The Seersucker Whipsaw

Chapter 7

On the way back to the hotel, the car got caught in a midafternoon traffic snarl and we were forced to inch along Bailey’s Boulevard at four miles an hour. There was no breeze and we sweltered in the thick, palpable heat that made me want to gasp. As a concession to it, Shartelle unbuttoned his vest, took off his slouch hat and fanned himself.

“Fans,” he said.

“What?”

“Fans. Remember the funeral parlor ones, the kind that contained advertising?”

“Like the one that the Great Commoner used during the Scopes trial?”

“Like that. We’re gonna get us some, Pete. You want to make a note of it?”

I took out a notebook and wrote down “fans.”

“How many?” I asked.

“A couple of million,” he said. “Better make it three.”

I wrote down “3,000,000” after fans. “Think they’ll cinch it for us, huh?”

“We can’t lose,” Shartelle said. “Not with three million fans.”

“To be crass, don’t you think we’d better have a little commercial on them? Maybe a jingle?”

“You’re the word man, boy. Just set yourself to composing.”

“I’ll give it the afternoon.”

“Mastah want me drive?” William asked, skillfully missing a goat by an inch.

“When?” I asked.

“Now, Mastah.”

“No.”

“I go for brother’s house,” he announced.

“You have a brother here in Barkandu?” Shartelle said.

“Many brothers, Mastah,” William said and smiled his big-toothed smile. “They give me chop. Go small-small time.”

“Okay. You go for brother small-small time,” Shartelle said. You be back at the hotel, six o’clock. Right?”

“Yes, Sah!” William said.

“How’s my pidgin coming, William?” Shartelle asked.

“Very good, Sah,” he said and giggled. “Very nice.”

“What are your plans for the afternoon, Sahib?” I asked.

Shartelle looked out of the car window at the harbor. “Some harbor,” he said. “Well, I plan to get ahold of some hickory nuts and stain my face, slip into my burnoose, and flit about the bazaars to pick up the native gossip. Then I got some planning to do,” Shartelle went on, “and I do planning best when I’m in the solitude of my own counsel.”

“What you want to say politely without hurting my feelings is that you don’t hold with the DDT theory of brainstorming during which everybody spews out everything and a pearl appears among the hawkings.”

Shartelle looked at me. “You don’t honestly do that — you and Pig and all those grown men?” He sounded horrified.

“Honest to God.”

“Does it work?”

“Not for me. But then I’m the type who lurks in the wet forest and throws rocks at those cozily sitting around the camp fire.”

“You’d like to be asked to join, huh?”

“So I could say no.”

“You got problems, boy,” he said.

“I’m going swimming.”

“That’s healthful. Let’s meet for dinner about seven.”

“In the bar?”

“Good enough.”

At the hotel, Shartelle went up to his room and I found out from the Lebanese desk clerk that the hotel ran a shuttle car to a beach. There was a place to change on the beach, but no shower. I went upstairs and got my trunks, a white duck hat with a floppy brim, the biggest hotel towel I could find, and caught the Morris Minor shuttle. I was the only passenger.

At the beach there was a snack stand that sold Pepsi-Cola and Beck’s Bier. I bought a Beck’s in its tall green quart size, took it into the shack that served as a dressing room, changed and carried the beer and my clothes out to the beach. It was virtually deserted, except for three or four Albertian children who were running up and down in pursuit of a small brown dog with an enormous tail that waved ecstatically. They never caught the dog but nobody seemed to mind. I put my shoes down on the sand, folded my slacks, shirt and underwear and placed them on top of the shoes as carefully as a suicide who wants to leave something neat to commemorate a messy life. I spread the towel out on the beach, pulled at the brim of my white-duck hat, took a swig of beer, lighted a cigarette, and sat down on the towel and looked at the ocean.

Like the rest of the Dakotans, I felt that anything larger than a two-acre pond held the promise of wild adventure. The ocean was a body of unbearable expectation. I sat looking at the South Atlantic lace itself into combers as the Benguela current rolled up into the Gulf of Guinea. I put the cigarette out, squirmed the beer bottle firmly into the sand, and ran out into the sea. I caught a wave and dived through it. I could feel the undertow, strong and cold, pulling me out towards Fortaleza and Cayenne, eight thousand miles away. I decided I didn’t want to go so I swam back, scrambling when my feet touched bottom. Then I tried it again and got the hang of the undertow, playing a game with it to see how long I could last without scrambling to get back. I was a less-than-average swimmer, but that made the game more interesting. If it had been raining, I could have stayed in my room at the hotel and played Russian roulette.

The cigarettes, the martinis, and English food had provoked my chronic malnutrition. Weariness forced me to quit my war against the sea. I stumbled back to the tidy pile of clothes, shook the sand out of the towel, and dried myself off.

The blue jeep drove down as far as it could, until the beach sloped too sharply, and then it stopped. The girl who was driving it got out and walked towards the dressing room shack. She knocked on the door and when there was no response, she went in. She was carrying one of those blue airline bags. The jeep had some white lettering on the top of its hood, but it was too far away for me to read.

I lighted another cigarette and picked up the bottle of Beck’s from the sand and swallowed some. It was warm but wet. I watched the dressing shack and in a few minutes the girl came out and walked towards me carrying the airline bag and a large, black and red striped beach towel. She wore a white two-piece bathing suit that was almost a bikini. She moved with an awkward grace that signalled a total lack of self-consciousness.

Her hair was blond, almost white, as if she spent much time in the sun, and she wore it carelessly long. It framed a smooth tan face that would never conceal an emotion. The face was smiling as she walked towards me, swinging the blue bag and carrying the towel. The face was alive — the mouth was wide and full and the smile was dazzling white against the dark tan. She had kind, soft dark-brown eyes that you could learn to trust.

She was all girl. Her breasts formed tan half-moons where they peeked out above the top of her bathing suit. Her stomach sank flatly back from her rib cage and then rounded out nicely to her thighs. Her legs were long and she would stand at least five-seven in heels. It was all there, nicely shaped and molded, in almost perfect proportion, and she seemed totally unaware of it.

When she was twenty feet away she made the smile warmer and said: “Hi, there.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Would you mind watching my things while I go in? The last time I was here a couple of the kids made off with them and I had to drive back in my suit.” She spread the black and red towel on the sand and dropped the bag down on it.

“I’m Anne Kidd,” she said and extended her hand. I took it.

“Peter Upshaw.”

“You American?”

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t tell by the way you speak, but then I haven’t given you a chance to say anything, have I? But your hat’s a dead giveaway. I haven’t seen a hat like that since Daytona.”

“It’s been in the family a long time.”

She smiled at me. “I’m just going in for a little while. Please don’t go away.”

“I’ll be here.”

She ran towards the water, and she ran well in the sand. She caught a wave and dived through it and then began to swim with a smooth, effortless Australian crawl. She swam as if she had spent a lot of time in the water. I liked to watch her. She swam for fifteen minutes and then she came running back up the beach, just a little pigeon-toed, but not much, her sunbleached hair hanging wet and straight to her shoulders. She remained lovely.

“You remind me of a fish I once knew,” I said.

She laughed and picked up the towel, shook it, and began to dry the water from her body. I watched with interest. “When I was three,” she said, “they threw me into the pool at home. It was during a party. My parents thought it was fun. I learned to swim for self-protection.”

“You weren’t frightened.”

“I didn’t have time to be, I suppose. Daddy jumped in and my mother followed him, fully dressed, and then all of the guests jumped in and they passed me back and forth like a beach ball. It was hilarious, they tell me. I don’t remember it.

I offered her a cigarette after she had spread the towel out and was sitting on it, her knees tucked up to her chin. She refused, but said; “Could I have a swallow of your beer? I’m terribly thirsty.”

“It’s warm — I’ll be happy to get you one from the stand.”

“I’m used to it warm. All I want is a swallow.”

I handed her the green bottle and she drank and handed it back.

“Where do you drink your warm beer?” I asked.

“In Ubondo.”

“You live there?”

“I teach there. I’m with the Peace Corps.”

“I never met a Peace Corps before,” I said. “Do you like it?”

“After a while you don’t think about whether you like it or not. You just do it.”

“How long have you been here?”

“In Albertia?”

“Yes.”

“Fifteen months. I came down to Barkandu to have my teeth checked. The Baptists have a good dental clinic here. How are your teeth?”

“My own.”

“Somebody told me once not to think about yourself anymore than you do about your teeth. That started me thinking about my teeth all the time. Do you think about yours often?”

“Every morning; also every night.”

“I like my teeth,” she said. “They seem to be the most permanent thing about me.”

“How many Peace Corps people are in Albertia?”

“About seventy. Some are up north. There are about twenty of us around Ubondo and there are about forty-five over in the east. You haven’t been here long, have you? I can tell because you’re still so white.”

“Just got in.”

“From the States?”

“From London.”

“For the Consulate or AID or what? I don’t think you’re a missionary.”

“Not an ecclesiastical one. I’m down here to stir up some interest in the campaign.”

“Oh. You’re one of those Americans. There will be two of you, won’t there?”

“Yes.”

“They’re talking about you at the university in Ubondo. The students are.”

“They speak well of us, I hope.”

“Not very.”

“What are they saying?”

“Let’s see — there is something about Madison Avenue techniques—”

“That’s to be expected.”

“American imperialism disguised as political counsel. Then you’re also supposed to be connected with the CIA. Are you?”

“No.”

“I’m glad. I really am. Isn’t that strange?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why are you down here really?” she asked.

“It’s my job. I make a living doing things like this.”

“Aren’t you embarrassed.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Why should I be?”

“I mean joining the Peace Corps. Doesn’t that embarrass you?”

“I’m one of those who don’t mind caring,” she said. “I don’t mind if people know about it either. So I’m not embarrassed.”

“Why did you join?”

“Kennedy.”

“You mean the ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ thing?”

“That was part of it. I was in Washington when he was sworn in. Daddy was invited because he had made a donation or something.”

“This the same daddy who tossed you in the pool?”

“The same.”

“It was a good speech,” I said.

“So that’s why I joined. I thought I could help.”

“Have you?”

She looked at me, and then out at the ocean. A breeze had come up and it felt cool against my sweat. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m involved, anyway. I was never involved before. Perhaps I’ve only helped myself. Maybe that’s where you have to start.”

“But you don’t feel the same?”

“Not since Kennedy died. I joined more than two years after he was shot to prove that it was as much me as anything else. But it wasn’t really. It’s different somehow.”

“He was younger,” I said. “That made a lot of difference.”

“There was something else,” she said. “They talk and write a lot about his grace and style. He had all that and he had a beautiful wife and two nice children. They looked like something out of a bad ad. Yet he didn’t seem to think about how he looked — I mean he didn’t think about himself so much—”

“Like the teeth,” I said.

“Yes. He knew he had what everybody else wanted, but he didn’t really care anymore about having it. I’m not making sense, am I?”

“Go on.”

“They killed him because he didn’t care about what they care about; because they couldn’t stand him not being like they were. They killed him not because he was good, but because he was better than anything else around and they couldn’t stand the contrast.”

“Who’s they?”

“Oh — Oswald, all the Oswalds. There’re millions of them. And they were secretly glad when he died. I know they were. I don’t mean that they were Democrats or Republicans or anything. But they weren’t comfortable with Kennedy around and now they’re comfortable again. They’re got the old shoe back, the Texas tacky, and they can snicker and make fun of him and feel superior or just as good, and they couldn’t do that with Kennedy.”

“It’s a theory,” I admitted.

She looked at me and the smile that came my way was chilly. “You’re not one to go overboard, are you Peter Upshaw?”

“I said it’s a theory.”

“I don’t mean about that. That’s what I feel. I don’t give a damn whether you agree with what I feel or not, because I can’t change the way I feel. I just said that you’re not one to go overboard about anything, are you? You’re cautious. And if you’re cautious enough then you’ll never get caught and if you don’t get caught, then you’ll never feel anything.”

“Tell me something, little girl. Do they still sit around the sorority houses after their Friday night dates and talk to each other about sex and God with their half-slips drawn up to cover their breasts?”

“I guess that was due.”

I said nothing and looked out at the waves playing follow-the-leader towards the beach.

“You’re married, aren’t you?” she asked. Her voice was small and low.

“No. Divorced.”

“Do you love your wife very much?”

I looked at her. There was no guile in the question; just a curiously gentle curiosity.

“No,” I said, “I don’t love her very much. I don’t love her at all. Why do you ask?”

“Because you seem lonely. I thought you might be lonely for your wife. But you’re not, are you?”

“No.”

We sat on the towels on the African sand in silence and watched the ocean. Some gulls tried their luck in the water. The three children chased the small brown dog with the oversized tail along the edge of the surf, then turned and let the dog chase them. They screamed and laughed and the dog barked happily.

“Would you like to go in once more?” she asked.

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Who’ll watch the stuff?”

“We can watch it from the water and yell if anyone comes near it. You can chase them if they try to take it.”

“All right.”

We ran down to the sea and caught the same wave and dived through it. When we came up we were very close together so I kissed her. It was a brief, wet, salty kiss and she laughed and said “Oh, God,” and I knew what she meant. So we stood there in the Albertian sea and kissed each other again and held each other for what seemed to be a long time. Then the laughter of the children and the barking of the dog drew closer. We turned and the children were pointing and laughing at us. We smiled and waved back and they laughed some more and started to chase the dog again. I held her hand and we walked back up the beach. I helped her to dry off and we didn’t say anything until we were dressed and were in the jeep and driving towards my hotel. Then I asked her to have dinner with me at seven and she smiled and nodded. We didn’t say anything else. She looked at me once and winked.

It has happened that way sometimes, I suppose. But not to me.