The Moth

28

When they came in, I don’t know, but I’d got to my coffee, and the place was almost empty, when the younger one, the blonde, went out, maybe to powder, and came back again, and I felt my heart skip a beat at the graceful way she walked. Both of them were in the uniform of Navy nurses, but on her it looked like something by Adrian in Beverly, while on the other one, who was around forty, it looked like the shine on a blue serge suit. I tried to keep my eyes off their table, and did, I guess, but could see them there, talking to each other, and laughing. I poured myself another cup of coffee, and wondered if I wanted it, or was making an excuse to sit there. I wondered if I shouldn’t have a third, and watch that walk some more, and try to forget the moth. Pretty soon the older one went out. Then the younger one, the one I’d been watching, came over. “... Major, don’t you think we should speak?”

I jumped up, shook hands, and pulled out a chair. “We most certainly should, Lieutenant. Can I entice you to join me? Perhaps for a liqueur?”

“Well — could we have apricot?”

“Waiter!... Two apricot brandies. Be sure they’re Apri.”

“Apri. Did you learn that in France?”

“I was in France eight days.”

“Off agin, on agin, gone agin—”

“—Finnigan!”

We both laughed, and the waiter brought the drinks. When he had gone she said: “I bet you don’t even know it.”

“Know what?”

“Finnigan to Flannagan.”

I’d never even heard of it, except the off-agin-on-agin part. She recited it, pretty funny, a whole lot about a section boss named Finnigan “a-boilin’ down his report” about a wreck, for a superintendent named Flannagan. We sipped our drink and I kept peeping at her hair. It was the color of honey, and I wanted to touch it with my hand, like it was a powder puff. She said she’d just come from France, that she’d been in Cherbourg three months. I’d never even got to Cherbourg, and we talked about what it was like, and the gray color of the sea, with the gulls white against it. I said on the Pacific the gulls looked black, as the sun blazed away in the south, and the shadows were on the near side. She thought that was interesting. We drank out, and she pushed her glass away. I paid and we went out in the lobby. “Well, what do you feel like doing, Lieutenant?”

“Oh, my. Have we got to be doing?”

“They’ve got shows.”

“I saw a show.”

“Would you like to ride?”

“I think I would.”

We went out, got in my car, and started off. She said something about the Isle of Hope, to see the terrapin farm, and we headed for it. Next thing we knew, we were rolling up the coast, and there didn’t seem to be any terrapin farm. I started into a filling station to ask, but she said: “Oh, let’s forget the turtles. Can’t we just ride?”

“All right. You could sit closer.”

“... Oh, could I?”

“If you care to.”

She measured, with her hand, the distance between us. It was about one span. It was also about the prettiest hand I’d seen in a long while, and I took it. “... Well?”

“Let me think a little bit.”

If she had laughed, that would have been one thing. If she had said: “Want to think about it,” that would have been something else, meaning something but not much. When she said: “Let me think a little bit,” it meant she was really thinking, and I felt a prickle go over me. I let go her hand, and we drove quite a while. Once she said something about not going too far, and I asked her if she was stationed in Savannah. She said no, in Miami, but she was visiting the other nurse, at her home. I said I’d have her back in plenty of time. I nearly hit a cow, which is a feature they’ve got all over Dixie. We rolled through some more scrub woods, the same scrub woods, as I’ve said, that starts in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and ends at Sabine, Texas. After a while it began getting dark, and we were twenty or thirty miles from Charleston. “... How about having dinner with me?”

“In Charleston?”

“It’s not good, like Savannah, but it’ll do.”

“I’d like to. I’ve never been there.”

“I’m living there, and I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks.”

With that she moved over. I put my hand down and she put hers in it.

We ate in a place near the old market, pretty gruesome after New Orleans and Savannah, but we managed to get a meal. She talked about the Civil War, and I told her about the Star of the West and Sumter and the rest of it, anyway a little bit. Then she said she had it in her mind that Poe had been here, and said he’d always been a favorite of hers. I said he’d been a soldier at Moultrie, and as a matter of fact laid The Gold Bug on Sullivan’s Island. She got pretty excited and talked about the cryptogram and how wonderful she had thought it was, when she was young, the solution of it. I said we could drive over there. She asked if we had time, and I said we could still get to Savannah before it got too late, as we’d make better time at night. “Unless we hit cows.”

“Oh, they go to bed.”

“A black cow just looks like she goes to bed.”

We thought that was pretty funny, and laughed, and then were in the car, driving over the Cooper River and on past the flats. I’d stop now and then and show her Moultrie and Sumter and Folly Beach, where Gershwin is supposed to have written Porgy and Bess, no great chapter in history, I would say. They were nothing but bunches of lights, but I kept on talking. We went on, to the island at last, which is nothing but a stretch of sand, with a flock of cottages on the south end. But we drove along, and the ocean was out there, and pretty soon there weren’t any houses, and I pulled off the road, and stopped. We got out, walked around, and watched the surf, where it was coming in, but not rough. We came to kind of a dune we could sit on. My hand went down in the sand and it was warm. I had a bright idea and slid down, so the dune was at my back and the warm sand spilling over my pants. Then I grabbed her by the feet, and pulled her down. Then we were in each other’s arms, and she was whispering: “At last, at last, it’s been so long.”

I don’t know if it was an hour later, or how long, that I looked out to sea, and into the silver path to the moon, and knew if the moth would fly across it, I could watch it, and love it, and not have things happen inside. I knew it was the most beautiful moment of my life. She was lying close to me, her cheek under mine, her nose against my neck, when I raised up and spoke to her. “Lieutenant—”

“Yes?”

“Isn’t it time we told names?”

She raised up and stared at me, a look of horror in her eyes. Then she jumped up and went off. I lay there a minute, wondering what the trouble was. Then I got up, felt around for my barracks cap and started after her. By then she’d put on her shoes, and was on the road, running back, toward town. I tried to run, but kept slipping back in the sand. Then I remembered the car. I ran back to it, got in, and started the motor. But when I shot power to the wheels they spun in the sand. By then I could barely see her. I jumped out and cut beach grass, with my knife. When I had a little pile I jammed it under one wheel and tried again. The car gave a jerk and I rolled on to the road. I raced along, trying to spot her, and couldn’t. Two or three hundred yards away, I saw a bus stop, take somebody on, and go off. I overtook it. Every time it would stop, I’d be right behind, watching who got off. Pretty soon I could see inside of it, ahead of me, on the bridge. It was empty.

I went back to the island and drove all around. Next day I went down to Savannah and asked, and the day after that called Miami, anything to find her. So that’s what I was doing when I got this wire from Sheila. And that, once I’d answered, was what I kept right on doing.