“No.”
“She got cause to come looking for you?”
“NO.”
She nodded to herself. “The law doesn’t pay it no mind unless somebody comes along to make a fuss. You just keep your mouth shut about that wife. Cobb is too proud to let her set up any common law thing with you, so all you have to do is keep your mouth shut and marry her, and who does that hurt? Nobody, and does you both good, and gives that bush kitten she’s carrying a daddy. Christine, she can make a garden bear the year round, and with a snitch hook she’s good as you’ll ever see, and it don’t make for bad living having a young wife grateful to you.”
Chook completed her series of tortures and came and sat by us, breathing deeply, brown body gleaming with perspiration, hair damp.
“Surprised we ever saw you again, Arthur.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have. I thought about it. She was as trusting and affectionate as a dog you I bring in out of the rain. I could have stayed right there the rest of my life. But I kept remembering eight friends who had believed in me. Somehow that was worse than my money being gone, the way theirs went with it. I couldn’t hide from that the rest of my life. And the pressure from Leafy and Christine merely made me more aware of it. So I told them I had something personal to take care of, and I’d be back as soon as I could, maybe in a few weeks. That was two months ago. I went back to Naples thinking I could try to recover enough just to pay back my friends.”
He had gone to the Citrus Blossom Motel and found that his possessions had long since been sold, leaving a deficit of nine dollars on the room. He paid it out of the seven hundred he’d saved. He found another room. He bought the clothing I’d thrown in the dockside trash can. He went to see Crane Watts. Watts got the file out. There had been one additional assessment. When attempts to contact Mr. Wilkinson had failed, his participation was eliminated according to the terms of the agreement.
As they had been unable to acquire an option on the Kippler Tract after lengthy negotiations, the syndicate had been dissolved and all monies remaining in the account had been divided on the basis of final participation. Arthur had demanded the addresses of Stebber and Gisik, and Watts had said that if he wished to write them, the letters could be sent to Watts’ office for forwarding. Arthur told Watts, with some heat, that he felt he had been defrauded, and he was damned well going to stir up all the trouble he could for them, and if they wanted to settle, to avoid investigation, he would sign an unconditional release in return for a ten-thousand-dollar refund.
Watts, Arthur told us, looked unkempt in beard stubble, soiled sports shirt and bourbon breath at eleven o’clock that morning. Heartened by Watts’ lack of assurance, Arthur had lied to him, saying that his attorney was preparing a detailed complaint to be filed with the Attorney General of the State of Florida, with a certified copy to the Bar Association. Watts, angered, said it was nonsense. There had been no illegality.
Arthur gave his temporary address, and said that somebody better get in touch with him, and damned soon, and bring the money.
He got a phone call at five that evening. A girl with a brisk voice said she was phoning at Crane Watts’ request, to say that Calvin Stebber would like to have a drink with Mr. Wilkinson at the Piccadilly Pub on Fifth Avenue at six and discuss Mr. Wilkinson’s problem.
Arthur was prompt. The tap room was luxurious and exceedingly dark. He sat on a stool at the padded bar, and when his eyes had adjusted, he searched the long bar and nearby tables and did not see Smiling Calvin. Soon a young woman appeared at his elbow, a trim and tailored girl, severe and pretty, who said she was Miss Brown, sent by Mr. Stebber who would be a little late, and would he come over to the table. He carried his drink over.
Miss Brown parried his questions about Stebber with secretarial skill. She took microsips of a dry sherry. He was paged, went to the phone, found that it was a mistake. Someone wanted a Mr. Wilkinson, sales representative for Florida Builders Supply. Back at the table, suddenly the room tilted and he sprawled over against Miss Brown. She giggled at him.
Then, in foggy memory, Miss Brown and a man in a red coat were helping him out to Miss Brown’s car. He woke up in another county, in Palm County, in the drunk tank, without funds or identification, sick, weak and with a blinding headache. In the afternoon a sheriff’s deputy, with a massive indifference, told him the score. He’d been picked up, stumbling around on a public beach, stinking and incoherent, brought in and booked as John Doe. They had a film strip of him. Standard procedure. He could plead guilty and take a thirty-day knock right now, or plead not guilty and go loose on two hundred dollars bail and wait for circuit court which would be about forty days from now. And he could make one call.
He could have called Leafy. Or Christine. He elected the thirty days for himself. After four days of lockup, he signed up for road work as the lesser of two evils, swung the brush hook in lazy tempo under the tolerant guards, always turned his face away from the glitter of the tourist cars staring their way by, wore road gang twill too small for him.
Out of tension, or despair, or afte reffects of whatever Miss Brown had dolloped his drink with, or the greasy texture of the rice and beans, he could keep little in his stomach. Road gang work gave him a fifty cents a day credit. He bought milk and white bread, and sometimes he kept it down and sometimes he didn’t. Sun and effort dizzied him.
One bush to be chopped was Stebber, and the next was Watts, then G. Harrison Gisik, Boo Waxwell, Wilma, Miss Brown. As he began to fit the issue work clothes, in afternoon delirium he recalled what Chook had told him about me. And he knew that he’d be a fool to try anything else on his own. Maybe a fool to even ask for help. They gave him back his clothes and let him go, with a dollar thirty left from his work credit.
He tried to hitch his way across the peninsula, but something was wrong, somehow, with the way he looked. They would slow down, some of them, then change their minds, roar on into the pavement mirages. Sudden rains soaked him. He bought sandwiches, had to abandon them after the first bite. He got a few short rides, found dry corners to sleep in, remembered very little of the last few days of it, then had the vivid memory of coming aboard the Busted Flush, and the deck swinging up at him, slapping him in the face as he tried to fend it off…
“Just enough to pay my friends back,” he said. “I understand you take the expenses off the top and divide what else you can recover. If it wasn’t for them, I’d give up, Trav. Maybe it’s hopeless anyway. I had all that money, and now it’s all unreal, as if I never really had it. My great grandfather barged a load of fabrics, furniture and hardware up from New York, rented a warehouse and sold the goods for enough to pay off the loan on the first load and buy a second free and clear. That’s where the money started. Eighteen fifty-one. By nineteen hundred there was a great deal of money. My father wasn’t good with money. It dwindled. I thought I was better. I thought I could make it grow. God!”
Chook reached and gave his oily shoulder an affectionate, comforting pat. “Some very smart people get terribly cheated, Arthur. And usually it happens far from home.”
“I just… don’t want to go back there,” he said. “I dream that I’m there and I’m dead. I see myself dead on the sidewalk and people walking around me as they go by nodding as if they knew all along.”
Chook took my wrist and turned it to look at my watch. “Time for you to choke down another eggnog, Arthur old buddy. Nicely spiked to give you a big appetite for dinner.”
After she left, Arthur said, “I guess the biggest part of the expense is feeding me.”
I laughed more than it was worth. After all, it was his first mild joke. Sign of improvement. Other signs too. Stubble shaved clean. Hair neatly cropped by Chookie McCall, an unexpected talent. Sun burning away the pasty look. Pounds coming back. And Chook had him on some mild exercises, just enough to begin to restore muscle tone.