Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

“Who else knows about this, Tom?”

“I decided that the fewer people who know about it, the easier it would be for him to change his mind back again. I don’t know who he has told, of course. But aside from Melissa and me, you are the only one who knows about his phone call.”

She looked at her watch. “I’ll see what I can do. You understand, Tom, I can’t get... rough about it. Di and Claire have been too good to me. I mean, if he doesn’t want to talk to me, I can’t get insistent.”

“Of course I understand that. Of the eight on the committee, he’s the one I didn’t want to lose.”

“I have to feed the kids and stow them away, and then I’ll see what I can do. I’ll let you know.”

“Phone me right away, please, no matter how late it is.”

The kids were in bed by quarter to ten, their faces dark against the pillows. As she was wondering whether to phone, or whether to walk to the Sinnats and leave the children alone for a little while, someone rapped on the glass of the patio door. She turned the outside lights on and saw Nat Sinnat silhouetted there.

She opened the door and said, “Come in, Nat. Listen, dear, you’ve come along at just the right time. Could you stay here for a little while while I hurry up to your house and talk to Dial for a little while, if he’s home?”

“What about?” Nat said, walking in. The tone of voice was so flat as to be almost rude. When the girl moved into the light, Katherine saw the compressed lips, the puffy eyes, the dark patches under the eyes.

“I want to talk to him about the committee.”

Natalie walked slowly to a big chair, sat in it and looked toward Kat. She kicked her sandals off and pulled her legs up into the chair and said, “Then maybe you better listen to me. My father isn’t going to talk to anybody, Kat. Not even Claire. And somehow I can’t talk to Claire either.” She lifted her chin slightly. “And I’ve God damn well got to talk to somebody or start beating my head on the trees. Do you mind?”

Kat sat down near the girl. “It’s about the committee? I don’t understand.”

“Some person or persons got in touch with Dial this morning. They told him that his darling daughter was a tramp. They named the times and the place and they had it right, damn them. They told him they didn’t want to interfere with any fun his little girl was having, but unless he severed every connection with Save Our Bays immediately, said little girl was going to be in the middle of such a stinking public mess, decent people would probably tar and feather her.” Natalie Sinnat began to cry.

Kat went to her quickly. “Please, dear,” she said.

“I keep c-crying because I get so d-damned mad. He’s taking it so seriously.” She started furiously at Katherine. “What the hell kind of a human being does he think I am? Certainly, people could make it sound ugly and horrible. I’m not a tramp! I don’t feel messy! He should realize I don’t care how anybody tries to make it sound. I don’t feel as if I’ve done anything so terribly wrong.”

“I can’t believe you have.”

“But now I don’t know what to think. Maybe it was wrong. I have to tell you about it. And you have to promise to tell me if I was wrong. Will you?”

“Of course I will.”

“Please go back over there, Kat. Could I have a drink? A strong one. Gin, if you have it.”

“And tonic?”

“Please.”

Katherine made drinks and brought them in. Natalie blew her nose and got her cigarettes out of her purse.

“You have to know how it started,” the girl said. “When I first came down here, the second week in June, Jigger started sort of following me around. It was funny and it was annoying. I don’t like the sort of boy I thought he was. Big and powerful and beautiful and arrogant. I thought he was trying to rack me up for a summer score, so he could brag to his seventeen-year-old friends how he made it with a college girl. It seemed as if every time I looked around, there he was. And I was waiting for a chance to chill him. After I was here about ten days they put on that big end-of-school beach party for all the kids in the Estates. I went because I didn’t have anything else to do. He wanted to walk down the beach with me. I thought it was a good chance to clobber him. We walked a long way. I wondered when he was going to make the pass. He didn’t. We’d started back. The bonfire was a long way off. I stumbled on some driftwood. He caught me and he didn’t let go. His hand was here and he was trembling and it was as if he couldn’t let go. That was my chance, and I let him have it. I’ve got a mean mouth, Kat. I chopped him right down to nothing, and I left him there. He didn’t follow me. When I was about sixty feet away he made a terrible sound. A kind of anguish. I kept walking, but I kept remembering that sound. I’d said some truly horrible things to him. Finally I stopped and went back. I realized I hadn’t been fair. I was taking out on him some of the pain and the heartbreak of the terrible year I’d had.

“He was sitting in the sand and he was crying. I circled around. I know he didn’t know I’d come back. The crying wasn’t faked. He was slamming his fist down into a little pile of shells the tide had left, hammering the shells with a terrible force so his hand was bloody. When I spoke to him he froze. It scared me. Have you ever seen a face with no expression on it at all? I knew there was something terribly wrong, and I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I’d pushed him over some kind of edge. I knew I’d nearly destroyed him, and I had to see if I could undo the harm. I knew I had to make him talk to me. And I sensed for the first time that there was a real person, actually a scared person, hiding under all that poise and muscle.

“It took a long time to get him to talk. I didn’t get all of it that night, or the next night, or the next week. But finally he was able to break through all the inhibitions and tell me what it was that was eating him.

“I won’t go into detail, Kat. It’s a lousy lonely home for those kids. There’s no love in that house. Sally Ann is a domineering bitch. Burt is a dull, withdrawn man. The kids do as they please. Anyway, when Jigger was fourteen, he got drawn into a little group set up by a practicing homosexual teaching in the junior high. I gather that the man didn’t actually mess with the kids until he’d made sure of them, and he took a long time making sure. Months passed before he got around to Jigger. The poor kid didn’t know how to cope. He was fifteen when it happened. It shocked him, scared him and revolted him. He never went back to that house, and he never told anyone. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it, remembering it. He carried all that guilt and shame locked up inside him. He went around with it like a dog with a rotting chicken tied around its neck. He began to believe he was queer. He began to get the idea people could tell it by looking at him. He worried about the way he walked and about his tone of voice. He thought the man had ruined the rest of his life. When it all came out — apparently there was a considerable scandal — Jigger knew his name would come into it, and he began to plan how to kill himself. When he’d made up his mind how to do it, he wrote a farewell note and put it on his pillow and swam out into the Gulf. He left in the early morning. He swam out until he was exhausted, until the shore line was just a little shadow he could see whenever he was on the crest of a swell. He tried to let himself drown, but he couldn’t make himself go under and inhale water. He would go under, but he always came back up for air. Those Lesser kids were practically raised in the water. He doesn’t know how long he was out there before he gave up and started swimming back. He was so completely spent he doesn’t remember very much about coming back. He had to float often and rest. He came ashore a mile below the Pavilion. It was dusk. He said he fell down several times while walking home. His family was out. His bed wasn’t made. The note was on his pillow, just as he had left it.