Bill Pronzini: Blowback

“There are the other guests.”

She smiled. “Yes. Thank God for that.”

I would have liked to press it further-she had taken it in each of the three possible directions, and yet in none of them-but before I could say anything else we came out of the trees into the cleared area where Cabin Six was situated. And sitting there on the porch, with his shirt off now and a tumbler of colorless liquid in one hand, was Ray Jerrold.

He did not remain sitting for long. He saw us at about the same time I saw him, and he got up in one quick jerky motion and came down the porch steps as if they were carved out of blocks of ice. That drink he was holding was either gin or vodka, and it was by no means his first. When he reached solid ground he stopped and leaned his left hand back against the porch railing; his face was damp and splotchy, and even from where Mrs. Jerrold and I had come to a standstill thirty feet away I could see the same half-wildness in his eyes that there had been when he braced Cody.

He said, “So you found another one, huh?”

“Another one what?” she said.

“You think I'm blind? That what you think?”

“Ray, you shouldn't drink so much in this heat-”

“Don't tell me how much I can drink.”

“I was only-”

He cut her off. “Where you been?”

“Up visiting Walt Bascomb.”

“Him too,” Jerrold said. “Jesus Christ.”

“Now, honey-”

“Don't give me that honey crap.”

“Ray, for heaven's sake!”

“Get over here. Now, damn it.”

She gave me a look that had embarrassment and apology in it, and maybe just a touch of fright; then she said softly, “Thanks for walking me down, I'll see you again,” and went over to where Jerrold was. He watched her all the way, the fingers of his right hand tight around the tumbler, and when she brushed past him and started up the steps, I tensed a little, leaning forward on the balls of my feet, because I was afraid he might make a grab at her. But he just let her go on past him without moving anything except his head; his eyes followed her all the way into the cabin.

When the screen door banged shut behind her, his head snapped around to me like a doll's on an elastic pivot, and he raised the hand with the glass in it and pointed it in my direction, and the hand shook enough to rattle the ice cubes audibly. “I don't know who you are, mister,” he said, “but I'm telling you this: Stay away from my wife. You and all the rest of them in this place, sniffing around her ass like a pack of dogs in heat. I won't stand for it much longer, you hear?”

“I hear,” I said. If I had said anything else, it would only have provoked him; he was in no condition to listen to what anyone had to say except himself.

I went along the path to where it looped into the trees again and snaked down toward the lake, and he watched me all the way, just as he had watched his wife, without moving any part of his body other than his head. Once I got into the trees I stopped looking back; but when I was far enough into them so that he could no longer see me, I stepped off the path and doubled back slowly and quietly until I had a screened view of the cabin.

Jerrold was still standing there at the foot of the porch steps, still staring off toward the empty path. Watching him stand like that, completely motionless, made me uneasy. Another full minute went by, and then, as if there had been no abnormal time lapse, he raised the tumbler and kept it raised until it was empty. Then he went up the steps and slammed his way inside the cabin.

I waited five more minutes, listening, but there was nothing to hear. Whatever was going on in there, if anything was going on, it was a quiet confrontation.

But I did not like the way this thing was shaping up. It was like watching something bubble and froth in a pot-sooner or later, unless you turned the heat down or off, it was going to boil over, and if that happened, somebody was liable to get hurt. Badly.

I went down to the lake, to a shallow inlet and a small rocky strip in the open center of the horseshoe which Harry's guests could use as a bathing beach if they felt like it. It was deserted, as were the area over by the dock and the jumble of cobbles and outcroppings that marked the shoreline in the other direction. It was nearly five-thirty now, but the day had not cooled off any yet; in the hazy sky to the west the sun looked like the bottom of a brass pot. There was not a whisper of a breeze, and the surface of the lake was perfectly flat and smooth and seemed to have no depth, as if it were a piece of curiously blue-stained flatland stretched out between the foothills.

My clean shirt was already damp with sweat, the back of my neck ran with it, and despite the fact that I had rolled on some deodorant before leaving San Francisco, I could smell myself a little. I dropped down on one knee and ducked a hand in the lake. Icy cold, even on a blistering summer day like this one, because it was fed by underground runoff from snow melting at the higher elevations. Well, I had never minded cold water, and a swim might be nice; I had even remembered to bring a suit with me.

So I returned to my cabin and changed into my trunks and then came right back down again. I passed Six both ways, in the open, but there was no sign of either of the Jerrolds and nothing but silence from inside.

I had my swim, and the water cooled me off all right. But after five minutes and no more than a hundred yards of breaststroking, I started to have trouble with my breathing. I told myself it was just the coldness of the lake-and knew as I did so that that was only a part of it. A small part of it.

It's not malignant, I thought. The lesion is not malignant.

Behold, a pale horse, I thought, and his name that sat on him was Death…

I swam in and dried off with a towel I had brought from the cabin. Then I sat there on a flat rock in the sun, feeding on the heat like Winslow, the old man in Chandler's Black Mask story “The Curtain,” and after a while the chill evaporated from between my shoulder blades. When it got to be too hot-nothing but extremes for me today, it seemed-I decided I would go over to Harry's cabin and help myself to another beer.

While I was getting ready to do that the buzzing of an outboard became audible on the dry air, coming in from the north side of the lake. I looked over in that direction, and a minute or so later I could see the skiff and the two good-sized guys in it, Knox and Talesco. From the angle at which they were traveling, it looked as though they were headed for the pier. I rolled up my towel, put my shirt on, walked over to the pier, and went out along it to where the other skiffs were tied near the end. Then I plunked myself down in front of the outermost boat and tugged at the painter to bring the stern around and pretended an examination of the Johnson outboard while I watched the two of them approach.

When they got close enough for the guy at the tiller to cut off the engine and let them drift in, I stood up and gave them a friendly wave. The one on the bow seat lifted a hand slightly in what might have been a salute, but the other one didn't make any sort of acknowledgment; neither of them looked particularly cheerful, or particularly curious about who I might be.

“Hey,” I called, “need a hand?”

“No thanks,” the guy on the bow seat said, and stood up on pretty good sea legs as the skiff drifted in. He caught hold of one of the pilings and held them off and steady; then he climbed out onto the pier, tied the painter through an iron side ring while the other guy tilted the outboard up out of the water and gathered up their gear-two complete bass outfits and a waterproof tote bag, the kind you use on fishing trips to ice down beer and keep sandwiches fresh. The one who had been at the tiller handed the gear up. They worked together silently and with a good deal of precision and economy, the way two people will who have known each other for some time.