Part 2 (1/2)
”But you can't tell anyone we have this arrangement. If anybody asks you anything about me, I'm just a friend.”
”I think maybe you are. But what about those expenses if you don't get anything back?”
”That's my risk.”
”So long as I don't end up owing. Lord G.o.d, I owe enough here and there. Even some to Chookie.”
”I want to ask you a few questions.”
”You go right ahead, Trav. ”
”Do you know of anybody who served with your father in the Army?”
”No. The thing is, he wanted to fly. He enlisted to try to get to fly. But he was too old or not enough schooling or something. He enlisted in nineteen forty-two. I was six years old when he went away. He trained in Texas someplace, and finally he got into the... something about Air Transit or something.”
”ATC? Air Transport Command?”
”That was it! Sure. And he got to fly that way, not flying the airplanes, but having a regular airplane to fly on. A crew chief he got to be. Over in that CBI place. And he did good because we got the allotment and after he was over there, those hundred dollar money orders would come once in a while. Once there were three of them all at once. Ma saved what she could for when he got back, and the way it turned out, it was a good thing she did.”
”But you don't know anybody he served with?”
She frowned thoughtfully. ”There were names in the letters sometimes. He didn't write much. My mother saved those letters. I don't know if Christy threw them out when she died. Maybe they're still down at the house. There were names in them sometimes.”
”Could you ride down there with me tomorrow and find out?”
”I guess so.”
”I want to meet your sister.”
”Why?”
”I want to hear what she has to say about Junior Allen.”
”She'll say she told me so. She didn't like him much. Can I tell my sister what you're trying to do for us?”
”No. I'd rather you wouldn't, Cathy. Tell her I'm just a friend. I'll find some way to get her to talk about Allen.”
”What can she tell you?”
”Maybe nothing. Maybe some things you didn't notice.”
”It'll be good to see my Davie.”
”Why was Allen sent to prison?”
”He said it was a big misunderstanding. He went in the Army and he was making it his career. He was in the Quartermaster, in the part that they have boats, like the Navy. But little boats. Crash boats, they call the ones he was on. And then he got into the supply part of it, and in nineteen fifty-seven they got onto him for selling a lot of government stuff to some civilian company. He said he did a little of it, but not as much as they said. They blamed it all on him and gave him a dishonorable discharge and eight years at Leavenworth. But he got out in five. That's where he was a cellmate of my daddy, and said he came to help us because my daddy would have wanted him to. That's the lie he told us.”
”Where did he come from originally?”
”Near Biloxi. He grew up on boats, that's how the Army put him into the boats. He said he had no folks left there.”
”And you fell in love with him.”
She gave me a strange and troubled look. ”I don't know as it was love. I didn't want him to have me like that, right there at the home place with my mother still alive then, and Davie there, and Christine and her two. It was shameful, but I couldn't seem to help myself. Looking back I can't understand how it could be.
”Trav, I had a husband, and there was one other man beside my husband and Junior Allen, but my husband and the other man weren't like Junior Allen. I don't know how to say it to a stranger without shaming myself more. But maybe it could help somehow to know this about him. The first time or so, he forced me. He would be tender and loving, but afterward. Saying he was sorry. But he was at me like some kind of animal, and he was too rough and too often. He said it had always been like that with him, like he couldn't help himself. And after a while he changed me, so that it didn't seem too rough any more, and I didn't care how many times he came at me or when.
”It was all turned into a dream I couldn't quite wake up from, and I went around feeling all soft and dreamy and stupid, and not caring a d.a.m.n about what anybody thought, only caring that he wanted me and I wanted him. He's a powerful man, and all the time we were together he never did slack off.
”Do a woman that way and I think she goes off into a kind of a daze, because really it's too much, but there was no way of stopping him, and finally I didn't want to, because you get used to living in that dazy way. Then when he come back and moved in with that Mrs. Atkinson... I couldn't stop thinking how...”
She shook herself like a wet puppy and gave me a shamefaced smile and said, ”How to get to be a d.a.m.n fool in one easy lesson. I was just something real handy for him while he was looking for what my daddy hid away. And all the time I thought it was me pleasing him.” She looked at the coffee-shop clock. ”I have to be going to get ready for the next show. What time do you want to go in the morning?”
”Suppose I pick you up about nine-thirty?”
”I'd rather I come to your boat about then, if that's okay with you.”
”It's fine with me, Cathy.”
She started to stand up and then sat back again and touched the back of my hand swiftly and lightly and pulled her fingers away. ”Don't hurt him.”
”What?”
”I wouldn't want to think I set anybody onto him that hurt him. My head knows that he's an evil man deserving any bad thing that can happen to him, but my heart says for you not to hurt him.”
”Not unless I have to.”
”Try not to have to.”
”I can promise that much.”
”That's all I wanted.” She c.o.c.ked her head. ”I think maybe you're clever. But he's sly. He's animal-sly. You know the difference?”
”Yes.”
She touched my hand again. ”You be careful.
Cuatro
CATHY Kerr sat primly beside me on the genuine leather of old Miss Agnes as we drifted swiftly down through Perrine and Naranja and Florida City, then through Key Largo, Rock Harbor, Tavernier and across another bridge onto Candle Key. Her eagerness to see her child was evident when she pointed out the side road to me and, a hundred yards down the side road, the rock columns marking the entrance to the narrow driveway that led back to the old frame bay-front house. It was of black cypress and hard pine, a sagging weathered old slattern leaning comfortably on her pilings, ready to endure the hurricane winds that would flatten glossier structures.
A gang of small brown children came roaring around the corner of a shed and charged us. When they had sorted themselves out, I saw there were but three, all with a towheaded family resemblance. Cathy kissed and hugged them all strenuously, and showed me which one was Davie. She handed out three red lollipops and they sped away, licking and yelping.
Christine came out of the house. She was darker and heavier than Cathy. She wore faded jeans hacked off above the knee, and a man's white T s.h.i.+rt with a rip in the shoulder. She moved slowly toward us, patting at her hair. She did not carry herself with any of Cathy's lithe dancer's grace, but she was a curiously attractive woman, slow and brooding, with a sensuous and challenging look.
Cathy introduced us. Christine stood there inside her smooth skin, warm and indolent, mildly speculative. It is that flavor exuded by women who have fas.h.i.+oned an earthy and simplified s.e.xual adjustment to their environment, borne their young, achieved an unthinking physical confidence. They are often placidly unkempt, even grubby, taking no interest in the niceties of posture. They have a slow relish for the physical spectrum of food, sun, deep sleep, the needs of children, the caresses of affection. There is a tiny magnificence about them, like the sultry dignity of she-lions.
She kissed her sister, scratched her bare arm, said she was glad to meet me and come on in, there was coffee made recent.