If I Die Before I Wake Read online

  ‘No. I never knew my parents. I lived on my uncle’s farm in North Dakota. When he died I went to sea. I still have the farm, but the land’s all shot up there and I can’t even sell it. I’d always wanted to go to sea, but I never meant to make it my life. Not that I haven’t done other things ashore, but none of them lasted very long, for one reason or another.’

  ‘How’d you ever get with Bannister?’

  ‘That just happened. It was getting harder and harder to get on a ship and I was pretty tired of it, anyway. I wanted to do things, amount to something. But I couldn’t get a job on land, either. You know how things were. Finally I drifted out here on Long Island, thinking this is where all the rich people were and that I might get a job here. I was out here swimming when Bannister saw me.’

  ‘He saw you come out of the water?’

  ‘Yes. I came up on his beach. He called to me. He didn’t mind me using his beach, but he was lying there in the sand and asked me about myself and I told him. Then he gave me the job. That’s all.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Grisby said. ‘But it’s not why he hired you – just because he needed someone, I mean.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. He could have got dozens from the city, just by raising a finger. He took you because you were young and good-looking and had such a marvelous physique.’

  ‘That’s silly,’ I said. ‘What difference would that make?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Just all the difference in the world,’ he said. ‘You mean he’s never told you about his leg? It was in the War that it happened. This was before he was in the intelligence service. He was a lieutenant and was having a mess kitchen drawn up. A shell struck it. When he woke up in the hospital they told him his leg would have to come off.’

  He waited so long I asked, ‘Well, did they take it off?’

  ‘No, they didn’t. He wouldn’t let them amputate. Said he’d rather die if that’s the way it was. They did what they could, and managed to save his life, but the leg was twisted all out of shape and never could heal right. It made him bitter and a little screwy.’

  ‘How do you mean – screwy?’

  ‘Oh, he’s got a quirk in his brain about youth shuffling along. Says they’re wasting the most precious moments of life and don’t know it. Thinks they ought to be doing something – you know, grasping the fruits while they’re offered. All that rot. It’s his idea that they might be crippled in the next hour themselves, like he is – how do they know they won’t be? – and then the fruits would be denied them like they are him. Screwy? He’s absolutely batty when he gets on the subject!’

  ‘He’s never said anything to me.’

  ‘Well, he will, he will! He’s been pretty busy, that’s all. But it’s why he hired you, you can bet on that. He likes to have people around who are young and straight, the way he’d like to be himself, so he can see them doing all the things he’d like to do, but can’t because of his leg.’

  ‘But he doesn’t seem to be denied anything,’ I said. ‘He’s got plenty of money, a swell big house, a beautiful young wife—’

  ‘Yes, a beautiful young wife who hates him, who married him when she was eighteen, before she knew what it was all about, and has regretted it ever since.’

  ‘Is that so? They seem to get along pretty well to me.’

  ‘Why, figure it out! What would a girl like that, who’s no older than you are, have in common with a man like Bannister? Always brooding about his bum leg. He’s all washed up and doesn’t know it.’

  The train whistle sounded eerily along the swamp.

  ‘Well, you think over our proposition,’ he said, getting out.

  III

  I kept turning it over and over in my mind like a hot pancake.

  Five thousand dollars!

  That was a hell of a lot of dough. Not too much for getting myself in a jam on a murder rap, even if it was all set for me to go free. Something might always happen.

  But it was too much for Grisby to pay just to make it look like he was dead. There’d have to be a better reason than wanting to leave his wife. If that was all there was to it, he could just pick up and go.

  Another thing: the police would want to know why I’d killed him. They’d sweat it out of me. What could I tell them – robbery? They’d grab the five thousand, sure as shooting. What else? I checked them off, all the motives I could think of:

  —Hate?

  —Anger?

  —Jealousy?

  —Revenge?

  It couldn’t be any, as far as I could see. Robbery, yes. But that was out; it had to be out. Yet what other reason could there be for his partner’s chauffeur to murder him and throw his body in the Sound?

  Well, that was Grisby’s problem, not mine. Only I wasn’t rushing into the thing blindly. I’d have to know plenty first. Right now it looked fishy – fishy as hell.

  Still – five thousand dollars! What I couldn’t do with that! I thought of all the things I could do, sitting up in my room that night.

  The room was over the garage. Mrs Bannister had done a swell job fixing it up. Bright drapes on the windows. A good clean bed. Bookshelves. A writing desk. A fireplace that would be great in the winter. All mine! The job was pretty soft, too. But the whole layout couldn’t compare with five thousand dollars.

  The phone rang. It was about nine o’clock. Mrs Bannister’s husky low voice. Would I bring the car around? They were going down to the beach.

  Bannister came out first, walking in that comic, jerky way his leg made him walk. He was wearing a long white robe with a cowl hanging loose and looked very handsome with his sleek black hair. Close up his features were too sharp, his cheeks too pinched for him to be really good-looking. Deep-set black eyes under dark brows gave him a brooding and defiant look.

  ‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘Nice night for a swim.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ His voice was cold.

  I kicked myself, remembering he couldn’t swim.

  He had a blanket and towels and put them in the back of the car while I switched on the light.

  ‘Where’s your suit?’ he asked.

  ‘My suit?’

  ‘Didn’t you bring it?’

  ‘Why, no. I—’

  ‘Oh, you needn’t stand on ceremony here. Glad to have you. If it’s hot for us, it’s hot for you, too. Besides, Mrs Bannister always swims out too far. That’s dangerous at night. You can keep an eye on her. But hurry it up. On the run!’

  I went up and grabbed the suit. When I came down again Mrs Bannister was there. She was standing beside the car in the light from the house. Just to look at her took my breath away. She had on a one-piece white suit without any back and her dark red hair hung loose and wild.

  There was a bathhouse on the beach. I put on the trunks and came out and sat in the sand near Bannister. He was hunched up on the blanket smoking his pipe. I looked around for Mrs Bannister. She wasn’t there.

  The moon was up over the water and as far up and down the beach as you could see were little fires. Down a way a man was playing a guitar and a girl was singing.

  We sat and listened. After a while a speedboat shot past in the water ahead of us and started cutting capers in the moonlight. It leaped and splashed over the water, its motor making a racket as the throttle was pushed to top speed.

  Suddenly it cut in toward shore and charged straight for the landing on Bannister’s beach.

  Bannister started to jump up, then sank back as the motor was cut and the boat slid in to a stop.

  Mrs Bannister jumped out, laughing and waving at Bannister.

  Bannister bit his lip. She’d given him a scare – on purpose, it looked like.

  ‘Better come in,’ he called. ‘We’ll build a fire.’

  She shook her head, ran up onto the diving board and dove in.

  Bannister sighed.

  ‘The water lo
oks fine,’ he said.

  I looked at him; he was taking me in.

  ‘Man, but you’ve got a build,’ he said.

  What could I say?

  ‘It just looks that way,’ I told him. ‘A sailor not half my size beat the tar out of me once.’

  ‘That’s right, you were a sailor, weren’t you?’

  ‘Most of the time. I did other things, too. Sold house-to-house, drove a truck, worked on a newspaper—’

  ‘You did!’

  ‘Sure.’

  I told him how I’d read every good book I could get my hands on while at sea, and how I’d been trying to write ever since a kid, even though I’d never got past the eighth grade out there at Goodrich, North Dakota.

  ‘I thought I was getting somewhere when I got into newspaper work,’ I said, ‘and I even started going to City College nights. But when times got tough I found out, like a lot of other people, that my hands could get me three squares a day a lot better than my head could. So after I got laid off the paper, I got one of those real man-killing jobs driving a ten-ton truck around the country eighteen hours a day. That didn’t last, either, so I dug out the old A.B. ticket again and went back to sea.’

  He wasn’t listening. He was watching his wife’s arms going up and down in the path cut by the moonlight.

  ‘Better go out and watch her,’ he said.

  His voice said a lot more than that. It said that she was precious to him… that he couldn’t have anything happening to her.

  I went out on the long pier and dove in.

  It was deep here – a good place to say I’d dumped Grisby. I’d heard, too, that few bodies were ever recovered from the Sound. There was something about it that kept the body down, or carried it out to sea. That would work in good – if I went through with it.

  The water was cold at first, but by the time I’d reached her it was fine.

  She turned her head, smiling, and went right on. It was easy to keep up with her. Then she started to race me. The way she was going, I got the idea she didn’t want me watching her, that she’d just as soon drown as not. I let her get ahead a little way and when she tired I came up fresh. She turned on her back and floated.

  ‘The sky!’ she said.

  It seemed to be tumbling down on us a million miles a minute. You could almost hear it roar.

  I kept still and watched. She hadn’t been talking to me, I knew, but to herself.

  Going back, she cut over toward a raft that was rolling in the water about fifty feet off shore. We held on to it out of breath, gasping. It had been a good swim.

  ‘Help me up, please.’

  I climbed onto the raft and reached down for her. She put one hand on my wrist and the other on my shoulder and came up easily, laughing. At the top she slipped and held on close. A shiver went through her. I put my hand on her back to steady her and felt her hair like dark seaweed in my face. My heart started pounding.

  The raft bobbed in the water with a crazy motion, throwing us still closer. Her body pressed.

  I looked over toward the beach. The fires were like fireflies. I couldn’t see Bannister, everything looked blurred. I wondered if he could see us, in case anything happened.

  Then the raft steadied and she sank down putting her hands behind her head, lying looking at the stars.

  I felt pretty shaky. I had seen her now really for the first time not as a married woman I drove the car for but as someone very beautiful and near my own age.

  I sat down next to her on the edge of the raft and tried to catch my breath in earnest now.

  She was so near I could have leaned over and kissed her. I didn’t. It would have to be her doing. I wasn’t taking any chances losing my job.

  After a while she raised herself on one elbow, looking at me and then up at the stars again.

  ‘You can get me that big red one,’ she said.

  I didn’t know what she meant. Then I saw it, too late. Mars. I guess she thought I was pretty dense.

  She smiled and settled back.

  ‘Hadn’t you better go in and build a fire?’ she asked.

  Class dismissed.

  I dove in and swam back slowly. I had a lot of thinking to do.

  IV

  Bannister was still puffing away on his pipe, the robe over his knees. He was wearing a blue and white striped jersey and looked very thin.

  I said: ‘Mrs Bannister would like a towel and her comb.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘And her cigarettes.’

  He fished them out of her bag, hesitating a little.

  ‘Did she say she intended to stay out there? Tell her I’d rather she came in, won’t you? We’ll build a little fire. How was the water?’

  I didn’t want him to think he’d missed anything.

  ‘A little too cold,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell her.’

  Now maybe there’d be a different story. At least, I’d give it another try. But I still wasn’t going to start it myself.

  She said: ‘Oh, thank you. That was nice of you to think to bring my things.’

  ‘Mr Bannister said—’

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s always the same. Tell him when I finish this cigarette. I want to lie here and watch the sky awhile. It’s so glorious tonight.’

  She began drying herself with the towel, humming the song they were playing down the beach. She didn’t pay any more attention to me.

  I left her on the raft and went back and found some wood and built a fire. I felt pretty small. Of course she wouldn’t have anything to do with her chauffeur. She wasn’t that sort.

  We sat and watched the fire, Bannister scowling over his pipe and not saying a word. Now and then a couple would go past on the way from one party to another. They all seemed to fit in with the music; we didn’t.

  Suddenly a girl came running. She stumbled in the sand and got up laughing, looking over her shoulder. She had on a suit with a brassiere top tied in the back and her lips were very red in a brown face. A nice looking young fellow my age was right behind. He caught up to her in front of us and brought her to the sand with a shout. The laughing stopped. Her arms went around him and they lay still. After a while he lifted her up and carried her down the beach. Neither had even looked at us.

  Bannister took out his pipe and stared at me.

  ‘Good God, man,’ he said, huskily. ‘How can you sit there and not want to be a part of all that? How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-six.’

  ‘Do you know how old I am?’

  ‘Why, I’d say about – about forty.’ I wished I’d said thirty-five.

  ‘Well, I’m forty-three. Forty-three! Do you know what I’d give to be twenty-six again, with a build like yours?’

  I said: ‘You don’t look forty-three.’

  He laughed far down in his throat.

  ‘No, but at forty-three how heavily my thousands of years of nothingness weigh upon me.’

  I guessed it must be the night and the singing and the waves going up the shore. I smelled whiskey, though, and remembered he was strong for his Scotch and soda. Why, at his age he was still a young man. I wasn’t too young to know that; I’d seen sailors tough as marlinspikes at sixty and seventy even, but then, there was that leg of his. That was really what was behind it, probably.

  ‘And the pity of it is,’ he said, ‘when you’re young you can’t imagine yourself being old and wanting the chance to be young again. If you could, you would regulate everything differently, I assure you. Wasn’t it Voltaire who suggested that we make love in our youth, and in old age attend to salvation?’

  What did he think, I should be out making love? That was a good one.

  ‘There’s a poem I like to recite,’ he said. ‘Would you care to hear it?’

  ‘Sure.’ I was getting paid for it.

  ‘It goes like this.’ He leaned forward, his face at once dark and brigh
t in the firelight, his voice at once eager and old:

  ‘A Moment’s Halt – a momentary taste

  Of Being from the Well amid the Waste—

  And Lo! – the phantom Caravan has reach’d

  The Nothing it set out from – Oh, make haste!’

  ‘That’s swell,’ I said.

  He looked at me with the left eyebrow raised for a minute, and then shrugged. I thought he was going to drop the whole thing and give me up as a total loss. I started to poke the fire and go look for more wood, but he stopped me.

  ‘Listen!’ he snapped.

  He was tighter than I’d thought. Then I spotted the bottle on the blanket and knew he’d been hitting it all the time we were out swimming. I sat down and let him talk, without listening very hard… all about the things that were denied him because of his leg, so he couldn’t ‘make haste’ if he wanted to. But what made him boil most was that those who could weren’t doing anything about it, like me. They were asleep and maybe never would wake up. Maybe never until they were about to die. And then it was too late to wake.

  What the hell, I thought.

  ‘Myself, in the War… going on leave, knowing that the next moment might be the last – seeing how cheap life could be, even my own—’

  Mrs Bannister, coming into the firelight suddenly, gave me a scare. I guessed she’d been listening.

  ‘Marco, for heaven’s sake,’ she said. ‘Again?’

  ‘Yes, Elsa,’ he mimicked her. ‘Again!’

  She seemed surprised and not quite sure that she had heard right.

  ‘Don’t you ever get tired of the same—’ She stopped, looking at him with her lips still parted.

  His eyes blazed yellow in the firelight. Veins stood out on his neck and forehead. If I hadn’t known he’d been drinking, I’d have been surprised, too.

  ‘I get tired of the attitude you adopt, that I am a child to be humored—’

  She hadn’t been trying to humor him, just to be nice.

  ‘Oh, it isn’t that; you know it isn’t. It’s only—’

  ‘What? Only what? We might as well face this thing, Elsa, now as any other time. I needn’t tell you how strangely you’ve been acting lately. I think I have the right—’