Ed Lacy - The Woman Aroused

Joe soon snapped out of it. Later, when he was down at the cottage for a week-end, he was back to normal, full of admiration for Walt—the same admiration he'd have for anybody with eleven thousand.

When Joe left, Eddie—Flo's kid brother—came down. He was a handsome kid, tall and with a big skinny frame, and the only member of her family I liked.

We were on the beach early Monday morning and Eddie's serious, quiet, talk was a relief from two days of Joe's gabbing. We sunned ourselves, talked of going over to Sag Harbor and fishing for blows. Eddie said he'd called Mr. Henderson before he left, who said Slob was fine, coming up for his meals regularly. I wondered if the cat ate the old man's concoctions—cats are smart.

Eddie was getting red from the sun and I stared at the ugly scar that looked like twisted burnt skin on his left shoulder, and the small scar farther down his back—where the bullet had come out. The slug had done something to one lung—exactly what I never knew—but he wasn't able to do any heavy work, received a full pension from the government. He rolled over on his back, dug his toes into the sand and laughed. “This is the life, sun and the sea air and no sweaty clothes on. I feel as if no other world existed but this beach and the pretty girls in their brief suits. My headache is gone, too.”

“Something wrong?”

“My head's been throbbing... for the last few months.”

“Sounds like a cold, or one of these new X sicknesses. Been to a doctor?”

“Sure, he said it was mental, that I worry too much. George, has the world gone mad, or is it merely me? My God, I read the headlines, listen to the news over the radio, and my head becomes full of pain. And on rainy days when I can feel my wound and I hear this war talk... another war and my wound isn't properly healed yet. It doesn't make sense.”

“Far back as I can remember, there's always been some sort of war talk. Hell, we can't let Russia, or anybody else, walk over us.”

“Nuts,” Eddie said. “We ought to learn by this time that war never settles anything. But it seems nobody learns, all they do is forget. Look how the vets forget the things promised them. Mention the Four Freedoms now and it sounds like double talk. Ah, headache starting again.”

“Maybe the sun's too strong for you? Had your eyes examined recently?”

Eddie turned over so he faced me. “Funny, that's exactly what the doctor asked. He was a fellow from my old outfit. He gave me a thorough check-up. Said to forget the world and the headlines for a while.”

“That's good advice?”

“Good? It's impossible! We never worry about cars but we keep our eyes open when we cross the street. How can we shut our eyes when it seems the world is going out of its way to get knocked down by a tank.” He dug up a little mound of sand with his fingers, made a tunnel through it with a finger and the mound collapsed. “George, how do you plan, think of anything decent, when such blundering headlines leave you in a cold sweat?”

“You take it too seriously,” I told him. “Doc find anything wrong with you?”

“Said I was suffering from some sort of nervous tension, something like combat fatigue. Odd thing was, he didn't realize he's a victim too, for he said it with a straight face, as though one could and did live in a vacuum. That's what this war of nerves, this strain in the air, has done to him—a fellow who was calm and crafty on the battlefront, now he walks around with his eyes shut. I really blew my top when he told me, Eddie, what are you worrying about? Suppose war does come—you're exempt with your wound.' Jesus, I felt as though my head was coming apart. A fellow I once respected talking like that. George, we've all gone off the beam.”

“Well he was right,” I said, feeling in the mood for an argument. “I don't pay much attention to the saber rattling because I'm over age. Now if I was younger—I'd worry plenty.”

He sat up. “You really mean that. This selfishness, this sickness, has infected you too.”

“Let me tell you the facts of life—we translate the law of self-preservation into... be selfish, take care of old number one. It's the way of our world, and don't shut your eyes to that.”

“Sure, if the world ran smoothly, if everybody had enough food, security, I'd say leave me alone, I'd say being selfish works. But we live in the midst of needless misery and want, and that's wrong... unnecessary!”

I smiled. “Be careful, you're talking like a Communist. The sand is probably crawling with the FBI.'

“Another symptom of our sickness—name calling. I don't give a damn if I'm called Red, Blue, or Black—I've seen suffering, horrible stupid suffering, and I can't live with it. Couldn't live with myself if I did. Maybe you can. You've never seen it and you're... you're...”

“I'm smug and comfortable,” I added. “Another fact: your Commie friends say a man's thinking is determined by his pocketbook. Very true. I'm comfortable, my status quo is fine. And the corollary: Communism doesn't scare me, under it I'd probably live much the same as I do now. I have no capital to lose. For all I know, Communism may be the next logical step in our industrial development. Back in the feudal days, the industrialists were looked upon as the dangerous wide-eyed radicals. As Joe says, everything is transit. But I'm not going to get myself in an uproar over Communism, or capitalism. Why do you?”

“Why do I what?”

I shrugged. “Stop it, Eddie. Why are you set to change the world single-handed? Your pension is about thirty bucks a week, you need only another year to finish your accounting, and you can take it under the GI Bill for free. You and Flo are the only kids. When your folks die, you'll come into a few thousand, and from Flo you'll inherit the house, and whatever she has socked away—which must be plenty. That's the future—but in the present, once you've graduated college, you could work a few hours a day, and with your pension, live very comfortably. Sounds a little hardboiled, but then I consider myself a realist, and facts are hard.”

“You're merely salving your conscience, rationalizing.”

“Could be. Aren't you doing the same with your weeping for poor humanity?”

“George, I can't stand by. Here's a little war yarn I never told you. You remember me before the war, an eager beaver at school, had a lot of the push that drives Flo. I was like that up till April 20, 1945. We liberated Auschwitz that day. It was sickening work, but easy in a way—little chance of running into a bullet. And there were the sick and the dying, the bloated stomachs of the starving—all that you probably saw in the newsreels. Outside the camp—the Nazis were getting ready to ship them someplace I suppose, we came upon a flat car piled with bodies, all looking like horrible skeletons in their ragged stripped uniforms. Skull heads, arms and legs covered with tight skin, caved-in cheeks, staring eyes. They were lying out in the cold like a stack of neatly piled wood... all dead. And then one of these skeletons raised himself. Somehow he was still alive. He looked at me, this pale dead-man, and all he did was smile... and die. The bodies didn't mean much to me till then. Why I damn near went crazy at the thought that here was a fellow like myself, starved of everything, even the ordinary kindness we never think about... and he gave me all he had left, a smile. I see that smile sometimes in my nightmares—the pathetic smile, as if he was forgiving me for all the craziness we've made in the world. Or maybe he was greeting me as another human. You talk about selfish; all right, I'm selfish as I can be... I don't want that to ever happen to another human on the face of this world... because that human might be me!”

“They say they have camps like that in Russia,” I said, enjoying baiting him—it was an easy lazy way of passing the time.

He looked at me with sad eyes. “You're like a witch doctor with magic words. Today when something goes wrong, we say the magic word—Russia. They say, they say... this I saw! If they have torture like that in the Soviet Union, then I'll fight them. Only so far I don't believe it because they haven't any reason for concentration camps. You yourself said you have nothing to lose under socialism and you're better off then...”

“Relax, Eddie, we're only batting the breeze. Flo tells me you live in a flea-bag room, spend all your time at meetings and picketing. Why don't you go back to school, reach a stage of personal comfort, then work for the good of others? Since we agree this is a selfish world.”

“George, you talk like a man from another world. How could I sit in a classroom, think of debits and credits, the hollow things, when I feel fascism in the air, see them getting set for more flatcars of humans shorn of everything, even a smile? Why I'd...” He set up, held his head in his hands. “Damn headache has returned again.”

I sat up. “My fault, I was egging you on. Let's forget talk. We'll take a swim to cool off, then go fishing. Blowfishes are the most amazing and stupidest creatures in the world. Even beat us humans.”

We didn't go in for any more heavy talk, fished and swam for the rest of the week, had a swell time. And then on the Friday before my week was up, I received a special delivery from Flo. There were two newspaper clippings in the envelope, nothing else. One was dated the same day, that Friday, and was merely a death notice, cold, impersonal, that read:

CONROY,—HENRY, beloved brother of Marion.

Services at Universal Chapel, 10 a.m.

Service private.

The other clipping bore a Wednesday dateline. It was a half column story about Hank falling out of a window of his fifth story apartment, as he was standing on a ladder, hanging some curtains. It said Hank must have lost his balance, crashed through the partly open window to his death. His wife, Lee Conroy, was using the basement washing machine at the time of the accident...

I put the clippings down and was full of strange thoughts. First (and quickly) a wild thought that I now had seven thousand dollars... if I wanted to keep the money. Then vague puzzled thoughts: What an odd way for poor Hank to the... he was always so careful. Why wasn't he being buried from a church? Why no mention of his wife in the obituary notice? And above all, why the rush to bury him?

These were tiny thoughts, the big one was the tempting idea that nobody knew I had Hank's money. It was a hideous thought, well mixed with my sincere sorrow over Hank's death... yet there wasn't any point in denying—especially to myself—that it was very much in my mind.

It was a fact.

Chapter 3

THERE WAS no reason why I should rush back to town—aside from the fact I think funerals are stupid anyway. I spent a curious week-end, full of secret elation that the money was mine, while my righteous self argued I must return the money. Nor did I overlook another point: I had no way of knowing whether Hank had told anybody else about the seven thousand. I was sure he hadn't, but I didn't really know.

On Monday, when I reached the office, I played Scoundrel in the second at Aqueduct, a four to one shot, and was both alarmed and pleased when he won. I wondered how much truth there was in my hunch. I decided I better quit stalling. I called Hank's sister and a maid told me, “Mrs. Keating has gone to the country for a week, on the advice of her doctor.” I gave her my name and felt better—it all fitted in nicely with my plans. First, I had a bit of work to catch up on at the office, a feature spread we were getting out on our Georgia dealers, and a speech to write for one of the vice-presidents—which we would later run as an article. Harvey couldn't write speeches, he always made the speaker sound too sharp and acid, not realizing that the purpose of an after-dinner speech is to say nothing in the mildest way possible. Secondly, I wanted more time to think things out about Hank's money, although I didn't know exactly what there was to think out.