Read Online Bright Orange for the Shroud by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John D. MacDonald
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project over near the airport.
Sam Dunning partitioned a small corner of the garage, and Leafy fixed it up with a cot, chair, lamp, and packing box storage disguised by a piece of cotton drapery material thumb-tacked to the top edge. He paid her twelve dollars a week for room and meals, after long earnest bargaining. She wanted ten. He wanted to give fifteen.
There on the sundeck, in a thoughtful voice, Arthur told us that it was a strange time in his life. He had never done manual labor. Until he acquired a few basic skills, the foreman came close to firing him several times for innate clumsiness. The skills pleased him—rough carpentry without owl eyes surrounding the nail heads, learning when the cement mix was the right consistency, learning how to trundle a wheelbarrow along a springy plank. He said it was as if he had turned half of himself off, settling into routine, speaking when spoken to, sitting with the Dunning kids when Sam and Leafy went out on Saturday nights. On days off he helped Sam with boat maintenance, and sometimes crewed for him on a charter. He felt as if he was in hiding from every familiar thing, and, in theprocess, becoming someone else. He spent almost nothing, and accumulated money, without counting it. He could lay on his cot and keep his mind empty. When it would veer toward Wilma or toward the lost money, he would catch it quickly, return it to the comforting grayness, feeling only a swoop of dizziness at the narrowness of the escape. Sometimes he awoke from sleep to sense erotic dream-memories of Wilma fading quickly, leaving only some of the tastes of her on his mouth, textures of her on his hands.
Leafy had her child in January, her third boy. His present to her was an automatic washing machine, a used one in good condition. He and Sam got it tied into the water line and wired the day before Sam brought her home. She was ecstatic. Her attitude toward him warmed perceptibly, and soon, in the most obvious ways, she began to try to make a match between Arthur and a seventeen-year-old girl down the road named Christine Canfield. Christine had run off to Crystal River with a stone crab fisherman and had come home alone at Christmas, slightly pregnant. She was the youngest of three daughters, the older two married and moved away, one to Fort Myers, the other to Homestead. Christine was a placid, pleasant, slow-moving child who smiled often and laughed readily. She was husky, brown-blonde, pretty in a childlike way.
“Nobody’s in the place Cobb Canfield put up for his Lucy before Tommy got the good job in Fort Myers. You could fix it up right nice,” Leafy said.
“Listen, she’s only seventeen years old!”
“She’s carrying proof she’s a woman, and it hardly shows yet. She likes you fine, just fine, Arthur. She’s healthy and she’s a worker, and they’re good stock. And she got the wild run out of her, and Cobb’d be so grateful to get it worked out, he’ddo you good, believe me. Christine’d make you a good steady woman, not like some her age on the island.”
“I should have told you before, Leafy. I’m married.”
Her eyes narrowed as she accepted this new problem. “You plan on taking up again with your wife, Arthur?”
“No.”
“She got cause to come looking for you?”
“No.”
She nodded to herself. “The law doesn’t pay it no mind unless somebody comes along to make a fuss. You just keep your mouth shut about that wife. Cobb is too proud to let her set up any common law thing with you, so all you have to do is keep your mouth shut and marry her, and who does that hurt? Nobody, and does you both good, and gives that bush kitten she’s carrying a daddy. Christine, she can make a garden bear the year round, and with a snitch hook she’s good as you’ll ever see, and it don’t make for bad living having a young wife grateful to you.”
Chook completed her series of tortures and came and sat by us, breathing deeply, brown body gleaming with
Sam Dunning partitioned a small corner of the garage, and Leafy fixed it up with a cot, chair, lamp, and packing box storage disguised by a piece of cotton drapery material thumb-tacked to the top edge. He paid her twelve dollars a week for room and meals, after long earnest bargaining. She wanted ten. He wanted to give fifteen.
There on the sundeck, in a thoughtful voice, Arthur told us that it was a strange time in his life. He had never done manual labor. Until he acquired a few basic skills, the foreman came close to firing him several times for innate clumsiness. The skills pleased him—rough carpentry without owl eyes surrounding the nail heads, learning when the cement mix was the right consistency, learning how to trundle a wheelbarrow along a springy plank. He said it was as if he had turned half of himself off, settling into routine, speaking when spoken to, sitting with the Dunning kids when Sam and Leafy went out on Saturday nights. On days off he helped Sam with boat maintenance, and sometimes crewed for him on a charter. He felt as if he was in hiding from every familiar thing, and, in theprocess, becoming someone else. He spent almost nothing, and accumulated money, without counting it. He could lay on his cot and keep his mind empty. When it would veer toward Wilma or toward the lost money, he would catch it quickly, return it to the comforting grayness, feeling only a swoop of dizziness at the narrowness of the escape. Sometimes he awoke from sleep to sense erotic dream-memories of Wilma fading quickly, leaving only some of the tastes of her on his mouth, textures of her on his hands.
Leafy had her child in January, her third boy. His present to her was an automatic washing machine, a used one in good condition. He and Sam got it tied into the water line and wired the day before Sam brought her home. She was ecstatic. Her attitude toward him warmed perceptibly, and soon, in the most obvious ways, she began to try to make a match between Arthur and a seventeen-year-old girl down the road named Christine Canfield. Christine had run off to Crystal River with a stone crab fisherman and had come home alone at Christmas, slightly pregnant. She was the youngest of three daughters, the older two married and moved away, one to Fort Myers, the other to Homestead. Christine was a placid, pleasant, slow-moving child who smiled often and laughed readily. She was husky, brown-blonde, pretty in a childlike way.
“Nobody’s in the place Cobb Canfield put up for his Lucy before Tommy got the good job in Fort Myers. You could fix it up right nice,” Leafy said.
“Listen, she’s only seventeen years old!”
“She’s carrying proof she’s a woman, and it hardly shows yet. She likes you fine, just fine, Arthur. She’s healthy and she’s a worker, and they’re good stock. And she got the wild run out of her, and Cobb’d be so grateful to get it worked out, he’ddo you good, believe me. Christine’d make you a good steady woman, not like some her age on the island.”
“I should have told you before, Leafy. I’m married.”
Her eyes narrowed as she accepted this new problem. “You plan on taking up again with your wife, Arthur?”
“No.”
“She got cause to come looking for you?”
“No.”
She nodded to herself. “The law doesn’t pay it no mind unless somebody comes along to make a fuss. You just keep your mouth shut about that wife. Cobb is too proud to let her set up any common law thing with you, so all you have to do is keep your mouth shut and marry her, and who does that hurt? Nobody, and does you both good, and gives that bush kitten she’s carrying a daddy. Christine, she can make a garden bear the year round, and with a snitch hook she’s good as you’ll ever see, and it don’t make for bad living having a young wife grateful to you.”
Chook completed her series of tortures and came and sat by us, breathing deeply, brown body gleaming with
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