Mosquitoes

  “I wasn’t following you. I—”

  “Yes, you were,” he interrupted, shaking her, “following me. You—”

  “I just wanted to come, too. Besides, it’s Aunt Pat’s boat: it’s not yours. I’ve got as much right down there as you have.”

  “Aw, get on up on deck. And if I catch you trailing around behind me again—” His voice merged into a dire and nameless threat. The niece turned toward the companionway.

  “Oh, haul in your sheet: you’re jibbing.”

  FOUR O’CLOCK

  They sat at their bridge on deck, shuffling, dealing, speaking in sparse monosyllables. The Nausikaa surged sedately onward under the blue drowsing afternoon. Far away on the horizon, the lazy smudge of the Mandeville ferry.

  Mrs. Maurier on the outskirt of the game, gazed at intervals abstractedly into space. From below there came an indistinguishable sound, welling at intervals, and falling, and Mr. T’alliaferro grew restive. The sound died away at intervals, swelled again. The Nausikaa paced sedately on.

  They played their hands, dealt and shuffled again. Mr. Talliaferro was becoming distrait. Every once in a while his attention strayed and returning found Mrs. Maurier’s eyes upon him, coldly contemplative, and he bent anew over his cards. . . . The indistinguishable sound welled once more. Mr. Talliaferro trumped his partner’s queen and the gentlemen in their bathing suits surged up the stairs.

  They completely ignored the card players, passing aft in a body and talking loudly; something about a wager. They paused at the rail upon which the steward leaned at the moment; here they clotted momentarily, then Major Ayers detached himself from the group and flung himself briskly and awkwardly overboard. “Hurray,” roared Fairchild. “He wins!”

  Mrs. Maurier had raised her face when they passed, she had spoken to them and had watched them when they halted, and she saw Major Ayers leap overboard with a shocked and dreadful doubt of her own eyesight. Then she screamed.

  The steward stripped off his jacket, detached and flung a life belt, then followed himself, diving outward and away from the screw. “Two of ’em,” Fairchild howled with joy. “Pick you up when we come back,” he megaphoned through his hands.

  Major Ayers came up in the wake of the yacht, swimming strongly. The Nausikaa circled, the telegraph rang. Major Ayers and the steward reached the lifebelt together, and before the yacht lost way completely the helmsman and the deckhand had swung the tender overside, and soon they hauled Major Ayers savagely into the small boat.

  The Nausikaa was hove to. Mrs. Maurier was helped below to her cabin, where her irate captain attended her presently. Meanwhile the other gentlemen plunged in and began to cajole the ladies, so the rest of party went below and donned their bathing suits.

  Jenny didn’t have one: her sole preparation for the voyage had consisted of the purchase of a lipstick and a comb. The niece loaned Jenny hers, and in this borrowed suit which fit her a shade too well, Jenny clung to the gunwale of the tender, clutching Pete’s hand and floating her pink-and-white face like a toy balloon unwetted above the .water, while Pete sat in the boat fully dressed even to his hat, glowering.

  Mr. Talliaferro’s bathing suit was red, giving him a bizarre desiccated look, like a recently extracted tooth. He wore also red rubber cap and he let himself gingerly into the water feet first from the stern of the tender, and here he clung beside the placid Jenny, trying to engage her in small talk beneath Pete’s thunderous regard. The ghostly poet in his ironed serge—he didn’t swim—lay again at full length on four chairs, craning his pale prehensile face above the bathers.

  Fairchild looked more like a walrus than ever: a deceptively sedate walrus of middle age suddenly evincing a streak of demoniac puerility. He wallowed and splashed, heavily playful, and, seconded by Major Ayers, annoyed the ladies by pinching them under water and by splashing them, wetting Pete liberally where he sat smoldering with Jenny clinging to his hand and squealing, trying to protect her make-up. The Semitic man paddled around with that rather ludicrous intentness of a fat man swimming. Gordon sat on the rail, looking on. Fairchild and Major Ayers at last succeeded in driving the ladies back into the tender, about which they splashed and yapped with the tactless playfulness of dogs while Pete refraining “Look out goddam you look out christ watcher doing lookout” struck at their fingers with one of his discarded and sopping shoes.

  Above this one-sided merriment the niece appeared poised upon the top of the wheelhouse, unseen by those in the water. They were aware first of a white arrow arcing down the sky. The water took it lazily and while they stared at the slow green vortex where it had entered there was a commotion behind Fairchild, and as he opened his mouth his gaping surprise vanished beneath the surface. In its place the niece balanced momentarily on something under the water, then she fell plunging in the direction of Major Ayers’s yet passive astonishment.

  The ladies screamed with delight. Major Ayers also vanished, and the niece plunged on. Fairchild appeared presently, coughing and gasping, and climbed briskly into the tender where Mr. Talliaferro with admirable presence of mind already was, having deserted Jenny without a qualm, “I’ve got enough,” Fairchild said when he could speak.

  Major Ayers, however, accepted the challenge. The niece trod water and awaited him. “Drown him, Pat!” the ladies shrieked. Just before he reached her, her dark wet head vanished and for a while Major Ayers plunged about in a kind of active resignation. Then he vanished again and the niece, clad in a suit of her brother’s underwear—a knitted sleeveless jersey and short narrow trunks—surged out of the water and stood erect on his shoulders. Then she put her foot on the top of his head and thrust him deeper yet. Then she plunged on and trod water again.

  Major Ayers reappeared at last, already headed for the boat. He had enough also, and the gentlemen dragged him aboard and they dripped across the deck and passed below, to the derision of the ladies.

  The ladies got aboard themselves. Pete standing erect in the tender was trying to haul Jenny out of the water. She hung like an expensive doll-confection from his hands, raising at lax intervals a white lovely leg, while Mr. Talliaferro, kneeling, pawed at her shoulders. “Come on, come on,” Pete hissed at her. The niece swam up and thrust at Jenny’s sweet thighs until Jenny tumbled at last into the tender in a soft blond abandon: a charming awkwardness. The niece held the tender steady while they boarded the yacht, then she slid skilfully out of the water, sleek and dripping as a seal; and as she swung her short coarse hair back from her face she saw hands, and Gordon’s voice said:

  “Give me your hands.”

  She clasped his hard wrists and felt herself flying. The setting sun came level into his beard and upon all his tall lean body, and dripping water on the deck she stood and looked at him with admiration. “Gee, you’re hard,” she said. She touched his forearms again, then she struck him with her fist on his hard high chest. “Do it again, will you?”

  “Swing you again?” he asked. But she was already in the tender, extending her arms while sunset was a moist gold sheathing her. Again that sensation of flying, of space and motion and his hard hands coming into it; and for an instant she stopped in midflight, hand to hand and arm braced to arm, high above the deck while water dripping from her turned to gold as it fell. Sunset was in his eyes: a glory he could not see; and her taut simple body, almost breastless and with the fleeting hips of a boy, was an ecstasy in golden marble, and in her face the passionate ecstasy of a child.

  At last her feet touched the deck again and she turned. She sped toward the companionway and as she flashed downward the last of the sun slid upon her and over her with joy. Then she was gone, and Gordon stood looking at the wet and simple prints of her naked feet on the deck.

  SIX O’CLOCK

  They had raised land just about the time Major Ayers won his wager, and while the last of day drained out of the world the Nausikaa at halfspeed forged slowly
into a sluggish river mouth, broaching a timeless violet twilight between solemn bearded cypresses motionless as bronze. You might, by listening, have heard a slow requiem in this tall nave, might have heard here the chanted orisons of the dark heart of the world turning toward slumber. The world was becoming dimensionless, the tall bearded cypresses drew nearer one to another across the wallowing river with the soulless implacability of pagan gods, gazing down upon this mahogany-and-brass intruder with inscrutable unalarm. The water was like oil and the Nausikaa forged onward without any sensation of motion through a corridor without ceiling or floor.

  Mr. Talliaferro stood at the sternrail beside Jenny and her morose hatted duenna. In the dusk Jenny’s white troubling placidity bloomed like a heavy flower, pervading and rife like an odor lazier, heavier than that of lilies. Pete loomed beyond her: the last light in the world was concentrated in the implacable glaze of his hat, leaving the atmosphere about them darker still; and in the weary passion of August and nightfall Mr. Talliaferro’s dry interminable voice fell lower and lower and finally ceased altogether; and abruptly becoming aware of an old mislaid sorrow he slapped suddenly at the back of his hand, with consternation, remarking at the same time that Pete was also restive and that Jenny was agitating herself as though she were rubbing her body against her clothing from within. Then, as if at a signal, they were all about them, unseen, with a dreadful bucolic intentness; unlike their urban cousins, making no sound.

  Jenny and Pete and Mr. Talliaferro evacuated the deck. At the companionway the ghostly poet joined them hurriedly, flapping his handkerchief about his face and neck and the top of his unnurtured evaporating head. At that instant Mrs. Maurier’s voice rose from somewhere in astonished adjuration, and presently the Nausikaa put about and felt her way back to open water and stood out to sea. And not at halfspeed, either.

  SEVEN O’CLOCK

  Years ago Mrs. Maurier had learned that unadulterated fruit juice was salutary, nay, necessary to a nautical life. A piece of information strange, irrelevant at first draught, yet on second thought quite possible, not to mention pleasant in contemplation, so she had accepted it, taking it unto her and making of it an undeviating marine conviction. Hence there was grapefruit again for dinner: she was going to inoculate them first, then take chances.

  Fairchild’s gang was ultimately started from its lair in his quarters. The other guests were already seated and they reo garded the newcomers with interest and trepidation and, on Mrs. Maurier’s part, with actual alarm.

  “Here comes the dogwatch,” Mrs. Wiseman remarked brightly. “It’s the gentlemen, isn’t it? We haven’t seen any gentlemen since we left New Orleans, hey, Dorothy?”

  Her brother grinned at her sadly. “How about Mark and Talliaferro?”

  “Oh, Mark’s a poet. That lets him out. And Ernest isn’t a poet, so that lets him out, too,” she replied with airy feminine logic. “Isn’t that right, Mark?”

  “I’m the best poet in New Orleans,” the ghostly young man said heavily, mooning his pale, prehensile face at her.

  “We were kind of wondering where you were, Mark,” Fairchild told the best poet in New Orleans. “We got the idea you were supposed to be on the boat with us. Too bad you couldn’t come,” he continued tediously.

  “Maybe Mark couldn’t find himself in time,” the Semitic man suggested, taking his seat.

  “He’s found his appetite, though,” Fairchild replied. “Maybe he’ll find the rest of himself laying around somewhere near by.” He seated himself and stared at the plate before him. He murmured, “Well, well,” with abstraction. His companions found seats and Major Ayers stared at his plate. He murmured, “Well, well,” also. Mrs. Maurier chewed her lip nervously, putting her hand on Mr. Talliaferro’s sleeve. Major Ayers murmured:

  “It does look familiar, doesn’t it?” and Fairchild said:

  “Why, it’s grapefruit: I can tell every time,” He looked at Major Ayers. “I’m not going to eat mine, now. I’m going to put it away and save it.”

  “Right you are,” agreed Major Ayers readily. “Save ’em by all means,” He set his grapefruit carefully to one side. “Advise you people to do the same,” he added at large.

  “Save them?” Mrs. Maurier repeated in astonishment. “Why, there are more of them. We have several crates.”

  Fairchild wagged his head at her. “I can’t risk it. They might be lost overboard or something, and us miles from land. I’m going to save mine.”

  Major Ayers offered a suggestion. “Save the rinds, anyway. Might need ’em. Never can tell what might happen at sea, y’know,” he said owlishly.

  “Sure,” Fairchild agreed. “Might need ’em in a pinch to prevent constipation,” Mrs. Maurier clasped Mr. Talliaferro’s arm again.

  “Mr. Talliaferro!” she whispered imploringly. Mr. Talliaferro sprang to the breach.

  “Now that we are all together at last,” he began, clearing his throat, “the Commodore wishes us to choose our first port of call. In other words, people, where shall we go tomorrow?” He looked from face to face about the table.

  “Why, nowhere,” answered Fairchild with surprise. “We just came from somewhere yesterday, didn’t we?”

  “You mean today,” Mrs. Wiseman told him. “We left New Orleans this morning.”

  “Oh, did we? Well, well, it takes a long time to spend the afternoon, don’t it? But we don’t want to go anywhere, do we?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mr. Talliaferro contradicted him smoothly. “Tomorrow we are going up the Tchufuncta river and spend the day fishing. Our plan was to go up the river and spend the night, but this was found impossible. So we shall go up tomorrow. Is this unanimous or shall we call for a ballot?”

  “Gabriel’s pants,” the niece said to Jenny, “I itch just to think about that, don’t you?”

  Fairchild brightened. “Up the Tchufuncta?” he repeated. “Why, that’s where the Jackson place is. Maybe Al’s at home. Major Ayers must meet Al Jackson, Julius.”

  “Al Jackson?” Major Ayers repeated. The best poet in New Orleans groaned and Mrs. Wiseman said:

  “Good Lord, Dawson.”

  “Sure. The one I was telling you about at lunch, you know.”

  “Ah, yes: the alligator chap, eh?” Mrs. Maurier exclaimed. “Mr. Talliaferro” again.

  “Very well,” Mr. Talliaferro said loudly, “that’s settled, then. Fishing has it. And in the meantime, the Commodore invites you all to a dancing party on deck immediately after dinner. So finish your dinner, people. Fairchild, you are to lead the grand march.”

  “Sure,” Fairchild agreed again. “Yes, that’s the one. His father has a fish ranch up here. That’s where Al got his start, and now he’s the biggest fisherd in the world—”

  “Did you see the sunset this evening, Major Ayers?” Mrs. Wiseman asked loudly. “Deliciously messy, wasn’t it?”

  “Nature getting even with Turner,” the poet suggested.

  “That will take years and years,” Mrs. Wiseman answered. Mrs. Maurier sailed in, gushing.

  “Our southern sunsets, Major Ayers—” But Major Ayers was staring at Fairchild.

  —“Fisherd?” he murmured.

  “Sure. Like the old cattle ranches out west, you know. But instead of a cattle ranch, Al Jackson has got a fish ranch out in the wide open spaces of the Gulf of Mexico—”

  “Where men are sharks,” put in Mrs. Wiseman. “Don’t leave that out.” Major Ayers stared at her.

  “Sure. Where men are men. That’s where this beautiful blond girl comes in. Like Jenny yonder. Maybe Jenny’s the one. Are you the girl, Jenny?” Major Ayers now stared at Jenny.

  Jenny was gazing at the narrator, her blue ineffable eyes quite round, holding a piece of bread in her hand. “Sir?” she said at last.

  “Are you the girl that lives on that Jackson fish ranch out in the Gulf of
Mexico?”

  “I live on Esplanade,” Jenny said after a while, tentatively.

  “Mr. Fairchild!” Mrs. Maurier exclaimed. Mr. Talliaferro said:

  “My dear sir!”

  “No, I reckon you are not the one, or you’d know it. I don’t imagine that even Claude Jackson could live on a fish ranch in the Gulf of Mexico and not know it. This girl is from Brooklyn, anyway—a society girl. She went down there to find her brother. Her brother had just graduated from reform school and so his old man sent him down there for the Jacksons to make a fisherd out of him. He hadn’t shown any aptitude for anything else, you see, and his old man knew it didn’t take much intelligence to herd a fish. His sister—”