Home is the Sailor (4 page)

Down below us, three hundred feet or more, at the base of a sheer cliff, the pound of the swells broke against rock. The wind was heavy with salt spray, and cold. Corliss ran her hands over her bare arms and made a small sound of discomfort. I asked her if she wanted my coat.

“No, thank you, Swen,” she said.

She pushed a button and the top came up automatically. Another button closed the windows. I could still hear the sea, but the shutting out of the wind emphasized the smell of her. I liked it.

Corliss lighted a cigarette. “You’re wondering about me, aren’t you, Swen? You’ve logged something new this trip.”

I sat, afraid to touch her. “That’s right.”

She blew a small cloud of smoke in my face. “How long have you been at sea?”

“Off and on since I was fifteen.”

“And you’ve known a lot of tramps, haven’t you?”

“One way or another. Not all of them wanted money.”

I’d left the motor idling and the dash lights on. So I could see her face. Corliss’ brown eyes appraised me in the half-dark.

“No. Not from you. It’s a wonder they didn’t offer to pay you. But even when their love was not for sale, these other women you have known, they were breaking their marriage vows, making a fool of some trusting man who loved them. Right?”

I said, “That would seem to sum it up.” The pressure of her thigh was setting me on fire. I lowered the window on my side a little.

“Didn’t you ever meet any of the other kind?”

I grinned at her. “There is another kind?”

Corliss slapped me. Lightly. A caress. Her fingers lingering. “Egotist. I’ll bet you never heard the fable of the king and the two couriers.”

I couldn’t take too much of this. I drank from the neck of the bottle, using the rum as insecticide, to drown the butterflies in my stomach. “No. I can’t say that I have.”

She told the story well. It was about a king who sent one courier to look for weeds, another to look for flowers. The moral was that each found what he was looking for.

Corliss’ fingers fondled the lobe of the ear nearest her. “I wanted you this morning, Swen. Terribly. I fell in love with you on sight. Roaring drunk, filthy, elemental. No half measures. Everyone either a friend or an enemy. I caught on fire when you touched me. It would have been so much easier to pretend I was what you thought I was and let you — well, do what you wanted to do.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“If I had, we wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d never have wanted to see you again. Because I’d have broken my code, allowed myself to be cheap. I meant it. I have to have love, and respect.” She sounded worried. “You aren’t married, are you, Swede?”

I grinned at her. “That’s why I was headed for Hibbing.”

“To get married?”

“That was the general idea.”

“You have a girl there?”

“No.”

“You do have a family, though?”

“A sister.”

“In Hibbing?”

“No. I haven’t the least idea where she is. We haven’t kept in touch for years. And you?”

Corliss sounded puzzled. “What do you mean, and me?”

“Your background, please.” Not that I gave a damn. The palms of my hands were wet with sweat. I wiped them on my trousers.

Corliss puffed her cigarette to a glow. “Very ordinary. Outside of the money angle. I, too, was born in a small town. Married at seventeen. To a rich man’s son. A lieutenant commander of a submarine.” Her eyes glowed in the half-dark. “Jack was a swell guy, Swen. You’d have liked him.”

I sat, still afraid to move; the smell of her caught in the hairs in my nose. What the hell did I care about the guy she had been married to? He was dead. He had to be, if she was a widow.

Corliss cried a little. “He was — lost at sea.” She looked at the spray-smeared windshield. “He’s out there, somewhere.”

I gave her a clean handkerchief and took her cigarette away before it burned her fingers. “Here. Make like a foghorn. Blow.”

We sat quiet for a long time. Then she asked what I’d done during the war. I said the war had been over for years. At least, the one she was talking about. And I’d just as soon forget it.

Corliss moved my head from side to side. “Please, Mr. Mate. Don’t be cross with me. I like sailors. Remember?”

“Sure. You married one.”

Corliss took a deep breath. “He’s dead. And you’re alive.” She laughed in her throat, up from where she lived. “And I’m glad. I’ve been waiting so long for you, Swede.”

She kissed me of her own free will. For the first time. Intensely. Passion in slow motion, as if she were brushing my lips with poppy petals, petals wet with dew.

The sea was roaring now, inside the car. I took her bare shoulders in my hands and pushed her back against the cushion. “Don’t do that if you don’t mean it,” I warned her.

“I mean it, Swen,” she said.

“I told you to call me Swede.”

“Swede, then.”

I cupped a breast. “Be sure.”

Corliss clamped one of her hands on mine, having trouble with her breathing. “I am sure. I knew it the minute I saw you at Jerry’s last night. With your cap cocked on the side of your head and a lock of tow hair in one eye.”

“Roaring drunk, filthy, elemental?”

She breathed the words against my lips. “Roaring drunk, filthy, elemental.”

“A hell-raising first mate on a tramp steamer.”

“A man. My man.”

Sweat beaded on my temples, on my upper lip. I could feel it trickling down my chest. “You’ve a hell of a lot more money than I have.”

She said, “I don’t see where money enters into this.”

“What if I decide to buy a farm after all?”

“Then I’ll sell the court and go with you.”

“To Minnesota?”

“To Timbuktu. If that’s where you are.”

“You mean that?”

“I never meant anything more.”

I kissed the tip of her nose, her eyes, her throat, the hollow between her breasts. They were no longer cold white marble. Corliss lay, her head thrown back, twisting my hair in her fingers.

Then she pushed me away from her forcibly.

“No. Not here.
Not in a car, Swede.”

I sounded as if I were shouting at her. I was. “I told you to be sure.”

She shouted back at me. “I am sure. But I won’t be cheap. Not here, Swede. Please.”

“Where then?”

“Anywhere. Why not go back to the Purple Parrot?”

I opened the door of the car and got out. The cold wind felt good on my face. I walked down to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the white water breaking against the jagged rocks three hundred feet below. Then I went back to the car and slid in behind the wheel. It was still an effort to speak calmly. “O.K. That’s fine with me,” I said.

I reached for the ignition. Corliss stopped me. “One last cigarette.”

I lit one and gave it to her. Then I bought myself a drink. It went down smooth, like water.

Corliss’ voice was still shaky. “Don’t be angry with me, Swede. Please. It’s just that I want it to be fine. As fine as I know it can be.”

I said, “I’ll light a candle.”

She laughed from deep down again. “But this is for keeps or not at all. You are willing to marry me, Swede?”

I told her, “Boston.”

She asked, “What does that mean?”

“On the level. In any church you name.”

“A justice of the peace will do.”

“Fine,” I said. “Fine. We can get our license tomorrow. But until then?”

Corliss came into my arms again and nibbled at my lower lip. “You’ll see,” she promised. “Just as soon as we get back to the Purple Parrot.”

Sometime during the day a bee had blown into the car. Warmed by the heat, it crawled up the door on my side and across the dash. Then it began to buzz annoyingly in the lower bevel of the windshield on Corliss’ side of the car.

I took her cigarette and puffed at it. “You’re not handing me a line?”

She brushed a lock of damp hair from her forehead. “About what?”

“About marrying me? You’re willing to marry a man you’ve only known—” I looked at my watch. It was twelve-five. “Well, not very long.”

Corliss ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip. “Why should you ask such a question? Are you hiding something from me?”

“No.”

“Would I know you any better if we were engaged six months?”

I said, “I doubt it. But then there’s the Purple Parrot.”

“What about it?”

“It’s worth a lot of money.”

“Yes,” Corliss admitted. “It is. Almost two hundred thousand dollars. But I can’t see that money enters into this.”

I warned her. “I won’t be
Mr.
Corliss.”

She stroked the sleeve of my coat. “I wouldn’t ask such a thing of you, Swede.”

I revised my plans. “I’d intended to head for Hibbing. Buy a farm. But the main thing was to settle down. Maybe even raise a family. And I don’t see why we can’t do that just as well in California as we could in Minnesota.”

Corliss laughed. Her laughter tinkling again. “Nor I.”

The bee continued to buzz, like the drone of a dentist’s drill. Corliss reached out a finger and squashed it. Against the glass. Slowly. The small
plop
of its body filled the car with sound.

“Anyway you’re through going to sea, Swede,” she said. She wiped her finger on the leather upholstery. Her voice was deep in her throat, and husky. “Well? I thought you wanted me.”

“I do.”

“Then why are we sitting here?”

I turned the car in a sharp U turn and pointed it south, driving along the sea with the wind blowing sand over the highway, through patches of fog at fifty, eighty, ninety miles an hour. I wove in and out, the tires screaming on the curves. Foolish. Lucky. Both of us laughing like mad.

There was a light in the bar but the neon parrot was turned off. I drove past the court and had to back almost a quarter of a mile, with Corliss laughing at me.

In the carport she put her fingers on my lips. “Now quiet, Swede, please. I don’t want Wally or Mamie to know until after we’re married.”

I kissed her fingers. “Sure.” I helped her out of the car. She came into my arms. We kissed until we were breathless. In silence. “Maybe I’d better go to my cottage first.” I whispered.

“No.” It was more sound than word, made with her tongue against my lips, using my mouth as a sounding board. Corliss molded her body against mine, so close I could feel every contour and detail. “No.”

I cursed her in a whisper. “Damn you.”

She pressed even closer. “Why?”

“I love you,” I whispered.

“I love you, Swede,” she breathed.

Then we walked through the chirp of the crickets and the fragrance of nicotiana, our feet crunching in the gravel, around to her front door.

I opened the screen door. Gently. So the spring wouldn’t screech. Corliss dug in her purse for her key. A man on the porch coughed. Softly. Apologetically. So close I could have reached out and touched him. Then the overhead light snicked on.

Wally, the fat barman, still wearing his white mess jacket, was sitting in the glider. With a big account book in his lap, a small adding machine on top of the account book, and a huge spike of receipted bills beside him.

Corliss put the back of her hand to her forehead. “Oh, my God. I forgot. This
is
Wednesday night.”

Wally gave me a dirty look. “I’ve been waiting for an hour.” He brightened. “And we did real well this week, too. According to my figures, our gross is up three hundred dollars.”

Corliss explained to me. “I always go over the books with Wally on Wednesday nights.” She stood, undecided, trembling, disappointed, trying to control her voice, her hands.

Wally stood up smugly, holding the account book and the adding machine, waiting.

Corliss put a small hand in mine. “Well, thanks for bringing me home, Mr. Nelson. And thank you for a pleasant drive.”

It was dismissal. For now. I said, “Thank you for getting me out of jail, Miss Mason.”

She chanced putting her hand on my arm. I could feel the heat of her fingers through the cloth. “You’re staying on at the court, of course, until after the trial?”

“Of course.”

She said, “I’m glad.”

“And I’ll see you—?”

Corliss shook her head in a barely perceptible gesture. “In the morning.”

Wally beamed. “A three-hundred increase is good. But maybe next week we’ll do even better.”

I wanted to slap the smirk off the fat fool’s face. Instead, I asked if the bar was still open.

He said, “Until two o’clock, Mr. Nelson. Mamie takes over at midnight on Wednesdays. While Miss Mason and I go over the books.”

I took a deep breath. “Good night.”

“Good night, Mr. Nelson,” Corliss said.

There were three cars in front of the bar, one of them with Illinois license plates. The pretty brunette who’d come into the cottage was working back of the bar. I ordered rum and told her to leave the bottle.

“Just as you say, Mr. Nelson,” she said.

Four men were clustered at the far end of the bar, talking in whispers. One of them looked like Jerry, the barman in the joint where I’d clipped the Mexican pimp. I considered asking him if he was Jerry, and if he was, to get in touch with Sheriff Cooper. Then I thought to hell with it. I was too burned to be concerned about anything but Corliss. Wanting her was a physical pain.

The Purple Parrot wasn’t so wholesome now. Not with the tourists asleep. I didn’t like the looks of the four men at the far end of the bar. I’d met their kind before. In barrooms all over the world. All four were strictly on the make, their terse whispers crawling between them like so many sticky-footed cockroaches.

Mamie came back with a plate of sandwiches and set it on the wood in front of me. “Eat these. They’ll be good for you, Mr. Nelson.”

I smeared a Braunschweiger on rye with mustard. It tasted good. I ate four of the sandwiches on the plate, looking at Mamie. She was as pretty as Corliss and about the same age. But life hadn’t been kind to her. The corners of her pretty mouth turned down. Her gestures were quick and birdlike. She acted afraid. Of what?

“What you got against men, baby?” I asked her.