She felt a stone move as her foot brushed it, and she snatched it up, held it to strike, and yelled, “Roger! Roger!” He was in some far place where he might hear her.
He halted, still in a half crouch, then slowly straightened and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at her and turned away and went to the flat stone where he had sat before. He rested his arms on his knees, lowered his head to his arms. She saw him in profile, chest and belly expanding and contracting with his fast, deep breathing.
She dropped the stone and walked out to where she could not be trapped again. She saw a movement of his hunched shoulders and thought for one incredulous moment he was laughing at her.
“I don’t — know why,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m — so sorry.”
She sighed and went closer to him. She felt very tired. “Just don’t cry. It doesn’t matter that much.”
He looked up, frowning, eyes wet. “I had the feeling — it would be — some kind of an answer to something.”
She understood. She moved closer. “It could be, maybe. Not with me, though. It’s what he’s doing to you, Rog. He won’t let you have any pride. He won’t let you have — manhood. Or maleness, maybe is a better word. He’s getting you to the point where you don’t know what you are. So this was — trying to find out, maybe. I don’t know anything about these things, Roger. Maybe he is trying to — emasculate you because she’s emasculating him. Could that make any sense?”
“I don’t know. I hate him. I keep getting the feeling I’m going to do some terrible thing. I guess — I almost did.” He tried to smile.
“You were very scary, you know. I don’t know if I could have hit you with that stone or not. I didn’t even know you. If I couldn’t — stop you, you were going to rape me.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“If you could hate him, Roger, it would be better for you.”
“I despise him!”
“Sure. That’s why you keep straining all day to do something that will please him. Something to make him proud. And the harder you try, the worse things get. Roger, listen to me. Please. You’ve got to get out from under. Because, if you could — try what you tried, you haven’t got things under control. You could do some terrible thing. You’re a man. You shouldn’t let him make you doubt it.”
“I feel so ashamed, Leila.”
“It’s over. Okay? Don’t keep on making some kind of a thing out of it. People can start enjoying remorse. Come on, Rog. Get up. Nothing happened. Nothing will. Nothing has changed. I’ve forgotten it already.”
She could remember going back to the rocky beach with him, remember making him laugh, finally. But she could not unearth any other parts of what was left of that day. It seemed to fade out somewhere between the beach and the cruiser.
Now in this narrow bed in the clutter of the shack, with the Sergeant watching her, she wondered if it had been a very bad decision to do nothing about Roger’s attack. Perhaps, when he had the next chance, when they were in the Muñequita together, he had come at her again and she had not been able to stop him. She had read that a severe blow on the head resulting in concussion could temporarily or even permanently wipe out all memory of the incidents leading up to the moment when the injury occurred. The Sergeant said she had been naked when he found her in the drifting boat. The boat had a good range. She remembered Captain Staniker saying it would go two hundred and something miles on full tanks. That could account for her being in Florida. When it was done, and the madness dwindled, Roger would have tried to wake her up. If he couldn’t, he would panic. He would head for the states, abandon the boat, and try to run away and hide. But they’d find him. Maybe they already had. She wondered how large the gap in her memory might be, how much time had passed between that day when things faded out to the time she had been injured and abandoned.
“I guess they’ve been trying to find me, Sergeant Corpo. I guess there’d be a big fuss about it in the papers and on the air.”
“Now I wouldn’t rightly know about that, because there’d be nobody coming by here to tell me. Don’t have a radio or get a paper. Lot of noise, foolishness, gets people all stirred up.”
She tried to smile. “You’re kidding me!”
He sat on a rickety wooden chair and tilted back dangerously. “One time some kids came and messed this place up for me. But they won’t be back. And the Lieutenant stops by to see how the place looks, maybe once a year. But I go on in every month to town to cash my army check and stock up on what’s needed. Have to go back sometimes when I forget something. Damn — excuse me, Missy — nuisance.”
“Then you’re a hermit!”
The chair legs came down with a thump. He looked aggrieved. “Hermit? Some nutty old man in a cave? Miss Leila, what I am is a veteran on a pension. Having people around gets my head to hurting. Maybe on account of getting wounded in the head. I couldn’t say. When I was a little kid I liked to go off by myself. Go into the big swamp and stay in there for days.”
She sat up straight and swung her legs out of the bed. The look of them shocked her. They were like old pictures of people in concentration camps. The backs of her legs were pink and tender where the deep burn had shredded away the tanned skin of cruising.
She looked at the improvised garment, the rolled and knotted blue bandanna which served as a belt. She saw the brilliant red flowers in the glass jar on the crate beside the bed. She saw the piece of cheap costume jewelry pinned to the front of the white shirt. Red glass mounted in a brass brooch. It was like someone dressing a doll, a tender game which made her feel shy.
“You — you’ve been taking care of me since Sunday morning? Alone? You’ve been doing everything that had to be done?”
He got up restlessly. “Missy, I had a long time in them hospitals, believe you me. What has to be done has to be done. You were burning up and clean out of your head.”
She tried to stand up but the room swam and darkened and she fell back as he hurried to her. “Now don’t try a fool thing like that!”
She sat in a huddle of misery and said, “I... I have to go to the bathroom.”
He covered his eyes with his left hand and began snapping the fingers of his big right hand, making a very loud cracking sound. “Now just a minute. Now you wait. I had something worked out.
Oh!”
He spun and hurried out. A spring slapped the screen door shut. She heard him clumping down outside stairs. Soon he was back looking pleased, carrying an old-fashioned chamber pot. Water sloshed in it as he set it down close beside the bed. The lid was from a small green garbage container. He said, “You get well enough to walk, I’ve got a privvy about a hundred feet from the cabin. I recalled finding this pot a long time ago, and I kept looking till I found it. Brush grown up around it and a mess of other stuff. I sand-scrubbed it clean as a dollar.” He moved the chair over next to the pot. “You just kind of ease yourself over, and take it slow and easy so you don’t get faint, Missy. You need me, you just yank on that cord there and it’ll jangle some cans I’ve got hung below. When you get settled back into bed you jangle them anyhow. I’ve got to cook you up a good dinner. You slept on through breakfast today, and you should be next door to starved.”