The Moth (13 page)

I swear it happened that quick. What went in was a child, that you’d look at because she was pretty and graceful and friendly, but not for any other reason. What came out was a woman, only twelve years old yet, but one you couldn’t take your eyes off of, for all the reasons there are. She wrapped the robe around her and knotted the belt, then rolled her eyes in a resigned kind of way and went switching out there.

By that time darling Dickie was gone, but when I got out there with my gear he was back, and had his gun on him, in a holster, over his right hip. He started to talk, but Helen kept snickering like he must be crazy, and Margaret and Mr. Legg and Mrs. Legg kept looking at each other in a nervous kind of way while he talked: “Honest, folks, I don’t think you’ve thought this thing through. I’m not taking out Helen in any
formal
way, you understand. I’m only asking her to the
picture
show tonight. It’s not like she was making her
debut
or something. And frankly I think it would be good for her. If you ask me, Mr. Legg, she doesn’t go out enough.”

“I wasn’t asking you, Dick.”

“Oh? Oh? Oh?”

The little grin kept coming and going, and Mr. Legg kept licking his lips and looking at the gun. I don’t smoke, but there was a package of cigarettes in the sand and I picked it up and stuck a cigarette in my mouth and began slapping myself like I wanted a match. Then I stepped over toward Mr. Legg, like I would borrow one from him. Dickie paid no attention. I caught him on the chin with everything I had and he went down soft, which meant he was out. I unbuckled the holster, pulled it clear, then gave him some toe under the ribs. He rolled over. “Get up.”

“What are you doing to me, you big—”

“I said get up.”

I yanked him to his feet and he staggered around a little but pretty soon he could stand. Out of the tail of my eye I could see another boy, about his age but quite a lot bigger, come out of the Finley house and stand there watching. I gave Dickie a cuff on the jaw and said: “Now you cheeky little louse, suppose you get out and stay out or there’ll be more of the same, only a lot more. And leave Helen alone. Don’t speak to her or look at her or think about her, or it’s going to be most unfortunate. And don’t bring any more guns. What do you say?”

“So O.K., you hit me when I wasn’t looking, you—”

I clipped him again and he went down and when he got up I impressed on his mind he was to call me sir and he did it. Then he went stumbling through the sand to his house and the pal began looking at the marks on his face. Mr. Legg said: “Thanks, Jack.”

“Sometimes it’s the only way.”

“I’ll take that gun. I’m making an issue with Finley about it. This thing has gone far enough.”

“I’ll save you the trouble.”

I swung the holster and gave it a heave and it and the gun went flapping through the air about a hundred feet out into Chesapeake Bay. That was the one dumb thing I did. Because I was no sooner unarmed than the pal said something and here the two of them come, one piling in on one side, one on the other. They hit me and I went down but jumped up and backed away. Mr. Legg said something about phoning the state police and Margaret and Mrs. Legg ran into the house. A shell clipped Dickie on the head and he ripped out some cussword and turned. My heart jumped when I saw it was Helen that had thrown it. Mr. Legg began shooing her into the house.

All that took maybe one second, maybe two or three. After I went down, Dickie did, and his pal did, and nobody moved fast, because in the sand you slid and lurched and tripped yourself. I backed, though, some kind of way, and they plowed along after me. I felt damp sand under me and then I was in the water, and they were, but getting closer, as they could see where they were going and I couldn’t. Then I did something I’d seen linemen do on many a football field. I grabbed for their heads, but instead of headgears, I caught hair. I jerked them off their feet, and when their faces went in the water I held. They began to wriggle and kick and I held and kept on holding. Bubbles came up and the kicks got slower. By now, in addition to Mr. Legg and Helen, quite a few people, maybe seven or eight, were there, most of them yelling at me to let them have it, it served them right. Then a guy that seemed to be Dickie’s father splashed in and began shaking me and screaming I was murdering his boy. I let them up and dragged them out. They had water in their lungs and I put Pappy to working it out, with artificial respiration. When they could get up I let them have a couple of kicks and chased them out of there. Next thing, I was on the porch and Mr. Legg was pouring me a drink and people were arguing about it and it was pretty unanimous I had done a good thing for the island. Mr. Legg kept saying it was “magnificent,” and apologizing for not doing more to help me out. Then he told Helen to tell Margaret there was no need for the police, and to stop calling them, and she went inside. But before she did she gave me a funny, sidelong look, like she was seeing me for the first time. Mr. Legg kept on talking: “Jack, I can’t tell you what it did to me. I wouldn’t be capable of it in a million years, I may as well admit it.”

“It’s mostly muscle.”

“More than that.”

“And practice. I’ve spilled a few guys.”

“It’s more than muscle and more than practice. It’s—what they used to call courage and now they call guts.”

“Well—who am I to—”

I tilted the drink and he went on. He was, as I’ve said, a small, pink man with a little white mustache, and I don’t know how he ever expected to be much good in a fight. People began going home, and in a few minutes it was all awful quiet. Mr. Legg was worried about what Finley might be up to, and he kept watching. Then after a while he said: “Just the same, I think I’ll send her back. At the hotel Mrs. Brems will look out for her perfectly well, and if she’s not here the main source of trouble will be out of the way.”

“You mean—Helen?”

“Yes. I see it now. He’s showing off for her.”

“And the rest of you will stay here?”

“It’s not fair to ruin everybody’s summer.”

So I sat right in the boat, watched it drift out from the bank, turn in the current, and head for Niagara Falls, without lifting a finger to stop it or steer it or sink it. What was I thinking of, to do a thing like that? Who says I was thinking? Maybe I’d lost the capacity to think. For three years I’d been living in a dead house in a dead city in a dead state, going to a dead school studying the dead history of a dead country. Maybe you’ve forgotten 1930, 1931, and 1932, but I haven’t. All the things I’d been taught, about life and love and what it was all about, those lights I was to steer by, had turned into fish scales on me until they were just stuff for guys in college to gag about when they were half shot with beer. If I’d had the money I’d earned, that might have helped, anyway until I could figure out where I was at. But it was gone, because the things my father had learned had turned to fish scales on
him,
and it didn’t help much that the broker had been gentleman enough to knock himself off with a gun. So I’d let myself in for this marriage I didn’t want to a girl I didn’t want and a job I didn’t want, because I had as much use for the hotel business as a fish has for grass. All the thinking I was doing, I’d say, was thinking how not to think. If that meant drifting down the stream with this child, who was almost as unhappy as I was, it later turned out, picking flowers off the bank, listening to the bees, and watching the moon come up, then I was a sap all right, no argument about that. But all it meant at the time, so far as either one of us knew, was that it took two minds of what was weighing down two hearts, and wasn’t due to last any longer than the landing we were headed for, that would put an end to the trip. That we might shoot past it, that anything lay beyond it, never once entered my mind, and I’m sure it didn’t enter hers.

Not that I told her anything about it, or touched her or kissed her or did anything out of line, or even wanted to, that I remember. It was just that I was with her all the time, when I lived in a misty gold dream, and when I wasn’t with her I wasn’t even living. By now, she was growing to a woman so fast it made you catch your breath. Her hair had lost that ratty, kid look it had sometimes had, and was soft and glossy over its red-gold color. There were dark circles under her eyes and she had an expression like you see in the paintings of Madonnas. Her movements, that had been quick, all slowed down, so she was the most graceful thing in skirts I think I ever saw. Every motion she made was controlled, it began the right way and ended the right way, it wasn’t too fast and it wasn’t too slow.

I lived in the hotel now, but for the tutoring we used Margaret’s studio. Whichever shift I worked, we’d get the lessons in, and the rest of the time we’d swim in Clifton Park, where there’s a big lake they use for a pool, or go somewhere and dance, or see a picture. Mrs. Brems, the housekeeper, thought it was wonderful we should be such pals, and often put up little lunches, especially when we went swimming, so we could loaf at the pool and really enjoy ourselves. But what we did mostly, if I was free at night, was drive. We drove all over, down into southern Maryland, up into Pennsylvania, over into Virginia. But if we only had a little time we’d drive out to Lake Roland, where there was a place we could park and sit, or get out and walk around. One of those nights she touched my arm. “Jack ... up there ... in the trees.”

“Watch where you’re walking.”

“But look at it, Jack! It’s beautiful!”

I looked, but I knew what it was going to be before I looked.

It was a big luna moth, fluttering above us, full of moonlight. When it was gone her hand was in mine.

The algebra didn’t go so well. We’d work at it, she on one side of the card table we set up, me on the other, and the book in the middle, but we didn’t seem to get anywhere. It wasn’t long before I saw, or thought I saw, what the trouble was. What had made the arithmetic go so well was that I’d really go into it, what she didn’t understand, but of course the way to start that off right was with some stuff about how dumb she was, and then we’d have the roughhouse, but when we got done with it we had our finger on the trouble. Now there was nothing like that at all. I treated her like a lady, instead of a hoodlum, and she tried to act like one, and where we got was nowhere. And then one day, toward the end of August, it seemed to me the time was getting short and we better get fundamental if she was ever going to learn anything, so I let go with it. I mean, I hauled out the same old line, that alongside of her a parade of snails would look like graduates of the Johns Hopkins University, or something like that. But that’s as far as I got with it. She burst out crying and sat there with tears squirting out of her eyes and running down on her dress. I jumped up and put my arm around her but she ran over to the sofa and threw herself down on it, face in the pillow, and shook with sobs. “Helen, Helen, what’s the trouble? Don’t you know it was just a joke? The same joke we used to have, so we could get to the bottom of it, what it is you don’t understand?”

“Go on, let me alone.”

“Come on, we’ll take a drive and—”

“Please, please!”

“Here, let me wipe your eyes!”

“No! No! Go on, go, go, go!”

I walked around the room, hoped it would pass and that she’d let me talk to her, went over and patted her, but it was no soap. I left, and the next two or three days I didn’t see her.

“Jack, where’s Helen?”

“... I don’t know, Mrs. Legg. Why?”

“Mrs. Brems hasn’t seen her since lunchtime. I’ve had them ring her room and she doesn’t answer, I’ve had her paged—maybe she’s just gone downtown somewhere without leaving word. But—I have a queer feeling something’s wrong.”

“I’ll look into it and call you back.”

I was in my room when they told me the island was calling, in pajamas from the heat, but I dressed quick, went down to the desk, picked up the master key, went to her room, and knocked. There was no answer. I went in and she wasn’t there. I was worried twice as bad as Mrs. Legg was, because I knew there could be an answer I hated to think about. I began looking for a note or something, but didn’t find anything. Her things were all in order, dresses in the closet, panties in the bureau, algebra book on her night table. Under that, when I picked it up to make sure nothing had been slipped in with it, was my picture, one I didn’t know she had, that she must have swiped from Margaret, taken in the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit when I was about her age. It was face down.

I checked with Tolan, the house detective, for what little he knew, and rang Mrs. Legg. She and Mr. Legg were up there in about an hour, and put police and private detectives and God knows who-all to work on it. Around seven, when I was trying to stuff something to eat in me, in the dining room, Margaret came in. I couldn’t face a night on that island alone, so I took the bus.”

“Be pretty rugged at that.”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“But what’s all the fuss about that brat? Can’t she even go to a picture show or take a car ride or whatever she’s done without practically putting bloodhounds on her trail?”

“They’re kind of worried.”

“Well,
are
you glad to see me?”

“Can’t I be worried too?”

“What about?”

“I don’t know.”

I wasn’t on duty that night, and around nine I went to my room. By that time the whole place was going crazy, and even Margaret was getting mildly interested. I sat there, looking at a sign go on and off down on Centre Street, and kept trying to think what I’d do if I was a young girl and had woke up to the fact I was in love with a guy that I supposed was in love with my sister. And all of a sudden I had a horrible hunch. I rang information for the Finley number on the island, and called. If Dickie was there I was going to give a phony name and say how about doing a job for me with his boat. But I never got that far. The mother answered, and said he wasn’t there. “Do you know where he is, Mrs. Finley? I mean, I’d like to know when he’ll be back.”

“He didn’t say.”

“Is he out in his boat?”

“No, the car.”