Bill Pronzini - Blowback

You better come to terms with it pretty soon, guy, I thought. Otherwise you're going to wind up no damned good to anybody, least of all yourself.

But how? How do you come to terms with your own mortality?

Time passed emptily. At length my thoughts turned muzzy and the image faded and I slept a little. And dreamed things that had no sense and no continuity. And woke up streaming perspiration, nerves bunched and jangling. And slept again, and dreamed again, and woke up again, and slept and woke up…

At five-thirty I gave it up and got out of bed and went into the bath alcove. I had not slept much since Friday and it was beginning to show; the face that stared back at me in the mirror had pockets under the eyes and deep clefts like a pair of parentheses at the corners of the mouth and a lot of furry gray beard stubble that gave the cheeks a look of cracked leather spotted with mold. Nice metaphor. I did not like looking at the face, and I shaved quickly and turned out of there.

It was still dark outside, but songbirds had already begun to herald the approaching dawn, Monday morning, I thought. And tomorrow-Revelation Tuesday.

I put a pan of bottled water on the hot plate, spooned instant coffee into a mug, and looked into the sack of groceries I had bought yesterday in The Pines. Salami and hard rolls that had already dried out from the heat. I had no particular appetite, but when the coffee was ready I made two sandwiches anyway and sat eating them at the table in my underwear. Bachelor's breakfast, full of nutrition. Who needs eggs and packaged cereals when you can start the day with Italian deli?

When I was finished I pulled on a pair of slacks and got my fishing gear together and went outside, down to the lake. Dawn was breaking by then, and the sky was flushed a deep magenta color. There was an aura of primitive beauty to the smooth water, to the green-black foothills and mountains that surrounded it. I stopped in the verge of the trees and stood taking it in, thinking that there was nothing quite so captivating-so utterly peaceful-as an isolated mountain lake at dawn. You could imagine a sense of oneness with the land when you saw it like this, a sense of communion with the vanished past; and you could imagine, too, if only for a little while, that the nighttime visions of death and nihilism were as insubstantial as a mirage.

I walked onto the rocky beach at the inlet; Mrs. Jerrold was standing alone at the far end, drying herself with a big yellow beach towel. She wore a white two-piece bathing suit and a white rubber bathing cap with yellow daisies on it; her skin glistened silkily in the ruddy morning light. She saw me at the same time, and flashed a smile and waved. I went over to her.

“Hi,” she said. “Going to try your luck?”

“Yep. How's the water?”

“Cold. Wakes you up in a hurry.”

“I'll bet.”

She took off the cap and shook her head and ran her fingers through the tousled layers of red hair. She was something in that bathing suit; and yet the absence of make-up made her look young and fresh and wholesome, like somebody's kid sister. Some kid sister-Eve in the Garden was more to the point.

She said, “You missed all the excitement last night.”

“Excitement?”

“Across the lake. Searchlights and everything. We looked through Karl's binoculars, and there were a lot of policemen and a tow truck and an ambulance on that bluff over there.” She pointed. “They were pulling up a car that had gone into the lake.”

“Karl?” I said.

“Karl Talesco. He's another guest.”

“I've met him, yeah.”

“I hope nobody was seriously hurt,” she said.

I nodded; I did not want to get into it with her. I let a few seconds go by, and then I said, “How's your husband today?”

Her eyes clouded and her mouth pulled into a wry frown. “Still sleeping off his drunk, I suppose,” she said. “He came back positively boiled last night.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.” She came a step closer and touched my arm, let her fingers rest there. It seemed to be the kind of natural, meaningless gesture that certain people make when they're about to express something of a personal nature; but even though her fingers were cold and light on my skin, I could feel a sudden stirring in my loins. Some women do that to you; it's like static electricity. “I think I ought to apologize for the way he acted yesterday. He's such a jealous fool when he drinks.”

“I'd already forgotten about it,” I lied.

“Well, it was embarrassing.”

“Does he usually drink so much?”

“He used to be able to handle it in moderation,” she said. “But the past few months he's been going at it pretty heavily.”

“How come?”

“Overwork,” she said. “He's got himself wound up so tightly with his own ambition that liquor is the only way he can relax-or so he thinks. What it really does is wind him up even tighter. I mean, he never used to have these jealous rages and now he flies into one if another man even looks at me twice. It worries me sometimes.”

“Well,” I said carefully, “maybe he ought to see a doctor.”

“Not Ray; he hates doctors. And he won't touch tranquilizers or anything like that. According to him, no red-blooded American needs to take dope.” She smiled sardonically. “I thought this vacation would do him some good, but it hasn't seemed to so far. I honestly don't know what to do.”

Yeah, I thought, and shifted position slightly so that her fingers slid away from my arm. I said, “Have you seen Harry this morning?”

“No, I haven't seen anyone but you since I came down for my-Oh. Speak of someone and he appears.”

She was looking past me, and I turned and saw Harry approaching from the direction of his cabin. He gave us a falsely cheerful smile as he came up. He looked a little puffy under the eyes; he had not slept much either during the night.

We made small talk for half a minute. Then, because I knew Harry had come over to have his talk with Mrs. Jerrold and wanted to get it done with before anybody else came along, I said, “Well, I'd better get moving. I want to put a line out before sunrise.”

“Try that clover-shaped patch of tules on the north shore,” he said. “Lots of bass in there.”

“I'll do that.”

“Talk to you a little later?”

“Sure. I probably won't stay out long.”

He nodded, and I said something by way of parting to Mrs. Jerrold, and then I left them and went out onto the pier. One of the skiffs was gone; I fired up a second one, swung it in a wide turn past the beach. They were standing in the same place, talking earnestly, Harry making fidgety gestures with one hand. Neither of them glanced out at me.

Fifty yards from the rule patch Harry had mentioned, I shut the outboard down and let the skiff drift languidly on the still water. It took me ten minutes to get my rod unwrapped and screwed together, the reel fitted on and a fly hook tied in place-and the first cast I made was poor enough to get the line snarled in the reeds, so that it took me another fifteen minutes to free it and replace the lost fly. When I finally did get a line out, nothing happened: no bites, not even a nibble.

I reeled in for another cast, but nothing came out of that one either. Hell with it; I tucked the rod between my knees and left it there. I was not enjoying myself much because I could not relax, could not get into the spirit of it. Too many things running around inside my head, and for the first time in my life, a vague distaste for fishing: what kind of pleasure was there in ripping up the mouth of a bass with a sharp hook, killing a living thing solely for sport? Everything had a right to live, didn't it, whether it was a fish or a man?

The sun came up and seemed to climb rapidly, bringing more heat and glaring refractions of light, robbing the air of its early-morning moistness. It was going to be even hotter today than it had been yesterday. Once, after forty-five minutes or so, I heard the buzzing hum of another outboard, saw the second skiff gliding in distantly toward the pier; there was one man in it, but I could not tell who it was. Otherwise, I was alone in absolute quiet.