Strawberries in the Sea (29 page)

“All right?” she called.

He didn't answer. She went in with the hot drink and found him huddled in the bag. She wrapped his wet head in a towel and held the mug to his mouth. His teeth clattered on the rim, but he sipped and swallowed. When that was done she rubbed his head as dry as possible. It fell into thick damp waves. “This long hair is a nuisance,” she said.

“It was even longer once,” he said with feeble pride.

“I'll bet.” She spread a dry towel on a pillow and put it under his head, zipped up the bag, then tucked a woolen blanket over it.

“I'll go let them know,” she said. “Maybe someone's come around to the harbor.” She went across the dark sitting room to the stair landing, and from the window there she saw lights in the Percy house, and Mark Bennett's wharf was illuminated. The carrier lay just inside the breakwater. “Yes, they're there,” she called back. “I'll go down.”

“
No!
”

The hysterical cry took her back to him. He was struggling to get out of the sleeping bag, his face contorted as if against torture. “Don't go! Listen—I'll tell you—” He freed his arms and got that death grip on her again in spite of sore hands. He was strong, muscled like a welterweight or an acrobat.

“I won't go yet,” she said, “but get back into that bag.”

“Do you promise you won't go?”

“I promise.”

He lay down. The bed shook with the energy of his chills. “St-stay where I c-c-can see you,” he commanded.

She sat on the side of the bed. He should drowse as he got warmer, and then she could go. She watched him in the grip of the tremors, wishing there were some quick way to warm him, and then watched him fight exhaustion in the quieter moments, trying to keep his eyelids up. She imagined what horrors he must see the instant the lamplit room and the comfort of another presence were shut off from him; the all-but-drowning in the dark, being carried along by the black water, reaching out frantically with fingers and toes for nothing; salt water washing into ears, eyes, nostrils, throat, and then something—maybe the big rock humped and shaggy like a bison in the mouth of Barque Cove—to hang onto while his vision cleared so that he saw the island rearing up over him, and a little distance away the white glimmer of the narrow beach.

She came back to the reality of the bedroom with relief. It seemed like a long time. He should be asleep, but he was watching her, his eyes a dull gleam under the lashes. The shivers were faint now, like the distant rumbles of a departing thunder storm.

“Listen,” she said. “I've got to tell them. Maybe they've told your folks by now, or your wife. They should know the truth right away.”

His teeth showed in a grin that was more a slow-motion snarl. “No folks. No wife. Nobody to worry about. I've got nobody but me.”

“But the other men should know.” He started to sit up and she said soothingly, “Look, I'll run over next door and tell the woman there. She can go down to the harbor and tell them, and I'll come right back. How's that?”

“No!
Please!
” The word came out in a gutteral explosion. His grip could have drowned a rescuer, if they'd been in the water. “There's time—there's time—they don't even know I'm gone, it's somebody else they're looking for—” He became incoherent.

Finally he lay back, breathing hard, watching her with an intensity she found both frightening and moving; he was like a terrified animal that could harm her in its mindless terror.

She said, “Would you like another hot drink?”

“If you go for that you'll keep going right out the door.” He spoke more carefully, piecing his words together, sweating with the effort to concentrate. “Don't give me up, please,” he begged. “Let them think I'm dead. Then I can get away, see?”

“You're going to wring my arms right out of the sockets,” she told him.

He wouldn't loosen. “I've got to keep you here. I think I killed a man back there. I clubbed him with an oar and he went overboard backward and didn't come up. I looked for him, believe me,” he implored. “That's how I fell overboard and the dory got away from me. It was outside the cove. The guys with him saw me hit him. That's why they have to think I'm drowned, see? I got my boots off and tried swimming for the shore, but the tide kept carrying me. I didn't want to drown out there in the dark, I was going to come in somewhere different from where they all were, and hide in the woods till they gave up, and then go down to the harbor and steal a boat. They found him, I'm pretty sure, and they can see where I hit him.”

“You don't know if you killed anybody. He could be ashore now and home all dry and safe.”

“I know I killed him!” he said angrily. “I know what it sounded like when I hit him side of the head with that oar handle. Jesus! I didn't mean to, but they were lying in wait for us down there. One bunch came out fast from the shore with an outboard, and started going round and round us to break up the herring and keep us from putting the twine overboard, and somebody else was back there in the dark firing at us and the carrier. Christ, we weren't going to take that!”

“Was anybody shot?”

“No, they were firing high from the shore, but the damn bastards, they said if we did put the twine over we'd never get it back in one piece. Well, they were spoiling for a fight, they been looking for it all summer, so by God they got it.” He was suddenly exhausted and fell back. “Only I didn't mean to kill anybody. He shouldn't a got me so mad. Guy with real yellow hair. When I hit him I saw it in the light from the carrier.”

“
No
.” She went slack under his grip.

“You know him?” he said hoarsely.

“Yes.”

“I didn't mean to,” he repeated. “You got to believe that. We were all like wild men down there.”

“I believe you.” She wanted to get away and vomit.

“So you see why I want 'em to think I'm dead too.” He was losing his voice. “Just let me rest and warm up, and I've got this friend who can come at night and take me off the shore where you found me. You can get a message to him. Write him a letter, and he'll come right away. . . . I do have this friend,” he insisted, as if she'd challenged him.

“I believe you,” she said again, automatically.

“And you hate my guts.”

“No.”

“If you give me up I'll kill myself. I mean that. I'll never go to jail.”

“Look, I'm not going anywhere tonight except maybe out back to the toilet.” The simple fact was that she could not walk away from this house tonight and down to the harbor and meet the announcement of Jamie's death. As long as she stayed here, there was a kind of nightmare unreality about the affair, even though this boy's panic and terror was convincing. Still, they were a part of the nightmare too, and they offered a hope of waking from it.

If only Jamie's face wouldn't keep coming up before her. The blue eyes, the quick belligerence and the sudden smile of triumph or capitulation.
But I'll be around. Just put your head out the door and whistle
.

She had to get out of the room, not to weep—which would have been an easy release—but away from
him
, who had done it. Mean it or not, he had done it.

She said, “Let go. I told you I'm not going anywhere.”

He released her. She could not look directly at him, but she sensed that he was staring at her with awe and fear. She could give him up and he would kill himself. They both knew.

“Do you want the lamp left?” she asked, standing up.

“Yeah. I hate the dark.” He sounded chastened and weary. Without looking at him again she went upstairs, got herself a blanket, and lay down on her bed.

If only she had stayed home instead of going toward the shots. She'd be sleeping now, free from Con for a while, and for her at least Jamie would still be alive. In the morning when she met the news she'd be equal with everyone else.

In the morning, she thought coldly, I will have
that one
out of my house. She sat up, gazing out of the window. The Percy house was dark now, the lights had been turned off on the wharf, and the carrier was leaving. Taking Jamie's body and his parents to the mainland?

She abhorred the bed, she loathed her own skin and wished she could escape it. She went downstairs, and listened at the bedroom door. He was sleeping now, she could tell by his breathing. She was free to go and tell somebody about him. Nobody else would be sleeping much tonight, even if they'd put out the lights at last.

But
he
slept. His face was turned toward the lamp, not only drained of terror but of life. She could see it more clearly now than before when he had been so frantic. He was older than she had first thought, with aquiline, almost Italian features, the black brows and lashes like ink strokes on parchment.

She believed that he would kill himself in jail. These saltwater tramps were always around to fill in for someone on a seiner or a dragger, or to work as a lobsterman's helper, drinking up their earnings or losing them by gambling, never sticking at anything for long. Something in them, or lacking in them, turned them unpredictable. They were half-gull, but far less stable than a gull. It wasn't simply a hunger for change that drove them.

No, if he couldn't find a way to kill himself here, he could hang himself in his cell at the county jail. Such deaths occurred once or twice a year.

What he could do here, she thought, looking at the lamp, was burn up the house and himself along with it. She blew out the lamp and went back to her bed. Finally she fell into the restless state which sometimes passes for sleep. She woke from a dream in which Con was sobbing over the death of his child and she was crying too and trying to comfort him. It was a good dream in spite of its anguish, because Phyllis was nowhere in it, and Con leaned his head against her breast, and they mourned the baby together.

A man
was
sobbing. Still in the spell of the dream, without questioning what Con was doing here in this house, she sat up to go to him. With the motion, everything fell away. She remembered that it was Jamie who was dead.

T
he harsh, visceral sobbing went on. She went downstairs and found him crying in his sleep. And because it was in his sleep, when woe is so tearingly intense, she wanted out of simple compassion to wake him. But to what? The reality couldn't be much improvement on the dream.

Still, she could hardly bear to listen, and there'd be no rest for her, however broken. She spoke to him, even put her hand on his shoulder, but it didn't rouse him, he was too far away. She got her blanket and pillow and lay down on the bed, turned on her side and put her arm across the sleeping bag and held him firmly.

He began to quiet down. Occasionally he drew a long shuddery breath, but these became infrequent. Under her arm his body seemed to go boneless and flat. Her own body pressed heavier against the mattress. Her brain was spinning behind her closed eyes, and the whole bed began to swing like a boat at her mooring. It was rather restful. Everything external retreated to a great distance; she saw Con drawn rapidly away from her, becoming tinier and tinier until he disappeared. There was one flashing glimpse of Jamie, like the explosion of a set piece in a night sky; the yellow head fell backwards in slow motion toward the water, but before she could cry out the scene died out in a train of sparks and left the night blacker than it was before.

There was really nothing, she thought. Cocooned in exhaustion, she slept.

Slowly surfacing in the morning, she thought it was Con in her arms, his breath against her throat, his hand on her breast. The small room was dim, but morning sunlight slanted in obliquely from the sitting room.

Last night came back to her like the big wave out of nowhere, she even tasted its salt in her mouth. She wanted to escape from the unconscious embrace, but she didn't want to wake him up and have to talk to him. She wished that he would mysteriously disappear without her having to tell anyone he was here. She inched cautiously out from under the naked shoulder and arm. For an instant he seemed to settle deeper against her, the hand slid off her breast to clasp her ribs, then he went slack, and she got away and out of the room without his waking.

She found she was holding her hand to her throat where his face had been, she could still feel the heat of it; she remembered thinking it was Con, and was ashamed and disgusted. She snatched a towel and went out doors, taking long thirsty breaths of the cool air. She leaned over the rain barrel and splashed water vigorously over her face and throat. It was very cold. She kept at it, as if she could wash away the whole night if she just did it long enough. Nothing would, of course. She straightened up and dried herself.

Down at the Sorensens the rooster crowed over and over. She wondered if the parents were sleeping now, wherever they were. It was indecent to think of two people like that in grief. They should always be the way she had known them.
Jamie
. Oh dear God. And Linnie would have to be told today. Blue eyes scalded with hours of weeping. Blue eyes staring upward, blind blue glass.

She retched, without anything much to bring up. Jamie dead, and his murderer lying in her house like a beached fish at the edge of the tide. She wished something would save her from the appalling incredibility of it.

Heavily she went back into the house. She put water on to heat and went upstairs to change her clothes. He didn't move when she passed through the sitting room both times, but when she was sipping coffee in a patch of sun, trying to think beyond her misery, he suddenly appeared, wrapped in a blanket.

“Got any more of that?” he asked hoarsely.

“Yes. Sit down, and I'll get you some clothes.” She put a mug of coffee and some canned milk on the table, and went upstairs to look at her clothes. She was in the habit of buying men's jeans because they fitted her flat rump better than women's sizes, so she picked out a pair, a flannel shirt, wool socks, and a pair of moccasins and took them down. But he was back in bed again, the coffee not touched.