced the room angrily. She cried, "Mark-don't you see that what you're doing is hopeless? Nell is never going to leave the man she's married to. As long as you want to hang around her she'll be your girl friend. But you're never going to have her in any permanent way."
She reached me in a way not even Fred Turner had managed. I started to shake all over.
"That's a damn lie," I said. "You don't know what you're talking about."