The Drowner (13 page)

“You don’t have to worry, Mama. I’d rather be dead.”

“That’s my sweet Angie.”

Angie Powell showered quickly and did her exercises in her cotton pajamas and went to bed. After fifteen minutes she got up and went silently to the open door of her mother’s room. She listened for a full minute to the cadence of the soft rumbling snores. She paused outside her father’s closed door, but could hear no sound. Back in her own room, she changed quickly and silently to her gray twill coveralls and blue sneakers. She tied a scarf around her hair, shoved a pair of cotton gloves into her pocket and went out her bedroom window. She lowered herself to the grass. The screen was hooked at the top. She let it swing silently back into place. She stayed in the shadows. To get through to Tyler Street, she had to cross the playground of Southwest School.

As she was skirting the playground, she had a sudden hearty impulse, and after making certain she was not observed, she went over to the swings, grasped the slanted pipe support, took a deep breath, and then went swiftly up, hand over hand. When she neared the top of the inverted V, she reached out and snatched the other support with her right hand, then hung there for a moment, feeling the good pull of the muscles across her back. She let go, dropped, landed lightly, sitting on her heels for a moment, fingertips against the ground for balance.

She stood up. She stood with her legs apart, hands on her hips. She felt all rared back within herself, high-chested and immune. She had her Joan-feeling, the stake, the smile, the armor, the curved pattern of the flames. And it was mixed with the red mare-feeling, the one that made her arch her back and stick her buttocks out. Neat hooves to chop the meadow grass, and a small pleasant sweat of exertion, and the ability to shiver any portion of the roany hide to dislodge the hungry fly.

Gus was parked in the driveway near the blackened shell of the furniture store. He was standing beside the dark car. She saw the red glow of his cigar. It amused her to circle him and come up behind him and stand there for a long time, just looking at nun. She touched him on the shoulder. He bleated and leaped and whirled and gasped, “Jesus Christ!”

“Apologize to God,” she said sternly.

“What?”

“That was blasphemy, Gus.”

“Oh. Well. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“God, I’m sorry. Amen. I can tell you sincerely, Angie, you nearly stopped my heart.”

She saw a late car coming down Tyler, and she moved to keep Gus’ car between her and the moving car until it had passed.

“What’s the matter with you, Angie?”

“I told you. Suppose somebody told Mister Sam I saw you tonight?”

“I suppose. How do you handle Sam? He does his share of cussing.”

“Not in front of me. Not ever. He knows it irks me.”

“Well, did you say we could drive around?”

“Come to think of it, we could just as well talk here. I guess I’d feel better. Let’s walk around in back.”

Far across the flat marshy land behind the cinderblock shell, she could see the moving lights of traffic on Route 27. A pile of lumber covered with building paper was stacked five feet high against the rear wall of the building. She jumped lightly up and sat and gave Gus her hand. He climbed up with the aid of a cinderblock on edge.

He sighed and said, “I can tell you in all honesty, Angie, I’ve never felt so terrible about anything in my life. I mean it was always a business relationship and nothing social on the side to speak of, but after five years you get the feeling there is a relationship aside from business. I have had no one lay hands on me in violence since I was a schoolboy, and the shock of it made me nauseous all day. Even allowing for a great tragedy coming into his life, it seems that he would do a thing like that… with more taste, not in front of you and a stranger.”

“I guess you made him awful mad, Gus.”

“It was a business thing, but he took it in a personal way. I don’t know what makes you think you can make him feel better toward me.”

“If I can’t, what will you do?”

“Angie, I just don’t know. I keep thinking I have to think of myself. How can I survive in my business with people knowing about it? Like a damn fool I went downstairs, bleeding, and so confused I told the people in my office what happened. It’s all over town. How can I hold onto the clients I’ve got left? What I could say, Sam wanted me to do something crooked on this tax compromise and I refused and he threw me out.”

“That would be a lie, Gus.”

“I’ve got a business to protect. How much should I protect a man who slides me out the door? And I’ve got to think of the Jacksonville contacts too. I can do a good job for my clients because I’m respected. He should have thought of all these things before he laid hands on me. If you can fix it, it will be good for Sam and good for me.”

“I have some ideas, but I have to know a little more about what you quarreled about.”

Gus bit the tip off a fresh cigar and spat it into the darkness. “He wanted me to do a perfect job for him without telling me the whole story. If he’d told me, would I have to find out my own way? Then he gets sore. Was she some kind of a princess or something?”

“Gus. Was he really sore because he thought that after you found out, you might have told somebody else?”

“Truthfully, I swore up and down I had not so much as opened…” He stopped and turned his head and looked at her. “You sound like you know a lot about it already.”

“Maybe I find out things my own way.”

“Like what?”

“Like I wondered why you spent so much time going back over those old personal records. You wouldn’t take them out of the office, and you’d work on them when Mister Sam was on trips. You made out it was part of the tax case, but you were looking back before the years they were interested in. And you wouldn’t take them down to your own office. It just seemed funny, Gus. You ran tapes and threw them in my basket. And you wrote figures down and balled them up and threw them in my basket. I wondered if I ought to speak to Mister Sam about it. You acted sneaky, Gus, I swear.”

“Just doing my job.”

“I saved those tapes and pieces of paper and they sure puzzled me, Gus. Then one day I got it figured out. You were taking everything he took in, and then subtracting the taxes he paid and subtracting all the estimated personal money you figured he spent, and subtracting the net worth off the balance sheet, to find out if there was something left you didn’t know about.”

“You’re a bright girl, Angie.”

“You know, I don’t think I would have got onto it if you hadn’t said something funny to me a month ago. You said it like a joke and then you looked at me real close, but it wasn’t a joke, was it?”

“What did I say to you?”

“Why, Gus, you should remember! You said I was about as good as a bank except I didn’t pay any interest. I just didn’t know what in the wide world you were talking about. Later on, that’s what started me thinking about cash money, and figuring out that’s what you were looking for. But you hadn’t figured out where it was. Next chance I had, I searched all through Mister Sam’s apartment. You know what I found? A suitcase in the closet all packed, and him without a trip in sight. Clothes to last quite a spell, Gus. But no money. Then something else scared me.”

“What?”

“A passport with his picture in it, but it was a different name. And some business papers and things to match up with the new name. And thirty-five thousand dollars in bearer bonds. And a skinny green bank book without a name, just with French printing on it, from a bank in Zurich, showing twelve thousand pounds in that bank.”

“So my top guess was closer.”

“But no money. And it was the next day I asked you if he was in bad trouble.”

“I told you the truth, Angie. I said that if they indicted him for fraud, I did not see how they could make it stick. I thought it would be a mistake on their part. But no trial is ever a sure thing, and there would always be the off chance he might have to do a year in Atlanta. But as it turned out, it was all worked out very smoothly.”

“That’s the kind of chance Mister Sam would never take. When they come to get him, he’d be long gone. I suppose if you told them all this stuff, they’d come down on him again, rougher than before.”

“Not if there’s any chance of our settling our differences.”

“Gus, I just don’t see how you’re going to do that. Because the truth of the matter is that if you hadn’t started getting so sneaky, and making that fool joke, I wouldn’t have figured out about the money and who had it. When I talked to her to make sure of it, she thought you’d told me. And I guess you did without knowing it. Mister Sam has a weakness for women, but I can’t say it’s pure evil. They lead him on and he can’t help himself sometimes.”

“You talked to her?”

“And I lied to her, but it was in a good cause. I went quiet to her place one night, and she let me in all silk and lace and perfume. I told her I knew she had the money and she said she did. I called her a wicked fornicator. Then I told her the lie. I told her that you were planning to turn Mister Sam in so you’d get a percentage on the tax, and to say nothing to Mister Sam because he’d do some wild, crazy thing that would get him in worse trouble. I said you’d promised me you’d wait a while, and I was figuring out a good way to stop you, but I thought I’d need her help, and I’d let her know.”

He was looking at her. His face was a featureless blur in the starlight, except for the vague calligraphy of the dark frames of his glasses.

“He sure wasn’t going to run off, not even alone,” she continued. “I protect that man with all my heart and soul, Gus. I’m not going to let another thing hurt him, all the rest of his life. Nothing. Nobody.” She realized that Gus, moving ever so slowly, had hitched forward and was reaching a questing toe down toward the cinder block.

“So,” she said, “with her being alive today if it wasn’t for you getting sneaky, I can’t see Mister Sam ever feeling kindly toward you.”

As he started to lunge toward escape, she swiveled on her seat and snapped her long legs out and caught him between them, locked toe and ankle. Her legs were diagonally around his chest, pinning one arm. His feet were on the ground and his struggles threatened to drag her off the lumber pile. She rolled face down and hooked her fingers onto the back of the pile. He was making breathy gasping sounds and scrabbling weakly at the tough twill with his office fingers. She slowly increased the pressure, feeling the thews and tendons of her long round golden legs turn as solid as marble.

Abruptly he slumped. She held his weight for a few more moments, then let him drop. She eased herself down to stand straddling him, and put on the white cotton gloves. She bent and laid her hand against his throat and felt the fast, ragged cadence of his breathing. She lifted him and held him pinned against the lumber, then dug her right shoulder into the pit of his stomach and let him fall forward across her strong back. When she was properly braced and balanced, her right arm hugging his slack legs, she stood up with a single powerful effort. She walked with her knees locked, taking short steps. With each step a swinging hand casually patted the back of her thigh. When she reached the car she opened the door on the driver’s side with her left hand. With another quick and violent effort she lowered him and pushed him in onto the seat. As he toppled over onto his back, his elbow touched the horn ring, startling her briefly. She looked in all directions, her head tilted, listening. She bent and picked his heavy legs up and put them inside, his feet by the pedals. She leaned in and hooked her hand around the nape of his neck and pulled him into proper position behind the wheel. She guided him cautiously as he slumped forward. But the motion stopped before he reached the horn ring. He sat puddled in upon himself, chin on his chest, making a mild snoring sound.

She could not get at him the way she had planned. She had to change position and kneel beside the car, half facing him as she pulled off her right glove. She reached across him with her left hand and grasped his right shoulder, held it to steady him. She dug her right hand, hard fingers extended, into the softness of his diaphragm on his left side, above the spongy mass of belly, just under the hard ridge of the lowest rib. The sport shirt was making it more difficult. She unbuttoned it and pulled it out of the way, then again socketed her fingers deeply into softness, reaching up under the edge of rib. The flaccidity repelled her. She strained but felt she could not reach far enough. She braced her shoulder and then felt something give, some soft tearing of inner tissues. Gus Gable groaned and stirred.

“Easy now,” she whispered. “Not long now, not long at all.” The hard edge of rib was now against the pad at the base of her thumb, her hand deep into the huddled man. And she felt it move against her fingers, the warm beating muscle, big as two clenched fists, working in a rubbery way against the pads of her index and middle fingers.

This was the depth and the essence of Gus. She waited and suddenly she had the Joan-feeling, the flames hot against her face and body. And the red mare feeling mixed with it. Her hand was beginning to cramp with the effort, but she endured it. He moved. With a great effort she forced her thumb away from her fingers then gave a deep, prodding, savage tweak. The heart leaped and fluttered and she pressed it into silence. It was as before. Gus gave a curiously prolonged tremor. Not quite a shudder. He made a remote gagging, rattling sound. And wave upon wave of a delicious burning feeling shook her and weakened her as she yanked her hand down and out of the deep socket which disappeared instantly. She sat back on her haunches for several seconds, her eyes closed, breathing through her mouth, then quite briskly buttoned his shirt and replaced the right glove. She closed the car door and got in on the other side. She pushed the body over against the door, hitched close to him and started the car. She could see no lights in either direction. She put the automatic shift in low and the car crept out of the drive. She turned it north, away from the school. She put it into drive and it moved at a reasonably fast walk. She aimed it down the middle of Tyler Street, put the lights on, stepped out and slammed the car door. She ran into the schoolyard shadows and stood behind a tree and watched it. After several dozen yards it began to angle toward the right. It bumped the curb and the impact turned the wheels. It angled across the road to the left. She ran a hundred feet and stopped and held her breath and listened. She heard it going through the heavy brush with a sound like somebody crackling thick paper. Then there was a thud and the crackling stopped. But the motor was still running. She could hear it.