Paul Kavanagh - Such Men Are Dangerous

I don’t know how long I stayed on the boat. For a few days I left the engines off and stayed adrift in the Atlantic. The boat became a surrogate for my island, but without the discipline. There was food and water on board. I drank water, but as far as I know I didn’t touch the food. I think I slept a lot, but all the edges of memory are blurred, and I could not say what happened and what was dream.

This did happen: One night I took off all my clothes and jumped overboard and swam out to sea, away from the ship. I may have meant to drown myself, but it could also have been a test, a game. If so, I proved what I had set out to prove, and thus lost or won, as you prefer. I couldn’t take black pills either. Somehow I swam back to the ship and managed to drag myself aboard.

That must have been a turning point, or the signal of a turning point, because the next thing I did was start the engines. I set out to run the boat south, and figured that I could stay within sight of the coast and cruise all the way around Florida to my island.

Madness has many phases. This phase was good enough to wear off before the tanks ran dry. I suddenly realized one day that I would run out of fuel and be permanently adrift in the Atlantic, and the phase instantly lost its charm.

I docked at a private marina outside of Neptune Beach, which is a shore suburb of Jacksonville. It was the middle of the night and no one was around, and I tied up my boat like a good little sailor and walked through the grounds unchallenged. Pure dumb luck, and it got me through the most genuinely hazardous part of the whole operation. There I was with no identification, someone else’s boat, and a million dollars in a metal satchel. I didn’t even realize the danger until it was long past.

The time on the boat established one thing. By the time I got off it I knew that all the things I had to do would have to wait until I was in shape to do them. Buying the land, stashing the money, everything. None of it was that goddamned urgent. It could wait. First I had to go home.

I sat in a Turkish bath in Jax until the barbershops opened. I went to one and got a shave and a haircut. A Chinese laundryman pressed my suit while I waited. Then I walked over to the terminal and got on a bus.

He didn’t recognize me. He pointed his eyes at the middle of my chest, and he put the cracker accent on hard, the way he’ll do with mainland types.

I said, “I’ll bet you forgot the dictionary, too.”

The eyes jumped, the mouth gaped. “Now I will be damned,” he said. “Now I will be paternally damned. Do you know I didn’t know you? By God, I don’t know as I can be blamed. No beard, next to no hair, and pale enough to pass for white.” He suddenly remembered that the radio was on and that it was against my religion. He spun around and turned it off, then turned to face me again.

“A dozen aigs and what-all else? You know, I never thought I’d get to say that again.” His face turned serious. “Thought I’d gone and lost your trade. Thought you were dead, if I’m damned for saying it. Been how long? A month?”

“About that.”

“Haven’t been sick, have you?”

“Up North.”

“About the same, some would say.” He leaned on the counter. “Well, now.”

I didn’t want to be too talkative, but I had to fill in a few blanks for him. “Sudden trip,” I said. “A boat came across from Little Table Key to pick me up.”

“Business?”

“A death.”

“Oh, now,” he said. “I am sorry. Kin of yours?”

“A friend,” I said. “My only really close friend.”

“Terrible. A young fellow, I suppose.”

“About my age.”

“Terrible. Sudden?”

I thought for a moment. “No,” I said finally. “No, not sudden. We knew it was coming. It was just a question of when.”

I told him I would hold off on restocking until I had a chance to take inventory. I explained that my own row-boat was on the island and he immediately offered to run me over. I said I’d just as soon go myself, if he knew where I could borrow a boat; I’d tow it back tomorrow or the day after. He had a dinghy with an outboard on it and said I could keep it as long as I wanted.

“And one thing you don’t walk off without, by God.” He reached under the counter, pulled out a book and slapped it down hard. It was a paperback dictionary. “That’s a bet you just lost, that I wouldn’t remember it. Oh, and there’s a story goes with it.”

He propped himself up on his elbows, grinning at the memory. “That fellow brought the dictionary, you know, and he always just goes and sets the books in the rack and clears out the old ones. Well, the wife was here at the time and of course she didn’t even think. And a couple of days go by, see, and this nigra conies in. Suit and a tie and you just knew he walked through life waiting for someone to take his photograph. Well, what does he pick out but the dictionary.

“Now you can imagine. First time in the store, and he brings this book over to the counter, and what do I have to say? ‘Oh, can’t sell you that, it’s reserved on special order.’ Which is exactly the truth, and I’d of had a better chance of convincing this nigra that I’m a bleached Chinaman myself, see? And the more I talk the madder he gets, and I just keep on explaining and explaining. Take another book, take a dozen.’ I tell him. ‘Have a Coke, free, my compliments, drink it right here in the store, hell, I’ll get you my own damn glass. ’ And out he goes with his nose scraping the ceiling.”

He cackled. “So of course for the next three days I sat and worried about it. Every morning I woke up looking to see a picket line around the house with Martin Luther Coon himself at the head of it. You wouldn’t believe the thoughts went through my mind, and of course I never heard anymore about it, or saw that particular son of a bitch again, and doubtless never will. But that’s your dictionary, and it’s been in back of this counter ever since, and it’s marked sixty cents and cost me thirty-six, and it is yours free like the Coke the nigra wouldn’t take, because if I didn’t get thirty-six dollars worth of excitement out of it I don’t know what.”

And out back, when he showed me the boat, he said. “I hate to tell you this but I’d hate worse to go without. About two weeks ago I took a liberty. I went out to your island.” He turned his face away. “I thought it over and thought it over, and the wife said either you were dead and couldn’t be helped or alive and wouldn’t welcome company, but all I could think of is what if you were sick? So I took the boat around just for a look and saw your boat on the beach, and I thought, well, he isn’t gone anywhere, and then I saw all this weed and such on the beach, and called to you and couldn’t raise you, and that’s when I worried.

“I went ashore and just checked to see if you were about. 1 went close enough to the shack to see inside, but I swear 1 never set foot in the door or touched nothing. Then I thought, well, he must of drowned, and came back.”

I didn’t say anything. He turned to look at me. “It was a liberty, and it won’t happen again.”

“Oh, now. You were doing me a kindness.”

“I hope you’ll think so.” He snapped quickly out of the mood. “Well, now, you keep that dinghy long as you like, hear? And next time you come I’ll have that dozen aigs—”

The beach was a mess. I started to pick things up but there was too much debris and too many things to do first.

I got out of my clothes. They had been comfortable all along, but as soon as I set foot on my island they felt as though they were strangling me. Eventually I would decide whether any of them was worth keeping.