John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

“Good for you, dear. I think you better go, sir.”

“Stay here, Mike!”

“She’s upset, sir.”

“Upset, hell !” Debbie Ann snarled. “I’ll be more upset if I don’t hear more about this. Now get out of here, please, Parkins, and let us talk.”

The nurse hesitated. “I’ll be right outside the door. Don’t be too long, sir.”

When the door shut Debbie Ann said, “Mommy wasn’t involved in it, of course?”

“No.”

“Was he with that woman?”

“Yes.”

“And she was killed too?”

“Nobody could have gotten out of that one.”

“How is Mommy taking it?”

“Pretty well. She identified him. She’s pretty... subdued today, but she’s making the funeral arrangements herself.”

“Does... does she blame me, Mike?”

“She hasn’t said.”

“Do you think she will?”

“She knows the situation was bad. And she can’t help knowing you made a bad situation a hell of a lot worse. You slept with her man when he was sick, mixed-up and vulnerable. You gave him a guilt he couldn’t live with. I don’t see how she can ever think of you again as her sweet little lovable baby. You asked me. I told you. But you didn’t have to ask. You know all that.”

“Oh, God!”

“There’s an old-timey idea still in force. Whatever you take, they get stubborn and make you pay for it.”

“I should have been with him last night, Mike. That would have made it a hell of a lot neater. I wish I’d been with him.”

“Don’t tell me! Am I hearing right? Debbie Ann expressing remorse? Regret? Guilt, even?”

“Don’t pound on me, please.”

“Or maybe it’s just an act. You want to soften me up for some reason. So you make with the tragedy jazz. Remember? You’re the golden girl. You can do anything in the wide world you want to do and it’s right because it’s you that does it. Everybody in the world is a slob except the infinitely desirable Debbie Ann.”

“What are you trying to do to me? My God, I hate myself enough without you—”

“Not enough. Not yet. But you’re moving in the right direction. Remember I told you about looking in the mirror. You haven’t yet. But maybe it’s possible.”

“Who were... the other people killed?”

“Stop changing the subject. Ask the nurse for the morning paper after I leave, which is going to be just about now. You got a lot of time alone. Play this game. Be somebody else, looking at Debbie Ann, getting to know her. What would this somebody else think?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t!”

“Do me this,” he ordered. “Give it a try. You got all day.” He held his left hand out. The single eye had a baleful stare.

“Bastard!” she said.

“Coward!” he said, and did not take his hand away.

Finally she reached across her body with her uninjured left hand and took his. “Okay. But I have a feeling I’m not going to enjoy it.”

“Who said it would be a pleasure?” he said, and walked out.

He went back to the house. When he had a chance to speak to Mary alone he said, “She could grow up, that girl. A little delayed, but not impossible.”

“How did she take it?”

“It jolted her. It knocked her off balance. While she was on a tilt, I jolted her another couple of times. The modern style of handling Sleeping Beauty. No kiss. A boot in the tail. Maybe she sits up and looks around. Maybe she goes back to sleep. It’s anybody’s guess.”

“Maybe I kept her asleep so long, treating her like a little child.”

“Don’t treat her that way any more.”

“How could I?”

“Treat her with love. Love isn’t for reward and punishment. Respect is what you give and take away, not love.”

“Mike, Mike,” she said, the tears starting to come.

“If you can cry again, good. Go do so.”

She tried to smile, and fled. He roamed the house restlessly for a little while, and then went over and basked on the beach. He swam a little — with great fury and determination. He walked and found a shark’s tooth, black as the eyes of McGuire. He summoned up specific memories of Buttons, and braced himself for the big wave. It came, and it blinded him, but did not nudge him off his feet.

Mike Rodenska. A chunky brown man on a lot of beach, balding, thoughtful, and alone — relighting the hoarded half of a cigar.

He sat down. A pale gray crab came out of his sand-hole home and squatted, motionless, staring at Rodenska.

“What do you need?” Mike asked him. “You got a hole there. You got a hard shell, and all the beach you can use. You know your trouble, my friend? You’re over-privileged. You got it too good. Go back in the hole and count your money.”

He flapped his hand. The crab darted back into his hole. Mike lay back and went to sleep.

The wide beach is there, unchanging. A storm nibbles some of it away. Another storm replaces it. And the wild things are there, watchful, hungry — generation after generation, yet always the same. Man is but a guest on the beach. He changes nothing, and is soon gone.

A little over a week after Troy’s funeral, Mike Rodenska and Mary Jamison sat on Purdy Elmarr’s front porch, cautious, watchful.

Purdy was saying, “Like I told you, I kept thinking on how Corey Haas could just set quiet and make out real fine on his piece of that corporation, and you two ain’t rough enough to squeeze hard enough to squeeze him out, and him doing so good isn’t in the plans I got for him, and I pledged you I’d help out with that deal, and if a man’s going to help it’s only natural he gets a piece of it. So I just squoze Corey out.”

“You said you bought him out,” Mike said.

“That I did. But Corey’s never stayed as liquid as he should, and when all of a sudden he started needing fast money here and there for this and that, he sold cheap.”

“I guess that... makes us partners,” Mary said.

Purdy grinned at her. “You two don’t look like you’d heard any kinda good news. I’ll want some say in how we run it, sure. And you’re wondering now I got my foot in the door, maybe I’ll squeeze you a little. Keep right on a-wondering. It’ll keep you on your toes.”

“I guess we don’t have too much choice,” Mike said.

“You spoken a true word right there. I’m in to stay. I’m taking a real interest,” Purdy said.

“And my lawyer will check every piece of paper,” Mike said.

“You’d be a damn fool if he didn’t. Now you come along and look at a brand-new colt came into the world yesterday. Pretty thing. Wobbly on his legs.”

“I’m telling you, Purdy Elmarr, if Mike should lose money on...”

“Now you hush up, Mary Kail. We’re through with money talk for the day.”

Ten months later, after all the lots were sold out in Area One of Horseshoe Pass Estates, Area Two was opened for sale, prior to completion of the final portion of the roads and sea walls. The public response was most encouraging to the officers and directors of the corporation.

A week after Area Two was opened, a letter arrived from Thomas Arthur Rodenska to his father.

Micky and I have been looking at those pictures you sent a thousand times I bet. And we can’t hardly wait to fly down Easter. Last summer was sure a keen deal, being in Florida, but like you said in your letter to Micky it’s one thing renting a place and another thing having your own. Are you sure the house will be done by the time we come down? Will it be ready to live in even? We have been having big fat arguments about what the surprise is. Finally I figure the way Micky does. In one picture you can see just left of the house a sort of thing that could maybe be the end of a dock. Could the surprise be a boat? Could it be a sailboat? I know you won’t tell because you never do, but I am asking anyway. If it is a boat, will it be there when we get there? There is one thing you should know about next summer anyhow, even if it is a boat. We have talked it over, what you said about good times and all that in my letter, and it is best for you to know we are going to get jobs next summer. That means we will not have so much time for the sailboat, so if it was there for Easter we wouldn’t have anything else to do and we would get a lot of good use out of it. You said you had everything sent down and that means all our junk from home and a lot of that is kid stuff. So it was too bad to spend the expense of sending it down but we can sort it down there for give away and throw away and keep. We can probably do that at night when it is too dark for anyone but foolish reckless people to be out in a sailboat .