A Flash of Green

Twenty-one

During the first part of the week which remained before the date set for the public hearing, Jimmy Wing was intrigued and sometimes mildly alarmed by an apparently interrelated disruption of both his sense of time and the quality of his capacity to remember.

For a long time he had fitted sensibly into the steady progress of his days and nights, knowing without any effort of consciousness where the minutes belonged on the clock and the days belonged on the calendar. Now the internal time-keeping device had stopped. Three hours could disappear between heartbeats, and ten minutes could appear to last all afternoon. It had the remembered flavor of childhood, when Saturday was always a vast glad surprise, and Monday was a generation away. The segments of each day were protracted and compressed without reason. He would find himself startled by the idea of being late for an appointment only to discover it was still three hours away.

This disassociation seemed linked with a new vividness of memory, of fragments which came into his mind with such a force and color that he seemed to have to squint to look directly at these visions. The outside world was faded by comparison. These were all recent images, and they often had that ominous persuasive weight of dreams rather than reveries. He was absent-minded, forgetful. He sensed that people were being patient with him, and he smiled his gratitude. Sometimes, when his attention was on the person speaking to him, he seemed to hear the other’s words a fraction of a second before the words were said. This was a hypersensitivity which made his brain feel as if it had been stripped raw, made all comprehension an immediate and painful thing. At other times he would see the mouth moving and he would hear nothing. He would search for the range of the person’s voice, like moving a tuning dial, and suddenly he would hear him again.

The hot images in his mind were curiously static. A thing would come into his mind and last and finally fade, and when it was ended, then he would know whether it had been in bright focus for two seconds or an hour. The visions were random. One that came often was the image of Charity’s eye, far brighter than it had been in the motel room, suspended slightly above him, big as a basketball, wet, fixed, anatomically exact, the lashes thick as lead pencils, iris big as a saucer, pupil big as a cup, utterly still. He could not force continuity onto such images, re-creating what had come before or what came after. There were others which recurred. One was the bottom half of Elmo’s face, the hard, chunky, knowing grin. And the motionless tumble of the orange slacks of a dead tourist woman. Aunt Middy Britt’s leathery arthritic claw folded onto the arm of her rocker. Two flies, with the metallic sheenings of hummingbirds, feeding at a droplet of jam. Mitchie’s mouth, wrenched sideways in a frozen sneer of sexual effort. The wrinkled brown nape of Shannard’s neck beneath the feathery whiteness of his hair. The clean slant of Kat’s shoulder, her fair skin oiled and angry red.

He would set out to drive to the courthouse and find himself at the entrance to his driveway. Once he sat on the side of his bed to change his shoes, and found himself in the bathroom, in pajamas, brushing his teeth at three in the afternoon. At times he was amused, but could not sustain amusement. At times he was alarmed. He knew he was doing his work reasonably well, but often when he would read his bylined work, he could not remember having done it. And at all times he felt as if he was braced for some huge horrid unimaginable noise that might come at any time. He had always awakened in the morning remembering dreams. Now there were none, and he was glad there were none because he did not like to think of what they might be like.

Sometimes he thought of talking to Dr. Sloan, but he did not know what he could tell him, nor did he believe it could be of any significance to the man.

On Monday afternoon, two days before the public hearing, he had a phone call from Morton Dermond. Dermond asked him if he could come over to the Art Center right away.

Dermond was in his office. The Center was closed to the public. A good half of the clutter in the office was gone, and most of what remained had been dumped into a huge pile under the windows.

Dermond sat at his desk, the brute in colors gay, all brawn and hair, but without an essential ferocity, like a bulldog with rabbit eyes. He sat tired and remote, with a small self-deprecatory smile, handed Jimmy a fuzzy carbon of a typed statement and said, “Sit down and read it, Jimmy.”

It was a brief, formal resignation as director of the Palm County Art Center, giving health as the reason.

“It has to be in tomorrow morning’s paper, Jimmy,” he said. “Please say that Mr. Oscar Grindle, chairman of the Board of Directors, will handle the Center until a replacement can be located. All activities will continue without interruption.”

Jimmy made a note on his copy of the resignation. “Very sudden, isn’t it?”

“Suddener than anyone could have guessed. My car is all loaded. My landlord has my key. Bobby is driving around doing some last errands. He’ll pick me up here in about twenty minutes. Young Peter Trent is being kind enough to crate the rest of my things and ship them north. Bobby and I should be out of the state tonight.”

“Do I get the news in depth, Mortie? The story behind the story?”

“Just for your own amusement, I guess. You can’t publish it, of course. You see, I knew something like this might happen. When I saw how vicious and unreasonable people were getting, I told Tom I should get out of it. I told the dear man I’d do the group more harm than good. But he made such an appeal to my loyalty, really. You see, Jimmy, we develop a sort of sixth sense about these things. We should never, never, never let ourselves get mixed up in public issues which get terribly emotional. I was lulled into a false sense of security, I guess, because nothing happened two years ago.”

“What happened this time?”

“Tell me something, Jimmy. I want to be sure I haven’t been living in a fool’s paradise. Have I ever been too terribly obvious about my personal private life? Have people been really sure about me?”

“Not completely, Mortie. And I guess most of the people have had no idea at all.”

“I know you have, because you ran into Bobby and me that time in Key West. But I had the idea you didn’t go around smirking and gossiping, really.”

“I didn’t.”

“I’m not an idiot, you know. And I’m certainly not a member of that pushy set, who go around demanding equal rights and so on. I’m living in a world which disapproves of my personal life, and I can’t change that, so what would I be trying to prove? I’ve kept my two worlds completely separate, Jimmy. I was down there three whole months before I sent for Bobby Serba to come down. He’s had that nice little job in the gift shop at Cable Beach, and we’ve been terribly discreet. Actually, even though I know who most of the locals are, and some of them might astonish even you, Jimmy, we’ve never mingled. And we’ve even maintained the precaution of Bobby’s having a little place of his own. I’ve liked my work here, and I know I’ve done a very good job, and I swear to you on my word of honor, Jimmy, that in all the time I’ve been down here, I’ve never made the smallest pass at anyone.”

“I believe you, Mortie.”

He gave Jimmy a look of despair, and suddenly there were tears in his eyes. His voice broke as he said, “What they did to me, Jimmy, they bugged my house. A dirty invasion of privacy. And what good would it do me to go to the police? It’s a shameful thing, Jimmy.”

“Who did it?”

“Two horrible men. Bobby came over on Saturday night. Saturday was his birthday. I made my famous paella in the big casuela I brought from Spain. You can’t get all the right ingredients here, but it was really very good. And we had quite a lot of Spanish wine. Yesterday morning, just before noon, we were lounging around the house, listening to music, and those men rang the doorbell and came muscling their way right in, grinning and laughing at us and talking dirty. They had this battered little tape recorder, and they set it up and made us listen to some of it. I don’t care what kind of a relationship you have, Jimmy, a recording of completely personal things sounds vulgar and nasty and horrible. Bobby got quite hysterical and went positively flying at them to turn it off, but they slammed him back against the wall and he hurt his head. I was going to punish them, but one of them took a gun out. Have you ever seen anybody aiming a gun at you in your own living room? It is really impossibly theatrical. It’s truly vulgar. That put Bobby in even worse condition, and I had to quiet him down. Then they told me I was resigning immediately and we were leaving town. No place for us in a decent community and so on. Just what you’d expect. If we didn’t leave, the recording would be played for some of the members of my board, and I’d be publicly accused of being a deviate at the public hearing on Wednesday, and their evidence would be turned over to the police. You see, there’s nothing I can do except what I’m doing, Jimmy. All we can do is run. If we stay here and brazen it out, not only will it be hurting a lot of people I’m fond of, but we could really be sent to prison. The laws down here are truly medieval.”

“What were the men like?”

“Oh, rather beefy fellows in their thirties, ignorant types, with meaty faces, dressed in cheap resort clothes. I’ve never seen them before. Their first names were Ray and Andy. They acted like cops. They had a southern accent, and a lot of dirty language, and they acted like it was all very very funny. They hadn’t done anything very tricky. They’d just fastened a microphone onto my window sill with a long wire running all the way to the driveway next door, where they sat in their car and listened and ran the tape recorder whenever they felt like it. They were in a dark green De Soto with Tampa plates. The house next door is empty for the summer. One of them must have sneaked over and put the microphone where he wanted it as soon as it got dark.”

“Where are you going?”

“I made some phone calls yesterday afternoon. We’re going to borrow a friend’s cottage on Fire Island and spend some time forgetting there is such a place as Palm County. Then I’ll find something in New York. Jimmy, I know I’m imposing on you, but would you please tell Tom Jennings? I know I should phone him. I just can’t.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Mortie Dermond walked into the lobby with Wing. “Say goodbye to the others, the few who mean anything to me. Jackie, Kat, you know the ones. Explain it a little, so I won’t look too bad.”

“Sure, Mortie.”

There were several huge raw-looking canvases hung in the lobby, predominantly black, red and white. The blacks were weighty and structural, like Kline. They were by a local young man named Sol Utica.

Morton Dermond stopped by the largest painting. “Poor little Sol. He’s derivative, of course. But he’s finding where he wants to go, and he’ll have to have time. They’ll find somebody for my job who won’t give Sol gallery room. They’ll pack this place with the hobby people, beach scenes, waving palms, picturesque fishing nets. I can feel wistful about that, Jimmy.”

“People like to object to what they don’t understand, Mortie.”

“It’s more than that. There’s something we can’t say to the public because it sounds so arrogant it makes people screamingly angry. Work like this is like mirrors. Cruel mirrors. They can’t reflect a substance which doesn’t exist. A person who is nothing will look at these and see nothing. They’ll be baffled, angry, indignant. They’ll think they’re being had. They say a child could have done it, or a monkey. They’ll think the whole world of modern art is some vast conspiracy. We tell them to make an effort to understand. That’s nonsense, actually. They can’t suddenly become actual people through an effort of will. This is a world they can’t enter, so they claim it doesn’t really exist. But it is more real than anything they can ever know. Dear God, if a man looks at a meadow and sees only a drainage problem, or something he thinks he can kill, why should he think he should be able to look at a painting? That’s what angers them, Jimmy. They sense their limitations, and defend themselves by accusing the rest of us of fraud.” He smiled. “My final lecture as director, my friend. I guess you are a reasonably sensitive man, but I shouldn’t expect too much empathy from you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re adequately tolerant, I suppose. But the prejudice is still there, isn’t it? ‘Some of my best friends are a little queer. Some of them are real nice guys.’ But I disgust you a little, don’t I?”

“What’s the point of talking like this, Mortie?”

“Turning the knife in the self-inflicted wound. Or maybe it’s luxurious self-expression, my friend. Once you’ve burned a bridge, you can turn and yell anything you want. You see, you dreadfully viable types have a conviction of righteousness and decency which offends me. So the prejudice, like all prejudice in the world, works both ways.”

“Is this doing any good?”

“It probably isn’t even very good therapy, dear man. Out of pure reaction, I’ll probably get progressively queeny as time goes by. Goodbye, Jimmy, and thanks for some small favors. No, I’d rather not shake hands, because at the moment it strikes me as a sort of gesture of tolerance.”

Jimmy shrugged and walked out. Mortie’s new red Falcon station wagon was parked near the entrance, down on its haunches with the weight of the luggage inside and on the roof rack. Bobby Serba was checking and tightening the lines which held the tarp. He was a willowy man, with an abundance of glossy dark hair and a minimum of chin. He gave Jimmy a slow glance as Jimmy walked by. He had long almond eyes, and in the glance was that same wary, remote, inhuman speculation he had seen in the eyes of penned cattle.

It was a little after six o’clock when he parked at Elmo’s office. Elmo’s pickup and Sandra Straplin’s little car were there. The street door was locked. He pressed the bell but could not hear it ring because of the traffic sounds behind him. He alternately hammered on the door and pressed the bell button. After a long time he saw Sandra walking toward him, her heavy breasts bouncing, her eyes narrow, her mouth ugly with annoyance.

She unlocked the door and swung it open and said, “When you phoned, Jimmy, I told you he was too busy to see you. What’s the matter with you anyhow?”

“I want to see him for a minute.”

“Come on. You’ll see him, all right. You got him in a dandy mood now.”

Elmo was standing beside his desk. He dropped the papers he was looking at and stared at Jimmy as he came in. Muscles bulged and flexed along the hard angle of the jaw.

“Get out and shut the door, Sandra.” As soon as the door closed he said, “You getting uppity, boy. You want to talk to me, you phone. She told you tomorrow. Not tonight. Tomorrow.”

“Don’t I have special privileges? As a member of the team?”

“You say that pretty snotty. Who all the hell you think you’re getting to be?”

Jimmy went over and sat on the couch and looked at him. “I’m good old Jimmy Wing. That’s all. I do odd jobs. Like at the Drowsy Lady Motor House. Like carting Buck’s wench to Tampa. Like sidelining Doris Rowell. Like telling you every move old Tom Jennings plans before he makes it. When we get to Tallahassee, Elmo, will I have my own office? And a state car? I worry about things like that.”

“Is this the way you were acting when you walked in and busted Leroy in the mouth?”

“I was a lot calmer, I think.”

Elmo looked at him for a few moments. He finally sighed audibly, peeled a small cigar and took his time lighting it. “So what’s got you all riled, boy? Dermond?”

“If you can guess that good, guess the rest of it.”

“Sure will. When you come into this, the idea was how you were going to he’p me slow those Save Our Bay folks down. Knowing them the way you do, you could do it quiet and gentle. So all of a sudden you find you somebody else is in on it. And I guess you want to know why.”

“I very much want to know why.”

“Lots of reasons. You turned out to have a softer heart than I give you credit for. That doesn’t mean I got no use for you now and in the future. It just means little things will come up best done by others. You bleeding about how Dermond got handled? Like my daddy used to say, a man with a plate glass ass shouldn’t walk where it’s slick.”

“Leroy arranged the Dermond thing?”

“He found some fellas to take care of it. The thing was to run him out of town fast, him and his pretty boy, so as when the Reverend Darcy Harkness Coombs gives his little talk at the public hearing on Wednesday night, he can point to Dermond as being one of the bird lovers exposed and run out of the county by the forces of decency. You standing up for a goddam degenerate, boy?”

“Aren’t you trying to win too big, Elmo?”

“In this game, Jimmy boy, there’s no such thing. Then, you losing your wife, it kind of took your mind off all that’s going on. And we figure you’ve been doing us a lot of real good by writing up how wonderful Palmland Isles is going to be. We figured you’d be a lot happier if you don’t have to mess with the rougher parts of this thing. If you couldn’t stomach it when Leroy give that big girl a little cuffing around, it’s best we took some of the dirty work off your hands. Like how Dermond got convinced it was time to leave town.”

“I don’t care about Dermond, Elmo. I had to see you tonight to get something else straight. Jennings’ organization is pretty well gutted now. There’s four left on the committee, and about fifty members who haven’t been scared off. I assume Leroy’s little helpers are still on the job. I came here to tell you that nothing is going to happen to Kat Hubble. If anything is being set up, you better make sure it’s called off. If anything happens to her, I’m going to make you the sorriest man in south Florida, Commissioner.”

Elmo wore a tiger smile. “Big words. Maybe, as the years go by, Jimmy, and we get to know each other good, you’ll stop wondering if I’m a damn fool. Leroy still wonders, sometimes. Ever since you busted his lip he’s been especially nervous about you. But what he can’t understand yet is how I got a lock on you that you couldn’t bust out of if you tried. You’re the most loyal man I’ve got. Now don’t stare at me so bug-eyed, boy. Think it out. I’d say the one thing you value most is the good opinion and respect of that nice little redheaded woman who is the widow of your best friend. And every little thing you’ve done for me has give me a solider lock on you. But I don’t want to push you past the point where you’d lose your own respect for yourself. I could make you do things you wouldn’t want to think about. I could tell you that if you didn’t do like I told you, I’d make sure that little lady found out just how you’ve been helping us and hurting them. Leroy has no call to be nervous about you, no more than I have. And that redhead isn’t going to be hurt in any way. She’s going to stay sweet and loving toward you, because that’s how you want her to be, and you’ll work to keep her that way. Before I ever talked to you I looked it all over careful. She’s a spirited woman. She looks up to you. I knew you’d be awful careful not to let anybody know you have any deal with me, because she might find out. And I want you real careful, like you’ve been. You can’t cross me, Jimmy, any more than Leroy could, or Buck, or Doc, or Bill, or Burt. Any one of you would be hurting yourself worse than me. So have no fear about anything happening to that little woman.”

The office seemed slightly tilted, and Elmo Bliss looked half again life size. Jimmy moistened his dry lips and said, “It’s so strange. The best reason you gave me for joining your team was that if I didn’t, she might get hurt. That was the reason that meant the most to me. None of the reasons for it or against it seemed very important a few weeks ago. But that was... the one that counted.”

“It was the heaviest one I had,” Elmo admitted. “But why should you or anybody act like I’m a bad man? Chrissake, boy, we’ve been giving folks something to take their mind off the hot weather. What do they say? Bread and circuses. Dog packs need rabbits to chase. It angries up the blood and keeps folks young. I was going to get those two Army fellas pushed out of the picture too. We could have got to Jennings through his Chinaman wife, but then I got to thinking it would take the joy out of the public hearing if there was nobody to show up at all on the other side. They’ll need somebody to boo at, and it might as well be Jennings and Lipe, standing all alone against the multitude. If Jennings has any idea of taking the fight further after the clobbering we’ll give him, we can take his mind off it later on. And Lipe, without Jennings, isn’t worth cutting up for chum. So who’s been hurt too bad? Dermond, Mrs. Rowell, the Sinnat girl? They all blameless, boy? And look at the good that’ll be done to more folks than you can count. There’ll be fat pockets in this county.”

“You... you can understand why I got upset.”

“Because you didn’t think it through. But I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t know how you can do it. But you’d best keep Miz Hubble away from that public hearing. She’ll have no speeches to make. She’s done all she can. You keep her away. It’ll all die down fast afterwards. You’ll see. But folks will be heated up Wednesday night. People could get roughed up, even if no real harm is meant.”

For most of that Monday evening he had been without the bright static images in his mind. He sat at his desk in the newsroom and wrote about promotions and zoning appeals, meetings and resolutions, a Pigeon Town knifing, a drainage control project. He shrank himself into a little rubbery figure at a matchbox desk, running scrawled notes and short phone calls into rapidity-click, whappety-clack of pica black on yellow paper, bucked through rewrite, initialed at the desk, slugged, linotyped, copyread and locked up.

But later he was to remember that the image started before the phone call came. He did not know exactly what it was when it began. It was a shadowy something, and he could see the typed words well enough through it. Then it began to tower over him, a huge thing, ominous, silent. The words were gone and he was in a wild, still, lunar country. He stood in blackness at the foot of a bulge of mountain. There was some piercingly bright light beyond the mountain, shining on the long smooth concave curve of snow that led to the summit. To his right was a shadowy roundness where the light leaked around a wider portion of the great promontory. Suddenly perspective and proportion seemed to click into place, and he realized that it was a woman’s breast, his eye so close to the base of it that for a moment he listened for the velvety thud of her heartbeat against his ear. The concave line of snow was the whiteness of her skin against the light beyond.

At midnight, after the phone call, as he was driving to the hospital, the image was still there. The lights of the oncoming traffic shone through it. After he had parked and was walking toward the emergency entrance, the vision left him. It did not fade as the others had. It merely moved slowly upward until it was beyond the furthest upward tilt of his vision.

Kat was waiting for him in the small alcove beyond the emergency room. She sprang up when she saw him and came to him, her eyes swollen. He held her in arms that felt wooden. She rolled her forehead back and forth against his shoulder, saying, “The dirty bastards. The horrible filthy dirty bastards.”

“Where’s Ross?”

“He’s with her right now. He’s waiting for the sedative to work.”

“Has he reported it?”

“Yes. It was outside the city. Two deputies were here. They left a little while ago. What good can they do? She didn’t know those people. She didn’t get a look at any of them.”

“Who’s the doctor?”

“The one who was on duty in the emergency room. He’s quite nice. He was very upset about it. Dr. Bressard.”

“Does Ross expect me to go to her room?”

“No, dear. He was lucky enough to get a private room for her. He told me to wait for you down here, and for us both to wait for him. It shouldn’t be long now.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“I think Ross ought to.”

Ross came down five minutes later. He seemed to walk very carefully, like a man trying not to limp. His expression was thoughtful. “She’s asleep now. It won’t wear off for a while. I’ll come back here so I’ll be with her when she wakes up. Let’s go get a drink someplace.”

They walked to a small cocktail lounge two blocks away. It was a warm still night. They could hear the radios in the cars that drove by. They sat at a red plastic horseshoe booth in the back. Kat slid in first. After they had ordered, Kat said, “I haven’t heard all of it, you know. How did they get the drawings?”

The low wall lamp had an opaque shade and a weak orange bulb. Ross Halley’s face was in shadow. The light shone on his lumpy, malformed hands. He tore off small bits of the paper napkin, rolled each into a pellet and dropped it into the black plastic ashtray. “I didn’t know the drawings were missing. I didn’t know anything was missing. I haven’t had time to check. Saturday afternoon we went to the beach. I took a camera along to get some casual beach stuff. Background for future work. I wanted to get her mind off this damn Palmland deal anyhow. We got back a little after four. Somebody had pied my studio. Dumped all my work, all my files and records and materials in the middle of the floor, poured everything onto it that would pour, and stirred it up with a broom. The tubes of color they squirted on the walls. The way they got in, they broke my outside studio door open. They wedged something in there and pried it open and splintered the door all to hell around the lock.”

“Did you report it?” Kat asked.

He stared at her with a blank expression. “What was the point? Did it do any good reporting they cracked a window ten days ago heaving a rotten cabbage at the house? When Jackie saw what’d been done to my workroom, I’ve never seen her, or anybody, so mad. She scared me, she was so mad. When that was over she cried as if her heart was broken. Sunday she was still mad, but it was a deep slow burn. I fixed the door, put a new bolt on the inside. We worked all day long cleaning the place up, salvaging what we could. I haven’t got any kind of insurance that covers that sort of thing. I checked and I don’t. Actually, it’s a hell of a loss. It made me feel sick. All the work I do for a long time is going to be just that much harder to get right. Now, understand, I’d been telling her to be careful, but when she went out tonight, I should have gone with her. She went out about eight o’clock, just to drive over to the mainland and pick up some cigarettes. We were nearly out. I guess they were waiting for her to come out, and followed her. I guess if we’d both gone out, it would have been the same thing. I don’t think they were going to let me stop them.

“She went over to that shopping center at Bay and Mangrove. It was just about full dark by then. When she came back to the car, just as she opened the door, somebody eased up behind her and pulled some kind of big thick bag down over her head. She’s a strong girl, but they didn’t give her a chance. They grabbed her and hustled her into a nearby car and drove out of there. They’d wrapped some fast turns of line around her. It was so airless in that bag she panicked, and she thinks she fainted. But Bressard found a lump on the side of her head, so maybe she didn’t. When she came out of it, she was being carried along a path in the woods. When they found she could walk, they stopped carrying her. They walked her with her arms twisted up into her back. The bag was gone and she wasn’t tied. They had flashlights. She thinks there were at least four of them, and no more than six, all men, all in dark clothes, all wearing black hoods with big eyeholes and a big place for the mouth. They came to a small clearing. She could hear traffic a long way away. They spoke in whispers, and they used no names.

“They told her to take her clothes off, or they’d be ripped off. She tried to run and she tried to stall. Nothing worked. She did as they told her. They tied her to a big live oak tree, her face to the tree, so big she couldn’t reach around it. She said she was blubbering and bellowing by then. There was a length of line fastening one wrist to the other. They wanted to show her something. They put the lights on it and held it where she could see it. Her head was turned to the side, her cheek against the tree. It was one of my drawings of her. I did a lot of them. I kept about twenty of the best ones. Some were charcoal, some pastels, some ink. Nude studies. Nothing lascivious, for God’s sake. They were unmistakably her. I can get a good likeness. I did them years ago. I love her. I love how she’s built and the way she looks. These were a private labor of love, something between me and my wife. Our business. Nobody else’s. The head man whispered to her, ‘Did you pose for this?’ The question steadied her down. She said of course she did, and why not? Her husband is an artist, she said. Only a sick mind would see anything wrong in acting as a life model for your husband. He told her to answer yes or no, and he asked her again. She said yes. As soon as she said it, there was a sort of whistling, whirring sound behind her, and then such a terrible smashing pain across her naked back she bucked hard against the tree and screamed. The man tore the drawing in half, whispered, ‘Repent!’ and held up the next one and said, ‘Did you pose for this?’ Along about the fourth drawing, she tried saying no, to see if that was what they wanted. When she said no they hit her twice, once for posing and once for lying. She said she would have done anything in the world to stop them. She begged. She said she repented. Toward the end she was going into a half-faint after each lash. She hung against the tree.

“Suddenly there were no more drawings. She heard them whispering to each other. They cut her wrists loose. She slid and fell. She heard them hurrying away, going away through the woods, and she lifted her head so she’d know what direction to go in. She rested for a long time, then, with her eyes more accustomed to the darkness, she was able to find her clothes. It took her a long time to put them on. She wandered off the path on her way back toward the highway. She forced her way through the brush and went through a deep ditch and up onto the shoulder. She was on the Bay Highway, about a mile this side of Everset. Two young boys picked her up, probably thinking their luck had provided them with a fine drunken blonde. She wasn’t walking very well. As soon as she was in the car she fainted. Apparently the boys discovered the blood soaking through her shirt and slacks. Instead of dumping her anywhere, they drove her to the hospital and dumped her out there. She sat on the curb near the driveway to the emergency entrance. A nurse spotted her out there and came out and looked at her, then went back in and came out with another nurse and a stretcher. She told them to call me. When I arrived, Bressard was still working on her. He had a lot of cleaning to do, from where she’d rolled over into the dirt when they cut her loose. He thinks it was a heavy length of braided leather. Every swing sliced her open. The highest one is across the top of her shoulders, and the lowest one is across the back of her thighs a couple of inches above her knees. He says the worst places are where two marks cross. He did some stitching on those places. They had to treat her for shock and loss of blood. I saw her back. It’s a dozen colors. If it wasn’t for the shape of her, you wouldn’t know what it was.”

“Wicked,” Kat whispered. “Cruel and wicked.”

“She told me about it after we were up in the room. The pain isn’t so bad. He froze it somehow. She told me in bits and pieces, not orderly like I’ve told you. There’ll be scars for a long time. Maybe as long as she lives. She was always a girl who was proud of not having any scars and blemishes. And she never liked being hurt. If she’d scald a finger cooking, it would scare her and upset her.”

“Don’t talk about her that way,” Kat said. “Don’t use the past tense, Ross, please.”

He gave her that strange thoughtful look. “Isn’t it accurate? What makes you think the Jackie we know is still living?”

“Don’t, Ross!”

“They took it all out of her, Kat. All the joy and the spunk and the spirit. It all leaked out of her back. You can’t do that to a woman like that and expect to have much left. She’s dull now, Kat. Her eyes are dull and her face is dull, and you can see how she’ll look when she’s old. She doesn’t give a damn whether they fill your goddam bay or leave it alone. She’s in a world she doesn’t like any more, because now she knows there’s no part of it you can trust. She trusted too much, and I didn’t trust enough. I suppose I could go looking for those people. And if I’m as unlucky as I think I am, I might find them. Once I found them, I’d have to kill them. There’s no other conceivable thing to do. And how much good would that do Jackie? So I’m not even going to look. When she’s well enough, we’ll move along. I don’t think either of us will want to stay here.” He looked at Jimmy in a slightly puzzled way. “Kat thought you could write this up. But you can’t. And we wouldn’t want you to. We don’t want to advertise anything or fight anybody. We’re going to take our losses and run, kids. And if you have any sense, Kat, you’ll run too.” He finished his drink and stood up. “I want to be right there in case she wakes up.”

“Ross,” Kat said. “Maybe it won’t be as...”

He leaned one hand on the table to brace himself, reached with his right hand to cup her cheek in a clumsy way. “For everything you’re thinking... for everything you’re wishing... thanks.”

He dropped a bill on the table and was gone, walking swiftly to the door and out into the night.

Kat looked down at her fists and said, “I wish it had been me. I wish it had been me. I’m tougher, Jimmy.”

“Not that tough.”

She tilted her head to give him a sidelong glance from narrowed eyes. “All that righteousness,” she said. “That’s the worst part of it. The way they must have enjoyed it. Repent! Shining those lights on her. Smacking their lips. A naked, painted, evil woman. Such a contrast she must have been, compared to their own women, their sorry, dumpy, drab little women. They couldn’t have ever earned the love of a woman like Jackie. It was like rape, wasn’t it, only better because they don’t have to feel guilt. They can feel virtuous and stern. The mighty wrath of Jehovah.” She rested her forehead on her clenched fists. Her hair was a sorrel gleam in the slant of the light. “What’s happening to everything, Jimmy?” she said in an almost inaudible voice.

He caressed the shining hair. She leaned her head against the caress, pressing hard. Then suddenly she sat up, dug into her purse for a tissue, dabbed her eyes, blew her nose.

“Down to three little Indians,” he said.

“These are bad times for Indians. Tom felt so damn guilty about Mortie. He kept saying over and over that he should have let Mortie quit when he wanted to. He’s feeling responsible for the whole thing now. He’s sick about getting all of us into it. I don’t know what this will do to him, when he hears about Jackie. I don’t think he’ll give up. But he’ll try to go the rest of the way alone. Of course, he’s damn close to being alone right now. My car is at the hospital. I don’t like to sound like a coward, but will you follow me home? And stay with me while I phone... No, I can’t phone him from the house, darn it. Anyway, it’s so late. He needs what sleep he can get. I’ll leave for work early tomorrow and stop there on the way and tell him.”

“Are you back in your own house now?”

“Things quieted down. I thought it was all right.”

“I think you better stay at the Sinnats.”

“I guess so. Faithful Natalie is the emergency sitter. I guess we better move back there again tonight.”

“I’ll follow you home.”

“Will... this be in the paper?”

“Wednesday morning. Yes. It’ll get in through the emergency room records. Bressard will have to make a report. It will be picked up as a matter of routine, even though there’s no complaint, no charges filed. Woman hospitalized, beaten by unknown assailants.”

“I’m so tired, Jimmy. So gosh-darn tired.”

“So let’s get you home.”

“I got a card from Claire from the Madeira Islands. She said it’s a dreary boat, and get the filter unit changed in the pool please, and she hopes I’m having more fun than she is.”

It was almost two-thirty when he drove out of the Estates. He hesitated at the gates, then turned right toward Turk’s Pass instead of left toward town. There were no other cars parked at the pass. There was a high far fragment of moon and a moist steady breeze out of the west. He walked around to the Gulf side. The breeze kept the mosquitoes away. He sat on soft dry sand. The small waves spilled up the gradual slant of the beach and slid back, leaving a gleam which quickly soaked away into darkness. There was a phosphorescence in the waves, a green flickering where they broke. He found bits of broken shell in the sand and snapped them toward the water.

Now then, he kept saying to himself. Now. He wanted a beginning. He wanted to pick things up and build a plausible structure. He wanted a starting place and a middle place and an ending place.

“Now then!” he said, and was startled to realize he had said it aloud. But nothing began. Things were in bright fragments, and they were all static. They existed, and could not be moved. He took off his clothes and waded out. Fish sped away from him, leaving faint green lines of phosphorescence. He stood where the incoming march of the slow waves slapped his thighs. He felt the suck of water around his feet, pulling the sand out from under them, settling him slowly, washing him in like a pier. He moved out and swam for a little while, floated on the lift and fall of the swell, looking at the stars, then swam in. He knelt at the surf line and combed the sand with his fingers, combed out a half handful of coquinas, then walked slowly on the packed wet sand letting the wind dry him, eating the coquinas, opening the small shells with his thumbnail as if they were pistachios, licking out the tiny sweet bits of living meat with the tip of his tongue.

When he was dry he put his clothing back on. He stretched out in the dry sand and made a sand pillow for his head. A night bird flew by, croaking with sad, habitual alarm. Now then, he told himself. But nothing began. When he awoke, the beach, the sea and the sky were all the same shade of silver-gray. Far out over the Gulf lightning made a small silent calligraphy between cloud blackness and the gray horizon. A crab stood on tiptoe nearby, a small ballet of wariness. Beyond the storm dunes and sea oats was a crimson line over the mainland. He bent over and brushed the sand out of his hair. A hundred yards away, in shallow water, there was a turmoil of fish, startling him. It was still too early for birds. The tide was running in swiftly. He walked slowly along the shore line of the pass, around toward the bay side where his car was parked. When he was opposite the middle of the pass, an oiled black arc of porpoise appeared, made a gasping huff and sounded again.

He got behind the wheel of his car. Now then, he told himself. But some essential connective pinions of his mind had rusted in place. He felt as if he was trying to glance at still photographs swiftly enough to achieve the illusion of motion. But the pictures were not in order. He had reasons, but he could not link them to acts. He could devise acts, but they were naked of reason and consequence. Memory had suffered a strange inversion, so that all that was to come seemed to have the quality of things remembered.

When he reached the cottage, he showered, knotted a towel around his waist and sat at the typewriter. During the morning the phone rang several times, but he did not answer it. By eleven o’clock he had it exactly the way he wanted it. He set his alarm and slept until two o’clock. When he woke up, he read it again. He had an original and one copy. He folded them separately, after dating and signing each one. He put the carbon in an envelope and addressed it to Kat. He mailed it in town and then went to the bank lot to wait for her to come out.