Pale Gray for Guilt (24 page)

I squirmed out from under both of them and stood up. I did not want to feel any more dead throats. The left side of her head was toward me. Her hair was clotted heavily with blood. I stared at her and when I saw the rise and fall of her chest, I risked the finger on the throat, found a place going bump, bump, bump.

Then I looked at him. Nobody was going to be able to feel any pulse. He had a grooved head. Diagonal. From one temple across to the opposite eyebrow. A groove as wide as the fire extinguisher and maybe an inch deep. The eye bulged with a blank astonishment greater than any astonishment in the living world.

The faintness came over me and faded away slowly. I stood three stories tall and I would sway in the slightest breeze. Toy fellow made of broomstraws and flour paste. My left arm hung there, and I looked down and saw the blood dropping busily from my fingertips.

Things to do, McGee. Got to take care. Got to tidy ship. Grab the buckets and brooms, men. Clean sweep fore and aft. So start moving, because you don't know how much time you have, and it might not be enough. I fingered Hazzard's pockets and found the cuff key and managed to turn it with numb fingers and get my right wrist free. The metal had rubbed it raw.

I could not make myself hurry. I felt thoughtful. It was a kind of faraway game. Amusing and not very important. I might be able to do what might keep me from falling off the edge for good, and I might not. Interesting.

On my slow way to the head I ripped my shirt off. I turned my left side toward the mirror. The entrance hole was three inches below the top of the shoulder and on the outside of the upper arm, but deep enough so that I couldn't tell if it had done bone damage. The slug had tumbled apparently, and torn one hell of a hole on the way out. I lifted my left arm with my right hand, braced the left palm against the wall and locked the elbow. I took my time putting the gauze pads on the wounds, winding it very neatly, tearing the surgical tape with my teeth.

"Nice," I heard myself say in a voice that seemed to come from the next room. "Very neat."

So I went floating blissfully to the galley. Shock. Loss of blood. Replace fluids. Use stimulants. There was a quart jar of orange juice in the icebox. I found an unopened fifth of Wild Turkey in the liquor locker. I put them on the booth table and eased into the seat and wondered what a good name would be. An Orange Turkey? A Wild Screwdriver? The white mist began moving in from the edges and I realized nobody was going to come along and serve me. I picked my left arm up by the wrist and put the arm on the table. It wiggled its fingers when I sent the message down the nerves. I drank a third of the quart of juice. I took four long swallows of the bourbon. Second third of the juice. Another deep drag on the liquor. Polish off the juice. Then enough bourbon to just begin to tickle the gag reflex.

Come on, white mist. Take another shot. Here is McGee.

But it had edged so far back I couldn't see it anymore out of the corners of my eyes. I got up without thinking of my arm. It slid off the table and flapped me on the leg. And I thought about Janine, and she had a slug in her skull, and the bump, bump, bump would be over. I picked up my left arm and turned it and looked at my watch. How had it gotten to be three in the afternoon?

Go find out. You have to find out sometime. So go take a look at her.

The throat was still knocking away like a good little engine. I tugged at her and got her off Freddy and straightened her out on the bed. I did not want to move her too much. But I did not want to take the chance of her waking up all of a sudden and finding herself right there side by side with what had been Freddy.

I got an old tarp and put it on the floor beside the bed, on his side, reached beyond him and got hold of the bloody sheet and yanked it out from under her, and tugged on it until it rolled him off and he fell onto the tarp with a lanky thudding, face-down. I left the sheet on him and flipped the ends and side of the tarp over him. I turned on the bright reading light and fingered her crusted hair apart and found where the bullet had grooved her skull in an area an inch and a half long and the same distance above her left ear. There didn't seem to be anything you could pull together or sew together. It had punched out a strip of scalp meat, hair and all, and had clotted over and stopped bleeding. I soaked gauze in antiseptic and patted the wound very delicately, then tied the pad in place with more gauze.

Then, in a moment of pure genius, I got a piece of sheeting and made a sling for myself, so my arm would stop swinging around and flapping at me. It was much better. I didn't want her to wake up and look in that tarp. I found the fire extinguisher in the corner where it had rolled. I wiped it off and put it back in the clips. I sat on the floor and put both feet against the tarp and shoved Freddy half under the bunk where he was less noticeable.

I went above decks. We were riding well at anchor. Sea calm. Skies clear. I went below and stripped and cleaned myself up. I wasn't bleeding through the gauze. Good sign. I put a robe on. The empty sleeve flapping was less troublesome than the empty arm.

I made two giant peanut butter sandwiches and yonked them down and washed them the rest of the way with a quart of cold milk. What every healthy American kid needs after being shot.

At four thirty, after some mental practice, I warmed up the set and got through to Miami Marine and put through a credit card call to Meyer aboard his boat. She told him she had a call for him from the motor vessel, the Busted Flush.

"Travis? Say, I see you must have talked her into it without too much trouble, huh? Over."

"It was spur of the moment, Meyer. Crazy wild kids taking off on a magic adventure. Over."

"Are you maybe a little smashed, old friend? Listen, I can't talk about the other thing, not with half this transmission open for anybody who wants to listen. Tell her things are going well. How about the next time you call me, make it from shore and I can tell you the news. Over."

"Will do. I don't know how long we'll cruise around. Maybe I can keep her out a couple of weeks. Over."

"It will be great for her, Travis. And it won't hurt you. Have some fun. Catch fish. Sing a little."

As soon as I signed off, the reaction began. Somehow you do what you have to do, and somehow the machinery accepts the abuse. But when you've forced your way through it, all the gears and wheels start to chitter and grind and wobble around on the pinions. I felt icy cold. I knew it was all sour. She would never come out of it. Something would be bleeding in her head and that would be the end of it. Or somebody had seen him coming aboard, or seen him taking the houseboat out. My arm would start to rot. The hook would pull out of loose sand and we'd drift aground.

I went back below and looked at her and went into the master stateroom and slipped out of the robe and into the giant bed and wished I wasn't too old to cry myself to sleep…

I heard her saying my name for a long time before

I let it wake me up. She sat on the edge of the bed, facing me. She wore a short beach robe and she had fashioned a turban affair out of a pale blue towel. It was night. The light was behind her.

"Trav? Trav?"

"Mmm. How's your head, Janine?"

"I'm all right. I'm perfectly all right. Trav, how badly are you hurt?" She had bared my shoulder and she was looking at the bandage.

"It's just a scratch."

"Please. How bad is it?"

"I don't think it's too bad."

"I want to look at it."

"Let me wake up. I didn't mean to sleep so long."

"Get waked up, then. I'll be right back."

She came back with a towel, a first-aid kit and a basin of hot water. I rolled onto my right side. She went to the other side of the bed, spread the towel and equipment out, and snipped the bandage off.

I heard her insuck of breath, and said, "That bad?"

"I… I think it looks worse than it is. I'll try not to hurt you."

She busied herself. She was very gentle. "Travis?"

"Yes, Jan."

"He was going to kill us both, wasn't he?"

"Maybe."

"I know he was. From the way he looked at me. After he… I thought when you came in and snipped me loose, it was him coming back."

"Did he give you a bad time?"

"Sort of. After he chained me up, he hit me on the head again. Very very lightly, and it was just enough so everything seemed to go far away and I couldn't move or speak or see. I wasn't awake or asleep. I could feel what he was doing. Just with his hands. Sort of… to see what a woman was like there. And when I could move, I grabbed his hands and pushed them away. And he looked at me and blushed and then sort of half smiled and shrugged and I knew he knew I wouldn't ever be able to tell anybody about whatever he decided to do to me. I knew he'd come back… but it was you. And then I was sure he'd killed you like he killed Tush and… I knew I could kill him. I knew he couldn't stop me. And so… I did."

"You didn't quite make it, honey. I took care of it."

"Don't try to be sweet and protective and all. I looked at him in there. I had to touch him and turn him over to make sure. I even felt it in my hands when it hit him, a kind of looseness, the way his head went. I'm not proud of it or full of joy or anything. But I can live with it… There. I think that's better than the way it was, Travis."

"Thanks," I said and rolled onto my back. She took the basin and towel and gear away.

When she came back, she stood at the foot of the bed and said, "What do we do now?"

"I called Meyer while you were still out."

"And told him about this?"

"No. I said we might cruise around for quite a while."

"You did?"

"Until we're both healed up enough so people won't ask questions. If we go back, we make statements. Everybody will want to see how much front page space they can get, how many times they can get their pictures taken with us. What good will that do you or your kids?"

"No good at all."

"Or do Freddy's people?"

"They might as well think he's alive in the world, somewhere."

"And I couldn't take that kind of hot publicity, Jan. I can't start wearing a public face. It would put me out of business. I don't need a lot of official interest. There's a little bit now. All I can handle. So we deepsix him and say nothing. Not a word, Jan. Not ever, to anyone. Can you handle that?"

Her face was quiet, her eyes thoughtful. In the seanight there was the tangible presence of death aboard. A head-knocker whose luck turned very bad, who'd never make it to the Caicos, who'd had something rancid going on in the back of his mind, some warped thing all mixed up with darkness and helplessness and sexual assault. The sickness had begun to stir and move under stress, had begun to emerge, but his life had stopped before it had gone out of control.

She said, "What if you don't heal right? What if we have to find a doctor?"

"We have a story. We were potting at beer cans with a thirty-eight. The kick startled you. It slipped out of your hand, went off when it hit the deck."

"Does… anyone but us know he was aboard?"

"Not likely."

She nodded. "I'll be all right, Travis. I'll be fine." I got up and went on deck and discovered I had completely forgotten the anchor lights. We were well away from any course a small boat might take, but a darkened boat at night invites investigation. I put us back onto legal status. We were riding well. The night was soft, the stars slightly misted. Miami was a giant blow to the north.

I stayed topside a long time. When I went below, she was curled up on the yellow couch in the lounge, sound asleep. I looked down at her and hoped that she would have enough iron in her to help a one-armed man with some curiously ugly chores. She had dark patches under her eyes. I turned off the small dim lamp nearby and felt my way through dark and familiar spaces back to the master stateroom.

I didn't really know if she could last, if she could handle it, until the neat morning when I sat on the edge of the freshly made bed in the guest stateroom and watched her using the curved sailmaker's needle and the heavy thread, sewing Freddy into his sea shroud. She had cleaned and dressed my wound afresh. I had wired a spare anchor snugly to the deputy's ankles, and tucked his gun and cuffs and the black leather sap in beside him.

When she ran out of the hank of thread, and clipped it off and took a fresh end from the spool and moistened it in her lips before threading the needle again, she looked up at me for a moment. It was a flat, dark look, and it made me think of old stories of how warriors dreaded being taken alive and turned over to the women.

At the end of day she wrested the anchor free when I ran the Flush up to it, and brought it aboard. We ran outside, creaking and rocking in the swell. I put it on automatic pilot at just enough speed to hold it quartering into the sea, and together we clumsied him up and out onto the side deck. She held the book and tilted it to catch the light from where the sun had gone down, and she read the words we thought would be appropriate to the situation.

She laid the book down and with my one arm and her two, we lifted the stiffened body upright, and as she held it propped against the rail, I bent and grasped the tarp at the feet and lifted and toppled it into the sea. It sank at once. And then I took the wheel and came about and headed for the buoy that marks the pass back into Biscayne Bay.