Charles Williams: Gulf Coast Girl

I’d own the Ballerina . After I landed them I’d sail her across to San Juan. I’d go to work for the Navy, at least until the hurricane season was over, and then cruise the West Indies. Why, with that much money I could sail her around the world. I’d try writing again.

I pushed the food back and looked around for a phone booth. I dialed the yacht broker’s office. There was no answer. It went on ringing. At last I remembered to look at my watch. It was nearly seven.

I went out in the street and bought a paper, standing on a corner while I rustled impatiently through it to the classified section. She was still listed among a dozen others in the broker’s ad. 36 ft. aux, slp. Ballerina. Slps 4 . Now there was a description, I thought sourly. The poet who dreamed it up would probably call the Taj Mahal an oldr. type bldg, suitbl. lge. fmly.

I walked out to the beach and prowled for miles along the sea wall. It was after ten when I finally caught a cab and went back to the pier. The driver stopped at the watchman’s shanty.

“This will do,” I said, and got out.

While I was waiting for my change the watchman came out. It was old Christiansen, who was always eager for a chance to talk. “Fellow was here to see you, Mr. Manning,” he said. “He’s still out there.”

“Thanks,” I said. I put the change in my pocket and the cab left.

“Maybe he’s got a diving job for you, eh?” Christiansen said. “That’s what he said, anyway.”

“I suppose so,” I answered, not paying much attention. “Good night.” It was late for anybody to be coming around about a job, but maybe he’d been waiting for quite a while.

I crossed the railroad spur in the darkness and entered the long shed running out on the pier. It was velvety black inside and hot, and I could hear my footsteps echo off the empty walls. Up ahead I could see the faint illumination which came from the opened doors at the other end. There was a light above them on the outside.

I wondered what kind of man Macaulay was. There was no picture of him at all. An executive in a marine insurance firm who was being hunted down by a mob of gangsters didn’t make even the glimmerings of sense. I thought of being hunted that way, of never knowing when some utter stranger might shoot you in a crowd or when they might get you from behind in the dark. It had never occurred to me before, but I began to realize now how helpless and alone you could be. Sure, you had the police. But did you want to live in a precinct station? What was left? They could catch and prosecute the man after he’d killed you, if that was any comfort, but they couldn’t arrest him for wanting to.

Then I thought of something else. The girl herself. He must love her very much. If you were trying to hide, having her around would be like carrying a sign with your name on it, or a lighted Christmas tree. And in Central America? Murder. Any kind of scrawny, washed-out blonde led a parade down there, and she’d stick out like the Chartres cathedral in a housing development.

But maybe that didn’t matter so much. It wasn’t as if they were running from the police. A mob looking for them wouldn’t have any connections that far away, and if they got out of the country without leaving tracks they should be all right.

Then, for no reason at all, I remembered the thing she’d said when we had parted there at the car. “I can’t let him down.” At the time it had seemed perfectly normal, the thing any woman would say if her husband were in trouble. But was it? I can’t let him down. It puzzled me. There was an odd ring to it somewhere. He was her husband; presumably she was in love with him. And from the little I’d seen of her I knew she wasn’t given to stating the obvious. There wouldn’t be any question of letting him down, nor any necessity for mentioning it. When you put it into words, even without thinking, it wasn’t love, or devotion. It sounded like obligation.

I came out the doors at the end of the shed. Off to my left, just at the edge of the illumination from the small bulb over the doors, I could see the ladder leading down onto the barge. Only a little of it stuck above the level of the pier now, and I remembered absently that the tide had been ebbing about three hours.

I started over toward it, and then suddenly remembered old Chris had said somebody was waiting out here to see me. I looked around, puzzled. My own car was sitting there beside the doors, but there was no other. Well, maybe he’d gone. But that was odd. Chris would have seen him. There was no way out except through the gate.

I saw it then—the glowing end of a cigarette in the shadows inside my car.

The door swung open and he got out. It was the pug. There was just enough light to see the hard, beat-up face, and the yearning in it, and the bright malice in the eyes. He lazily crushed out his cigarette against the paint on the side of the car.

“Been waiting for you, Big Boy,” he said.

“All right, friend,” I said. “I’ve heard the one about the good little man. And it’s put a lot of good little men in the hospital. Hadn’t you better run along?”

Then, suddenly, I saw the whole thing over again, saw him holding and hitting her like some vicious little wasp systematically destroying a butterfly, and I was glad he’d come. A cold ball of rage pushed up in my chest. I went for him.

He was a pro, all right, and he was fast. He hit me three times before I touched him. It was like one of those sequences in an animated cartoon— boing-boing-boing! None of the punches hurt very much, but they sobered me a little. He’d cut me to pieces this way. He’d close my eyes and then take his own sweet time chopping me down to a bloody pulp. These raging swings of mine were just his meat; I didn’t have a chance in God’s world of hitting him where it would hurt, and they only pulled me off balance so he could jab me.

His left probed for my face again. I raised my hands, and the right slammed into my body. He danced back. “Duck soup,” he said contemptuously.

He put the left out again. I caught the wrist in my hand, locked it, and yanked him toward me. This was unorthodox, and new, and when my right came slamming into his belly it hurt. I heard him suck air. I set a hundred and ninety-five pounds on the arch of his foot, and ground my heel.

He tried to get a knee into me. I pushed him back with another right in his stomach. He dropped automatically into his crouch, weaving and trying to suck me out of position. He’d been hurt, but the hard grin was still there and his eyes were wicked. All he had to do was get me to play his way.

He was six or eight feet in front of the car, with his back toward it. I went along with him, lunging at him with a looping right. He slipped inside it, pounding that tattoo on my middle. He slid out again, as fast as he’d come in, only now he was three feet nearer the car. I crowded him again. He didn’t know it was there until he felt the bumper against the backs of his legs.

I moved in on him fast. He didn’t have anywhere to go, and he was already too far back and off balance to swing. I caught his wrist and the front of his shirt and leaned on him. The right crashing against his face had an ugly, meaty sound in the night. This was exactly the way he had held and beaten the girl. I slammed him again, savagely, punishing him.

“Different when you’re catching, huh?” I said. I rocked him again.

He twisted away at last, but he was a little groggy now and his timing was off. A trickle of blood ran out of his mouth, and my hand hurt. I was conscious I had blood on my own face, too, because it was getting in my eyes. There was no sound except the labored breathing and the rasp of our feet against the concrete of the pier. He circled me, a little more warily now, and we moved out of the cone of light above the doors. He slashed in suddenly and made my head ring with a hard right to the jaw, but left himself open long enough for me to counter. He rocked back on his heels. I swung again. He dropped. I looked down at him. There wasn’t even any satisfaction in it now. “Better beat it while you can,” I said, gasping for breath. “I’m too big for you. I lean on those arms a few more times, they’re going to weigh three hundred pounds apiece. And when they come down, the lights go out.”