Read an Excerpt
1
Sometimes the hot night wind brings bad dreams. It came streaming and steaming out of the west, piling the Gulf into a continual rumble of freight trains along the beach of Horseshoe Key, whipping the water of the wide bay inside the Key, and galloping along to rip and clatter the fronds of the cabbage palms beside my mainland cottage, to excite a squeaking and groaning of bamboo, to hiss and sigh through the tall Australian pines.
I slept deep in a heartbreak dream of the girl that was lost and gone, of my wife Judy, no longer mine, no longer wife. In my dream I looked out of blackness into a lighted room where she smiled upon a faceless man the way she had always smiled at me. I bellowed and pounded on the thick glass between us but she could not hear me. Or would not.
I came bursting up out of the dream, tense, sweaty, wide-awake, searching through all the turmoil of the west wind for some sound that did not fit the night. There was moonlight, coming and going between a scud of clouds. The curtain whipped and writhed in the moonlight. I did not know what I listened for until it came again, a sly scratching against the copper screening three feet from my head.
I slid open the bottom drawer of the nightstand, reached into the back of it and fumbled the oily cloth open to take the gun into my hand, feeling more assured but self-consciously dramatic, remembering the last time I had used it, months ago, to pot a palm tree rat eating from the bird feeder. It was loaded, as guns should always be. As I rolled off the bed toward the window, one knee against the harshness of the rattan matting, the scratching sound came again, and this time I heard the voice almost lost in the wind sounds, hoarse, urgent, cautious, speaking my name.
“Sam! Sam Brice!”
As I angled closer to look out, the moon was suddenly gone. “Who is it?”
“It’s Charlie, Sam. Charlie Haywood. Let me in. Don’t turn on any lights, Sam.”
I went through the small living room and out onto the screened porch and unhooked the door and let him in. I smelled him when he went by me into the dark living room. He stank of the swamps, of sweat and panic and flight.
“Something I can sit on, Sam? I’m a mess. I don’t want to ruin anything.” His voice was a half whisper, and I could sense the exhaustion in him.
He sat in a straight chair near the kitchen alcove, sighing as he sat down. “You know about me, Sam?”
“I read the papers. You’ve been news for five days, Charlie.”
“They making any guesses, about where I am?”
“The dogs tracked you south from the road camp before they lost you. They think you’re heading for the Keys.”
“Those goddam dogs! I circled back, Sam, after I bitched up those goddam dogs. I didn’t know if it would work. An old-timer told me it would. A pint bottle of gas I drained out of one of the trucks. When I got to a piece of open water big enough, I spread it thick on the shore where I went in. They snuff that, it’s supposed to put them out of business for an hour. I did some swimming, Sam. My God, I did some swimming. Have you got any cold milk? A bottle of it. I’ve been thinking about cold milk ever since I can remember.”
I thumbed the top off a new bottle and handed it to him, and sat near him, hearing the sound of his thirst.
“My God, that’s good! I’d forgotten how good.”
I went back into the bedroom and stowed the gun away and looked at the luminous dial of my alarm clock. Twenty after three.
When I turned he was close to me, startling me.
“I wouldn’t want you to use the phone, Sam.”
Anger was quick. “You made the choice, boy. You came to me. If you figured it wrong, it’s too late now, isn’t it? If I’m going to turn you in, you can’t stop me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said humbly. “I’m not thinking very good, Sam.”
We went back and sat and he finished the milk.
“Nice of you,” I said, “to count me in on this. It’s just what I need.”
“Don’t be sore, Sam.”
“I didn’t know we’re such close friends, buddy.”
“I went through the list fifty times, Sam, and it always came out to be you.”
“Why?”
“I knew I’d have to have help from somebody. I had to take the chance you’d still be living out here, a place I thought I could get to, and still living alone, Sam. I knew you wouldn’t scare easy. And, working for yourself, you’ve got more freedom to move around. And I don’t know if you remember it, but one time you hinted about the dirty deal you got—just enough so I guess you know how it feels to … get sent up for something you didn’t do. The way you feel so helpless.”
“For something you didn’t do!”
“I know how that sounds, Sam.”
“It sounds as if you’d lost your mind, boy.”
On the basis of all the known facts, Charlie Haywood was going to have all kinds of trouble peddling that story. Over two years ago he had been a car salesman at the Mel Fifer Agency here in Florence City, and the business I own and operate had brought me in contact with him. He was a reasonably likeable kid, about twenty-three, a little too dreamy and mild to be a very good car salesman, but, because he lived with his widowed mother who had a small income and also rented rooms to tourists, he didn’t have to make much to get along. I’d had a few beers with him several times and cased him as one of those optimistic, idealistic kids who, if he could find a bride with enough drive and guts, might find enough on the ball to make himself a tidy happy life.
And I guess it flattered me a little to be with him because he hadn’t recovered from the fact that I was one of his childhood heroes. When he had been in grade school I’d been Sam Brice, fullback, the big ground-gainer in the West Coast Florida Conference, with offers from every semi-pro college team in the East. And he was willing to forget that out of my own arrogance and stupidity I had let the wide world whip me and I had come home after three seasons with the National Football League with my tail tucked down and under.
Anyway, as the newspapers had brought out, Charlie Haywood had been acting gloomy and erratic for several weeks before he got in the jam. He drove out onto Horseshoe Key late one March afternoon, broke into the luxurious beach residence of a Mr. Maurice Weber, who had recently been a customer of the Fifer Agency, and had been apprehended while trying to pry loose a wall safe set into the rear wall of a bedroom closet. Mr. Weber had found him there, had held a gun on him, disarmed him and called the Sheriff’s office.
Charlie had spent three weeks in the County Jail awaiting the next session of the Circuit Court. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years. I heard that after a short indoctrination period at Raiford Prison, he had been transferred to one of the state road camps down in the ’Glades.
Though he had been gone over twenty-eight months, I could remember the gossip at the time he was sent up—how Weber had paid for a new car with cash, so it was possible there was more cash at the house. They said Charlie had been drinking a little too much, and his performance had been so poor the sales manager had warned him to straighten out or be fired.
“I haven’t lost my mind, Sam. I pleaded guilty. I had to. I couldn’t tell the whole story. It was the only thing I could do. I mean that was the way it seemed at the time. But … I’ve had a lot of time to think. And one day, a month ago, it all seemed to come together in my mind, all the loose parts of it, and I knew I’d been the worst damn fool the world has ever seen, and I knew I had to get out and come back here.”
“And do what?”
“Prove it was all lies, everything she said to me.”
“Who?”
“Charity Weber. The hell with bringing you into all that, Sam. It’s my problem. I’ve got to do it my own way.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want clothes and sleep and a chance to get clean. Nobody will ever know I was here, Sam. I swear I won’t tell anybody. I’m in terrible shape right now, but I’ll come back fast. They did one thing for me, Sam. They made me tough enough, mentally and physically, for what I’ve got to do. That guy you used to know, Sam. He doesn’t exist any more.”
“This puts me in a hell of a spot.”
“I know that. I didn’t tell you one of the reasons I came here. It’s because I’d do the same thing for you.”
There is no good answer to that statement.
