John Casey - Spartina

Dick was silent. It was tumbling on him. He wasn’t surprised, it was part of the way things were going, more invisible force disorienting him, dislocating him.

“The reason she’s doing this,” Elsie said, “I mean apart from her deciding it’s a perfectly good kind of investment — and of course her liking you — is that she wants things to be in good order around here. And her idea, somewhat feudal though it may be, is that you ought to be able to maintain your family’s place in the community. So.”

Dick shook his head. Elsie put her hand on his forehead. “I know it’s not exactly the way you’d like it. But that’s the deal.”

Dick had been feeling a drugged pleasure at Elsie’s reassurances. That was gone now. But his attention didn’t come right to the present, not entirely. He had a moment of fear as complete as he’d had on the hummock in the salt marsh lying flat beside the skiff. It wasn’t that he thought of himself as a criminal, but that there were people in uniform who thought he was. They knew someone was hiding in the salt marsh. They wanted to know his name. Once they had his name, that would be it. He imagined an office, a desk, a sheet of paper with his name on it. There was a force there — in the office, in the desktop, in the paper. The force wasn’t in the truth or not of what it said under his name. It was the power of duplication that terrified him — office after office, desk after desk, paper after paper. The power of his name on those papers to draw him to office after office … It wasn’t a fear of a trial or prison, it was of the tedium of plastic chairs, each chrome foot on a square of pale linoleum, square after square, pale brown, pale green, gray.

He stared at Elsie. Her sharp, tan face, the white collar of her blouse, the single-pearl earrings. Lipstick for her morning with Miss Perry and the doctor. A navy-blue velvet ribbon pulled her dark hair back from her high forehead and made her look like a nice young girl.

Elsie’s forest-green uniforms were all on clothes hangers for the moment, her.38 revolver shut up in the chest of drawers next to her jewel box. Her red bathing suit was hanging by one strap on a hook by the shower, the backless party dress on the same rack as her uniforms. What did Elsie think of the undertow in those linoleum-tiled offices? It wouldn’t scare her, it was another game she knew how to play.

Elsie said, “I promise you this is all for the best.” She put her hands on his shoulders. She smiled and said, “Say something.”

Dick brushed her hands away and sat up.

Elsie said, “You sometimes make things harder than they have to be.”

“You’re right,” Dick said. “That’s one thing different between you and me. I make it hard. You make it easy. For you it’s almost nothing at all.”

She said, “Oh, for God’s sakes.”

“I’m being dumb,” Dick said, “I can see that. I’m being a pisshead. It’s just going to take me a minute.”

“No, you’re right in a way. I see it’s not as simple as … I see I’ve been very forward about it, and you’re right to resist. I mean, especially if I gave you the idea that I did it because I felt guilty about my father’s buying your father’s land or because you saved my life. Or, God knows, if you think the main effort of your life is suddenly in the hands of a couple of women — I’m trying to see this from your point of view, you understand — a couple of women who don’t really know anything about boats.” Elsie sat up square on the sofa. “But one thing Miss Perry and I both know is that Joxer Goode would have loaned you the money if his freezer hadn’t broken. So why can’t we step in? Especially since Miss Perry got some advice from Captain Texeira.”

Dick nodded but didn’t say anything. He was having a hard time concentrating on how reasonable she was being.

“And Miss Perry and I both know this is just the last little bit. Just the last tenth. Less than a tenth, if you count all your labor. Do you understand that Miss Perry and I aren’t just … jumping in blind?”

“Yeah,” Dick said. “I can understand that part.”

“And this is a loan. No one’s giving you anything. You’ll have to pay it back.” Elsie laughed and poked his knee with her forefinger. “Miss one payment and Miss Perry and I may just repossess your ass.”

Dick moved away from her touch. He jerked to his feet. He stopped at the plate-glass window. He would have left the house, but he couldn’t turn around to face her.

She said, “Oh, Dick—”

“Don’t talk.”

He was trying to disconnect what was driving him away from her. Her last little jolly joke. Her flock of reasons. He could see her telling it all to Miss Perry — and Captain Texeira. That too. He couldn’t hear her voice, but he saw her hands moving, the lapels on her jacket moving like gills. Her face shining with her good deed. Maybe when she asked her brother-in-law for a thousand she’d been dolled up and half naked in her backless dress.

He knew that was terrible. He knew he was being disgusting.

It was the two of them who had mixed everything together. She was caught too. Maybe she was trying to get clear and this was the way she knew how.

He shook himself, breathed through his nose. Now he was angry because he couldn’t think straight. His anger eased off. He felt depression come in and flatten his anger.

“Well,” Elsie said, “I can see you think I’ve done something wrong.”

Dick said, “You wouldn’t tell your brother-in-law’s business to someone else. You wouldn’t try to do his business for him without his say-so. You wouldn’t tell people what kind of trouble he’s in. But someone who was last seen earning a few bucks fixing a clambake for the gentry, why, anything at all you can do for him, he ought to be pleased.”

“That is just so wrong!”

Dick turned to face her. He said, “No. Maybe it’s not so simple as that for you. Maybe the complications make it hard for you to see it as plain as that. I shouldn’t boil up about it either. There’s so much else mixed in.”

“So much else to get mad about?”

“No. You know what I mean. I see how you’ve made some efforts so your life doesn’t just stick close to shore. Some of that’s just for your own fun. But you aim to do good. I see that.”

Elsie looked down and straightened her skirt across her knees. “I’m … I really don’t dare say anything.” She folded her hands in her lap, her eyes still down.

Dick couldn’t believe he’d ever slept with her, so trimly rigged out in blue and white.

At the same time he had a sharp sense memory of her — his face over hers, her clenching her jaw, breathing fast and shallow, then going rigid with a hiss that frothed through her teeth.

Elsie looked up at him, looked him over. He felt the knot of his tie on his throat, his shirt collar riding as high as the lowest razor scrape. His scrubbed hands stuck through the ironed shirt cuffs.

Elsie stood up. “Look, Dick, I may not have arranged it perfectly.…”

Dick said, “The thing is, I pretty much have to go along. On account of May and the boys.”

“Well, there you are,” Elsie said. “It does come down to that.”

A t Miss Perry’s door for the second time that day, Dick was impressed with the stonework. The doorway was round-arched, made of gray stones rough-hewn to the size of bricks, except the keystone, a handsome wedge the size of a loaf of bread.

Dick said out loud, “Christ Almighty,” and rang the bell. A nurse in a navy-blue jumper opened the door. Dick told her his name. She said, “Just a sec,” and left him in the front hall.