Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

The value of all property in the area zoned commercial went up in anticipation of the new community which would be built upon the marl.

On a cold day in late January, Jimmy Wing walked out of the hospital into the tug and bluster of a northwest wind. He carried a small canvas airlines bag. As he started walking slowly toward the corner where he could catch a bus, somebody called his name. He turned and saw Elmo Bliss in a pickup truck. Wing hesitated and then went to the truck. Elmo leaned across and shoved the door open for him.

“Get on in here, Jim.”

He got in out of the wind and pulled the door shut. Elmo gave him a cigarette.

“You waiting for somebody?” Jimmy asked.

“Waiting for you. I heard you were getting out today. They didn’t keep you long this time, boy.”

“Not so much damage this time.”

“Turn so I can see you better. Damn if you haven’t got your face messed up for good. Jimmy, God damn you, what are you trying to do to me?”

“I’m not trying to do anything to you, Elmo.”

“You trying to prove something?”

“I don’t really know.”

“What you’re doing isn’t making any sense to anybody. You should know by now you go down to Everset and bad-mouth me down there, you’re going to get the ass knocked right off you ever’ time. Twice you went down there and twice you got half killed and put in the hospital. Then you went to Jacksonville and I thought we were shut of you. But you have to come back and go down there again and get whipped again. Why didn’t you stay in Jacksonville?”

“I got homesick, Elmo.”

“You can’t get no suitable kind of work here.”

“Why are you worried about me, Elmo?”

“Don’t you know I could have had you killed, you silly bastard?”

Jimmy Wing shrugged and sighed. “A lot of people knew that, Elmo, knowing how I cut you down to county size before you got a really good start. And so a lot of people were watching to see if I turned up missing. Then they’d have known I was on the bottom of the Gulf or down on the floor of some swamp. But if you let me walk around loose, the idea could get around that I’d done you no real harm. People would begin to say I’d made the whole thing up.”

Elmo’s voice went up a half octave. “But I was fixing to let you walk around loose, Jim boy! But you keep going down to Everset where they vote strong for me, and people are thinking it’s me getting you beat half to death every once in a while.”

“Then you’re not really worried about me, Elmo. You just don’t want me keeping the memory green.”

“What the hell do you want, Jim? I got Darse Coombs run out of the area. People are forgetting fast. I want they should have a chance to forget the whole damn thing. What the hell do you want me to do?”

Jimmy Wing turned his battered face toward Elmo. He laughed abruptly and harshly. “This is pretty funny, Commissioner, or whatever the title is these days. You’re a big man. A good business, a big family, big house, lots of weight and muscle. And I haven’t got a car, a house or a job. Why should a big man like you have to ask me anything? People like me, you can buy us or scare us, can’t you?”

“You wouldn’t stay bought, boy.”

“Think you can scare me?”

Elmo studied him for a moment. “I think I could have, last summer maybe. But now I got an idea it can’t be done. A man has something he can’t stand the thought of losing, that man you can scare. What I want to know is, are you going to go look for any more trouble?”

“I just don’t know, Elmo. I just couldn’t say right now. It may happen like this. I’ll get another little job like the last one I had. Rough carpenter work, or kitchen help, so I can give my sister something toward my room and board. And some night I may go home and sit and start thinking about just how much of a cold-hearted son of a bitch you are, and then I might get the urge to get on a bus and go down to Wister or Everset and give a few speeches around about you.”

“But you don’t really know?”

“Not at the moment, Elmo.”

“A thousand dollars cash money would take you a long way from here.”

“I tried going away and I didn’t like it.”

“You want a foreman job? I can break you in on foundations, forms and finishing and block work.”

“I tried working for you one time, remember.”

Elmo banged his fist against the steering wheel. “Damn you, Jimmy Wing, you force my hand. I can’t let this go on. You got folks laughing at me. There’s other people trying to talk too much just because you get away with it. Now, you know I can’t stand for that. I thought of two ways to stop it. One way, I spread the word nobody touches you, no matter what you say. But I thought that over, and I don’t like it. You’d keep right on talking.”

“Probably.”

“So I got to do something that actual turns my stomach to think on it. But you’re forcing me into it. I know you have nothing to do any more with the people you were close to. But they must mean some little thing to you. The very next time you get yourself put in the hospital making a fool out of me, you just take a look around and you’ll see some familiar faces under them bandages. For a starter it will be Haas and his wife and the Hubble woman, and maybe Mitchie McClure. And if you don’t learn from that, the list will be longer the next time.”

Jimmy Wing looked directly into Elmo’s eyes for a long moment. “Thanks,” he said.

“What for?”

“I wasn’t sure I was getting to you. How can you be sure I’m not out of my mind, Elmo? Your friends kicked me in the head that first time. How do you know I give a damn who you rough up?”

Elmo tilted his head and stared straight up in helpless exasperation. “What do you want from me? Just get off my back, will you?”

“Can’t you figure out what I want?”

“I would be humbly grateful to know.”

“I had to come back from Jacksonville to fight you, Elmo. I’ve been fighting you. I’m wearing the marks of it. But I’d rather fight you in a way I know more about. I had my gun taken away from me, so I have to use rocks and sticks.”

Elmo’s mouth hung open for a moment. “ You want me to get you back onto the paper!”

“I think we’d both be happier.”

“But I couldn’t swing that, Jimmy boy. Not now.”

“Not alone, but you can push the people who can. Shannard, Lander, Lesser, Cable, Killian... want more names?”

“But they’d figure me for a damn fool!”

“You aren’t looking too good lately anyhow, Elmo. You heard any of those little verses people have learned by heart? I make them very simple, very easy to remember. ‘A man in a house built by Bliss/Has one comfort he surely will miss./When the rain starts to come, he...’ ”

“I had an idea you were making those up.”

“If I was back on the paper, I wouldn’t have time.”

“Hell, they don’t bother me. They’re good advertising.”

“Got a lot of new contracts lately?”

“Honest to God, Wing, you got more brass than sense. How can you expect me to get you back into a spot where...”

Jimmy Wing opened the truck door and got out. He held the door open and turned and said, “I don’t expect a thing, Elmo. You gutted me, like a trash fish. But I got over it. I healed up. You had no way of knowing I would. So I’ll be on your back as long as we both shall live. And I’ll be thinking of new ways to turn you into a clown. So play it your way or my way, whichever you think will work out best for you. You’re half the size you were last summer. And one day it will be half that, and then halved again. And it’s too late now to have me killed because the whole county will know it’s because you couldn’t stand having people laugh at you. People never forget that kind of weakness.”