Home is the Sailor (3 page)

I felt even more of a fool. “Miss Mason lives at the Purple Parrot?”

The barman hooted. “Lives here? She owns it, sailor. Lock, stock, and all the barrels in the basement.”

I looked out the window at the landscaped grounds. The Purple Parrot Court was new. It had twenty units with a private beach. With the bar and restaurant, it was worth possibly two hundred thousand dollars.

The back of my neck got as red as my ears. I had no quarrel with Corliss. She had a quarrel with me. She’d picked me out of a clip joint. She’d saved my money for me. She was a lady, not a tart. And I’d repaid her by trying to force her.

I looked up as two guys walked in the door. There was only one thing they could be. They had the build, the walk, the smell. They glanced around the bar, then stood one on each side of my stool.

“What’s the idea?” I asked them.

The older of the pair pushed his Stetson back on his head. “The name is Cooper, son,” he told me. “Sheriff Cooper. And it would seem you answer the description of a man we’ve been looking for all day. Blonde. Six feet two. Two hundred pounds. A seaman. A first mate of Scandinavian ancestry. What’s your name, fellow?”

I told him. “Nelson.”

“Occupation?”

“Seaman.”

“Rating?”

“Mate.”

He wasn’t a bad joe, for a cop. “You hit a man last night?” he asked.

I said, “I was in a fight. As I recall, some pimp tried to kill me.”

The barman’s fat face colored. He said, “Please, Sheriff. We try to run a respectable place here. Would you mind talking to Nelson outside? There are ladies and children dining.”

There was a murmur of approval from the tourists in the booths along the wall. The old joe looked at me. I got off the stool. I’d caused Miss Mason enough trouble. “Sure. Why not?” I said. I led the way out the door. “Yeah. I hit the guy. As I recall, he came at me with a sap.”

The wind had freshened and the night was filled with salt spray and the sound of the sea. On the drive in front of the bar, I asked, “So what’s the charge?”

The young cop was nasty about it. “Manslaughter, if he dies.”

“I hit him that hard?”

“You did.”

“Who signed the complaint?”

“His girl,” Cooper’s deputy said.

I remembered her vaguely. A top-heavy brunette in a faded green dress. With a harsh voice. Shrilling, “Kill the big Swede, Tony!”

I lighted a cigarette, cupping the match against the wind. “So?”

“So what?” Sheriff Cooper asked me.

“What happens now?”

“We talk to the judge,” he told me.

The J.P.’s name was Farrell. Cooper had to dig him out of a poker game in the back room of the Elk’s Club. He held the hearing in the Sheriff’s office at the Palm Grove brig. It wasn’t much of a hearing.

“How you plead, sailor?” he asked me.

I said, “Self-defense. The guy come at me with a sap. I hit him.”

“During a crap game?”

“That’s right.”

Farrell spat tobacco juice over his shoulder. Out an open window. Up against the bole of a palm tree. “How about witnesses, sailor? Who saw him swing this sap?”

I said, “Two avocado ranchers, some construction stiffs back from Guam. Maybe the barman. Although he wasn’t in the game.”

“You know their names or where Sheriff Cooper can contact them?”

I shook my head. “Not me. The barman’s name was Jerry. But I haven’t the least idea who the other fellows were. They were just guys I met in a bar.”

The J.P. looked at Cooper. “Nelson give you any trouble, Sheriff?”

“Not a bit,” Cooper admitted.

Farrell looked back at me. “I’m sorry, Nelson,” he said. The little guy sounded as if he meant it. “We’ve had trouble with Tony before. But the law gives me no leeway. I’ll have to bind you over for trial. Your bail will be five hundred dollars.”

I asked Sheriff Cooper if I could call the Purple Parrot. He said I could. The fat barman answered the phone.

“The Purple Parrot Bar and Court. Wally speaking.”

I asked if Miss Mason had come back from San Diego.

“No. She has not,” he told me.

I said, “Well, look. When she does—”

“Yeah?”

“Tell her I’m sorry about last night. And ask her to do me one last favor.”

“What?” Wally asked me flatly.

“Ask her to deduct my bill and send someone over to the Palm Grove brig with my money. I’m being held on five hundred dollars’ bail.”

“For what?”

“For hitting a guy too hard.”

He said, “I’ll tell her,” and hung up.

The deputy’s name was Harris. He led me back to a cell and locked me in with two cases of empty Coke bottles, a confiscated four-bit slot machine, some leaky plumbing, and an assortment of curious cockroaches.

For some reason, Harris didn’t like me. He smiled nasty at me through the bars. “Let’s hope you’re not with us long, Nelson. Say, not more than two or three months. Then let’s hope that Tony dies.”

I asked, “What’s eating on you? You getting a cut of the game? Or was he managing your wife?”

His face got red. He started to unlock the door. Then he changed his mind and strode off down the hall.

The blanket on the cot looked crumby to me. I upended one of the Coke cases and sat with my back against the wall. My headache was gone. I felt fine. It could just be that Corliss would show in person with my money. I hoped so. I wanted to thank her for what she’d done, apologize.

I stopped kidding myself. I’d apologize, of course. I’d thank her for what she’d done for me. But what I really wanted was to see her. As I remembered her, she was lovely.

Still, considering the way I’d acted, she’d probably send one of the help.

The smell of the sea was gone now. All I could smell was dust and disinfectant and the cigar Sheriff Cooper was smoking.

I hoped I was satisfied. I was back on course again, in a cell. The cells I’d sat in. In Mexico, India, China. For brawling, wenching, getting drunk. It was time I settled down, made something of my life. I meant to. When I got out of this mess I’d head straight back for Hibbing. Without taking a single drink. I’d buy a farm. A good one. I’d marry one of the local girls and raise a family.

I lighted a cigarette, thinking. I’d been thirty-three on my last birthday. I wasn’t a kid any more. The rolling-stone gag was fact. I’d done a lot of things. And I still didn’t amount to a damn. I’d hunted diamonds in Africa. I’d used a machine gun for pay. I had my master’s papers in steam for a vessel of any tonnage. And where was I? In a cell in a hick-town brig. Lucky I had a dime. The little blonde was one dame in a thousand. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d be lying in some gutter, broke.

There were two four-bit pieces in my silver. I dropped one in the slot machine and pulled the lever. Two plums and a lemon came up. That for you, sailor. Phooey.

I sat back on the Coke case, thinking of Corliss.

“I wish I were what you think I am,” she’d told me. With tears in her eyes. “But I have to have love with mine.”

Love? I had plenty of love.

She’d wanted me plenty bad, too. Her flesh had crawled under my fingers. I began to sweat, remembering. Wanting what I’d seen. So she owned a tourist court. So what?

I got up and paced the cell, two steps forward, two back, while my mind and imagination squirreled across the steel mesh.

“I have to have love with mine.”

To keep from blowing my top, I dropped the other four-bit piece in the machine and yanked the lever. Hard. Three bars came up. One right after the other. Snicking into place without any hesitation. Win, place, and show, across the board. Then the trap door of the jackpot tripped and the machine spat half dollars all over the floor in a tinkling of silver; forty or fifty dollars’ worth of that beautiful stuff.

An omen?

Out in the office, Sheriff Cooper laughed. “There’s a sailor for you.”

Harris said, “God damn,” and strode back down the hall. His face pressed to the bars, he scowled. “Hey. You can’t do that. It’s illegal.”

“So’s adultery,” I pointed out. “But they tell me it happens all the time.”

I was still picking up half dollars when a car, traveling fast, stopped short in front of the substation. A moment later high heels clicked across cement. I knew who it was before she spoke.

“I bet your pardon,” the little blonde said to Sheriff Cooper, “but might I please see Mr. Nelson? I’ve brought the money for his bail.”

I gave Harris the handful of half dollars I’d gathered. “For your trouble, boy.”

He cursed me under his breath. With the bars between us.

Corliss’ heels continued to make music, tip-tapping down the hall. She was even lovelier than I remembered. She was wearing yellow now. A sports dress. She was bare-legged, with yellow sandals to match her dress. And a white gardenia in her hair, over a smile for me.

“Hello there, you,” she said.

“Hello yourself,” I said. “It seems I can’t get out of your sight without getting in trouble, eh?”

“So it would seem,” she laughed. “I got here as soon as I could. Ninety most of the way. I started as soon as Wally told me.”

She put her hands through the bars. I held them while Cooper unlocked the door. Then we walked back to the office together, to sign the bail-bond papers, my hand barely touching her elbow. Corliss didn’t have to tell me. I knew. She was as glad to see me as I was to see her. Sometimes it happens like that. She wanted me as badly as I wanted her. Even if I was a big drunken Swede who’d caused her a lot of trouble. Who knew? Maybe she was the dream.

The paper work over, Sheriff Cooper walked out to the car with us. It was a pale green Caddy with the top down. Corliss handed me the keys.

“You drive.”

I helped her in. Then I walked around to the other side and slid in back of the wheel.

Cooper leaned on the door of the car, still friendly. “Don’t do anything foolish, son,” he advised me. “I mean like trying to ship out before your trial.”

I promised him I wouldn’t.

He grinned. “Like Farrell said, we’ve had lots of trouble with Tony. And even if he should die, the worst you’ll probably get is probation. Meanwhile, I’ll sniff around and see if I can’t locate the two ranchers you say witnessed the fight.”

Corliss leaned across me to talk to him, her breasts boring into my arm. “You do that, Sheriff Cooper. Please.”

Harris gave me a dirty look.

I turned the motor over and drove north on U.S. 101. “How come?” I asked Corliss.

“How come what?” she asked.

“You came yourself,” I said.

She glanced sideways at me. “It could be I wanted to.” Her fingers tiptoed down my arm to my hand, leaving little patches of heat behind them the size of her fingertips. “Would you rather I’d sent Wally?”

“No,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t. And about last night. That is, I mean this morning.”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

Corliss laughed her tinkling laugh again. “How many times have you said that in your life, Swen?”

“Not very often,” I admitted.

Corliss patted the back of my hand. “I didn’t think so. Forget it. Please. It — was partly my fault. I shouldn’t have changed into a negligee. I didn’t think. I didn’t stop to realize—”

“What?”

“That you were as high as you were. That you’d been at sea for three years. Where were you headed, Swen, when you stopped in that awful place?”

“Hibbing, Minnesota.”

“Why?”

“To buy a farm.”

“You originally came from there?”

“Yeah. A long time ago,” I told her.

She was silent for a mile.

“Why so quiet?” I asked.

Corliss wrinkled her nose at me. “I just was thinking.”

“Thinking what?”

“How nice it would be.”

“What would be nice?”

“To live on a farm.”

I glanced sideways at her to see if she was kidding. She didn’t seem to be. I felt my way. “Who pressed my uniform and washed my shirt?”

She said, “I did. Why?”

“Because that’s the first time that ever happened to me. Because only a woman who likes a man would do a thing like that.”

Corliss’ voice was small. “Well, maybe I like you.”

“How much?”

“A lot.”

“At first sight? Roaring drunk, insulting? Treating you like you were a cheap pickup?”

“Maybe I could see the man in back of the rum.”

I gripped the wheel of the car hard to keep from pulling over on the shoulder of the road and acting juvenile.

Corliss sensed the strain in me. “Let’s not go right back to the court, Swen. Let’s find a turnoff somewhere and talk. If I’m right about this thing, we’ve a lot to talk about.”

I began looking for a turnoff.

Her fingers closed on my forearm. “Only promise me one thing.”

I said, “Anything.” I meant it.

“Please, don’t make me hate you, Swen. Don’t spoil something that may be very beautiful for both of us by acting like you did this morning.” She said it flatly. “I have a distinct aversion to being forced. When I go to bed with you, if I do, this time it’s for keeps.”

I looked sideways at her. “This time?”

Corliss met my eyes. “I don’t claim to be a virgin. Very few young widows are.”

Hitting the jackpot had been an omen. A good one. I laughed and it came out husky. “Maybe I’d better stop and get a bottle of rum. Just in case. Then you can use it if you have to.”

She had a deep laugh for a woman. When she really laughed. Starting deep down in her pretty, concave belly. It made her breasts rise and fall.

“That won’t be necessary,” Corliss said. “I came prepared.” She opened the glove compartment and took out a fifth of Bacardi. “I brought my own bottle with me.” She was cute as hell about it. “How about a drink, mate?”

I pulled over on the shoulder of the road and had a drink, a big one. From the neck of the bottle. Corliss drank with me. Smiling. Barely wetting her lips. Then I drove on slowly, the bottle on the seat between us, my heart pounding against my ribs, looking for a turnoff.

I found one a quarter mile down the road and followed it to the crest of a high bluff overlooking the sea, with a silver moon laying a course along the thirty-fourth parallel for China.