The Murderer Vine (16 page)

I lit a cigarette and interlaced my fingers at the back of my neck. I tried to think of other things — of standing up to my hips in the warm green water off Marathon Key trying for bonefish, or of the hammerhead shark that used to drift under the pier north of Clearwater and scare away all the small fish.

I stared at the ceiling. There were no interesting patterns on the ceiling I could trace to hypnotize myself to sleep. Maybe Old Man Mose had a juju I could use. He might even have a simple. And I would bet it would be just as effective as a tranquilizer. And organic. There would be no chemical residue left in my tissues to raise hell with my chromosomes. I must have chuckled because Kirby called out from her bed.

“What’s funny?”

“Oh, nothing.”

She got up and came, pulling on a blue robe of some thin material. Her hair was not in curlers.

“Oh, come on,” she said, sitting on the end of the couch and lighting a cigarette in the dark. “You know you can’t jus’ laugh an’ tell your wife nothin’s funny. It just ain’t friendly.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“I thought you were a hardened veteran.”

“I am. I still can’t sleep.”

Her behind felt warm and firm on my toes.

“Joe, what’s going on?”

“One reason why you’re getting so much money is that I won’t have to tell you anything.”

“Are we in danger?”

“Not with normal luck.”

“Am I supposed to fall into a relaxed sleep with that answer?”

“For five hundred a week you can afford to sleep lousy.”

She disregarded that. “Joe. Am I being some kind of an accessory?”

That was an interesting legal point she was bringing up. I didn’t think she was one, either before, during, or after. The state would have to prove she had full knowledge of what was going on and what my purposes were. I could protect her by not letting her know. If they’d ever give her a lie-detector test, she’d come out ahead. The trouble was that she would now want to know more than ever what was going on, and if I wouldn’t tell her, she was smart enough to piece it together from keeping her eyes and ears open. And as far as Milliken County was concerned, they wouldn’t give a damn about legal definitions. A shotgun poked into a car window after we’d been run off the road would be a duly constituted court.

“You’re not any kind of an accessory.” That was legally debatable, but it was my position.

She made little circles with her toes on the rug.

“Joe, if I’m more than camouflage, I have the right to know what kind of a situation I’m in.”

Sure she had the right. I had thought, however, that I could buy her silence and make her keep her fears to herself for five hundred a week. She was more than camouflage. Her advice in most matters was excellent. And perhaps the legal boundaries as to being an accessory were getting very thin here.

She exhaled slowly.

“If I wind up being dragged before some judge or other, I have the right to know what I’m doing.”

“Who pays what I’m paying for legal services?” I burst out. “Goddammit, you knew that when you started!”

“All right, Joe. I’m a woman and I just changed my mind.”

“And I’m exercising my male privilege and I don’t feel like answering.”

“All right. New topic. How are things going?”

“Lousy. Thanks for asking.”

“My pleasure. Good night.”

She stood up and looked down at me for a moment. She was hurt and she was mad. The blue robe hung open. Her breasts were pushing against the thin white nylon nightgown. The walls were thick, the bed in her room was solid; it had a firm box spring and a good mattress. The Garrisons were not hanging around the hallway eavesdropping, and their bedroom was downstairs and at the other end of the house.

I wanted to pull her back and pull her nightgown up and kiss her knees. Just for starters.

But it was better for her to go away hurt. It would force her to keep her mind on her work. And I was a man expecting to run fast pretty soon. How does that old proverb go?
He runs fastest who travels alone.

Scarcely an original thought. But it had pith. Pith is a stupid word. You can make bad puns with it. But pith it had, nevertheless.

I watched her walk back to her room. I watched her close the door. Then I watched the thin slab of golden light at the bottom of the door. Then it went out.

Dunne, you son of a bitch. You were noble. But try to sleep now — if you can.

Next morning I was about five miles west of Okalusa, drinking a Coke in a gas station. I heard a faint roar far down the road. It quickly became a scream. I shoved open the screen door in time to see a yellow blur go by. The noise bursting from its twin chrome-plated exhaust pipes was so high-pitched that it sounded like the blare of a bugle. I had never seen a car go so fast outside of a racetrack.

“Jesus Christ Almighty,” I breathed. The owner of the gas station hadn’t even gotten off his chair.

“That’ll be Ray,” he said calmly.

“The bus driver?”

“Yep. He cain’t do over sixty with the bus or he’ll git fired, so on his days off he goes up an’ down here considerable faster. He built that car hisself outta junk parts.”

Ray was someone I might get involved with in a business way someday. He chatted away. I drank the rest of my Coke thoughtfully, paid for my gas, got into the car, and looked at the speedometer. After all, Milliken County’s specialty was forcing strangers’ cars off the road into a ditch and shotgunning them.

The number at the extreme right end said 110. I had best make sure it was telling the truth. I got out and had the guy get her up on the lift. The king-pins, the linkage, and all the front-end steering was okay. The tires were good.

The lift hissed and she came down. He refused my offer to pay for his services, and I drove off with a wave of my hand.

I drove to a road that ran straight as an arrow through the swamp. No side roads, no intersections, just a deep, wide ditch on both sides. No deer could make a sudden leap out of the bushes and wind up going through my windshield, flailing around with its razor-sharp hooves.

I wanted to find out what I had under me and what it would do when I might ask it to sit up and stretch out.

I pushed the accelerator to the floorboard. She picked up speed like frozen glue, coughing like an old man with bronchitis. Then she began to go to work. Reluctantly. At fifty the steering began to wobble a little.

It could do eighty-three. Eighty-three wasn’t bad. But it wouldn’t do in Milliken County, where the kids began to fool around with Wolverine push rods and Mickey Thompson pistons at an age where Northern kids were graduating from stickball games into poolhalls.

The gas station man had told me that Ray’s yellow rocket had a big 401-cubic-inch Buick engine mounted on a ‘31 Ford Model A chassis. It had a Hilborn injector atop a GMC 4-71 supercharger, and all that power was being transmitted to the ground via a pair of M and H Raccmaster 9.00 by 15 tires.

Eighty-three? What I needed was a simple Ford chassis with a Chrysler engine cunningly hidden inside it, and some of the glamorous accessories hanging around at the Mille Miglia.

And with that I might be able to walk away from anything the county could produce. The only trouble was that I couldn’t see how a poor scholar like me might have such a jalopy. So I would have to live with that 83 m.p.h. albatross slung around my neck with the hope that I would play my cards right, and ease out of Milliken County as easy as a ripe apple falling from a tree — when the time came.

Two evenings later we drove to the country club. Kirby was driving. Washboard roads and mud can tire your back and shoulder muscles when you spend all day on them.

I slumped down in the seat beside her and looked at the top of the magnolia trees that were sliding by overhead. They lined the winding drive that led to the club. Every hundred feet another lamp lit up the dark green leaves. A moon hung low on the horizon like a big yellow balloon.

“How did it go today?”

“Umm.”

“No, really.”

“All right. I’m getting sick and tired of going into crossroads grocery stores where the blacks who come in take off their hats and wait to be spoken to by some tobacco-chewing slob who lets them know he’s going to finish reading the paper or serve some white first who came in after them. It sort of spoils the air.”

“An’ all you want from now on is beautiful people?”

I waved a hand.

“Just bring me beautiful people,” I said.

She was wearing a green dress. I had never seen the dress. She looked like a million dollars in it. I rolled my head against the back of the seat to look at her again. Her hair was exactly the same color as the low yellow moon.

Kirby parked in the lot back of the club. It had a graveled surface raked in neat parallel lines. Trash bins were placed at regular intervals around the edge. It was full of Caddies and Jags. The patio was filled with tables, each one with a hurricane lamp and a candle burning inside. Trees in the patio were festooned with lights.

As soon as we stepped through the French doors opening into the club, a man came up and greeted us. He had the most sincere handshake I had ever encountered up till then. I thought I had left those kind of greetings behind when I eliminated Harry Gilbert from my circle of associates.

“And you must be the Wilsons!”

My hackles rose. They’re the small hairs at the back of your neck and you can actually sense them sort of stirring when you’re angry if you can bend your mind to it next time you feel mad. I guess it’s an inheritance from our animal days when we used to erect our fur to make us look bigger and more threatening. Since I wanted to make everyone like me, I was glad those pre-dinosaur days were over. Else he would have known right away that I would have liked to sink my fangs in him. There must be something prehistoric in me which can’t stand the Harry Gilbert sort of person. I don’t know why it is. I will admit it’s a serious defect; lots of people don’t object to that warmth even though it’s produced by forced draft. They even feel flattered.

I suppose it’s because I don’t like being handled as an object. Because that’s what these people do, they regard everyone as a sort of a bolt that moves along an assembly line. You take the bolt, shove it through a properly machined hole, twist a nut onto the other end, give it nine turns with a wrench and there aren’t any problems from the bolt. It’s even supposed to like being treated like the other bolts. And it’s supposed to love the sensation of having a nut squeezed against it.

I haven’t been machined. I don’t want to be treated as a great guy when I might be a son of a bitch. I don’t give out love when I’m stroked that way. I’m not a cow’s udder to yield milk when someone smiles at me. As far as the country club was concerned, I might very well be harboring evil thoughts.

But I put on a very convincing smile when he was pressing the flesh.

“I’m Rich Cravens the third,” he said, and beamed.

“Third what?” I asked, puzzled. I was pushing it, and Kirby nudged me warningly. She was right. I had better ingratiate myself and not try to be funny.

“Why, Rich Cravens the third,” he repeated carefully. He explained that his grandfather had the same name, and so had his father. That made him the third, he went on. I listened patiently while he made it clear.

“I’m the club secretary. Mrs. Garrison told me to take special care of you two fine people, an’ that is what I’m goin’ to do, you can bet on that! You come ’long now, y’ hear?”

He took Kirby by her left hand and me by my right. He still hadn’t let go of it from the time he had begun to shake it. He must have been operating on the principle that if seizing one hand is good, grabbing two is better.

He took us into a huge room. There were handsomely draped curtains at the windows and on either side of the French doors, and three big chandeliers with thousands of crystals. Buffet tables lined one wall. Chairs were grouped around low tables filled with fresh flowers in vases, and two bars were busy working. People wandered in and out with drinks in their hands, nodding pleasantly as they passed.

He draped a heavy arm around my shoulders. I don’t like to be touched. I held back an impulse to throw it off. He put his arm around Kirby. That one I really wanted to fling away.

She sent me a quick warning glance. I rearranged my face into a shy, amicable look. He took us to the bar and presented us with mint juleps in iced silver mugs, introduced us to the few couples at the bar and waved a fat hand and disappeared.

After two juleps I found myself talking to him once more. He had circled around the room and had returned with a tall red-headed man and a thin, sulky, dark woman. She had short black hair, a deep cleavage, and several necklaces.

“I looked all around,” Cravens said, with one heavy arm draped around me once more and the other arm around the shoulders of the red-headed man. “An’ I brought two of ouah members ovah. Mr. an’ Mrs. Owen Brady!”

Brady looked at Cravens with distaste. Mrs. Brady looked at Cravens’ arm as if it were a snake. He took it off and clasped his hands together and stood there, flushing. No one said anything. I felt affection for the Bradys.

Kirby said immediately, “I think this place is simply marvelous!” I could recognize her instinct for saving situations. Mrs. Brady gave her a sour look.

Cravens said, “Mrs. Wilson, we’re real proud of the club. We think we’re pretty advanced in just about everythin’ we do here. We — ”

“Sure,” Mrs. Brady said. “Where are the black members?”

“Well,” he went on, “I’m an upholder. That’s what I am. I’m an upholder of tradition.”

“Of course.”

“I mean, I can’t allow any niggers in here. An’ I’m not prejudiced. I want you to un’er’stan’ that. I am not at all prejudiced. It’s only that I’ve got to stand in with the old traditions.”

“You betcha,” Mrs. Brady said. “Then how come they’re out there parking cars and in here serving drinks?”

“Oh, well,” he beamed, “anytime any one of them wants to work here, they’re welcome if we have a job openin’.”