Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

The amount in each packet was imprinted on some of the bands, rubber-stamped upon others. The top layer of packets was made up of packets of fifties and packets of hundreds only. On the hundreds the band said $10,000. The other bands were marked $5,000.

In the dim yellow-orange of the stateroom light, it had a look of remoteness, impartiality, indifferent dignity. It was like cathedrals, like long gleaming conference tables, like the crackling, hissing recordings of the voices of famous men long dead. Until he had opened the lid, he was not entirely convinced she had been right about it. The top layer was level, indicating the same number of packets in each stack. He pulled a stack free. Seven packets. He pressed it back into place, closed the case, fastened the pressure latches, carried it topside, lurching, banging it against the bulkhead as the dead vessel rocked in the trough.

In memory he jumped ahead to that moment when, in the shadows of rusty iron, he had finished burying it deep in the dryness of the drifted sand, and with great care had smoothed and swept and patted the surface until he could see no trace of his efforts.

Only much later, two days or three, he had fought the pain of the burns and the illusions of the fever by trying to estimate if there was as much there as she had said there would be. The fact of two denominations made it difficult to figure it out. Finally, scratching on the dirt with a twig, he figured out what would be in the case if every wrapped bundle contained only fifties. No matter how carefully he worked the arithmetic out, it came to $525,000.00. But at least half the top layer had been bundles of hundreds.

Finally his fever-dazed brain found a possible answer. On the bottoms of the other stacks there would be bundles of twenties and tens. And it had been merely accident that the stack he had examined had been made up of all fifties and hundreds. He decided the sensible thing to do was go up, dig it up, count it all — when the sun was lower, and when the pain wasn’t so bad.

The nurse told him it was time to go to sleep. She tried to help him to the bathroom. He said he could manage. She hovered close to him. When he came out she had cranked the bed down, plumped the pillow, tidied the bedding and turned it back into that cool and exact triangle shape of hospital welcome. She reminded him that after midnight, until eight when Nurse Chappie would be back on duty, he would have no special nurse. She pinned the call button to the sheet near the pillow. She took pulse and temperature, gave him the mild nightly barbiturate. She said goodby to him, saying that she had been taken off the case beginning tomorrow. He thanked her. When she settled herself into the armchair, the only light in the room was the cone of her reading lamp shining down on her knitting. The wool was pale gray. The needles ticked as steadily as a clock, and he heard from afar the long hollow mournful whonk of a large vessel signaling as it left Nassau harbor.

Corpo had propped her up on the narrow bed, almost to a sitting position. He had put his best white shirt on her, folded a blue bandanna diagonally, knotted it around her small waist as a belt, folded the cuffs of the shirt back until they were at her wrists. He had combed her hair in a way that looked quite good to him, gently fashioning it over the shaved and bandaged place.

He had cleaned up several areas of the littered room, stacking the things in boxes he had saved. On an upended crate beside the bed were some of the brilliant red blossoms of flowering air plants in a small glass jar.

He could not tire of looking at her. Her eyes were sea green, with little flecks of amber near the pupils, her skin flawless where it was neither burned nor bruised nor abraded. He liked to lean close and look at those eyes, and the way the little dark lashes curled, and the way the pale hair of the eyebrows was laid so neatly and cleverly, the blonde head hair springing so vitally from the white scalp where the curve of the gentle forehead ended. She had small even teeth, a narrow upper lip and a full protruding lower lip, and a small cleft in her chin. All the neatness of the way she was made reminded him of birds he had picked up, freshly killed, the feather patterns and the down of the soft underside.

He sat on the broken chair near the foot of the bed and admired her. She went on and on and on, in a light sweet breathless voice, her expressions changing often. She was by far the prettiest thing he had ever seen.

“And you sure are a talker, Missy. You sure do go on and on.”

He could not understand much of it. Sometimes the words didn’t fit together in any way that would make sense. It didn’t seem to matter whether he was there or not if she felt talky. She talked to a lot of different people. Sometimes she’d seem to be talking right to him, but when he moved off to the side she’d keep talking to the place where he’d been. She’d doze off. Sometimes it would be a good heavy sleep. Other times she’d toss and twitch and whine. She’d get all sweaty, and he’d wipe her face off.

He liked it when she’d laugh. It would make him smile and sometimes laugh with her. She had a lot of different kinds of laughing. Sometimes like a tea party, and sometimes teasing, and sometimes a real belly-buster, deep and hearty for such a little mite of a thing.

It began to seem to him as if he was getting to know the folks she was talking to. She’d wait and listen to them answer, and she’d nod, and he’d find himself straining to hear what they were saying to Missy. There was Stel and Roger and Mister Bix and Carrie. Then there was Captain Stan and Captain Staniker which could be the same one. There was a Mary Jane, and Jonathan and Sam, and other people she didn’t say often enough for him to remember.

Sometimes when she was talking real clear and straight, he would put his hands on her shoulders and give her a little shake and say, “What’s your name, Missy. What do these folks call you? ”

But she would keep carrying on as if she hadn’t understood a word. She talked about fish and reefs, and whether she ought to go back to the Island Shop and buy that blue sweater. A couple of times she just sat there and cried, not making much noise about it, but he just couldn’t stand it and he had to get out of there because it like to broke his heart hearing it. He went down to clean some fish and in a little bit he heard her tea party laugh a couple of times. He shook his head in wonder, and decided he’d boil her up a nice thick fish chowder for her supper.

Once he got angry enough to try to join in. Missy was talking in a whispery little voice to the one called Stel, trying to get Stel to stop crying. He figured it out from what she said that Stel had a game leg, and the one named Carrie was being mean to her. Missy didn’t seem to care much for Carrie either. So he said it was a pretty sorry person that’d pick on a little gimpy gal, but Missy went right on without hearing a word, and it all turned into nonsense words and she fell asleep all at once, leaving him with the idea that it was a good thing Captain Stan was being especially nice to that Stel, because she sounded like somebody who could use friends.

It tired his head trying to sort out all those people. And he was beginning to feel impatient with her for not getting better faster. Those heavy sweats and the moaning in the sleep made him nervous.

He had the uneasy idea he ought to go right on over to town and get the Lieutenant. But then they’d put her into the hospital. But hospitals had that funny thing about what to do when your head was hurt. They might never let Missy go. There was another thing too. The Lieutenant might get upset about the girl being there on the island with him all this time. And the people in those candy houses over there would get real puckered about it, and get dirty ideas. No use trying to explain to them there’d been just that one little slip, and he was sorry it happened, his hand just reaching out that way for a little feel of that pretty, dainty, little titty. If that hand got away from him again, he was going to go down and lay it on the fish cleaning block and whack a couple fingers off it with the axe.