Beatriz Williams - The Wicked Redhead

I wrap one hand about my stiff elbow and stare at the round, bald spine of a rising wave. The heavy pause as it commences to overturn into the foam. Because what can I say to this woman? Can I tell her how my insides ache like murder from the battering of my stepfather, who did punish me for my betrayal of him? Can I tell her about my arm he nearly broke in two, about my belly into which he drove his meat fist? Can I tell her about the sight of my brother’s neck, broken like a rag doll, or how it feels to witness a man being struck in the jaw with a set of brass knuckles, such that you will never forget the sight, you will witness it evermore you close your eyes?

She’s but a stranger, after all, and my hurts belong only to me.

Mrs. Fitzwilliam touches my shoulder. “I have an idea. Let’s drive into town and meet them, shall we?”

TOWN IS Cocoa, a collection of mostly wooden buildings sprawled along the edge of what Mrs. Fitzwilliam calls the Indian River, and is really some kind of inlet from the ocean itself. Maybe a river feeds it, I don’t know. Anyway, you reach this squirt of a town by means of a pair of long, flat bridges directly west from the barrier strip of Cocoa Beach, leapfrogging an island they call Merritt, which I confess I have no recollection of crossing the night before.

“You were likely asleep,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam says. “I’ve never seen such an exhausted pair as the two of you last night. Not since the war, anyway.”

“The war? Did you nurse?”

“No. I drove an ambulance on the Western Front. Well, a number of ambulances. They had a tendency to break down often.”

She tosses this off gaily, like she’s describing some kind of picnic expedition. Shifts the automobile into another gear—it’s a fine blue Packard roadster, immaculate cloth seats, a real nice piece of tin—while the draft loosens her scarf from its moorings to spread out behind us like a white flag of surrender. Air smells of salt and muck and burning oil. I narrow my eyes against the afternoon sun and say, “I guess that explains the way you drive.”

“Oh? Just how do I drive?”

“Like you mean it.”

She laughs and steers us into Cocoa, pulling up outside a large brick building that proclaims itself home of the Phantom Shipping Company.

“Who’s the phantom?” I ask.

She sets the brake and leaps free of the seat with breathtaking agility for a woman with so much baby inside her.

“Me,” she says.

THE MEN have gone out for a sail, says a receptionist in a neat navy suit, and if we hurry we might just catch them. I tell Mrs. Fitzwilliam I don’t especially enjoy messing about in boats. She tells me don’t be silly and takes my arm. The Phantom Shipping Company warehouses and dock lie but a pair of blocks away, she explains, and so we stride down the broiling sidewalk so fast as we are able, one of us recently beaten up to blazes and the other one set to whelp any minute, sweating and puffing, and lucky enough the ship is still moored, though a tall, bull-shouldered man stands beside her, unwinding a rope from a bollard.

Now, while I have spent the past three days and nights in Anson’s company, while I have lain in his bed and wept in his lap, while I have woken in the dark to the sound of his breath, have dressed his wounds and whispered to him things I have never before whispered to another living person, while we have eaten together and drunk together and driven together and slept together, still my cheeks burn as I make my way up the dock, and the shape of his brown, clipped head becomes clear against the green edge of mangrove lying along the opposite bank of the river. Mrs. Fitzwilliam calls out. Anson straightens and turns, stiff as some kind of machine, lit by the high, white sun.

Another man appears at the boat’s edge and, spotting us, calls something back, her name I think, crammed with delight, and leaps to the dock. Mrs. Fitzwilliam surges forward, and I envy the quick, eager way she hurries across the boards toward her husband’s open arms. My own feet have turned to sand. Anson spares not the least regard for Mrs. Fitzwilliam, propelling her great belly toward the man presumably responsible for it. Just stands there, tethered to the boat by the coil of rope in his left hand, and watches me approach. He’s not smiling, either. I have the idea that he’s making out the state of my injuries. The degree of strength returned to me by my night’s rest.

As for me, I walk forward measuredly, because I am yet incapable of swift movement. Because I am yet incapable of saying a word. What do you say to this man, when you have lived by his side for three days, and now find everything has changed between you, in the space of a morning’s separation? Now that the horror’s over. Now that you’re safe by the sea in Florida, under a tranquil sun, under the care and protection of a doctor and his wife. Now that you’re in paradise, the two of you, when a moment ago you were trudging through hell. How do you turn yourself into an ordinary, happy couple, like the one embracing next to you?

On the other hand. Here stands Anson, my Anson, wearing a white shirt and an ill-fitting suit of pale linen, too tight about the shoulders, his olive skin soaking up the light and his golden-brown hair bristling unfashionably; his navy eyes as grave as they ever were, his lips as thick; every detail, every bruise and scar so blessedly familiar in this strange new world, this Florida. I find myself smiling.

“Good afternoon,” I say.

“Good afternoon. Sleep well?”

“Had no choice, did I? It was either sleep or die.” I lift my hand and touch the bruise purpling his jaw, and I guess it says something for the both of us that he doesn’t flinch. “You?”

“About the same. Where’s Patsy?”

“She’s having the time of her life playing with the Fitzwilliam fry. Housekeeper’s minding them.” I nod my head toward the boat, which is some kind of sailing vessel, maybe twenty feet long, single mast, pulling eagerly at the rope in Anson’s hand. “Where are you headed?”

“Just for a cruise offshore.”

“For what purpose?”

His eyes slip away to inspect the rigging. “No purpose.”

“Liar. You’re going out to see the rum ships, aren’t you?”

“I guess we might happen to catch sight of a few. You can’t avoid them, after all.”

“Oh, naturally. You weren’t going to pull up alongside some old ship, some rum warehouse anchored just outside United States waters, and maybe flap your gums for a bit? Maybe tease a little knowledge out of somebody?”

He lifts the hand that holds the rope and rubs his chin with one thumb.

“Anson. You look guilty as my brother Johnnie used to look, when he was caught skimming off blueberries that were meant for a pie.”

“There’s no danger, Gin.”

“I thought you were done with this business. I thought we were on the lam. Fugitives. Price on our heads, probably.”

“I wasn’t planning on giving anybody my name .”

“It’ll never work. You’ve got fishy written all over that beaten-up mug of yours, in case you didn’t know. Anyway, what am I supposed to do if something happens to you out there?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me out there.”

“Oh? Good. Then I guess you won’t mind that I come along.” I start for the edge of the dock, and Anson makes a noise of objection and takes my elbow.

“See here. What’s going on with you two?” booms Dr. Fitzwilliam.

“Why, your wife and I are coming with you, that’s all. Aren’t we, Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

She frowns and puts her hand on her belly. “Oh, I shouldn’t. I stopped sailing months ago. But you go on ahead, Simon.”