A Flash of Green (43 page)

“Nat, honey, I’m glad to know and I’m touched that you’ve told me. I hope everything works out for both of you.”

Natalie frowned. “We’ll be apart when I go back to school. I can guess how these things usually work out. I feel sad when I think what will probably happen. But right now it’s so good to be halfway in love. Some of it is very young love. You know. Silly things. Jokes and games. And some of it is very adult, I think. Because we sort of started backwards. What we have now is what we should have had first, I guess. But we had the other part first, the six times that we were together like that, with it getting more tremendous every time, as close as two people can get. So now that it’s all a … younger kind of love, the things we already know about each other sort of shadow it, and make it more … I don’t know if any word fits … marriageable? But we can’t even think about that. I’ve got a terror complex about marriage. I’ve always promised myself I never would be. My father set such a dandy example.”

“He and Claire are all right.”

“Are they, Kat? They like the same things. A lot of people swarming around. And she gets the lush life she adores, and people to do the scut work for her. And he gets the girl-wife for his declining years, which is sort of a public advertisement of his manhood. Is it a marriage or a sort of a truce?”

“Most marriages are.”

“Yours wasn’t. I know that.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“What about Jimmy Wing’s? What was she like, really?”

“Gloria was a very beautiful girl. Not a complex person. She had a lot of earthy vitality, and she was easy to be with before she got sick because she was essentially a merry person. I guess she was good for Jimmy because there’s sort of a dark, involved, tortured side to him, and he’d need a marriage that would … would simplify the world instead of complicate it. Everyone who knew her knew she was a totally loyal and faithful wife. That’s why it was so shocking and ugly and incomprehensible when she began to change. She seemed to coarsen. She seemed to stop giving a damn, about anything. Poor Jimmy thought it was something he had done. He thought he was inadequate or something. Then he tried to turn into the Biblical husband and wham the mischief out of her. So when they found out it was a physical thing, an illness she couldn’t help, the guilt over how he had been handling it nearly destroyed him.”

“The poor guy.”

“She was put away for keeps over two years ago, and she’s been in what I guess you could call a coma for over a year. It’s supposed to be a very interesting case. Not very interesting for Jimmy.”

“He’s an interesting-looking man, you know. When he interviewed me at the Center, I was looking at him carefully. Every feature he has is actually ugly, all by itself. Those pale eyes that slant the wrong way and that big nose, the long head and sandy hair, and the crooked mouth and big uneven teeth. But he has all that darn presence, and that strange kind of …”

“Elegance?”

“That’s the word. Lazy grace, I guess, plus complete confidence and that freshly scrubbed and polished look. Actually, I think he’s wonderfully attractive.”

“I can’t think of him in just that way, Natalie. While Van was
alive I didn’t care for Jimmy particularly, even though he was one of Van’s best friends. It wasn’t jealousy. I just thought he was … a sort of contrived person. Artificial and sort of superior-acting. I didn’t understand why Van was so fond of him. I found out this past year. He’s a valued friend. An old shoe. When I’m with him I feel comfortable and safe and understood. When things were the worst I walked a hundred miles with him, said all the crazy things that came into my head, cried a gallon of tears onto his shirt fronts. He’s seen me at my worst and still puts up with me. I love him dearly as a good friend.”

“He could have other ideas, you know.”

She stared at the girl. “Jimmy? Bless you, no. Not toward this raddled old redhead, honey. One man had the pleasant delusion I was a sexy exciting woman, and that was enough for one lifetime. Just because you’re in the midst of romance, dear, don’t turn those rosy glasses on the rest of us. Jimmy is racked up, and I am taking care, and if I ever made a pass at him, his little eyes would bulge with horror.”

Natalie smiled and sighed. “I better get back to the younger set.” She stood up. “By the way, Mortie was in rare wild shape this morning. Things are a mess down at the Center, you know.”

“Tom told me Morton was having the same kind of problems as the rest of us.”

“There’s been a big membership petition asking him to either give up his S.O.B. activities or resign as director. My classes are down to about half what they were. Two of his people on the board have resigned in protest. People are canceling their pledges. All of a sudden his little empire has turned shaky, and Mortie is stomping on his hanky and dithering around all over the place. We’re getting a lot of crank calls at the Center, and some absolutely filthy mail. It’s such amazing reasoning, isn’t it? The reason why Mr. Dermond opposes the bay fill is because he is a Communistic
homosexual pervert, and opposing the fill is part of his long program of foisting degenerate abstract art on the duped citizens of Palm County.”

“Do you think he’ll knuckle under, Nat?”

“I don’t think so. He’s much too furious. But I don’t think he’ll have time to do you much good. He’s too busy trying to mend the fences as fast as they’re falling down around him. He had to have his home phone changed to an unlisted number.”

“I know.”

“Anyhow, one week from today it will be over. And then maybe my classes will fill up again. It seems so asinine to deprive those kids of something they love just because Mortie, for aesthetic reasons, thinks the loveliest bay in the county shouldn’t be turned into a housing project.”

They went out the terrace door into the side yard. Kat looked at her watch and saw it was almost five o’clock. “Send mine home soon, dear.”

“Floss can feed them. Don’t worry about them, Kat. I’ll bring them on home later on, really.”

“Well … they’d probably wake Jimmy up. If they won’t be any bother.”

“They never are.”

She watched Natalie walk out the driveway and turn toward her house. As she turned to go back in, a soft voice near at hand startled her. “Miz Hubble?”

“Oh! Barnett, I didn’t see you there.”

He came forward, away from the screen of shrubbery, moving slowly, turning a stained old cloth cap in his thick dark hands. “I didn’ get to this yard, yesterday,” he said, staring beyond her.

“I know. I wondered where you were.”

“Can’t get onto it tomorra neither, Miz Hubble.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Truth is, this time of year and all, I got me so loaded up on work, there’s some I has to let drop off. That’s the way it goes.”

“Do you mean you can’t work for me any more, Barnett?”

“Yassum,” he said.

“I know it doesn’t amount to very much money, and if you say you can’t, I guess you can’t. But I want you to see if you can find me somebody who can do it for me.”

“I kin surely try, Miz Hubble. But I jus doan know who.”

There was something very strange about him, the way he was standing, not even looking toward her, turning the cap around and around. Suddenly she understood.

“Who’s making you quit?” she demanded angrily.

“It’s just I got more than I …”

“Nonsense! Don’t you
dare
lie to me!”

His glance drifted toward her, apprehensive, uncomfortable, and slid away again. He swallowed, licked his lips. “Maybe I could fit this yard back in a little later on.”

“Who scared you?”

He looked directly at her. He straightened slightly and his voice had more dignity. “I’m not scared, m’am. I lived my whole life the way I got to live it. You have your head in the lion’s mouth, you do like my daddy told me. You lie quiet. A man said words to me on my telephone. And there’s other folks working for other white folks got the same words said. There’s no colored cops in Pigeon Town, m’am. Not yet there isn’t. Mister Van, he would have knowed how it is, without having to say anybody scared me. I’ll do the most I can.”

“I’m sorry, Barnett. It’s just that … they don’t seem to overlook anything.…” She realized that for the first time since it had all begun she was close to uncontrollable tears. She made herself smile. “I was angry for a moment.”

He looked down into the cloth cap. “And it could be a lie
about not being scared none. Decent colored people can always have their house fired by some boughten nigger.” He looked around. “I got things pretty good here. If’n you could do a little and that Mister Gus would do some of the heavy things, I could be back soon as it looks all right. This isn’t a lastin’ kind of thing.”

She had the television set on at ten o’clock, the sound turned low, so she did not hear Jimmy Wing getting up until he walked out with his jacket over his arm, startling her.

“Well! How did you sleep?” she said, turning the set off.

“So hard I had a hell of a time figuring out where I was when I woke up.”

“I was afraid the kids would wake you. I made them be quiet going to bed, but when they whisper they sound like steam engines.”

He sat on the couch and lit a cigarette. “Everything that happened today is a little blurred.”

“That’s the way it should be.”

“What did I get? About six hours. And when I get back to the cottage, I’ll want eight or ten more.”

“You could have stayed right where you were.”

“Makes a bad impression on the neighbors. And everything you do these days has to be above reproach, friend.”

“Or I won’t get any yard work done? Move to Palm County, the best of tropical living among friendly people. Brother!”

“What about yard work?”

She repeated the conversation with Barnett Mayberry, and said, “Two hours a week, for heaven’s sake! I’m unclean. I’m not fit to work for.”

“It’ll be the same at the Jennings’ and the Lipes’s and the Halleys’. Part of the pattern. Make all you people as uncomfortable as
possible, and keep you too busy to fight the bay fill. If Barnett ignored the suggestion, maybe nothing at all would happen. But why should he take the chance? You must be a trial to him, dear. You missed all your cues. You were supposed to understand just how things are, and go right along with his story about being too busy to work on your yard, and accept the fiction he’d try to find somebody else. Then a month from now he’d stop by and say things had eased up and he could come back to work if you hadn’t gotten somebody else.”

“I’m no damn good at your native folk dances, Jimmy, and I have no intention of learning them.”

“Barnett will put up with you.”

“Jimmy, you look a little better.”

“Thanks to you. And thanks for helping me through all the red tape, too. Laura’s got all she can do taking care of Sid. Kat?”

“That’s a strange expression you’re wearing, sir.”

“I feel strange.”

“Do you feel ill?”

“No. Nothing like that. You know what happens in color-plate work where the registration is a little bit off.”

“What? Oh, the ghost people, like with three mouths, all different colors.”

“That’s me.”

“But you’ve got to expect to feel a little …”

“Not just since I heard about Gloria. For longer than that. What if some time I want to talk to you?”

“You can always talk to me.”

“Really talk to you, Kat. Peel off the lid. Show you where the snakes live.”

“I’d listen. You know all my snakes by their first names.”

“It wouldn’t be that simple. All you’d have to do is listen to all
of it, then give me no opinion, just let me go. I have all the opinions I can use.”

“You know, you’re pretty silly.”

“Am I?”

“Of course you are. Everybody goes around killing people. Only the good ones know what they’re doing. That’s the penalty, I suppose.”

“You’re a fantastic woman.”

“Just how do you mean that?”

“In the best of all possible ways. So goodnight before I open the wrong valve. To scramble the metaphors, dear Kat, I know the wheel is crooked, but I want to make my money last as long as I can.”

She walked out to the car with him. For a time it looked as if the motor would not catch. But as the starter began to grind with an ominous slowness, it caught, ran raggedly and then smoothed out.

He looked up at her out of the car window and said, “The hell of it is, I can want a Mercedes, but not very much. Or a flight to Paris, but not as if I ached for it. I’m in the lousy middle, you know? The world is for people who either ache for the shiny things so bad their teeth hurt, or who don’t want them at all at all. How about us slobs in the middle? Do I sound sorry for myself?”

“Not enough to bother either of us.”

“Before I get really maudlin, farewell.”

“Will you work tomorrow?”

“I’d rather than not.”

“So I’ll see you for the coffee break, Jimmy.”

After he drove away she stood out in the driveway and looked at the sky for a little while. The stars were bright and close. She saw a shooting star, and with the wry habit of this past year, said
politely, “No thank you.” They were always giving you free wishes. Lately four-leaf clovers had become easy to find. But no thanks indeed. Not even for a flash of green, sir, if you should give me that notorious rarity. No flash of green, no monkey’s paw, no star light star bright. We tucked another one into the ground today. This one was Jimmy’s. And we’ll take our turns when the time comes. With or without clover.

A car turned into the Estates, and as it went by, under a weak streetlight, she saw that it was Eloise in her little white car, alone.

Kat went back into her house, kissed her sleeping children and went to bed.

Twenty-one

DURING THE FIRST PART
of the week which remained before the date set for the public hearing, Jimmy Wing was intrigued and sometimes mildly alarmed by an apparently interrelated disruption of both his sense of time and the quality of his capacity to remember.

For a long time he had fitted sensibly into the steady progress of his days and nights, knowing without any effort of consciousness where the minutes belonged on the clock and the days belonged on the calendar. Now the internal time-keeping device had stopped. Three hours could disappear between heartbeats, and ten minutes could appear to last all afternoon. It had the remembered flavor of childhood, when Saturday was always a vast glad surprise, and Monday was a generation away. The segments of each day were protracted and compressed without reason. He would find himself startled by the idea of being late for an appointment only to discover it was still three hours away.