The Last One Left

Chapter Seventeen

Early on Tuesday afternoon, Leila Boylston asked Sergeant Corpo to help her climb the crude ladder once again, up to the platform he had built high in a huge old water oak. She told him to stay close behind her in case she got dizzy, but she made it without trouble.

She sat crosslegged on the platform, catching her breath. He smiled at her, only his head visible over the edge of the platform.

“Did purely fine, Missy. You sing out when you want to come on down.”

“Okay, Sarg.”

After he had started down she leaned over the edge and looked down at him. “You’ll be going over to the mainland tomorrow? It’s the first of the month.”

He stopped and craned his neck to look up at her. “Don’t you get too close to the edge there now. I might go in tomorrow. I might go in the next day or the day after. Depends.”

She pouted. “But you promised me things.”

“And I guess you’d want to write down what you need.”

“I told you three times I’ve got my list all ready!”

“Guess you did. No need to get cross about it, Missy.”

“But I need things. You want me to be happy here. You keep saying it, anyway. How can I be happy when I need things?”

“I might go in tomorrow. Depends,” he said, and went on down the ladder he had fashioned of boughs and wire.

She settled herself and, through the openings between the branches, looked wistfully out across the wide bay. She could see the bright tract houses rimming the nearest part of the mainland shore, not much over a mile and a half away, she estimated. The shoal water near the island kept the larger boats well clear of it. She could see an occasional glint of traffic moving along a road beyond the houses, and by straining her eyes she thought she could see the bright patterns of lawn sprinklers, and the racing dots of children at play.

Looking south she could see an industrial mistiness, a jumble of city buildings much more distant than the residential shore. To the north were some smaller mangrove islands, and to the west the markers of the Intercoastal Waterway and a navigable outlet to the deeper blue of the Atlantic, water breaking white against the protection of a long rock groin.

She tried to quell her terrible impatience. If he did not go tomorrow, he would at least be going in his skiff to Broward Beach very soon. And when he was out of sight, she would put on Stel’s swim suit and take one of the floating seat cushions from the Muñequita, and paddle down his channel and across the flats and over across the bay toward those little houses. If she could not hail a boat, she felt she could make it without too much trouble. She did not panic in the water. She could rest, supported by the cushion. She thought with a certain grimness she might well startle one of the housewives over there out of her wits. Skin and bones, and with a back that looked as if she’d been recently flayed, hair like a bird’s nest and eyes like an overworked haunt, one with too many castles to spook up.

She could feel the texture of a telephone, see her finger dipping into the O for operator, twirling the dial all the way around. Brrrrt brrrrt. “Operator?”

“I want to place a long distance collect call to Mr. Sam Boylston in Harlingen, Texas, please.”

Oh, Sam, gather up Jonathan and come on the run. Come quickly. Please. I don’t know what happened.

She stiffened as again some small and vivid pattern moved across the back of her mind and flickered out. She’d had but one small glimpse of it. A huge head, a man’s head, sunbrown and bald, resting face down in a plate of food, but nodding back and forth as if he were saying no to something, rolling his face in the food, saying no because he did not want to be there. And she seemed to be looking down at him through some kind of a window from a dark outside place, and he was in the light.

Mister Bix! But why him? The brown head of a large middle-aged man. Drunk, probably. Mister Bix did not get drunk. Perhaps it was from a movie, a color movie, a clever camera angle.

When she felt sleepy enough to take a nap she did not call the Sergeant, but went down all by herself very carefully. He had been banging away at something, beating on metal with a small sledge. He seemed to have a small-boy intensity about building things. He did not do things very well, but he seemed happy with the results. He was sweaty with the effort. He was indignant about her coming down the ladder without help.

“You could have fell! Fool thing to do.”

As she fell asleep, she could hear him working away.

That evening he opened the last two cans of beef stew, served it on mounds of rice. She knew she could not finish so much, and then to her surprise she reached the end of it. The breeze had stopped. The mosquitoes and gnats were bad. The sun was beginning to set. Her belly felt so full it made her think of the Thanksgiving dinners way back when they had been a family of four. Corpo had acted strangely shy and evasive during the evening meal. She insisted on helping him wash up.

At last, in too loud a voice, he made an announcement. “There’s something I got to mess with you ain’t going to care for one bit, Missy.”

“Like what?”

“There are times folks don’t know the best thing is being done. You’re unsettled, and you want real bad to see your folks, but it isn’t time yet. You don’t understand now, but you will later on. It’s something I swear I don’t want to do, but it’s one of those things I got to do.”

“What are you talking about, anyway?”

He went out and came back very soon, carrying curious hardware, and slapping at the mosquitoes on his throat and arms.

“What have you got there?”

“Now just hold your arms out of the way, and I’ll see how it works out.” He put the band of metal around her waist. He had wrapped it in cloth to pad it. At the back he had made several slots, large enough to accept the U bolt he had fastened to the other end. With the U bolt through the proper slot, he put the open link of a length of heavy chain through the U bolt, and with a grunt of effort, closed the link with a pair of heavy pliers. He ran the other end of the chain down through a hole in the flooring, went out and under the shack and made that end fast. He came back looking shamefaced.

“Like an animal, Sergeant!”

“It hurt you any? Too tight or anything?”

“It hurts like hell!”

“You shouldn’t cuss like that, Missy. Where does it hurt you?”

“It hurts my feelings, dammit!”

“Missy, it’s the only way I’d feel right going to town and leaving you here. I have feelings about people, about the things they don’t say. You could promise me word of honor you’d rest quiet and wait for me to come back. But you’d be thinking it was fit to lie because you’d be doing the best thing for me and for you and your people. Later on you’ll know my way is best and when you decide that, I’ll know about it and I won’t have to fool with fastening you up while I’m gone. The state you’re in now, you might do any fool thing, like setting fire to the place so somebody’d come to see what’s going on, or trying to wade the flats and signal somebody in a boat, or even try to float yourself on something and get over to the mainland shore. Miss Leila, I had to find out if this would work good first before I could say for sure I’d go over to the city tomorrow. It looks about right. You got ten feet of slack in that old anchor chain, and I’ll leave you in reach of everything you need, but nothing you could use to work yourself loose. And I’ll be back just as soon as I can and turn you loose. Sorry that chain is so heavy, but it’s the only thing I could figure out except tying you hand and foot.”

“Get this thing off me! I feel like some kind of a dancing bear.”

As he opened the link and released her, he said, “It won’t be so bad, and it won’t last too long, and I swear it’s for your good just as much as mine. I had a replacement one time, a city boy they sent up to Able Company and put in my platoon, felt he knowed everything there was to know, fixing to get himself killed and maybe some of my other people at the same time. Soon as things quieted down I made that boy dig himself a fox hole six feet deep. Gave him a little aspirin box to bury in the bottom of it and fill it up again. Let him rest and then made him dig up that box. Guardhouse lawyer type boy, talking about cruel and unusual punishment and Inspector General and all that. Had him open the box and read the note I put in it. All it said was: Bury this here box again, Soldier. My, how that boy carried on. He like to kill me if I give him half a chance. But from then on he jumped when I said jump, ran when I yelled run, dug when I said dig. Found out finally it was keeping him alive. And he stopped minding everybody calling him Aspirin. Got proud of the name. Missy, I swear those little arms don’t look as much like match sticks as they did. You ate real good this evening.”

“Mother hen,” Leila said hopelessly. “You darn old mother hen.”

Crissy Harkinson, basted in fragrant oils, lay sprawled and drugged by the sun heat, plastic cups like a pair of glasses protecting her eyes from the midday glare, wearing only the red and white polka-dot bikini bottoms, tucked and rolled to the narrowness of a G string. A wind screen, backed with reflecting foil, shielded her from any boat traffic up or down the private channel near the shoreline.

When she heard the rapid slap-flop of Francisca’s sandals approach across the patio stone, she reached with slow hand, pawed and found the towel, pulled it across her breasts.

“Iss ice tea, Mees Harkysohn, lady.”

“On the little table, dear.”

She heard the tick of the glass against the glass top of the table, and a twinkling of ice. She expected to hear the sandals patter off, but they didn’t.

“Mees Harkysohn?”

“What now, girl?”

“I queet. Eh? No working here, eh?”

Crissy slowly took the cups from her eyes, worked herself over onto her stomach on the sun chaise. The towel slipped away. Propped on her elbows she frowned and said, “Get over here where I can see you, Francisca. That’s better. Sit on that stool.”

Francisca sat, facing her. She wore her broad smile of stupid delight. “Queeting, eh? Okay?”

“Not for the day, you mean. For good?”

“Oh yes!”

“Now God damn it, stop grinning at me. What’s the matter? We’re used to each other, girl. And I don’t exactly work you to death. You’ve got a nice place to live. Television. You’re paid right up to date. And paid well. Now what’s this all about?”

“I go to California now.”

“You go to California now. Isn’t that just nifty! Where did you get a stupid idea like that? From a boyfriend. Right?”

She shrugged. “He goes too. Yes.”

“Which one? Your little fry cook? What’s his problem, baby? A wife and kids he wants to run out on?”

“He has no married, no!”

“But you think it’s okay to run out on me, huh? Just up and leave? I’ve been real good to you, Francisca. Are you being fair?”

The girl scowled. She spread her arms wide. “I have no word. To stay one week, two week, what you like.”

“Notice. You’re giving me notice.”

“Ah, yes!”

“Well, doesn’t it depend on how long it takes me to find somebody else?”

“Oh, I find!”

“Don’t go away,” Crissy said, resting her forehead on her fists, trying to urge her sun-dazed brain into motion. Despite the extraordinary delicacy and sensitivity of her face, the poor girl was quite obviously a merry cretin. Garry Staniker had pointed out the ways she might cause them trouble. Crissy had explained that it was a problem they would have to take in order, consider later, if all the rest of it worked out. Now, of course, Francisca had to be on stage for the rest of it. She was a necessary part of the last act, and as the timing was not yet solidly established, it would be foolish to tell her exactly when she could leave.

Crissy raised her head again. “Let’s do it this way, Francisca. Suppose you try to find me another nice Cuban girl. Bring me a little letter from her and a picture. If I like the sound of her and the way she looks, then I’ll ask you to have her come here to talk to me. If I hire her, then you can leave after you show her around. All right?”

“Oh yes!” She stood up and cocked her head. “Here come sailboat boy. Sotch a big noise car!”

“Have him wait for me in the living room, please. Then you can take the rest of the day off, dear.”

The maid trotted away. Crissy stood up, hung the big towel around her shoulders and quickly finished the glass of tea. Holding the towel around her, she went to her bedroom by way of the terrace doors. She spent a long time in her hot, sudsy shower, knowing that the longer he waited and wondered, the easier this next step would be. At last she went to him in the living room. She wore little makeup. She wore a simple, navy blue cotton dress, and she did not smile at him. He came quickly to his feet and started toward her. She held her hand up and said, “No! Sit down over there, Oliver. Please. This won’t take long.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“It was a pretty good game of pretend. While it lasted. Don’t look so baffled, Oliver. I know you remember very well that night I tried to send you away for good. I should have. It’s more difficult now. But now it has to be done. Garry Staniker is coming back. You knew he’d come back. You knew that would be the end of it. And we’ve come to the end of it. What do I say? It’s been nice? It’s been a ball? There aren’t any words. You know that. So just go, dear. Very quickly and quietly. We indulged ourselves. We took all there was to take and gave all there was to give. We pretended it was forever. But it had a price tag. You know that. You’ll get over me. It won’t take as long as you think. I’ll never never get over you, but that’s beside the point.”

“Crissy. God, Crissy, it can’t...”

“Stay over there, Oliver. Sit down. Don’t come near me. It will just make it harder. And we have to do it. Now.”

He settled back onto the edge of the chair. Sand-colored slacks. Dark blue knit sports shirt. That good slope and weight and power of shoulder, a symmetry of chest, the sun-whitened curl of hair on muscular forearms, narrow taper of the waist, round strong column of the young throat. A beautiful animal, she thought, almost perfectly conditioned to me now, trained to respond to every subtle signal, disciplined to fulfill my urgencies with whatever haste or patience I require. But the face is so tiresome, with that goofy yearning look — eyes set too close, upper lip lugubriously long, underprivileged chin.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t leave you.”

“Don’t be dull. There’s no choice. We have no choice.”

“We could go away, Crissy. Right now. Today.”

“I expected you to say that. Deliciously romantic, isn’t it? You can get a thrilling job. Bag boy in a supermarket. I could be a clerk in a store. And the miracle of our love would light up the cruddy furnished room and make me forget how my feet hurt. How long, Oliver, before you’d start hating me for spoiling your life, before you’d look at me and see a tired, dreary, middle-aged woman? I had my dingy years, boy. Up to here. I’m spoiled. I like the way I live. I keep my looks by living just this way. Disappointed in me? Sorry about that. What we’ve had has been too perfect and too beautiful to do that to it. It’s meant too much to me, to have it turn into — resentment and squalor. If we ran, and I tried to sell the house, it would give Staniker a chance to track me down. No, Oliver. We finish it while it’s — beautiful.”

“But it can’t end. Please, Crissy. Let me stay here with you — and keep him away from you.”

She stared at him. “You keep Garry Staniker away from me? Excuse me if I hurt your feelings. You are a strong young man, and you are a brave young man. If you tried to send him away from me, do you know what would happen? First, he would laugh. He’d laugh very hard. And then he would hurt you, terribly. Because he would know you had been — with me. He’s an alley fighter. And he’s not quite sane. It’s possible he might make very certain you — would never be able to have a woman again. And when he was through punishing you, it would be my turn, wouldn’t it? Can’t you understand that I’m an obsession with him? In his mind I belong to him, like his shoes or his toothbrush, and he can do as he pleases with me. I’ve learned not to displease him in any way. When he comes swaggering in, Oliver, I had better be here and you had better be gone forever. We’ve known that since the day I knew he was alive.”

“There has to be something.”

She coarsened her tone. “Like in the movies, kid? Sure. The clean-cut hero whips the bad guy. This is life, baby. Cash in your chips and go find another game. You had your jollies with another man’s woman. Go brag around the docks. Consider it a part of your education, Junior.”

In a choking voice he said, “Don’t talk rough like that. Please. I can’t stand it. I... love you!”

“And I loved you, and now I have to stop loving you or go out of my mind.”

“I don’t even care what happens to me any more. I just can’t let him — come back and do things to you. I don’t care. I’ll kill him. I swear I’ll kill him!”

“How? With the funny little gun your daddy bought you to plink tin cans with? And wouldn’t that be a dandy solution? They’d find out the motive soon enough, and maybe for kicks they’d send me up for twenty years at the same time they electrocute you. I told you I’m selfish, boy. If it was a choice between servicing dear Captain Staniker, or working in the prison laundry daytimes and belonging to some dirty old bull dyke the rest of the time, what would my choice be?”

“My God, this is killing me, Crissy! Please!”

“So let’s stop talking about it and end it right now before it kills us both. You’ve got toilet articles here, and that gun and the ammunition, and a jacket and a tie and swim trunks and your sailboat, so let’s make a clean sweep and get it all over with now.”

She headed swiftly down the hallway to her bedroom, aware of him close behind her. He stopped in the bedroom, looking sick and dazed and miserable. She went into the dressing room and got the 22 rifle and brought it out, started to hand it to him, then walked with it to her desk, took some tissue from a box and wiped the end of the barrel near the muzzle carefully.

“Excuse me for messing up your little rifle somewhat,” she said.

He stared at the pink stains on the tissue with puzzlement and then growing comprehension. “Crissy! Were you going to...”

She made a wry face. “Stop the world and get off? I thought so. It was a real comedy scene. The dumb broad sitting at her dressing table looking at the three reflections of herself in the mirror, tears running down her face, sucking on the barrel of the gun. I could just reach the trigger with the tip of my middle finger, light as a butterfly’s kiss. Very corny and dramatic. Couldn’t do it. So I keep on living, kid. Staniker’s bitch. Very well trained. I’ll collect the rest of your stuff.”

She turned away and heard the gun thud to the floor, heard his great breathy bellow of anguish, and then his big arms went around her and turned her and pulled her snug and close. “Oh darling,” he said, weeping. “Oh, Crissy. Oh God, darling.”

She stood without response for what she considered a long enough time, then softened and returned the embrace, and reached back through memory to find something which would convincingly flood her dry eyes. She used the mutation mink wrap again. Savannah. She’d had it on layaway for seven months before she took the final fifty dollars to the store, had them wrap her cloth coat, and wore the wrap back to the apartment. Ten days later that crazy little Polack had gotten into the apartment somehow, when Crissy was out. That nutty Polish whore who had the idea Crissy was after her man. So she’d gotten in, bringing a pair of Sears Roebuck clippers for homemade haircuts, and had chopped all that beautiful silver-blue fur off, right down to the stubble, with the ugly hide showing through. She remembered how she felt when she walked in and saw that lovely soft fur all over her bed and the floor, and the tears came convincingly.

“Darling, darling, darling,” she said in a tearful voice. “I was trying to be so strong. But we do have to say goodby. Once more, then, my dear. The last time for us. This is our goodby.”

Later, in the drowse and lethargy of passion freshly spent, she lay sweetly sprawled upon him, her head on the firm tanned chest, her ear centered over his heart. With slow fingertips she traced the contours of his lips, and she listened to the deep slow sound of his healthy young heart.

“How can I let you go?” she whispered.

“There has to be...”

“Hush, my dear. Could we be — very cruel and very sly? Is it worth taking an awful risk, and doing a terrible thing — to stay together?”

She felt his heart accelerate, striking more solidly against the wall of his chest. “What kind of a risk?”

“I would have to see him. Maybe let him come here, or go to him. I would have to — pretend to be glad he came back. I might even have to — let him have me. Could you endure that? Could you still love me after that?”

“You know I could.”

“I think it would make me ill, after you. Physically, desperately ill. Darling, I’d try not to let it happen.”

“What are you thinking we could do?”

“I know that it must bother him to have lost that boat and those people and his wife. Oh, not the way it would bother most people. He’ll just be worrying about how it might keep him from getting a good job again. He wouldn’t feel any guilt, not really. He’d pretend to, but he wouldn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you see, dear? It would look kind of — logical if he killed himself.” Suddenly his heart was much faster.

“If... it looked as if he killed himself.”

“Yes. Are we — strong enough?”

“He doesn’t deserve to be alive.”

She hitched upward, held him, put her face in the side of his throat, let out a long shivering breath. “We might be able to — find the right chance real soon. Or we might have to wait, Olly. We’ll have to plan the best way to do it. The safest way, and be very clever and not leave any clues, and not let anyone see us at all. I’m scared, darling, thinking about it.”

He hugged her close. “We’d be crazy not to be scared.”

“It’s the only way I’ll be free. It’s the only way I can be yours.”

“I know.”

“We’ll have to — do it together. Help each other do it. Then we’ll really belong to each other forever and ever. It’s something we have to share. Do you understand?”

“I... yes. Yes.”

“If it goes wrong — they might take us away and kill us, Oliver.”

“I’d rather be dead than lose you.”

“You really mean that, don’t you, darling?”

He rolled to his side, so that he could hold her there against him. “Don’t cry, Crissy. Don’t cry. We’ll do it. Nobody will ever know. You’ll see. It’s all we can do. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”

“I have to say the word, dear. It’s — murder. You know that, don’t you? Murder.”

“Don’t be scared. Please don’t be scared.”

“Not when I’m with you. I love you, Olly. So much. So much.”

In a little while, in the strong circle of his brown arms she moved slightly, changed her position, sighed, slowly lifted her right leg and hooked it around him, her thigh heavy on his waist.

“I’m terrible,” she whispered. “So soon, dear. So soon. Thinking of what — we’re going to do to him seems to get me excited. That’s terrible, isn’t it?”

“No,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“Too soon for you?” she whispered, as she reached for him. She touched the hollow of his throat with her tongue tip. “You too,” she breathed. “You too, lovely lovely boy. No, dear. Just lie still. Lie very still. Leave it all this time to your Crissy, to your woman. She’ll make it so delicious for you.”

As she began, she wished she could get that damned mink wrap out of her mind. It was so silly to get mad about it again after all these years. That screwball Polski. The boss girl had warned the Polski about other things she pulled. And that time the Polski disappeared. Crissy had heard, over a year later, that the boss girl had turned the Polski over to the Snowman for one of his lessons in manners and she had then been sent west for the export trade. But it sure God didn’t grow any fur back on those mink skins.