I woke up covered with sweat, certain I had mailed the letter. I looked for it on the desk and couldn’t find it, and was positive someone on the hotel staff had found it and mailed it for me. I got the housekeeper on the phone and, I’m sure, convinced her only that I was out of my mind. The letter was on the bed. I saw it there and hung up the phone and got a pack of matches and burned every scrap of the letter. I didn’t even let myself read it, just burned each sheet and flushed the ashes down the toilet.
I started scanning the yellow pages for psychiatrists, then gave up and threw the book halfway across the room. If I made an appointment I would break it or forget it. Or lose the address, or miss my train, or something.
Because the obvious truth was that I could not be trusted. I did not know my own mind, and could not, because my mind was in too many places at once. I have seen men freeze in combat, attacked on the right and the left at once and unable to return fire in either direction, standing stupidly in their tracks until bullets knocked them down. I now knew how they felt. I was dangerous, to myself and to anyone near me. I had to be all alone somewhere until things settled down.
Do nothing, I thought.
Two perfect words, answering everything. See Sharon or don’t see Sharon? Do nothing. Get a job or don’t get a job? Do nothing. Join a mercenary army? Do nothing.
I cashed in all my government bonds, drew all my money out of the several banks who were taking care of it. I bought a money belt at Abercrombie ft Fitch and put 193 hundred dollar bills in it, along with my discharge and my birth certificate and my diploma. Then I wore it underneath my clothes and resolved never to take it off, not even in the shower. Wherever I went, I wanted to have everything with me.
Then I packed everything that seemed important into one suitcase and told the bellhop to do what he wanted with the rest. I paid my hotel bill and took a taxi all the way to Idlewild. It would have been cheaper to take the coach from the terminal, but I was sure something would go wrong if I didn’t get to the airport as quickly as possible. I got there. All I had decided until then was that I wanted to go someplace warm; it was October, and I didn’t want to have to buy winter clothes. By the time I was at the airport I had settled on Miami, probably because I had been there once, years ago. I was able to get a flight leaving in four hours. I bought a newspaper and spent four hours reading it. I read everything, want ads, stock-market quotations, everything I could find. I was first in line for my flight, first on the plane, first off when we landed.
On the plane I made a list of rules:
1. Never write a letter to anyone.
2. Make no phone calls.
3. Don’t talk to anyone.
4. No women exc. whores if you have to.
5. Two drinks every day before dinner, otherwise none.
6. Three meals every day.
7. Exercise regularly, swimming and calisthenics, keep in shape.
8. Plenty sleep, sunshine.
9. Don’t go anywhere exc. movies.
10. When in doubt, do nothing.
Three
The sun woke me. It slanted through my door every morning, a few seconds earlier than the previous day, a few seconds later than the following day. Midwinter had come and gone, and now the sun was rising just a little bit earlier every morning, and so was I. There were no clouds in the sky, hardly a ripple on the surface of the ocean. They could have used my view for an airlines ad. I walked straight from the cabin to the ocean and swam around in it for fifteen or twenty minutes, then came back and built a fire on the beach while I let the sun dry me. I broke the last two eggs into the frying pan and noted that it was my day to row across to Mushroom Key. I ate two eggs every morning and went to Mushroom Key every sixth day to buy a dozen more eggs and whatever else I needed. The store was the closed-in porch of Clinton Mackey’s house, and was thus open seven days a week, which saved me the trouble of owning a calendar. I could usually figure out about what day of the week it was and could make a fair stab at the date. This day, for example, was probably a Thursday, because I seemed to remember that it had been Friday when I last rowed over to Mackey’s. (Or was that the time before?) And it was somewhere around the middle of January, maybe just past the middle, because the first of the year, as I recalled, had come on a Monday. So if I had had to guess, I would have made it Thursday, January 19. But I didn’t have to guess because it didn’t matter.
I ate my eggs and sausages, made a cup of instant coffee, drank it, washed my dishes in the ocean, dried them, put them away. I added the empty egg carton to the fire and let it burn itself out. There was a list tacked to the inside of my cabin door, and I read it through, as I did every morning. It was the same list I had made on the plane, the Do Nothing list; I had had to copy it over several times, but I hadn’t changed a word, as though the precise phrasing of the original was catechismic in importance.
I read a chapter in my current book while my breakfast got itself digested. It was a paperback, The Lives of the Great Composers. This morning I read about Robert Schumann. When he was 34 he developed a profound distaste for high places, for all metal instruments (including keys), and for drugs. He also constantly imagined that he heard the note “A” sounding in his ears. This went on for two years. I learned other things about him, none of which I remembered for very long.
I put The Lives of the Great Composers back on top of the portable fridge. It was just as calm and clear outside as before, and warmer. I ran three laps around the island, which was about the size of a football field with the corners rounded. I usually ran six laps, which I figured added up to about a mile, and I usually did pushups and sit-ups and such, but on rowing days I limited myself to three laps. My island was a good half mile from Mushroom Key, and that much rowing makes up for no end of sit-ups and pushups and arm-waving.
I sprinted the last hundred yards or so and wasn’t even breathing hard when I finished. I cooled off in the ocean dried off in the sun, and did all the things I had to do before my trip to the store. My money belt was buried ten yards behind the cabin. I dug it up, brushed the sand off, fastened it around me. I put on underwear and a shirt and dungarees and socks and shoes. I dressed for trips to the store and when the weather turned cold, which it rarely did; at this rate my few clothes would last forever. I took a quick inventory, baited a line with some leftover strips of yesterday’s fish, and finally, with the inside of the frying pan for a mirror, gave my hair and beard a rough trim. There was no point in shaving and no place to get a haircut, but I tried to keep myself looking as little like a wild man as possible. Attracting undue attention was not consistent with doing nothing.
The boat was small, flat-bottomed, and red. I tossed the oars into it, dragged it across the sand and into the water.
“Dozen aigs and what-all else?” Clinton Mackey said this to me once every six days, never altering a syllable. This was one of the things I liked most about him. There were around two hundred persons living on Mushroom Key and the surrounding small islands, but it was a rare day when I spoke to anyone but Clint or his wife or daughter. When a man has only one conversation a week, it ought to be safe and predictable.
“Dozen eggs to start,” I said.
“A dozen is twelve, fresh from the hens.” He put the carton on the counter. “I swear you must never get out of the sun. Must shine at night where you are, sun night and day. You get any darker, I won’t have a choice of serving you or not. You get any darker, federal government’s gone tell me I got to serve you.”