It’s something about the burns, perhaps the medication. Or having so much fever. It had been the same as always during those long days aboard the Muñeca, and at the anchorages. Nothing wrong then. Carolyn Kayd had known just what she could do to him, passing him in the narrow areas of the boat, swaying that muscular butt just enough to give him a solid thud with her hip when they were opposite each other, then excusing herself with such a laughing innocence.
... but then slack and loose as a bag of butter, moving with the roll of the dead boat as he looped the length of quarter inch nylon line around her and threaded it through the lift ring of the hatch cover, snugged her down there so tight, made her so fast that the line dug into the softness of her waist and...
“Nurse!”
“Captain, what is wrong? What is wrong?”
“Could — I have a drink of water, please?”
“Of course, sir.”
And he realized that he had just gone through the worst of it. It could not happen again, not that dangerously. The dark movements beyond the four walls of fabric had been unbearable because of the weakness. He felt thankful. It reminded him of a time when, in Key West, with a hurricane coming, a drunken hand off a shrimper which had put in for shelter backed him slowly into a corner of a bar, holding the knife blade low, with that slight professional upward tilt which seeks the belly. All sound in the bar had stopped, and then he had seen in the man’s eyes an inability to use a knife on living flesh. It was the same kind of relief and gratitude, awareness of the narrowness of the escape. He had sidestepped, chopped down at the wrist as he hammered at the face. He had kicked the knife into a corner, snapped the wrist bone, and had been with the shrimper’s woman through the twenty-hour scream of the wind of the hurricane which had missed the town by a narrow margin, the eye passing twenty miles south, heading for Texas.
Now, in the center of his mind, he was able to bestir himself, stand up and stretch, walk about, anticipate the task of taking down the frame and the fabric. He knew the names of the black things out there, and he could let them in, one at a time, and tame them. They were called Throat, and Fan Motor, and Head Nodding. Once tamed they would begin to blur, and some day they would be difficult to recall.
He closed his eyes and once again he examined one of the objects he had dragged into the safe area. Suitcase of medium size, aluminum in a dull finish, ribbed for greater strength. Trade name — Haliburton. Good gear for the heat and damp of tropic cruising. The catches were designed to exert enough leverage on the double rubber seal inside the lip to make the suitcase airtight. The fourth key he had tried had fit the stowage locker. The second little brass key fit the suitcase. It all rested in there in such orderliness, such dignity. Official paper belts around the middle of each packet. There were two rows of stacks of the packets, six in each row, arranged vertically, across the long dimension of the case. To fill the additional width there were three stacks of packets placed end to end. Fifteen stacks of banded money, to a depth that filled the case to about two thirds of its depth.
The amount in each packet was imprinted on some of the bands, rubber-stamped upon others. The top layer of packets was made up of packets of fifties and packets of hundreds only. On the hundreds the band said $10,000. The other bands were marked $5,000.
In the dim yellow-orange of the stateroom light, it had a look of remoteness, impartiality, indifferent dignity. It was like cathedrals, like long gleaming conference tables, like the crackling, hissing recordings of the voices of famous men long dead. Until he had opened the lid, he was not entirely convinced she had been right about it. The top layer was level, indicating the same number of packets in each stack. He pulled a stack free. Seven packets. He pressed it back into place, closed the case, fastened the pressure latches, carried it topside, lurching, banging it against the bulkhead as the dead vessel rocked in the trough.
In memory he jumped ahead to that moment when, in the shadows of rusty iron, he had finished burying it deep in the dryness of the drifted sand, and with great care had smoothed and swept and patted the surface until he could see no trace of his efforts.
Only much later, two days or three, he had fought the pain of the burns and the illusions of the fever by trying to estimate if there was as much there as she had said there would be. The fact of two denominations made it difficult to figure it out. Finally, scratching on the dirt with a twig, he figured out what would be in the case if every wrapped bundle contained only fifties. No matter how carefully he worked the arithmetic out, it came to $525,000.00. But at least half the top layer had been bundles of hundreds.
Finally his fever-dazed brain found a possible answer. On the bottoms of the other stacks there would be bundles of twenties and tens. And it had been merely accident that the stack he had examined had been made up of all fifties and hundreds. He decided the sensible thing to do was go up, dig it up, count it all — when the sun was lower, and when the pain wasn’t so bad.
The nurse told him it was time to go to sleep. She tried to help him to the bathroom. He said he could manage. She hovered close to him. When he came out she had cranked the bed down, plumped the pillow, tidied the bedding and turned it back into that cool and exact triangle shape of hospital welcome. She reminded him that after midnight, until eight when Nurse Chappie would be back on duty, he would have no special nurse. She pinned the call button to the sheet near the pillow. She took pulse and temperature, gave him the mild nightly barbiturate. She said goodby to him, saying that she had been taken off the case beginning tomorrow. He thanked her. When she settled herself into the armchair, the only light in the room was the cone of her reading lamp shining down on her knitting. The wool was pale gray. The needles ticked as steadily as a clock, and he heard from afar the long hollow mournful whonk of a large vessel signaling as it left Nassau harbor.
Chapter Fourteen
Corpo had propped her up on the narrow bed, almost to a sitting position. He had put his best white shirt on her, folded a blue bandanna diagonally, knotted it around her small waist as a belt, folded the cuffs of the shirt back until they were at her wrists. He had combed her hair in a way that looked quite good to him, gently fashioning it over the shaved and bandaged place.
He had cleaned up several areas of the littered room, stacking the things in boxes he had saved. On an upended crate beside the bed were some of the brilliant red blossoms of flowering air plants in a small glass jar.
He could not tire of looking at her. Her eyes were sea green, with little flecks of amber near the pupils, her skin flawless where it was neither burned nor bruised nor abraded. He liked to lean close and look at those eyes, and the way the little dark lashes curled, and the way the pale hair of the eyebrows was laid so neatly and cleverly, the blonde head hair springing so vitally from the white scalp where the curve of the gentle forehead ended. She had small even teeth, a narrow upper lip and a full protruding lower lip, and a small cleft in her chin. All the neatness of the way she was made reminded him of birds he had picked up, freshly killed, the feather patterns and the down of the soft underside.