The Empty Copper Sea Part 9

Making it evident we weren't going to be given the reason.

"I didn't mean to pry," Meyer said.

"Of course you didn't. I can wring this stuff out and hang it later, gentlemen. Let's go up on the deck and see if we can spot John pursuing lunch."

We climbed the warped and weathered stairway to the deck climbed from one world into another. From the deck one could see across the top of the dunes, out to the blue Gulf dotted with infrequent whitecaps in the morning breeze. To the south was a curve of beach and the continuing line of dunes. To the north, far away, were a few white towers of Timber Bay rising up out of the city smudge. To the east was the north-south wavery line of the old asphalt road, heat s.h.i.+mmering from it.

She went into the house and came out with binoculars, and located him far up the beach. They were big old Navy ten-power, hard to hand-hold. She gave them to me, stood beside me. I was very conscious of her there, of a radiation of her body heat as we stood in the shade of the overhang, of the way the top of her brown head came higher than my eyes. Few women stand that tall in bare brown feet. I guessed her at a fraction of an inch over six feet.

I focused on John Tuckerman. He was a mile away, standing to mid-thigh in the waves, casting out beyond where they were beginning to lift and break.

"You can walk up there and talk to him," she said. "But don't... expect too much. He's quite confused."

"How so?"

"I thought when I got every last trace of alcohol out of his system, he would be like he used to be. Poor John. It's a wonder I haven't killed him, running him up and down that beach. I asked Dr. Sam Stuart about it and he said it was due to alcoholic spasm destroying brain tissue. He changed during the month after Hub disappeared. He was drinking so very heavily, I understand. He was... the way he is by the time I got here, by the time I could get here."

"Should we both go?" I asked her.

"It might make him anxious to see two of you coming. Just you alone would be better, I think."

He noticed me when I was a hundred yards from him. He saw me when he had drawn back his arm to cast. He stayed frozen in that position for a few moments and then lowered the rod and stood waiting. He looked like a Clark Gable gone seriously to seed. His dark hair was tangled and long. His black mustache had grown down over his lip. He had a four-day stubble of beard. But the cheekbones were high and hard, the brow jutting, the eyes dark, deepset, and merry. He was bigger than I had expected, almost as tall as I am, and wider, but soft. Tan helped hide the softness, the sagging belly, the varicosities on the husky legs. He wore ragged shorts. There was a tackle box on the sand and a stringer staked close by with the line leading into the wave wash.

"Any luck?" I asked.

"Not good today. Just some of those little suckers that taste like iodine. And a little shark I let go."

"What are you using, John?"

"I got these tired pieces of cut bait. They're beginning to smell. Say, how'd you know my name?"

"Gretel pointed you out up the beach here and told me you're fis.h.i.+ng for lunch. She seems like a nice person."

"Oh, she's a wonderful girl. Just wonderful. She's taking real good care of me. I can't remember the last time I had a drink. What's your name?"

"McGee. Travis McGee. I came out here with a friend of mine. His name is Meyer. He's back at the house with Gretel. We came to Timber Bay a few days ago to find out about buying Hub's ranch and grove land. We wondered if you could help us."

"No, I couldn't help you with anything like that. I was just a friend. That's all. We grew up together and went to school together and stayed friends. Hub was the smart one."

"I thought you were a vice-president of those companies he had."

"Oh, I was, sure. I guess I still am, come to think of it. But it didn't mean anything, not anything at all. He said it was so I could be expensed. I don't know why what I got paid couldn't have come out of just one of the businesses. I wasn't getting a free ride, though. I did a lot of things for Hub. And for Julie and the kids too. Pretty important things, sometimes. Like making sure something would get delivered on time to the right person."

Finally I was able to put a name to what was so strange about him: it was his childlike quality. The amiable open manner, the pleasant eagerness were those of a manly child, eager for approval. "Deliveries can be very important," I said. You just bet they can!"

I saw some action out beyond the waves and wondered if I could find him some better bait. I took off shoes and socks, rolled my pant legs up, went down to the edge of the water, and began digging in the soft wet sand. After a little while I dug up a sand flea, oyster-white, multilegged, and s.n.a.t.c.hed him before he could burrow back into the wet sand. He was as big around as my thumb and half as long. I took him and impaled him on John Tuckerman's hook.

"That's an ugly thing!" he said. "Where did you find it?"

"There should be a lot of them along this beach. Cast out over in that direction and reel in fast."

"Fast? Okay."

In the first ten feet of retrieve he got a hard strike. He yelled with excitement and pleasure. He worked the fish expertly, but when we got a look at it, his shoulders sagged. "Oh, nuts. Another kind of trash fish. A darn jackfish."

He had a fish knife in his tackle box. I pulled the four-pound jack farther up the beach, slit its throat, and pulled it back into the water, holding it captive by the leader. It pumped strings and strands of dark blood into the water until it weakened and died. The sea had washed away all the pink blush of blood.

"What did you do that for?" he demanded. He looked upset and disapproving.

"Because it is second cousin to a pompano, and now the meat won't be dark and heavy, and it makes a good panfish."

As the knife was sharp enough, I filleted the fish on the spot, washed the two slabs of meat in the sea, and threw the rest out beyond the surf, where the crabs would clean it up quickly.

"You sure did that fast," John Tuckerman said.

"Lots of practice."

"Say, were you ever a guide? Did you do guiding out of Marathon, ever? You look like a fellow me and Hub hired down there a long time ago. No, you couldn't be. That was maybe fifteen years ago. He'd be a lot older by now than you are."

"I've found fish for a lot of people, but not for hire."

"What did you say your name is?"

"Travis McGee."

"Trav?"

"Sure."

"I used to remember names real good. It is sort of a trick. You know. You find some way to match up the name to the way the people look. Like if there is a woman named Fowler with a big mouth and a real loud voice, you say to yourself, She is Fowler the Howler, and then you never forget. But I have stopped remembering somehow. I used to be able to tell ten thousand jokes. I was known for telling jokes. The other day I was fis.h.i.+ng and I tried to remember one. Just one. And I couldn't."

"If this fish is lunch, we ought to get it back to the house."

"Hey, you're right!"

We picked up our stuff and walked back along the beach toward the cottage. The roof gleamed white in the sunlight on the far side of the dune. I could see the dark shade on the veranda and a sudden glint, and knew she was taking a look at us through the binoculars.

Trite and repet.i.tive thoughts march endlessly through every mind. I cannot use or even think of binoculars without my memory banks making a printout of the overly familiar fact that in World War II the Israeli hero Dayan, serving with the British, lost his eye when a sniper slug hit the binoculars he was using. I do not need to know this all my life. I do not need my memory dredging it up. We have no way of turning these things off. Every brain, including those of Kissinger breadth and force, is cluttered with these bits and snippets, these everlasting echoes.

"House been there long?" I asked him.

"A long time. I don't know how long. It was there when Hub bought the whole tract. That d.a.m.n Kristin talked him into buying it. It was unique, she said. It sure is unique. It is too far from anything. Hub said I could use it as a beach house. I fixed it up a little. Got a new well dug. Put the generator in and did some wiring. But the generator won't work now."

"I fixed it."

"You did? So quick!"

"A setscrew had worked loose. It wasn't much."

"Gee, Gretel and I are sure glad it's fixed."

"And now you live out here?"

"With no money coming in at all, I couldn't keep the nice apartment I had at North Pa.s.s Vista. It was more like a whole house than an apartment."

"Kristin lived there too?"

"She lived in Melody unit. I was over in Symphony, nearer the beach. They're named after music things. Concerto, Harmony, Opera, and so on. The wife of the guy that put them up was a harp player. There are four town houses in each unit. Like Symphony One, Symphony Two, and so on. Mine was Symphony Four. I put my stuff in storage. I didn't want to bring it down here to the beach to this place. I don't think I can keep up the payments on the storage. I'll probably lose that too."

"Too?"

"Like I lost the car. They say I ran it into a tree, but I don't remember. I shouldn't have been driving anyway because my license was suspended. The car was totaled and the insurance company wouldn't pay a dime because I wasn't a licensed driver any more. How do you like that? I was with them sixteen years! It was right about then that Gretel got here, thank G.o.d. Now that she's here, everything will be okay."

"When we got here she was doing the laundry in those big drums. Are you two so hard up you can't spare quarters for a coin laundry? We pa.s.sed one back at the edge of town."

"Oh, we could afford that, but Gretel is stubborn. And she gets these ideas about things. She wants to see just how independent of everything we can be. No telephones or power companies. She's trying to grow stuff in a garden she planted way the other side of the hard road, on the edge of the marsh, but the birds and rabbits are giving her a hard time. And the mosquitoes eat her when she goes over to work on it. But she won't give up. Not on anything. Ever."

We came to the path that wound up to the crest of the dune and down the other side. Gretel and Meyer were on the deck. John Tuckerman held up the fillets of jack and Gretel applauded him.

She came down and got the fish. Once she had hefted it, she asked us to stay to lunch. Meyer sidestepped the question and left it up to me. I said we'd be delighted, and thanks very much for asking us.

We tipped the soapy-water drum downslope, and she grilled the fish over the embers from the driftwood fire. While I had been with John Tuckerman, Gretel and Meyer had wrung out and hung up the clothes. We had lunch off chipped blue willowware plates at a table by the windows in the small bare living room of the beach cottage. We had the grilled fish, canned peas, and black coffee. The biggest object in the room was the fireplace. There was seash.e.l.ls on the windowsills and the mantel. Gretel put on a blue work s.h.i.+rt over her bikini before coming to the table. She glowed with strength and health and vitality. I envied John Tuckerman. There were golden flecks in the deep brown pigment of, her eyes, near the pupils. The whites of her eyes were the blue-white of peak physical condition.

Through the meal we talked fis.h.i.+ng, and over coffee I said, "Where were you before you came here, Gretel?"

"I came out of the nowhere into the here."

"We don't answer questions," John said earnestly. "That's one of the rules. She says I could get into real-"

"Hey!" she said. "We don't have to explain why we don't answer questions."

"Okay," he said grumpily. "But you sure are bossy."

"There are reasons," she said. She smiled at Meyer. "We've had other visitors."

"Like Fletcher. Like that d.a.m.ned Fletcher."

"Hush, dear," she said.

"A deputy sheriff?" I asked. "Now in Mexico with the insurance investigator?"

"He said they were going there," John said.

She glared at me, her face darkening in anger. She said, "I think it is pretty d.a.m.ned low to keep digging and digging away at somebody who... who..." She didn't know how to say it in front of him.

"You're cute," I said. "Both of you. You make a cute couple. Speaking about low. Sure, John Tuckerman. Keep your mouth shut. And deprive a very decent hard-luck man named Van Harder from making a living at his trade. There is a smell of money in the wind, lady, and you seem to turn toward it like some kind of weathervane. You came out of the nowhere into the here to brush up an old affair and get closer to the money."

She stared at me, aghast. "You think I'm his old lady?"

"She's his sister," Meyer said. And as soon as it was said, I could see it. Bone structures, coloring. She thumped the table with her fist, making coffee dance in the cups. "I came here to help John any way I can, because there isn't anybody else left in the world who will help him."

"In spite of all your marvelous motives and family spirit and so on, Gretel, it still leaves Van Harder on the beach."

"He ran the Julie," John said. "Hub put half of one of those horse capsules in-"

"John! Shut up, shut up, shut up! Jesus G.o.d! They can nail you for conspiracy to defraud, or whatever the right words for it are. Now tell me, John, what really happened to Van Harder?"

"I guess he must have had that big drink Hub gave him on an empty stomach. Or else he brought some liquor aboard with him and drank it too. He pa.s.sed out when we were on automatic pilot, and one of the girls got sick and went up there and saw him and came down and told us. We decided we'd better go back to Timber Bay. When we found the pa.s.s and started in, Hub went up on the bow and-"

I interrupted him. He had been reciting it. He had learned it by rote. "Okay, okay," I said. "Van got half a horse tranquilizer. I know the other story by heart too."

John looked at Gretel for guidance. She said to me, "I guess you can understand why we can't help your friend. Why John can't help your friend. The establishment took such a beating, they would be glad to stuff anybody in jail."

John Tuckerman made a m.u.f.fled sound. We all looked at him. His eyes had filled and one tear broke and ran down his cheek. "He could have taken me with him," he said. "Everything would have been all right. if he had to go, he could have taken me. Instead of that b.i.t.c.h architect. That dirty rotten b.i.t.c.h architect." His voice broke.

Meyer said in his jolliest tone, "John and I are going to clean up here, while you and Travis take a walk on the beach, Gretel."

She looked at him and then she looked at me, a steady, suspicious, interrogatory look, trying to see through my eyes and into my skull. There was a sudden impact, almost tangible. I wanted to be more than I was, for her. I wanted to stop being tiresome and listless and predictable. I wanted to be thrice life-size, witty and urbane, bright and reliable, sincere and impressive-all for her. She merited better than the pedestrian person she stared at.

The hostility and suspicion faded into a look of doubt, a lip-biting tension. "So come on," she said, and I had to hurry to catch her halfway up the dune.

We stopped at the crest, the early afternoon sun speckling the sea with silver mirrors, aiming arrows of light at us. To the south, birds worked a moiled area of bait.

"We have to trust somebody," she said. She looked sidelong at me. "I've had terrible luck in the trusting department." Before I could respond she was off down the slope, leggy and swift, heading south down the beach.

Ten.

"YOU CAN'T really appreciate the change in John unless you'd known him before. So quick and funny and exasperating. If he'd just had the motivation, he could have been a successful person. Well, maybe he was a successful person. At least he had sense enough not to try marriage. He would have made a terrible husband. As bad, I guess, as the one I married too young, Billy Howard. I think John has always been more than half in love with Julie Lawless anyway."

We were two miles down the beach from the cottage. A driftwood weatherworn section of wooden dock projected from the shallow slope of the dune-a shelf for sitting. She poked at the sand with a stick as she talked, making small avalanches.

"He tied his life to Hub Lawless's life. And when everything went sour for Hub and he decided to run, he shucked John off. John has been an intensely loyal person. He drank for oblivion, and I think he found some... permanent kind. He is... a simplified personality now. At the time of the hearing and the investigation, he was himself. I couldn't be here then, but I could tell from the newspaper stories. He could handle it. He couldn't get through that sort of thing now. He can be tricked, like a child."

"The way I was tricking him."

"Yes. It made me angry."

"You didn't hide it."

"Short fuse, friend."

"Short fuse and long talk. You talk around and around it, and you keep on wondering if you should tell me anything, or if you should keep on waffling."