There was the first spring-quickening in the air this morning as I walked to Luke’s for breakfast. A watery sun warmed the sea breeze; the day was mild with a light-blue sky up above. However, any elation I felt was dissipated when I got to Luke’s. There was no sign of the old man and the place was a real toilet. I sat at my usual table and waited for Loretta to come and clear it up. It was swimming with spilled coffee, the ashtray was full of butts and someone had ground out a cigar in a half-eaten plate of pancakes and syrup. Loretta wore a loose Hawaiian blouse and stretch slacks in honor of the clement weather. She sat down and chatted and offered me one of the menthol cigarettes she chain-smokes, so I guessed I must have been forgiven. Then she leaned right over in front of me while she cleared the table so I could get a good look down her front at her heavy breasts. I ordered a hot tea, no milk, with a slice of lemon.
It may have been warmer outside but Loretta wasn’t taking any chances. All the windows were tight shut and their film of condensation and grease obscured any view of the beach.
I heard a car pull up. I wiped the window and peered out. It was a battered convertible and there were three guys inside. They got out and stretched, rubbing their buttocks and looking around. They were young, two whites and a Hispanic. There was a thin one with a pimp’s moustachio and a thick-lipped, black-haired guy with oddly white tattooed arms. They were wearing worn-out sharpie clothes.
This is a quite little town we live in and I hoped they’d just move on through. But just then the sun came out from behind some clouds, and in the corner of my eye, I caught its flash on the girl’s white T-shirt. It was the first time I’d seen her that day and I wiped the window some more to get a better look. But they saw her, too, and they glanced at one another and laughed in that shifty, teeth-baring way men in a group have. One of them bent his arm and did something with his fingers while the thick-lipped guy cupped his hands over his crotch and groaned. They all laughed again.
I felt my face flush and a pulse beat at my temples. When I put my cup down in its saucer there was a rattle of china. They disgust me, this kind of filth. City scum degenerates, just drifting up the coast in a hot car looking for cheap kicks.
I spent the rest of the day in my room reading my magazines. Later I tried to sleep but I had developed a bad headache. In the afternoon I had a long shower. That made me feel a little better.
At dusk I went to a small supermarket that I sometimes buy provisions at when I don’t feel like going out to eat. I was reaching for a can of clam chowder when I saw the girl through the window. I was a little surprised. Usually I never managed to see her this late and I always wondered where she went. But tonight it was obvious. Her eyes were gazing out to sea; her easy stride would carry her determinedly down to the beach.
The clam chowder tasted like earth. I couldn’t clear my mouth of it, so I drank a glass or two of rye. I opened the window that gives me a sea view and sat on the sill looking out at the darkening waters. Quite a way along the beach I could see the glimmer of a campfire burning and I knew at once that was where the girl would be — out there alone. Maybe she had cooked something and was enjoying the peace and absolute solitude. Then I could imagine her stripping off her clothes, her tan body with white bikini patches maybe, paler in the gloom, the breeze tensing her nut-brown nipples, the cool of the water as the waves broke against her golden thighs.…
But then I was distracted by the noise of raucous laughter in the street below. The three youths, half bombed, spilling out of the liquor store clutching six-packs and a bottle of wine. With a bizarre sense of mounting premonition I watched them laughing and joshing for a while in the street. Then one of them said, “Hey, look. A fire.” And with whistles and whoops they went running down the boardwalk, all heroic with beer, jumping gleefully onto the sand and heading up the beach toward my girl.
For an instant I heard my heart booming in my skull and my eyeballs seemed to bulge rhythmically to its beat. With a forefinger I wiped beads of perspiration from my upper lip. Bastards! SCUM TRASH BASTARDS! I saw stubby stained fingers fondling corn-yellow hair, spectral tattooed arms circling her slim brown body, probing tongue between thick dabbing lips, young beards on soft skin. She’d come dripping from the surf, wading quietly out of the green sea, her body dim and mysterious, to find a leering drunken horror waiting around her fire.
I felt the sharp taste of vomit in my throat, for I was almost sick with a desperate fear and anxiety as I rummaged in my bureau for my gun, an old police special. I was sick with insane visions of the fabulous lusts of nightmare hooligans, terrible images of deviant sex-dreams being foully realized out there on the lonely coast.
I came up behind them through the dunes, my feet silent on the sand. The three of them sat around the fire, drunk. One of them was singing quietly to himself. Discarded beer cans lay like shell cases around a gun emplacement. There was no sign of the girl.
They heard the sound of my feet as I crossed the strip of pebbles that lay above the high-tide mark.
“Hey, man,” the thick-lipped one said. “Whatcha doin’? Have a drink. Luis, give …”
Then he saw the gun. His jaw slackened as his beer-numbed brain tried to cope with what was happening.
“C’mon, what gives?” There was a smile of disbelief on his face. The other two began to edge away from me.
“Where is she?” I said, my voice shaking with rage and disgust. I raised my eyes, looking for signs of a shallow grave, half expecting to see her violated body cast up on the beach by the waves. “What have you filth done with her? Where is she? Where have you put her?”
He stood up shakily, an uncertain smile on his face. He looked around at his friends for support. “Who, man?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “For chrissake, who?”
“My girl!” I screamed at him, maddened by his feeble attempts to protest his innocence. “My sweet girl, you bastard!”
“We ain’t seen no friggin’ girl, man,” he shouted back, arcs of spittle flying from his lips.
The waves seemed to be crashing and breaking in my head as I leveled the gun at his denimed groin and pulled the trigger. I missed, but the bullet tore off a chunk of his thigh, which splashed a bright red in the firelight. He screamed with the pain and went down.
When the sound of the waves and the echoes of the shot had diminished, I heard the rattle of pebbles as his two friends ran off.
Thick-lips was crawling painfully down the sand toward the sea. One leg of his jeans was damp and left a trail like a slug. He was making little whimpering noises.
“I’ll give you one last chance,” I shouted after him. “Tell me where she is.”
He said nothing.
I pocketed the gun and picked up a piece of driftwood about the size of a baseball bat. I weighed it in my hand, swishing it gently through the air to get my grip right. Then I walked down the beach to thick-lips and with five or six firm strokes battered his head into the wet sand at the surf edge. The foam went pink like a milkshake.