"Maybe I won't have to use it," I said.
He looked at me and said, "I hope not. I hope you figure out another way."
"Maybe somebody will figure out another way for me," I said.
The funny thing was-somebody already had.
Nothing happened. Six o'clock ticked around and I knocked off and went over to the Queen Anne Cottage and had a New York cut and amused myself kidding with the cute waitress over my smoke and coffee.
I asked her what she thought of _Treasure Island_ and she told me she had gone over there one night with one of the college boys who worked on the lot and had she ever had a time fighting him off, and I said no I meant the book, and she gave me a blank look and said huh? Then she said oh and went on to tell me that _Treasure Island_ was just a kid's book.
"You're only half right," I said. "_Treasure Island_ was written for those who won't let youth slip away. For those whose attitude toward life has not been ruined by life."
She gave me a look that was supposed to imply that I just might be some kind of nut.
"I can't imagine what you think you're talking about"
"Neither can I," I said. "Because my attitude doesn't fit in that picture. I've already been ruined for life by sexy young things like you."
Now we were on her ground. She laughed and called me naughty and went rump-twitching on about her business. I spent a few seconds meditating on her locomotion, as viewed from the rear, and then I thought about _Treasure Island_ again.
The big clincher moment in the tale had been when Jim Hawkins and John Silver, George Merry, Tom Morgan and the lad known as Dick arrive at Flint's treasure cache and find that the map they have carefully followed is wrong. The treasure had been moved.
_There never was such an overturn in this world_, Stevenson had written about the pirates' shocked emotion.
I finished my coffee and went back to my stand and still nothing happened. Bill Duff had been giving me peculiar stares for about an hour, and finally around eight or so he strolled over and said hi.
"Bill," I replied. I showed him the little pea and covered it and made a right-over-left pass and he tapped the right shell with his finger. I didn't palm it because there was no profit in it. Anyhow, he had something on his mind and I didn't want to derail his train of thought.
"You want your orchid gift wrapped?" I asked him.
"Keep it for your bitch," he told me.
I was curious about what had brought him over to see me so I didn't get mad at that. Duff didn't look at me. He toyed with one of my walnut shells.
"I've been thinking, Thax, that you and I are a couple of saps."
"I'll go along with half of that," I said. "I've been thinking that one of us was."
He gave me the lovable old Duff dagger look.
"No, I'm serious. We've been at loggerheads when if we had any brains we'd be a team. You know what I mean?"
"Uh-huh, and it's a funny thing. I said the same thing to Ferris not so long ago."
"You did?"
"Uh-huh. A slapstick team. You slap a pie in my face and then I plaster your face."
"No, no, for godsake. I don't mean the cutthroat way we've always acted. I mean we should start putting our heads together. You know?"
"Like the two-headed calf in the illusion show."
He gave me an aggrieved but patient look and said, "Will you knock off the hilarity? I'm serious. And you know what I'm talking about. I figure together we could both do ourselves some good. Some real good."
"Well, Bill, everybody's opinion is worth something. Even a clock that's stopped is right twice a day. What is it that you want to share with me?"
"C'mon," he snapped. "You know as well as I do what the score is. There's a fortune in it"
"Um. I said that to a man last night and nearly got my head blown off." I started to rotate the walnut shells.
"The trouble with you, Bill, is you want to go fishing with my bait. You're seeing about a yard beyond Ferris' view- while I'm looking at the whole vista. No deal."
I raised my head and started a spiel.
"This way, ladies and gentlemen! The one cylinder ballbearing ride is about to start again. Three little tepees with a little white medidne ball. Step aside, mister, let the little lady with the pretty face see the white rabbit." I looked at Duff.
He gave me an icepick look and walked away.
The funny thing is that for the first time in the seven years I had known Duff, I felt sorry for him. A little. He, like most of us, had a hunger that could never be gratified in this life. But for a brief moment he had had a glimpse at the menu-just before I slammed the door in his face and hung out the Closed Indefinitely sign.
"The little lady's shriek of delight is a wail of woe in the gambler's ear," I said as I handed over a dime-a-dozen orchid to the girl with the pretty face.
The Viking horn moaned and the marks started their noisy, confused, semi-happy evacuation. There would probably be much misbehaving in the cars in the parking lot that night and you could risk a guess that there would be a few inevitable results in about nine months and maybe even a few venereal catastrophes a hell of a lot sooner.
But as far as I was concerned nothing had happened.
I went up to the treehouse to dig out my spare shirts and shorts and socks. The truth was, I felt a little sad about leaving Tarzan's hut. Maybe I was too much like those who wouldn't let youth slip by, like Peter Pan or Mike Ransome. Maybe I was doomed to bumble through life without ever realizing total maturity.
"Well," I thought, "it doesn't matter, does it? So I like to live in a tree house. What's so goddam wrong in that?"
I pulled out the Coke bottle carton which I kept my spare shirts and underwear in and I stared at it in the brilliant light of Terry Orme's Coleman lantern. And with an odd sense of unreality I felt the world turn back twenty-some years-back to the first time I read _Treasure Island_ and came to the part where Blind Pew put the piece of paper in Billy Bones' rum-palsied hand.
A little round piece of paper was pinned to my top shirt. It was black on one side and white on the other; words had been printed on the white side.
_One o'clock_.
17
_But what is the black spot, captain?_ Jim Hawkins had asked. _That's a summons, mate_, Billy Bones had answered.
And that's what this black spot was-a summons for me. Because the person who had planted it on my shirt knew me. Knew my immature sense of the dramatic. Knew I wouldn't call cop.
And he was right. Like John Silver I had to bullhead a bad deal out to the bitter end. I touched the plastic butted reassurance of the fortyfive under my jacket and grinned.
"Nobody," I thought, "ever got the best of Silver. Not even Ben Gunn."
I left the tree house and went down to the Admiral Benbow. The Hispaniola was moored for the night against Treasure Island. The stern windows were open and a blocky shaft of light was jabbing through them and making an orange puddle on the shallow water under the schooner's counter. Soft music throbbed over the dark manmade lake.
I got in a boat and rowed to the island.
The cabin door flew open and Mike Ransome stood in the flood of light grinning at me.
"Thax! I've been expecting you."
I held out the black spot to him and made another stab at quoting Silver.
"Look here. This ain't lucky. You've gone and cut a Bible. What fool has cut a Bible?"
Mike took the black spot and chuckled.
"It was Dick," he said, quoting loosely, "and he can get to prayers. He's seen his slice of luck, has Dick, and you may lay to that."
"Amen," I said.