The Dreadful Lemon Sky Read online

  He had become hesitant, the words coming more slowly, with less certainty. He smiled with strange shyness and shrugged and said, “But that doesn’t work, does it?”

  “I think it works pretty well.”

  “No. Because then they could only kill once. But some of them go on and on. Pointlessly.”

  “Some of them. Weird ones. Whippy ones.”

  “Theorizing is my disease, Travis. A friend of mine, Albert Eide Parr, has written, ‘Whether you get an idea from looking into a sunset or into a beehive has nothing to do with its merits and possibilities.’ I seem to get too many of my ideas by looking into my childhood.”

  “They didn’t nail either of us between the eyes this time.”

  “Ever the realist.”

  We cleaned up and sacked out early. I lay wakeful in the big bed, resentful of Meyer nearby in the guest stateroom, placidly asleep. When he had been involved in a government study in India, he had learned how to take his mind out of gear and go immediately to sleep. I had known how, without thinking about it, when I had been in the army, but in time I had lost the knack.

  Meyer had explained very carefully how he did it. “You imagine a black circle about two inches behind your eyes, and big enough to fill your skull from ear to ear, from crown to jaw hinges. You know that each intrusion of thought is going to make a pattern on that perfect blackness. So you merely concentrate on keeping the blackness perfect, unmarked, and mathematically round. As you do that, you breathe slowly and steadily, and with each exhalation, you feel yourself sinking a tiny bit further into the mattress. And in moments you are asleep.”

  He was, but I wasn’t. Once I had explained Meyer’s system to a very jumpy restless lady, telling her it wouldn’t work for me and it wouldn’t work for her. I said, “Go ahead. Try it. It’s just a lot of nonsense, Judy. Right, Judy? Hey! Judy? Judy!”

  Tonight I was too aware of all the world around me. I was a dot on the Waterway chart between the small islands. Above me starlight hit the deck after traveling for years and for trillions of miles. Under the hull, in the ooze and sand and grass of the bottom, small creatures were gagging and strangling on the excreta of civilization. The farthest stars had moved so much since the starlight left them that the long path of light was curved. After the planet was cindered, totally barren of life, that cold starlight would still be taking the long curved path down to bound off black frozen stone. Ripples slapped the hull. I heard a big cruiser go barreling down the Waterway, piloted by some idiot racing to keep his inevitable appointment with floating palm bole or oil drum. Long minutes after the sound had faded, his wash tipped the Flush, creaked the lines, clinked something or other in the galley. It disturbed a night bird, which rose from one of the islands, making a single horrid strangled croak. Far off on the north-south highways there was the insect sound of the fast-moving trucks, whining toward warehouses, laden with emergency rush orders of plastic animals, roach tablets, eye shadow, ashtrays, toilet brushes, pottery crocodiles, and all the other items essential to a constantly increasing GNP.

  My heart made a slow, solemn ka-thudding sound, and the busy blood raced around, nourishing, repairing, slaying invaders, and carrying secretions. My unruly memory went stumbling and tumbling down the black corridors, through the doors I try to keep closed. A tickle of sweat ran along my throat, and I pushed the single sheet off.

  Where had Carrie Milligan gotten the money?

  Had she told anyone I had it?

  What had the money to do with being in the same clothes too long?

  Kidnap?

  Smuggling?

  Casino?

  Robbery?

  Let’s take it to Nutley and give it all to the little sister and then go fishing, preferably down off Isla de las Mujeres.

  But first, friend, let us try to get the hell to sleep. Please? Please? Keep the black circle absolutely round. Sink deeper with each exhalation. Absolutely round.

  Four

  A good marina—and rare they are indeed—is a comfort and a joy. The private channel to Westway Harbor was about six hundred yards long. It was a seminatural basin, dredged to depth, with the entrance narrowed for protection from wash, storm waves, and chop. The gas dock was inside the entrance, tucked over to the south side. Small-boat dockage was on the southern perimeter of the basin. There were an estimated eighty berths for bigger craft dead ahead and to my right as I came through their entrance.

  A brown young man in khaki shorts came out of the dockmaster’s office, gave me a follow-me wave of his arm, and hopped onto an electric service cart. I eased to starboard and followed him to the indicated slip, then swung out and backed in between the finger piers as Meyer went forward and put loops over the pilings as we eased past. When the young man sliced the edge of his hand across his throat, Meyer made both bow lines fast to the bow cleat, and I killed my little diesels. The young man was polite. He helped with the lines. He asked permission to come aboard. He handed me a neatly printed sheet of rules, rates, and regulations, services available, and hours of availability. I asked him if he was Oliver, and he said Oliver had gone to lunch. He was Jason. Jason had a jock body, a Jesus head, and gold-wire Franklin glasses.

  The instructions were clear and precise. I helped him plug me into the dockside electricity. He took a meter reading. I said we’d like phone service, and he said he’d go bring an instrument. I tasted the hose water and told Meyer to top off the water tank while I went to the dockmaster’s office to make arrangements.

  As I walked, I admired the construction of the docks. Concrete piers and big timbers and oversized galvanized bolts holding them together. The trash cans were in big fiberglass bins. There were safety stations, with life rings and fire extinguishers. The water lines and power lines were slung under the docks, out of sight. They had about thirty empty berths. The fifty boats in sight looked substantial and well kept, especially a row of a half dozen big motor sailers. A calico cat sitting on the bow of a big Chriss stopped washing to stare at me as I walked by.

  There was a big tall lady behind the counter in the office. She had very short black hair and strong features. She was barelegged and barefooted and wore yellow shorts and a white T-shirt and a gold wedding ring. She stood about six feet high, and though the face was strong enough to look just a little bit masculine, there was nothing masculine about the legs or the way she filled the T-shirt. And she was almost as tan as I am. It made her cool blue eyes look very vivid, and it made her teeth look very very white.

  “Mr. McGee?”

  “Yes. You’ve got a fine-looking marina here.”

  “Thank you. I’m Mrs. Birdsong. We’ve been open exactly two years today.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” Her smile was small and formal. This was an arm’s-length girl. With a long arm. Twenty-eight? Hard to guess her age because her face had that Indian shape which doesn’t show much erosion from eighteen to forty.

  We made the arrangements. I paid cash for three days in advance, saying we might stay longer. I asked about a rental car, and she walked me over to a side window and pointed to a Texaco sign visible above the roof of the next-door motel and said I could get a car there.

  Just as we turned away from the window there was a roar, a yelp of rubber, and a heavy thud as someone drove a dusty blue sedan into the side of the building.

  A big man struggled out from behind the wheel and walked unsteadily to the doorway and paused there, staring at her and then at me.

  “Where have you been? Where—have—you—been?” she asked. Her eyes looked sick.

  He was six and a half feet tall, and almost as broad as the doorway. He had a thick tangle of gray-blond hair, a mottled and puffy red face. He wore soiled khakies, with what looked like dried vomit on the front of the shirt. There was a bruise on his forehead and his knuckles were swollen. He wafted a stink of the unwashed into the small office.

  He gave her a stupid glaring look and mumbled, “Peddle your ass anybody comes al
ong, eh, Cindy? Bangin’ dock boys, bangin’ customers. I know what you are, you cheap hooker.”

  “Cal! You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  He turned ponderously toward me. “Show you not to fool around with somebody’s wife, you bas’ard, you rotten suhva bish.”

  She came trotting toward him from the side, reaching for him, saying, “No, Cal. No, honey. Please.”

  He swung a backhand blow at her face, a full swing of his left arm. She saw it coming and tried to duck under it, but it caught her high on the head, over the ear. It felled her. She hit and rolled loose, with a thudding of joints and bones and skull against vinyl tile floor, ending up a-sprawl, face down.

  Cal didn’t look at her. He came shuffling toward me, big fists waving gently, shoulder hiked up to shield the jaw. If he’d left enough room for me to slide past him and bolt out the doorway, I would have. Dog drunk as he was, he was immense and seemed to know how to move. I did not want to be in the middle of any family quarrel. Or any wife-killing. She was totally out, unmoving.

  One thing I was not going to do, and that was stand up and play fisticuffs. Not with this one. I was getting a good flow of adrenaline. I felt edgy and fast and tricky. I put my hands out, palms toward him, as though pleading with him not to hit me. He looked very happy, in a bleary way, and launched a big right fist at the middle of my face. I snapped my open palms onto that thick right wrist and turned it violently clockwise, yanking downward at the same time. The leverage spun him around, and his wrist and fist went up between his shoulder blades. I got him started and, with increasing momentum, ran him into the cement block wall. He smacked it, dropped to his knees, and then spilled sideways and sat up, blood running down into his eye and down his cheek from a new split in his forehead. He smiled in a thoughtful way and struggled up and came hunching toward me again. This time I moved inside a pawing left hand and hit him as fast and as hard as I could, left-right, left-right, to throat and belly. I knew it damaged him, but as I tried to slide past him, once more thinking of the doorway, he hit me squarely in the forehead. It creaked my neck, turned the bright day to a cloudy vagueness, and put me into slow motion. As I was going down, my head cleared. I hooked my left foot around the back of his right ankle and kicked his kneecap with my right foot. He grunted and tried to stomp me as I rolled away.

  As I came to my feet I saw he was having trouble making his right leg hold him up. And the blood obscured his vision. And he was gagging and wheezing. But he was coming on, and I wanted no part of him. I had lost the edge of my reflexes. I was halfway aware of the whirling blue lights of the cop car outside, and of men moving smartly through the doorway.

  “Cal!” some man yelled. “Cal, damn you!”

  Then they walloped the back of his head with a hickory stick. They rang the hard wood off the skull bone. He tottered and turned and pawed at them, and they moved aside and hit him again. He puddled down, slowly, still smiling, with the unbloodied eye turning upward until only the white showed.

  One of the officers rolled the limp hulk face down, brought the hands around behind, and pressed the cuffs onto the wrists. He said, “Hoowee, Ralph. He do have a stink onto him. We want him riding in with us?”

  “Not after the last time we don’t.”

  Jason, who had helped us dock, was kneeling on the floor. He had lifted Mrs. Birdsong into a sitting position. Her head was a little loose on her neck, and her eyes were vacant. He was gentle with her, murmuring comfort to her.

  “She okay, Jason?” an officer asked.

  “I … I guess I’m all right,” she said.

  “How about you?” he asked me.

  I worked my arms, massaged the back of my neck. My head was clearing the rest of the way, taking me out of slow motion. I felt my forehead. It was beginning to puff. “He hit me one good lick.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I was checking in.”

  “He brought his boat in a little while ago,” Jason said. He helped Cindy Birdsong to her feet. She pulled free of him and walked over to a canvas chair and sat down, looking gray-green under her heavy tan.

  “Want to prefer charges?” the officer asked.

  I looked at Cindy. She lifted her head and gave a little negative shake.

  “I guess not.”

  The cop named Ralph sighed. He was young and heavy, with a Csonka mustache. “Arthur and me figured he might head back here. We’ve been trying to catch up with him for two hours, Cindy. We got all the charges we need. He run two cars off the road. He busted up Dewey’s Pizza Shack and broke Dewey’s arm for him.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Earlier he was out to the Gateway Bar on Route Seven eighty-seven, and he pure beat the living hell out of three truck drivers. They’re in the hospital. I’m sorry, Cindy. It’s since he got on the sauce so bad. And being on probation from the last time … look, he’s going to have to spend some time in the county jail. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

  She closed her eyes. She shuddered. Suddenly Cal Birdsong began to snore. There was a little puddle of blood under his face. The ambulance arrived. The cuffs were removed. The attendants handled him with less difficulty than I expected. Cindy got a sweater and her purse and rode along with the snoring gigantic drunk, after asking Jason to take care of things.

  Jason leaned on the counter and said, “He was okay. You know? A nice guy up to about a year ago. I’ve worked here since they opened. He drank, but like anybody else. Then he started drinking more and more. Now it makes him crazy. She’s really a very great person. It’s really breaking her heart, you know?”

  “Booze sneaks up on people.”

  “It’s made him crazy. The things he yells at her.”

  “I heard some of them.”

  The part of his face not covered by the Jesus beard turned redder. “She’s not like that at all. I don’t know what it is with him.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “Oh, right over there, in this end unit in the motel. They built the motel the same time as the marina, and leased it out, and in the lease they get to use the unit at this end, a little bigger than the others. Cal inherited some money and they bought this piece of waterfront and put up the marina and the motel. But they could lose it if it keeps up this way.”

  He went and got a mop and a pail and swabbed up the blood. While he was at it he mopped the rest of the floor. A good man.

  I stepped around the wet parts and went back to the Flush. Meyer was annoyed. Where had I been? What had happened to my forehead? What were we going to do about lunch?

  I told him how I’d happened to meet the Birdsongs. Lovely couple.

  When we went to get a car and get lunch, I saw a different fellow in the office. This one was beardless and smaller and rounder, but just as muscular.

  “Jason here?”

  “He went to lunch. Can I help you?”

  “I’m McGee. We’re in Slip Sixty.”

  “Oh, sure. We talked on the phone. I’m Oliver Tarbeck. I understand you and Cal went around and around.”

  “Sort of. If I can get a rental car, where should I park it?”

  “In that row over there where it says Marina Only. If it’s full, come here to the office and we’ll work something out.”

  “Place to eat?”

  “A block to the left, on this side. Gil’s Kitchen. It’s okay for lunch.”

  We had lunch first. The place wasn’t okay for lunch. Gil had a dirty kitchen. A fried egg sandwich was probably safe. We went from there to Texaco, which had some sort of budget rental deal, and I tested to see if I could get my knees under the wheel of the yellow Gremlin before giving him the Diner’s Card. Nobody will take a cash deposit on a car any more. It forces everybody into cards. As the world gets bigger, it gets a lot duller.

  I asked him if he could tell me how to find Junction Park. He gave me a city map and marked the route.

  The Gremlin did not have air, but it had some big vents
. Meyer read the map and called the turns. It was easy to see the shape and history of Bayside, Florida. There had been a little town on the bay shore, a few hundred people, a sleepy downtown with live oaks and Spanish moss. Then International Amalgamated Development had moved in, bought a couple of thousand acres, and put in shopping centers, town houses, condominiums, and rental apartments, just south of town. Next had arrived Consolidated Construction Enterprises and done the same thing north of town. Smaller operators had done the same things on a smaller scale west of town. When downtown decayed, the town fathers widened the streets and cut down the shade trees in an attempt to look just like a shopping center. It didn’t work. It never does. This was instant Florida, tacky and stifling and full of ugly and spurious energies. They had every chain food-service outfit known to man, interspersed with used-car lots and furniture stores.

  Junction Park was inland and not far from a turnpike interchange. It had been laid out with some thought to system and symmetry. Big steel buildings were placed in a herringbone pattern, with big truck docks and parking areas. The tall sign at the entrance said that Superior Building Supplies was the fourth building on the right.