The Last One Left

Chapter Ten

By first light on Sunday, in the sea mist, on the incoming tide, Corpo was wading the flats east of his island, hunting scallops, humming tunelessly, speaking greetings to each one as he shoved it into the gunnysack fastened to his belt. He had guessed it would be time for them to be in, and knew he had to get out there before the tide deepened it too much.

And it pleased him to have the silence and privacy of the mist and the dead calm. They couldn’t see him from the mainland shore, from all their candy-colored houses. No doll-wives shading their empty little eyes to stare out at old Corpo as if he was a bug who’d moved too close.

“Not a damned house back then,” he said, as if speaking to someone a dozen feet away. “Who was here first? I ask you that, man to man. Who was here first? Sergeant Corpo, that’s who.”

Sooner or later they’d work themselves up and get up some kind of damned petition. Like before. Potentially dangerous. Squatting on public lands. Health hazard. Known to be violent. Get one of their bloody writs, send the sheriff boat around, make a lot of trouble for nothing. Hell, the nearest part of the island to the mainland shore was a good half mile, and with a private channel five feet deep between the island and the shore anyhow.

Would mean losing the beard again, and all the itching when it was growing back in. Sit there in court in a white shirt with all the candy people staring at him, wishing they could snap their fingers and he’d disappear. The Lieutenant would have to handle it again, like the other times. It was hard to follow what he said, and some of it didn’t seem the way Corpo remembered it, but it was good to listen to.

“If it please the court, I would like permission to reconstruct the circumstances which brought Sergeant Walter Corpo to this area. He was a platoon leader in my company in 1944, an infantry combat veteran by then, a young man who had enlisted in December of 1941 after one year and a few months of college. I led a patrol of fifteen men into the small village of Selestat near the Rhine. We were ambushed. Sergeant Corpo took cover by a fountain in the square and gave us covering fire to enable us to withdraw, with little hope of being able to retreat in turn. He was not ordered to cover the retreat. It was his instinctive reaction. We got out with but three casualties and came back with the entire company. Sergeant Corpo was believed dead. It was obvious he had kept firing after being hit several times, gravely.

“A shard of metal, possibly a mortar fragment, had penetrated his skull. A corpsman detected a pulse and had him removed to an aid station, though believing he would soon die. From there he was taken back to a station hospital and then to a general hospital, both installations thinking his chance of survival remote. I believed he had died. I put him in for a posthumous decoration, and he was awarded the Silver Star. The war ended. I returned to law school. After graduation I entered the practice of law here in the city of Broward Beach. In 1948 the Veterans’ Administration got in touch with me and asked me if I would go over to Bay Pines Veterans Hospital near St. Petersburg on a matter regarding Sergeant Walter Corpo. He had asked for me.

“I discussed the case with his doctors. He was in excellent physical health. The brain injury, however, had left him with certain disabilities. Complicated instruction confused him. His attention span was short. He would say exactly what he meant in every circumstance, a trait our culture does not find palatable. They did not consider him dangerous. But they had noticed an increasing unrest in him, an increasing irritability at being forced to live in such close quarters with so many other men. They doubted he could earn a living. But he was eligible to receive a total disability pension. He had no relatives close enough to take any interest in him. Could I be of any help?

“He knew me. He was glad to see me. He was absolutely certain I could get him out of that place. He had saved my life twice. I brought him back here with me. He lived in my home. I had an outboard boat and motor. He had a taste for being alone. He began to spend longer and longer periods on the water. After he was gone for three days I demanded an explanation. He took me to that small mangrove island in the bay, approximately ten acres in area, nameless at that time and now known as Sergeant’s Island. He had, with what must have been incredible effort, hewed a curving channel back through the mangrove to a small hammock of palmetto and cabbage palm, and he had used the outboard motor to wash the channel deep enough to use. He had constructed a crude shelter out of driftwood, tarpaper, tin cans hammered flat, and some battered windows scavenged from the city dump. He said it was what he liked and what he wanted, and he wouldn’t be in anyone’s way.

“I will now present for the consideration of the court, two documents. The first is from the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund giving Sergeant Corpo permission to reside upon that state-owned land until such time as title passes into other hands. The second is also dated in November of 1949 and is signed by the Chairman of the County Commission, and grants Sergeant Corpo all the necessary zoning exceptions applicable.

“Once a month Sergeant Corpo comes to the mainland, picks up his disability check at my home, cashes it at my bank, buys provisions and returns to Sergeant’s Island. Over the years he has considerably improved his cottage. Should he not appear for his check, I would go there at once to see what happened to him. He is in splendid physical condition. He wants merely to be left alone.

“There has been talk of violence. There was one such incident. Seven years ago a pack of teen-age boys came to the erroneous conclusion that Sergeant Corpo was a drunk, and that the cottage might well contain a large supply of whisky. There were five of them. They decided to raid the island. They thought Sergeant Corpo some sort of harmless nut. I could have told them that Sergeant Corpo grew up in the swamplands of Georgia, that when he was twelve and thirteen he would go into those swamps hunting and be gone a week without anyone worrying about his safety. I could have told them how silent and deadly the Sergeant was on night patrol duty.

“They raided him on a Saturday night. He heard them coming. He turned his lanterns out. He went outside, circled them, found their boat and cast it adrift. Then, in the night, he took them one at a time, lashed them to the mangroves with pieces of rope, spacing them far enough apart so they could communicate only by shouting to each other. Then he went back to his cottage and cleaned up all the mess and litter and breakage they had caused. He did a good job. Then he came over here to the city and asked the authorities to come pick up the boys. It was dawn when they gathered them up, cowed and terrified, their faces grotesquely puffed by insect bites, eyes swollen shut. They were of good family, had been in trouble prior to the raid, but to the best of my knowledge, have stayed out of trouble ever since.

“I submit that these petitioners who are making a new attempt to dislodge Sergeant Corpo are expressing not any feeling that he is a public nuisance, but rather a social judgment, and wish to penalize anyone who is unwilling or unable to conform to their particular standards of housing, habit, dress and deportment.

“Your honor, I am reminded of the prim lady who lodged a complaint against the owners of property adjacent to hers on the grounds that it was being put to immoral use as a nudist colony. The officers who investigated were confused by her statement of carryings-on right out in plain sight, having noticed the high wall, the large size of the adjoining grounds, and the remote location of the nudist establishment. When asked what she meant by plain sight, she said, ‘Right from my roof with my husband’s binoculars, you can’t hardly miss it.’

“When the only room left in our society for men such as Sergeant Corpo is inside an institution, it will be time for us to re-examine our goals — and our humanity.”

“Hoooheee, how the Lieutenant does go on,” Corpo said. “And how you this fine morning, Mr. Scallop? Excuse me. Pop you into the sack with all your folks. Get your tribe thinned out some before the mist burns off, and the Sunday damn fools come roaring around here in circles, pulling other damn fools on skis, scaring the fish and stirring up the mud.”

He turned and looked back at his island, a vague darkness in the mist, and turned back to his chore, only to find himself staring at a blue hull inches in front of his eyes. It had appeared so suddenly, with so little warning, his first impression was that he was being run down, and gave a hoarse yell and sloshed backward in the thigh-deep water, stumbling, catching his balance.

“Dumb fool!” he shouted. Then he saw how it was moving, almost stern first, slightly crabwise, a line trailing from the bow. With no wind, and with the tide moving as it was, it had to have come in through the inlet to be moving across this flat. It had drifted right across the waterway and into his bay. Fine boat. New looking. Florida number on the bow.

Corpo reached and caught the bow line and started gathering the loose end in, coiling it as he did so. There was enough weed entangled in the line to convince him the boat had been adrift a long time. He put the coiled line up on the bow. He sloshed around the boat. He could not see into it, it had so much freeboard, but he reached high, slung his sack of scallops over the gunnel, lowered it and let it drop the final few inches.

At the transom he spoke the name and port aloud. “Muñequita. Brownsville, Texas. And that’s for sure one hell of a drift. No, you got a Florida number. And that’s weed from the ocean out there. Got your little propellers tilted up clear of the water. End of all that bow line too unraveled to tell much how it parted. Say you must have been riding an anchor, swinging too much maybe. Get a tide change and slack and you put a loop over a fluke, then when it comes tight again, it could fray. You’re pretty new, aren’t you now? Not a mark on those propellers. Walk you home and tuck you under my front stoop and find out how bad some poor fool wants you back.”

Suddenly Corpo noticed a little folding bronze step plate at the transom corner, just above the waterline. He folded it down on its hinge, got a foot on it, reached up and caught the grab handle and pulled himself erect on the step and stared into the teak cockpit.

“Motheragod!” he said, launched himself backwards, landed, stumbled and fell, came gasping to his feet in water deeper than he had expected. Wind riffled the water and the boat moved on. He hesitated a moment and then floundered after it, jumped and got the grab handle, knee on the folding step, worked his way up, sat on the broad transom, swung his legs into the boat.

As he took two strides toward her, he wiped his hand on his sodden pants, bent over and laid two fingers on the side of her throat just under the angle of the jaw. There was something there. A faint thing. A flutter. Not the bump-bump-bump you always felt when they weren’t hit bad.

He looked with consternation at the brightness, knowing the mist was burning off. Looking straight up he could see the first blue glaze through mist.

He went around her to the controls, pulled the nylon cover off, wiped his hands on his thighs as he studied them. Both keys in place, brass-bright. Quarter turn right for on. These little toggles should drop the props into the water. Hiss and chunk. Okay so far. Throttles in neutral? Starter buttons. Try it, Corpo.

One caught very quickly. The other ground for several long seconds and caught. He revved them with several quick hard bursts on each one, then at slow speed slipped them into gear. The boat moved. Exhaust bubbled astern. Water whispered along the bow. He turned the boat, tried more throttle, startled himself with the way it jumped. He pulled it back down. Just as he eased it slowly into his channel he looked west and saw the candy houses beginning to show through the mist, looked east and saw a motor sailer moving south down the Waterway toward Fort Lauderdale.

He had trouble in his narrow channel. At the turns the stern would swing too far, brush the roots. The channel widened at the cabin, where for so long he had used the very lowest tides at the time to chop out the dead roots, grub out the muck, sand and dead shell and use it to build up the land around the cabin. With engines off, he glided slowly under the platform porch, nudging his skiff rudely aside as he scrambled forward, fended the boat off the house pilings, then made it fast at bow and stern.

He picked up the damp sack of scallops and went up the stairs, pushed the trapdoor open from below, climbed into his living quarters. He dumped the scallops into a shallow washtub, went out onto his front porch, dropped a bucket on a line, pulled up enough water to cover them. They began to move around in the washtub.

“Taste the best that time I fried you with the butter and onions, didn’t you now?”

He wondered when would be the best time to eat them. They’d keep fine. Maybe late in the day.

“Got me a good mess of you scallop folks that time I found that girl in that boat, too.”

Now when was that? Last year, or yesterday, or was it something going to happen, or by God, was it now!

He went to his think place, put his hands around the poles he had cut for supports, rested his forehead against the wall timber. He closed his hands as hard as he could, hard enough to make his shoulder muscles creak and pop. The poles were shiny where he had grabbed them a thousand times, the timber stained where he had rocked his head back and forth on it.

Everything would open up for you and turn loose, so you didn’t know where you were. You had to pull it back and lace it down. You had to shut your eyes and think of a row of poles closing you in like a fence on each side of you, so that tomorrow was ahead, and yesterday was right behind you, and last month and last year were way back. Then you could get the shape of yesterday and the day before, and from that you could make it into now.

Yes, she was down there right now.

Clucking with exasperation at himself, he stripped his bed, flipped the mattress over, got the other sheets out of the box and made it up fresh.

He took a clean cotton blanket down to the boat, spread it on the deck beside the girl, and gently rolled her over onto it, trying not to look directly at her. He wrapped it around her, slid his hands under the blanket and stood up with her, astonished at how light she was. It was easier to carry her out and around and up the front way. He put her on the narrow bed and went back and closed his screened door, noticing the last of the mist was burned away.

He opened the petcock and ran some rainwater from his roof cistern into a basin, washed his hands with the sliver of yellow soap, dried them on sacking. He ran rainwater into the pot, pumped the little gasoline stove, lit the burner, put the pot on. Then he went over and sat on his heels and looked at her. Pretty enough little face, but the bones behind it looked sharp enough to come right through the skin. Skin worn off her cheek, mound of her forehead, edge of her jaw. He puzzled it out and decided it could have been rubbed against the teak deck just that way if the boat moved around much. Scrawny little arm about as big around as a turkey leg. He felt her forehead and clucked again, and said, “Just like a fire inside there, missy. You’ve got a fire that’s burning the meat right off your little bones.”

When he turned her head gently, he found the worst place. Where the fair hair was matted and tangled dark, above her ear. He fingered the hair pad away, separating it, and found the wound, perhaps two inches long, gaping almost an inch wide in the middle. It had been rain-washed, and had a skin of healing over it, but the lips of the wound were swollen and granular. He sucked his mouth in and held his breath and prodded at it with a gentle finger, but he could feel no give or shift of the bone under the wound, no fatal sponginess.

“Missy, you got a good hard little skull, or somebody didn’t get a good solid swing at you with that rifle butt. What that needs is some sewing, and maybe I can and maybe I can’t. All depends.”

When the pot of water began to sing, he dropped the handful of tea leaves in it and took it off the fire and swirled it. He filled a tin cup, tasted it, blew on it to cool it, put two spoons of sugar in it, stirred and tasted it again, and took it over to her. He supported her with one arm behind her, thumb and finger at the nape of her neck. He poured hot tea into her slack mouth and it ran out and down her chin and onto his blanket. He tried twice more with the same result.

He shook her, and yelled, “Swaller it, God damn ya! Stop messing up the bed!”

When he tried again, her throat worked and it went down. A sip at a time, he got it all down her and lowered her gently and said, “Missy, when I yell you got to understand it comes out before I think a thing about it. Now I got to see how that back looks. Kindly excuse me.”

He shifted her over onto her face and peeled the blanket away, tugging carefully where it had adhered to the drying fluids that leaked from the burned flesh. He swallowed hard at the faint sicksweet smell of infection, and said, “Now you lie still there. It’s not so bad at all, missy. There was a boy in my outfit, when we got pulled back there in North Africa to get some rest, can’t recall his name, blond boy, he got dog drunk, passed out on the beach, didn’t wake up ’til afternoon, and he looked worsen you.”

He examined her carefully. It was easy to see what had happened. She’d had a pretty good tan, but not across the buttocks where skimpy pants had covered her, and not across the band across her skinny back. There the burn had bitten deep, had blistered, cracked, suppurated, and was now a strange dark rough red, marked with random areas of yellow and yellow-green.

He pondered the problem. He went and got the little jar of the sulfa ointment he used when he got an infection from a barnacle scratch, or a catfish spine, or a bug bite. Damn little of it. Piece it out some. So he opened one of the small tins of butter, put about two parts of butter to one part of the salve in a bowl and mixed it thoroughly. Next he got his half bottle of snakebite whisky from under the bed, took a sheet of paper from his scratch pad and crumpled it, rolled it between his palms. He sat on the edge of the bed, soaked the paper ball with whisky and, after hesitant moments, began to scrub the bad-looking areas, breaking the crusts, rubbing down to a healthier rawness.

He thought she made some small sound, but could not be certain. “Got a poor sad little can on you, missy, all crumpled in and the bones showing, and these here little knobs down your back, like in that labor camp we took over that time. And your belly is puffed the way it is on the starving folks. Now that’s the worst of it for a little time, and I can butter you down now.”

He smeared her back glistening with the mixture he had concocted and then began rubbing it in. He hummed to her and he closed his eyes and he began to rock slowly back and forth, thinking that even starved down, hurt and burned, she was a soft, sweet and tender little thing. Suddenly he realized he had begun to breathe quick and high and shallow, and he jumped up and covered her over and paced back and forth, cursing the evil for wanting to come out at such a time. He wiped his hands on the toweling, settled himself down, and tried to think of some kind of covering for the burns.

Remembering he had some fine netting somewhere, he looked until he found it, cut squares of suitable size, boiled them, wrung them out, and pressed them onto the contours of the burned areas, turned her very gently onto her back and covered her over with the edge of the blanket.

The head wound took more time and trouble. He had to light the bright gasoline lantern and bring it close. He had to soak the matted hair, lather it, shave it with great care. He put a needle and some braided nylon line in the saucepan to boil clean. But what to put on the wound. Not a thing left.

Suddenly he jumped up, swatted himself in the forehead and said, “There’s a damn fool in this world every place you look, missy.” He hurried down and got aboard the fine boat and located the first-aid kit in one of the stowage areas in less than a minute. It was a good one, a big new one, the seal unbroken.

He put a strong antiseptic on the head wound. He sewed it neatly and solidly, pulling the edges together where they belonged. He put a gauze bandage on it and taped it in place. He had a wealth of medicines and instructions. The instructions were hard. He could get them into his mind, but then if he read further, the first part would slide right out of his mind. He found another burn remedy, and plenty of gauze and tape for her back. And some pills for fever, for infection, for a lot of other things which sounded as if she might have them. He settled for four different kinds, and decided two of each would be about right. Getting them into her was another problem. He found he could put her flat on her back, pull her jaw open, holding her tongue down with his thumb. Then put a couple of pills as far back as he could get them at the base of her tongue, poking them back in place with a finger. Then if he closed her jaws and poured tea into the corner of her mouth, making a little pocket for it, she would swallow.

He looked out and was astonished at how much of the day was gone. He read about exposure and sunstroke and dehydration and head wounds and shock, and the treatment for some of the things seemed to be just opposite to the treatment for others. He read the words aloud, puzzling over them. There was one certain thing. Nourishment and plenty of fluid.

He boiled the scallops, mashed them to paste, made a thick gruel out of them, gradually got all of it down her. And more tea. And boiled rainwater. And brandy he found on her boat. When there was a sharp ammoniac odor and a spreading stain on the blanket he had a feeling of pleasure. Get her full up enough so it starts running out the other end, you’re making some progress.

When night came he fixed the screens and made himself his first meal of the day. He lighted his other lantern. In the kerosene flicker she looked pretty, the way he had brushed her hair back and over to hide the shaved place. Her lips weren’t as swollen and cracked.

Heartily he said, “Got to make sure, little missy, there isn’t some hurt place I overlooked. You understand that, don’t you?”

He took the blanket off her and looked at her in the lamplight. Pretty little breasts, hardly bigger than teacups. Not as big, even. Little orangey buds on them. Poor little belly still swole. All resting sweet now on the clean bedding. Hands half curled into fists. Tufty little tan-color bush of hair down there, childish sweet and trusting. Safe as can be with old Corpo.

And he saw his big hand move slowly out to finger the little breast. He had nothing to do with it. It just moved by itself. He gave a huge coughing groan and jumped up, covered her, went over to his think place, grasped the supports, chunked his head solidly, three times, against the timber, grunting at each impact.

“What you trying to do?” he asked. “Who you think you are?”

He opened his eyes and turned and looked across at her, and at that instant the strangeness happened to him again. It happened sometimes when he was upset. It was like taking a half step backward into some bright busy area and looking from there into his life, seeing it as a dim and funny old movie. At such times he looked with disbelief at the boxes where he kept things, the dingy empty clothes hanging from nails, the straw chair he’d found afloat after the storm, the structural braces he had meant to fix in some better way. And the strew of pans and cans, floats and nets, and the things he found on the beaches after storms — a hatch cover, most of an awning, a white plastic dog, an empty keg, the row of colored glass bottles on the board over the wooden sink he had built — bottles frosted by the slow abrasion of the surf.

In this strangeness he always wanted to ask: What are they making me do? Why are they making me be like this? In the bright busy area things moved too swiftly for him to see them, but there were faces and places, books and buildings, words spoken too quickly to be understood. As always before it faded away, leaving him back in his own place, the memory of how it felt fading as quickly as the sensation, but knowing he would recognize it at once when it happened again, the way you recognize a dream you’ve had before.

He went over to the wall where he put the girls. Each month after he cashed his check, he would buy that magazine. And when it was a girl he thought would be nice to be with, a lively girl with a lot of fun in her, then he would cut out the folded page, print her name in the corner so he would not forget it, tack her onto the wall and introduce her to the others. Doreen, Ceil, Jackie, Puss, Bernadette, Connie, Judy Jean, Charleen. And they all smiled right at him, every one. The earlier ones were mottled by the dampness, the colors bleaching out of them.

Slowly and methodically he tore them free, making a neat packet, leaving a few corners tacked to the plywood. He held the stack in position to rip it in two, but could not because it suddenly seemed like tearing through all the tenderness of flesh. He folded the pictures, pondered in what box they might belong, put them in the box with his go-to-the-bank clothes.

Squatting there, he looked at the girl and said, “Too much light on your face, missy. Must have wore you out with all the aid station work. What the corpsmen used to say, don’t go moving them around too much. Do what you got to do right where they fall. You’ll know soon if they can stand moving, or’ll turn dead.”

He moved the lantern away from her, and in doing so momentarily put more light on her face, and was made uneasy by the immobility of it, a look of the skull. He set the lantern down, put his fingertips under the shelf of the jaw, felt nothing.

“So you died on me!” he yelled. “All I done for you! Hard as I worked, you damn little bitch! Just what the hell is the Lieutenant going to say? Missy, why’d you do such a fool thing?”

Her mouth seemed to move. He stopped, bent, peered, laid his two long fingers against her throat again.

“Now why should Corpo be cussing you out? There’s that little heart going along nice. Tump, tump, tump. Just put his fool fingers wrong and missed it, because it isn’t real hard and strong, but anyway it don’t have that bird-wing feeling any more, that fluttery stuff. Missy, you sleep deep and sweet, and Corpo’s going to be close by.”

He blew out the lanterns, waited for his night vision, then went out, crossed the little clearing, climbed the ladder to the driftwood platform he had built in the highest branches of the only live oak on the island, a water oak impervious to the salt water into which it thrust its roots.

Corpo sat crosslegged, looking out over the interwoven crown of the dense mangroves. From there, off to his right, he could see the blinkings of the range lights along the Waterway, see the light on the sea buoy out there beyond the Inlet channel, see the clutter of neon of the resort lights over on the beach side. To his left were the lights of the houses that ringed the bay, and back over his left shoulder were the city lights of Broward Beach. The night breeze was freshening out of the northeast. One of the nocturnal waterbirds flapped across the island, and made a sound like hoarse drunken laughter. He heard a rat-rustle in the cabbage palms, then a great surge and slap of a large fish just outside his channel, and the rushing sound of the smaller fish it had startled into flight. When the breeze would die, the marsh mosquitoes would cloud whining around him. He opened the wooden box he had nailed to the platform, took out the small bottle of oily repellent, greased his arms, neck and ears, annoyed at the odor of it which masked the night smells. Shortly after moving to the island he had stopped smoking, and the smells had come back until they were as strong as when he was a kid, able to find where the swamp cats slept, where owls had fed, where the swamp rattlers were nesting. This wind was a good one for the night smells. From other directions too often it had the smell of the meat they burned behind their candy houses, or the swollen stink of the city buses, or a smell from the dump fires beyond the city, a smell that to him seemed to have a color — a thin sulfurous green-yellow. Burned meat smelled purple. Bus stink was red-brown.

When he went down the ladder, yawningly ready for bed, as he crossed the clearing, he was startled to see the big pale shape of a strange boat under the porch platform, and after a puzzled moment, it all came tumbling back into his head. He hurried up the steps and into the cabin, knelt on the floor beside the bed in darkness, leaned his ear near her lips, felt and heard the weak but steady exhalations. Her breath was sour, and, through the sharper odors of the medication, he could scent the smell of sickness, a smell like fresh bread. He put the backs of his fingers against her forehead. The heat still came from it, and maybe it was a little less, but he could not be certain.

Suddenly he realized he could sleep on missy’s boat, in one of the two forward bunks. All day, and he hadn’t given that boat a real good look. It could have some good things on it, in a lot better shape than if it had gone down and they’d come washing onto the beach.

Once he was aboard he remembered seeing the flashlight in the same stowage locker where he had found the first-aid kit. He found it by touch, a good chunky one with a big lens, a red flasher, and one of those square six-volt batteries.

He found a lot of good things. Masks, fins, snorkels, spear guns, spinning rods, tackle box, nylon dock lines, fenders, charts, boat hook, bedding, several bottles of liquor, towels, bathing suits, hats, boat shoes, fire extinguisher, cans of engine oil. And, carefully wrapped against dampness, two guns. A twenty-two caliber target pistol and, broken down, a four ten gauge, single-barrel, automatic shotgun. Fool guns, he thought. Play toys. No punch at all to knock them down if they’re coming on you fast. He admired how neatly everything was stowed, and how the stowage compartments were fitted in.

Come daylight, he would figure out the electrical system and how much fuel she had, and how the little toilet worked. He opened the foredeck hatch for ventilation and figured out how the screens worked. He decided he would not use the bedding, just sleep on top of the plastic bunk cover. Crouched double under the low overhead, he stripped down to his ragged underwear shorts, turned the flashlight off and stretched out.

Immediately he began worrying about her. He went up and looked at her, came down and went back up again. Finally he tied a piece of cord around her ankle, ran it over to the trap door, let it hang through, and to the dangling end tied two empty tin cans, then dropped some small sinkers into them. When he tweaked the cord they made a splendid clatter. If she worsened, she might thrash around some, and if she woke up, it would give him warning so he could get to her before she got too scared waking up in a strange place.

The Lieutenant would be proud to know how well his sergeant was handling things. Saving everybody trouble. Why, if he ran that sick little girl over to town, they’d start yelling at him and get him all mixed up. And then all the candy fools in their candy houses would be signing up papers again, making trouble for the Lieutenant. And the Lieutenant had said not to get mixed up in anything at all, because give them half a reason they’d move him off the island for good. The Lieutenant would understand he couldn’t have just looked into that fine boat and seen her and then shoved the boat away to float on off into the mist. It was a poor damned excuse for a soldier didn’t look out for the wounded.

But, he thought, it might be the best thing of all to keep the Lieutenant out of it until it was all over, one way or another. If the little thing died, in spite of all the nursing care, he’d make up a nice box and bury her nice and say the words, and keep some fresh flowers over her for a time.

If she come out of it, she would be poorly for a time until the strength came back to where she could go driving off in that boat, smiling, waving back, calling out Thank you, Sergeant, Goodby, Sergeant, Thanks for everything, until her girl-voice faded into the distance.

Clothes! Now either way there’d have to be clothes. Not a thing on this boat except the naked little swim clothes. She’d have to have something to wear as she was getting well. And she’d want the other girl things too, comb and lipstick and such, and a purse to carry them in.

Until he could get it worked out, maybe one of his two good white shirts would come long enough on her so it could be sewed into something to cover her decent. Some pretty white nylon line off this boat for a belt. For a little bit of pretty, she could have that pin he’d found on the beach, with the red stone.

Later he could work out some way to get her the necessaries. Get some woman to buy things he could bring back. One of the girls in the bank where he cashed the government check every month? No, she might tell the Lieutenant. Then one of the women that hung around Shanigan’s Waterfront? Every once in a while, maybe not as often as every two months, those women would start coming into his mind no matter how hard he tried to keep them out, and then one night he would open the box and take out a twenty and a five and go over in the skiff and tie up at Shanigan’s and sit at the bar, and by the time the five was mostly drunk up, there’d be one of them handy to take him on back past the lady’s and men’s, into the storeroom, onto that busted old couch jammed up into the corner, making sure she had the twenty before she’d take off her skirt and pants, all beefy white meat there in the same light that always came in the little high dusty window, blinking red and white, red and white, over and over, fast as a heart beat, from Shanigan’s sign that hung over the docks. The light always the same, and the itchy need for it always the same, and no matter how different they looked out by the bar, in the little room it was always like exactly the same one, thick white belly and thighs, the dark smudge, big handfuls of the softness, and no poor damned way in the world to slow it or stop it or change it until too sudden it was over.

No, not one of them night women. Not one of them who took the money and made fun. Dumb Corpo. Herman the Hermit. Where’s your medals, Sarg? Going back in the skiff he’d have to fight to stay awake, and the whisky would have turned sour on his stomach, and all the next day he’d tell himself he’d never go back there, not ever again, no sir. There wasn’t a one of them fit to pick out clothes for the Missy, even touch them.

Just at the edge of sleep he was brought back by a frightful and familiar sound, and he knew one of the big owls had drifted silently into his clearing, carrying in its talons one of the small white terns from the sand spit at the inlet. The victim shrieked and squalled its panic, seeming to beg for mercy, and audible under the terror cries were the owl sounds, a deep hoo-ha-hoo-ho-ha, a rich continuing throaty chuckle of satisfaction. The tern sounds weakened to a whimper, ended with a final whistly squeal. In the silence the owl chortled a time longer before settling to the feast.

Better explain to Missy about that before it happens some night when she’s on the mend.