"But you can"t tell anyone we have this arrangement. If anybody asks you anything about me, I"m just a friend."
"I think maybe you are. But what about those expenses if you don"t get anything back?"
"That"s my risk."
"So long as I don"t end up owing. Lord G.o.d, I owe enough here and there. Even some to Chookie."
"I want to ask you a few questions."
"You go right ahead, Trav. "
"Do you know of anybody who served with your father in the Army?"
"No. The thing is, he wanted to fly. He enlisted to try to get to fly. But he was too old or not enough schooling or something. He enlisted in nineteen forty-two. I was six years old when he went away. He trained in Texas someplace, and finally he got into the... something about Air Transit or something."
"ATC? Air Transport Command?"
"That was it! Sure. And he got to fly that way, not flying the airplanes, but having a regular airplane to fly on. A crew chief he got to be. Over in that CBI place. And he did good because we got the allotment and after he was over there, those hundred dollar money orders would come once in a while. Once there were three of them all at once. Ma saved what she could for when he got back, and the way it turned out, it was a good thing she did."
"But you don"t know anybody he served with?"
She frowned thoughtfully. "There were names in the letters sometimes. He didn"t write much. My mother saved those letters. I don"t know if Christy threw them out when she died. Maybe they"re still down at the house. There were names in them sometimes."
"Could you ride down there with me tomorrow and find out?"
"I guess so."
"I want to meet your sister."
"Why?"
"I want to hear what she has to say about Junior Allen."
"She"ll say she told me so. She didn"t like him much. Can I tell my sister what you"re trying to do for us?"
"No. I"d rather you wouldn"t, Cathy. Tell her I"m just a friend. I"ll find some way to get her to talk about Allen."
"What can she tell you?"
"Maybe nothing. Maybe some things you didn"t notice."
"It"ll be good to see my Davie."
"Why was Allen sent to prison?"
"He said it was a big misunderstanding. He went in the Army and he was making it his career. He was in the Quartermaster, in the part that they have boats, like the Navy. But little boats. Crash boats, they call the ones he was on. And then he got into the supply part of it, and in nineteen fifty-seven they got onto him for selling a lot of government stuff to some civilian company. He said he did a little of it, but not as much as they said. They blamed it all on him and gave him a dishonorable discharge and eight years at Leavenworth. But he got out in five. That"s where he was a cellmate of my daddy, and said he came to help us because my daddy would have wanted him to. That"s the lie he told us."
"Where did he come from originally?"
"Near Biloxi. He grew up on boats, that"s how the Army put him into the boats. He said he had no folks left there."
"And you fell in love with him."
She gave me a strange and troubled look. "I don"t know as it was love. I didn"t want him to have me like that, right there at the home place with my mother still alive then, and Davie there, and Christine and her two. It was shameful, but I couldn"t seem to help myself. Looking back I can"t understand how it could be.
"Trav, I had a husband, and there was one other man beside my husband and Junior Allen, but my husband and the other man weren"t like Junior Allen. I don"t know how to say it to a stranger without shaming myself more. But maybe it could help somehow to know this about him. The first time or so, he forced me. He would be tender and loving, but afterward. Saying he was sorry. But he was at me like some kind of animal, and he was too rough and too often. He said it had always been like that with him, like he couldn"t help himself. And after a while he changed me, so that it didn"t seem too rough any more, and I didn"t care how many times he came at me or when.
"It was all turned into a dream I couldn"t quite wake up from, and I went around feeling all soft and dreamy and stupid, and not caring a d.a.m.n about what anybody thought, only caring that he wanted me and I wanted him. He"s a powerful man, and all the time we were together he never did slack off.
"Do a woman that way and I think she goes off into a kind of a daze, because really it"s too much, but there was no way of stopping him, and finally I didn"t want to, because you get used to living in that dazy way. Then when he come back and moved in with that Mrs. Atkinson... I couldn"t stop thinking how..."
She shook herself like a wet puppy and gave me a shamefaced smile and said, "How to get to be a d.a.m.n fool in one easy lesson. I was just something real handy for him while he was looking for what my daddy hid away. And all the time I thought it was me pleasing him." She looked at the coffee-shop clock. "I have to be going to get ready for the next show. What time do you want to go in the morning?"
"Suppose I pick you up about nine-thirty?"
"I"d rather I come to your boat about then, if that"s okay with you."
"It"s fine with me, Cathy."
She started to stand up and then sat back again and touched the back of my hand swiftly and lightly and pulled her fingers away. "Don"t hurt him."
"What?"
"I wouldn"t want to think I set anybody onto him that hurt him. My head knows that he"s an evil man deserving any bad thing that can happen to him, but my heart says for you not to hurt him."
"Not unless I have to."
"Try not to have to."
"I can promise that much."
"That"s all I wanted." She c.o.c.ked her head. "I think maybe you"re clever. But he"s sly. He"s animal-sly. You know the difference?"
"Yes."
She touched my hand again. "You be careful.
Cuatro
CATHY Kerr sat primly beside me on the genuine leather of old Miss Agnes as we drifted swiftly down through Perrine and Naranja and Florida City, then through Key Largo, Rock Harbor, Tavernier and across another bridge onto Candle Key. Her eagerness to see her child was evident when she pointed out the side road to me and, a hundred yards down the side road, the rock columns marking the entrance to the narrow driveway that led back to the old frame bay-front house. It was of black cypress and hard pine, a sagging weathered old slattern leaning comfortably on her pilings, ready to endure the hurricane winds that would flatten glossier structures.
A gang of small brown children came roaring around the corner of a shed and charged us. When they had sorted themselves out, I saw there were but three, all with a towheaded family resemblance. Cathy kissed and hugged them all strenuously, and showed me which one was Davie. She handed out three red lollipops and they sped away, licking and yelping.
Christine came out of the house. She was darker and heavier than Cathy. She wore faded jeans hacked off above the knee, and a man"s white T shirt with a rip in the shoulder. She moved slowly toward us, patting at her hair. She did not carry herself with any of Cathy"s lithe dancer"s grace, but she was a curiously attractive woman, slow and brooding, with a sensuous and challenging look.
Cathy introduced us. Christine stood there inside her smooth skin, warm and indolent, mildly speculative. It is that flavor exuded by women who have fashioned an earthy and simplified s.e.xual adjustment to their environment, borne their young, achieved an unthinking physical confidence. They are often placidly unkempt, even grubby, taking no interest in the niceties of posture. They have a slow relish for the physical spectrum of food, sun, deep sleep, the needs of children, the caresses of affection. There is a tiny magnificence about them, like the sultry dignity of she-lions.
She kissed her sister, scratched her bare arm, said she was glad to meet me and come on in, there was coffee made recent.
The house was untidy with tracked sh.e.l.l and broken toys, clothing and crumbs. There was a frayed gra.s.s rug in the living room, and gigantic Victorian furniture, the dark wood scarred, the upholstery stained and faded. She brought in coffee in white mugs, and it was dark, strong and delicious.
Christy sat on the couch with brown scratched legs curled under her and said, "What I was thinking, that Lauralee Hutz is looking for something, and she could be here days for twenty-five a week and I could maybe make forty-five waitress at the Caribbee, but it would mean getting there and back, and the garden is coming along good, and I got six dollars last week from Gus for crabs, so it don"t seem worth it all the way around, getting along the way we are with what you send down, but it"s lonely some days n.o.body to talk with but little kids."
"Did you fix up that tax money?"
"I took it in person, and Mr. Olney he showed me how it figures out a half per cent a month from the time it was first due. I got the receipt out there in the breadbox, Sis."
"Christine, you do how you feel about the job and all."
She gave Cathy a small curious smile. "Max keeps stopping by-"
"You were going to run him off."
"I haven"t rightly decided," Christine said. She looked me over. "You work at the same place, Mr. McGee?"
"No. I met Cathy through Chookie McCall. I had an errand down this way, so I thought Cathy might like to ride down."
Cathy said abruptly, "Daddy"s letters from in the Army, you throw them out going through Ma"s things?"
"I don"t think I did. What do you want them for?"
"Just to read over again."
"Where they"d be if anyplace, is in the hump-top trunk in that back bedroom, maybe in the top drawer someplace."
Cathy went off. I heard her quick step on the wooden stairs.
"You going around with her?" Christine asked.
"No."
"You married?"
"No."
"She"s still legal married to Kerr, but she could say desertion and get loose in six months. A man could do a lot worse. She"s strong and she"s pretty and she"s a worker. She"s saddened now, but anybody make her happy, they"d see a different woman. She"s a loving one, laughing and singing when she"s happy."
"I guess Junior Allen saddened her."
She looked surprised. "You know all about him?"
"Most of it, I guess."
"She must like you to tell you. Cathy is older than me but younger. She doesn"t see things about people. I wanted to run him off the place. All that laughing and smiling, and his eyes didn"t smile. Then he got to her, loving her up so she couldn"t think straight, and it was too late to run him off by then. Even too late to tell her he put his hands on me every chance he had, laughing at me when I called him names. I knew he was after something. I knew he was looking. But I didn"t know what for or where it could be. It was a wicked way he did her, Mr. McGee, getting her to need him so bad, then walking out. Better for her if he never come anywhere near here again, but he come back with our money and moved in on a rich woman, and not a d.a.m.n thing in the world anybody could do about it."
"Go to the police?"
"Why? Whatever he got was already stole one time. Police never did any favors for the Berry family. When you"ve got a daddy dies in prison, you don"t look friendly on the police!"
"When was the last time Allen was in the area?"
Suspicion changed her placid face, tightening it. "You wouldn"t be some kind of police?"
"No. Absolutely not."
She waited out the fade of suspicion, gave a little nod. "He was coming and going, taking her off on that boat, staying there with her, and maybe a month ago, one day the boat was gone and she was there alone. There"s a sale sign on that house and she stays pretty much inside the house and they say she"d turned to drinking more, so perhaps Junior Allen is gone for good."
"Perhaps that"s just as well, for Cathy"s sake. He shamed her. People knew what was going on. And they knew Kerr ran out on her. Junior Allen called her names and people heard it. They laugh about her. I clawed one face bone raw and they don"t do their laughing in front of me. What Cathy doesn"t need is any more trouble. You remember that. I don"t think she can take one more little bit of any kind of trouble."
"I don"t plan to give her any"
"She looks pretty good now. All slim as a girl." She sighed. "Me, I seem to keep right on widening out."
Cathy came rattling down the stairs with a crushed white box fastened with rubber bands. "They were down in the bottom," she said. "And there was this picture." She showed it to Christine and then brought it over to me. It was a snapshot. A powerful man sat grinning on the top step of the porch of the old house. A placid pretty woman in a print dress sat beside him. The man had his arm around a squinting, towheaded girl of about five. She was leaning against him. A younger girl was in her mother"s lap, her fingers in her mouth.
"Old times," Cathy said wistfully. "Suppose somebody came to us that day and told all of us how things would be. You wonder, would it have changed a thing?"
"I wish that somebody would come along right now," Christine said. "I could use the information. We"re due for good luck, Sis. The both of us."
I stood up. "I"ll go along and do my errand and stop back for you, Cathy."
"Shall we wait lunch?" Christine asked.
"Better not. I don"t know how long I"ll be."
The town of Candle Key was a wide place on a fast road. The key was narrow at that point. The town was near the southwest bridge off the key. It had taken a good scouring in 1960 and had a fresh new look, modern gas stations, waterfront motels, restaurants, gift shops, marine supplies, boat yards, post office.
I stopped at the big Esso station and found the station manager at the desk marking an inventory sheet. He was a hunched, seamed, cadaverous man with dusty-looking black hair and his name was Rollo Urthis. He greeted me with the wary regard salesmen grow accustomed to.
"Mr. Urthis, my name is McGee. I"m trying to get a line on the present whereabouts of one Ambrose Allen. Our records show that he worked for you for several months."
"Junior Allen. Sure. He worked here. What"s it all about?"
"Just routine." I took a piece of paper from my wallet, looked at it and put it back. "There"s an unpaid hotel bill of two hundred and twelve dollars and twenty cents. At the Bayway Hotel in Miami, back in March. They put it in the hands of the agency I work for, and he registered there as coming from Candle Key."
His grin exposed a very bad set of teeth. "Now that must be just one of them little details that Mister Junior Allen overlooked. When you run across him, he"ll probably just pay you off out of the spare change he carries in his pocket and give you a big tip for your trouble, Mister."
"I"m afraid I don"t understand, Mr. Urthis."
"He quit me in February and got rich all of a sudden."
"Did he inherit money?"
"I don"t know as that is just the right word. People got different ideas where he got it. He was away for nearly a month and came back on a big cruiser he bought himself, new clothes and a gold wrist.w.a.tch no thicker than a silver dollar. I"d say he made a woman give it to him. He"s the kind can make women do things they might not want to do if he gave them time to think about it. He came here and moved right in with the Berry girls, big as life. Their ma was still alive then, last year. They had hard luck, both of them. Cathy is as nice a little woman as you"d want to know, but he got next to her pretty quick. When he got the money he dropped her and moved in on Mrs. Atkinson. She was a customer a long time, and I could have swore she wouldn"t stand for anything like that. But she did. Lost me a customer too. G.o.d knows where he"s at now. But maybe Mrs. Atkinson would know, if you could get her to talk to you about it. I hear she"s touchy on the subject. n.o.body around here has seen Junior Allen in better than a month I"d say."