On Saturday afternoon he forced himself to drive to Kat Hubble’s house. It took an alarming effort of will. His mind kept presenting a hundred plausible alternatives. He was able to make the final three hundred yards only by telling himself that she would not be home. But her car was there. He stopped in her driveway. As he hesitated, deciding to back out again, she came around the corner of the house, a garden trowel in her hand, a look of question on her face. She halted abruptly when she recognized him. He willed her to turn on her heel and go back out of sight. She flushed, then came slowly toward him, unsmiling, the flush fading to pallor.
He got out of the car. “Hello, Jimmy?” The greeting was a question.
“I’ve got no business coming here. Brian said you asked about me.”
“I wondered about you. I phoned you. I guess I wanted to tell you... we appreciated what you tried to do, even if it didn’t work.”
“Regards from the committee.”
“Not exactly.”
She turned and moved into leafy shade. He followed her. Spots of sunlight made quick patterns on her hair.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m all right.”
He made a clumsy gesture. “About that other. I wanted to tell you something, Kat. It wasn’t... all planned out, anything like that. It was wrong, but it wasn’t from thinking about it and... waiting for a chance.”
“I know that.”
“Sometimes people do things that have no chance to turn out right.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t calculate everything you do!”
“Dear God, don’t plead with me, Jimmy. What do you want me to say to you? What is there I can say? It comes into my mind sometimes, and I push it out. It makes me feel annoyed, irritable. It’s like when you go to a party and you are trying to be nice, and you pull some terrible social error, so bad you can’t ever explain it to your hostess. We’re adults, aren’t we? We were tense and tired and upset, and we did a silly meaningless thing out of some sense of bravado, I guess. I’m not overwhelmed with guilt, you know. And there’s no reason you should feel any either. I just feel... sort of ordinary and trivial.”
He pulled a leaf from the pepper hedge and rolled it into a moist green ball. “Is there any starting place left?” he asked, not looking at her.
“For us?” She sounded startled. “But why?”
“Why not?”
“No, Jimmy,” she said, her tone gentle. “There’s no place to start because there’s no place to go. What we used to be to each other, that doesn’t exist any more, does it? And whatever new thing we tried to be, that didn’t turn out to be much of anything either. And you shouldn’t look at me like that, because I think you’re trying to kid yourself a little, to make a justification. I don’t hate you. Or myself. I just think any relationship would be... sort of dreary. It would be like wearing an albatross, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t you see that it doesn’t fit? I’m too terribly P.T.A., dear, and you don’t have enough self-esteem. We can’t adjust ourselves into anything, you know. We can’t neaten it up like a bad movie, because we can’t change ourselves or each other, and we’re both a little too wise to try.”
“You’re right, of course, but I didn’t want to admit it.” He smiled at her.
“Jimmy, you look pretty terrible. You look puffy. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got a good job lined up in Jacksonville.”
“That’s wonderful! When you get all settled, write me if you want to.”
“I’d like to, Kat.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Pretty soon, I guess.”
“Isn’t it definite?”
“Oh, it’s definite. Yes. A good job.”
She hesitated and put her hand out. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. And to you too.”
She winced slightly. “We need some. We haven’t had much lately, have we? We haven’t had much at all.”
After he left her, he drove to the mainland and turned south on the Bay Highway. From the mainland road he looked out across the bay through Turk’s Pass, and saw the dusky orange disk of the sun balanced precisely on the far clean edge of a purple sea. He drove slowly down through Everset and then through the twilight ranch land. He turned around in a ranch road, and it was night when he entered Everset again.
In the middle of the village he turned left toward the commercial dock area, and as he made the turn he had a strange feeling of inevitability. He felt as if a time of waiting was over. Barlow’s Towne Tavern was doing a good Saturday night business. The old cars and the pickup trucks were lined up in front of it. Inside, the juke was loud, and the sweaty weight of people had overpowered the air conditioning. There was a smell of fish and labor, beer and perfume. The juke thumped against the shouts and the laughter. He pushed through the crowd, smiling, looking directly at no one. He found a single vacant stool at the far end of the bar. He ordered a shot and a beer. He smiled directly ahead at the bottle rack, and he could hear the change in the kinds of sounds the people were making. He could feel their eyes. He ordered a second shot to go with the rest of the beer.
A man he did not know pushed in beside him and stared at him. The man was short and heavy, with a wide weathered face, sun-bleached brows, little pale eyes. “What the hell you doing around here, Wing?”
“Having a drink.”
“You know where you are?”
“Barlow’s. I’ve been here before.”
“Tell you where you are, you silly shit. You’re right in the middle of Bliss country. There’s anyway ten people here kin to Elmo. And the rest of us know he’s the finest man ever walked the earth. He got my brother set loose from Raiford one time when Lonny had to get home and he’p care for his sick wife. Ol’ Barcomb over there, Elmo he’ped him buy a boat when his old one got tore up in the hurricane.”
“Nice fella, that Elmo.”
“By now everybody in this here room knows who you are and they know you told a lot of stinking lies about the only man ever come into county government to he’p his own kind. Wing, you lost your damn mind?”
The last question was a shout. Barlow appeared suddenly on the other side of the bar and said, “Slack off, Walker. Nothing happens in here.”
“Harry, you don’t give a damn who you serve, do you?” Walker asked. He walked away, thick shoulders hunched.
Barlow leaned across the bar toward Jimmy Wing. “Could be you should git up and git, friend. There’s some went off to bring some others.”
“I like it here.”
“You’ll be all right here, inside, I gahrn-tee, but leaving is the thing. For leaving, a couple deputies might be a good thing.”
“Would they come if they knew?”
Barlow thought it over, his forehead deeply wrinkled. “Come to think on it, maybe not. But I sure wisht you’d go someplace else, or anyways try, before they get steamed up too damn much.”
“Another shot and another beer, Harry.”
Barlow hesitated, sighed. “Guess it would be cruel and unusual to refuse a man all the pain-softener he can hold.”
The flavor of the place continued to change. More men arrived. The women left. The juke was stilled. The stool beside Wing was empty. From time to time there was a low muttering of voices. Bar business was good. They were waiting for him with all the heavy patience men can learn from the sea.