“A convertible with good rubber. The best one we can get.”
“How much money do you think we’ll have?”
“I’m going to try for five thousand.”
“That’s wonderful. Do you think you can get it?”
“I don’t know. I’ll get going on him now,” Roger said and went into the other room. He shut the door and then opened it. “Do you still love me?”
“I though that was all settled,” she said. “Please kiss me now before the boy comes back.”
“Good.”
He held her solidly against him and kissed her hard.
“That’s better,” she said. “Why did we have to have separate rooms?”
“I thought I might have to be identified to get the money.”
“Oh.”
“If we have any luck we won’t have to stay in these.”
“Can we really do it all that fast?”
“If we have any luck.”
“Then can we be Mr. and Mrs. Gilch?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Gilch.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Brat-Gilch.”
“I’d better make the call.”
“Don’t stay away an awfully long time though.”
They had lunch at a seafood restaurant owned by Greeks. It was an air-conditioned oasis against the heavy heat of the town and the food had certainly originally come out of the ocean but it was to Eddy’s cooking of the same things as old re-used grease is to fresh browned butter. But there was a good bottle of really cold, dry, resiny tasting Greek white wine and for dessert they had cherry pie.
“Let’s go to Greece and the islands,” she said.
“Haven’t you ever been there?”
“One summer. I loved it.”
“We’ll go there.”
By two o’clock the money was at the Western Union. It was thirty-five hundred instead of five thousand and by three-thirty they had bought a used Buick convertible with only six thousand miles on it. It had two good spares, set-in well fenders, a radio, a big spotlight, plenty of luggage space in the rear and it was sand colored.
By five-thirty they had made various other purchases, checked out of the hotel and the doorman was stowing their bags into the back of the car. It was still deadly hot.
Roger, who was sweating heavily in his heavy uniform, as suitable to the subtropics in summer as shorts would be to Labrador in winter, tipped the doorman and got into the car and they drove along Biscayne Boulevard and turned west to get onto the road to Coral Gables and the Tamiami Trail.
“How do you feel?” he asked the girl.
“Wonderful. Do you think it’s true?”
“I know it’s true because it’s so damned hot and we didn’t get the five thousand.”
“Do you think we paid too much for the car?”
“No. Just right.”
“Did you get the insurance?”
“Yes. And joined the A.A.A.”
“Aren’t we fast?”
“We’re terrific.”
“Have you got the rest of the money?”
“Sure. Pinned in my shirt.”
“That’s our bank.”
“It’s all we’ve got.”
“How do you think it will last?”
“It won’t have to last. I’ll make some more.”
“It will have to last for a while.”
“It will.”
“Roger.”
“Yes, daughter.”
“Do you love me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say it.”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to damn well find out.”
“I love you. Hard. Hard. Hard.”
“You keep that up. That will be a big help to me.”
“Why don’t you say you love me?”
“Let’s wait.”
She had been holding her hand on his thigh while he drove and now she took it away.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll wait.”
They were driving west now on the broad Coral Gables road through the flat heat-stricken outskirts of Miami, past stores, filling stations and markets with cars with people going home from the city passing them steadily. Now they passed Coral Gables to their left with the buildings that looked out of the Basso Veneto rising from the Florida prairie and ahead the road stretched straight and heat-welted across what had once been the Everglades. Roger drove faster now and the movement of the car through the heavy air made the air cool as it came in through the scoop in the dash and the slanted glass of the ventilators.
“She’s a lovely car,” the girl said. “Weren’t we lucky to get her?”
“Very.”
“We’re pretty lucky don’t you think?”
“So far.”
“You’ve gotten awfully cautious on me.”
“Not really.”
“But we can be jolly can’t we?”
“I’m jolly.”
“You don’t sound awfully jolly.”
“Well maybe then I’m not.”
“Couldn’t you be though? You see I really am.”
“I will be,” Roger said. “I promise.”
Looking ahead at the road he had driven so many times in his life, seeing it stretch ahead, knowing it was the same road with the ditches on either side and the forest and the swamps, knowing that only the car was different, that only who was with him was different, Roger felt the old hollowness coming inside of him and knew he must stop it.
“I love you, daughter,” he said. He did not think it was true. But it sounded all right as he said it. “I love you very much and I’m going to try to be very good to you.”
“And you’re going to be jolly.”
“And I’m going to be jolly.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “Have we started already?”
“We’re on the road.”
“When will we see the birds?”
“They’re much further in this time of year.”
“Roger.”
“Yes, Bratchen.”
“You don’t have to be jolly if you don’t feel like it. We’ll be jolly enough. You feel however you feel and I’ll be jolly for us both. I can’t help it today.”
He saw on ahead where the road turned to the right and ran northwest through the forest swamp instead of west. That was good. That was really much better. Pretty soon they would come to the big osprey’s nest in the dead cypress tree. They had just passed the place where he had killed the rattlesnake that winter driving through here with David’s mother before Andrew was born. That was the year they both bought Seminole shirts at the trading post at Everglades and wore them in the car. He had given the big rattlesnake to some Indians that had come in to trade and they were pleased with the snake because he had a fine hide and twelve rattles and Roger remembered how heavy and thick he was when he lifted him with his huge, flattened head hanging and how the Indian smiled when he took him. That was the year they shot the wild turkey as he crossed the road that early morning coming out of the mist that was just thinning with the first sun, the cypresses showing black in the silver mist and the turkey brown-bronze and lovely as he stepped onto the road, stepping high-headed, then crouching to run, then flopping on the road.
“I’m fine,” he told the girl. “We get into some nice country now.”
“Where do you think we’ll get to tonight?”
“We’ll find some place. Once we get to the gulf side this breeze will be a sea breeze instead of a land breeze and it will be cool.”
“That will be lovely,” the girl said. “I hated to think of staying the first night in that hotel.”
“We were awfully lucky to get away. I didn’t think we could do it that quickly.”
“I wonder how Tom is.”
“Lonely,” Roger said.
“Isn’t he a wonderful guy?”
“He’s my best friend and my conscience and my father and my brother and my banker. He’s like a saint. Only jolly.”
/>
“I never knew anybody as fine,” she said. “It breaks your heart the way he loves you and the boys.”
“I wish he could have them all summer.”
“Won’t you miss them terribly?”
“I miss them all the time.”
They had put the wild turkey in the back of the seat and he had been so heavy, warm and beautiful with the shining bronze plumage, so different from the blues and blacks of a domestic turkey, and David’s mother was so excited she could hardly speak. And then she had said, “No. Let me hold him. I want to see him again. We can put him away later.” And he had put a newspaper on her lap and she had tucked the bird’s bloodied head under his wing, folding the wing carefully over it, and sat there stroking and smoothing his breast feathers while he, Roger, drove. Finally she said, “He’s cold now” and had wrapped him in the paper and put him in the back of the seat again and said, “Thank you for letting me keep him when I wanted him so much.” Roger had kissed her while he drove and she had said, “Oh Roger we’re so happy and we always will be won’t we?” That was just around this next slanting turn the road makes up ahead. The sun was down to the top of the treetops now. But they had not seen the birds.
“You won’t miss them so much you won’t be able to love me will you?”
“No. Truly.”
“I understand it making you sad. But you were going to be away from them anyway weren’t you?”
“Sure. Please don’t worry, daughter.”
“I like it when you say daughter. Say it again.”
“It comes at the end of a sentence,” he said. “Daughter.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m younger,” she said. “I love the kids. I love them all three, hard, and I think they’re wonderful. I didn’t know there were kids like that. But Andy’s too young for me to marry and I love you. So I forget about them and just am as happy as I can be to be with you.”
“You’re good.”
“I’m not really. I’m awfully difficult. But I do know when I love someone and I’ve loved you ever since I can remember. So I’m going to try to be good.”
“You’re being wonderful.”
“Oh I can be much better than this.”
“Don’t try.”
“I’m not going to for a while. Roger I’m so happy. We’ll be happy won’t we?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“And we can be happy for always can’t we? I know it sounds silly me being Mother’s daughter and you with everyone. But I believe in it and it’s possible. I know it’s possible. I’ve loved you all my life and if that’s possible it’s possible to be happy isn’t it? Say it is anyway.”
“I think it is.”
He’d always said it was. Not in this car though. In other cars in other countries. But he had said it enough in this country too and he had believed it. It would have been possible too. Everything was possible once. It was possible on this road on that stretch that now lay ahead where the canal ran clear and flowing by the right-hand side of the road where the Indian poled his dugout. There was no Indian there now. That was before. When it was possible. Before the birds were gone. That was the other year before the turkey. That year before the big rattlesnake was the year they saw the Indian poling the dugout and the buck in the bow of the dugout with his white throat and chest, his slender legs with the delicate shaped hoofs, shaped like a broken heart, drawn up and his head with the beautiful miniature horns looking toward the Indian. They had stopped the car and spoken to the Indian but he did not understand English and grinned and the small buck lay there dead with his eyes open looking straight at the Indian. It was possible then and for five years after. But what was possible now? Nothing was possible now unless he himself was and he must say the things if there was ever to be a chance of them being true. Even if it were wrong to say them he must say them. They never could be true unless he said them. He had to say them and then perhaps he could feel them and then perhaps he could believe them. And then perhaps they would be true. Perhaps is an ugly word, he thought, but it is even worse on the end of your cigar.
“Have you got cigarettes?” he asked the girl. “I don’t know whether that lighter works.”
“I haven’t tried it. I haven’t smoked. I’ve felt so unnervous.”
“You don’t just smoke when you’re nervous do you?”
“I think so. Mostly.”
“Try the lighter.”
“All right.”
“Who was the guy you married?”
“Oh let’s not talk about him.”
“No. I just meant who was he?”
“No one you know.”
“Don’t you really want to tell me about him?”
“No, Roger. No.”
“All right.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “He was English.”
“Was?”
“Is. But I like was better. Besides you said was.”
“Was is a good word,” he said. “It’s a hell of a lot better word than perhaps.”
“All right. I don’t understand it at all but I believe you. Roger?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“Do you feel any better?”
“Much. I’m fine.”
“All right. I’ll tell you about him. He turned out to be gay. That was it. He hadn’t said anything about it and he didn’t act that way at all. Not at all. Truly. You probably think I’m stupid. But he didn’t in any way. He was absolutely beautiful. You know how they can be. And then I found out about it. Right away of course. The same night actually. Now is it all right not to talk about it?”
“Poor Helena.”
“Don’t call me Helena. Call me daughter.”
“My poor daughter. My darling.”
“That’s a nice word too. You mustn’t mix it with daughter though. It’s no good that way. Mummy knew him. I thought she might have said something. She just said she’d never noticed and when I said, ‘You might have noticed,’ she said, ‘I though you knew what you were doing and I had no call to interfere.’ I said, ‘Couldn’t you just have said something or couldn’t somebody just have said something?’ and she said, ‘Darling, everyone thought you knew what you were doing. Everyone. Everyone knows you don’t care anything about it yourself and I had every right to think you knew the facts of life in this right little tight little island.’”
She was sitting stiff and straight beside him now and she had no tone in her voice at all. She didn’t mimic. She simply used the exact words or as exactly as she remembered them. Roger thought they sounded quite exact.
“Mummy was a great comfort,” she said. “She said a lot of things to me that day.”
“Look,” Roger said. “We’ll throw it all away. All of it. We’ll throw it all away now right here beside the road. Any of it you want to get rid of you can always tell me. But we’ve thrown it all away now and we’ve really thrown it away.”
“I want it to be like that,” she said. “That’s how I started out. And you know I said at the start we’d give it a miss.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m glad really because now we have thrown it away.”
“It’s nice of you. But you don’t have to make incantations or exorcisions or any of that. I can swim without water wings. And he was damned beautiful.”
“Spit it out. If that’s the way you want it.”
“Don’t be like that. You’re so damned superior you don’t have to be superior. Roger?”
“Yes, Bratchen.”
“I love you very much and we don’t have to do this any more do we?”
“No. Truly.”
“I’m so glad. Now will we be jolly?”
“Sure we will. Look,” he said. “There are the birds. The first of them.”
They showed white in the cypress hammock that rose like an island of trees out of the swamp on their left the sun shining on them in the dark foliage and as the sun lowered more came flying across the sky, flying white and slow, their long legs stretched behind
them.
“They’re coming in for the night. They’ve been feeding out in the marsh. Watch the way they brake with their wings and the long legs slant forward to land.”
“Will we see the ibises too?”
“There they are.”
He had stopped the car and across the darkening swamp they could see the wood ibis crossing the sky with their pulsing flight to wheel and light in another island of trees.
“They used to roost much closer.”
“Maybe we will see them in the morning,” she said. “Do you want me to make a drink while we’ve stopped?”
“We can make it while we drive. The mosquitoes will get to us here.”
As he started the car there were a few mosquitoes in it, the big black Everglades type, but the rush of the wind took them out when he opened the door and slapped them out with his hand and the girl found two enameled cups in the packages they had brought and the carton that held a bottle of White Horse. She wiped the cups out with a paper napkin, poured in Scotch, the bottle still in the carton, put in lumps of ice from the thermos jug and poured soda into them.
“Here’s to us,” she said and gave him the cold enameled cup and he held it drinking slowly and driving on, holding the wheel with his left hand, driving along into the road that was dusky now. He put on the lights a little later and soon they cut far ahead into the dark and the two of them drank the whisky and it was what they needed and made them feel much better. There is always a chance, Roger thought, when a drink can still do what it is supposed to do. This drink had done exactly what it should do.
“It tastes sort of slimy and slippery in a cup.”
“Enameled,” Roger said.
“That was pretty easy,” she said. “Doesn’t it taste wonderfully?”
“It’s the first drink we’ve had all day. Except that resin wine at lunch. It’s our good friend,” he said. “The old giant killer.”
“That’s a nice name for it. Did you always call it that?”
“Since the war. That’s when we first used it for that.”
“This forest would be a bad place for giants.”
“I think they’ve been killed off a long time,” he said. “They probably hunted them out with those big swamp buggies with the huge tires.”
“That must be very elaborate. It’s easier with an enameled cup.”
“Tin cups make it taste even better,” he said. “Not for giant killing. Just for how good it can be. But you ought to have ice cold spring water and the cup chilled in the spring and you look down in the spring and there are little plumes of sand that rise on the bottom where it’s bubbling.”