Alibi for Isabel: And Other Stories Read online

  I shoved Minnie over the basin for the shampoo to shut her up, but she came up still talking.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it, Ethel,” she said. “That she won’t fish, I mean.”

  “Maybe her mother was scared by a fish before she was born.”

  Minnie giggled but I was still sore. The hotel stands on a slope, and my shop is in the basement at the rear. From my windows I can see the guide dock, and I knew that every boat on the island was in the Pass that night, ready to fish the slack tide at two A.M. Even Joe was there. But not Mack. Win McKnight was always Mack to us. No, not Mack. He was upstairs in bed. Not sleeping. I didn’t think he was asleep. But letting us down when we needed the business, and that because he’d fallen for a girl who probably thought one went after tarpon with a worm for bait, and just didn’t give a damn anyhow.

  Not that Mack meant anything to me personally. At forty-five and a hundred and sixty pounds a woman quits fooling herself. But I’d always liked him. He’d stick his head in my door on his way down to the guide dock and grin at me.

  “How’s the beauty business, Ethel?”

  “Rotten. What’s the use? You men never look at anything but fish.”

  As I say, I liked him, which made it worse. When I had appendicitis it had been Mack—and Joe—who wrapped me in a blanket, carried me to the boat and got me to the hospital on the mainland before the abscess ruptured. He paid my bills, too. After that he could have used me for tarpon bait if he’d wanted to, and when I heard he was going into the army from the National Guard I took the newspaper down to Joe, and we both looked pretty sick.

  “He’s a good guy,” Joe said. “Best man with a fish I ever saw.”

  Only tarpon are fish on the island. The other little fellows have names.

  Naturally then there was considerable excitement when we learned he was coming. His wire said: “Have ten days before showing army how to fight. Wake Joe from his winter sleep. Also notify fish.”

  It meant a lot, because the season had been bad; late and cold, with now and then a tarpon rolling but none taken. You see, Mack was a sort of legend by that time. And when he did arrive about half the hotel met him on the dock. I myself was there. We let out a cheer when we saw him, and he grinned and waved. But the cheer sort of died away when we saw that he wasn’t alone. There was a girl behind him, and the way he helped her off the boat showed me right away how things stood.

  “Well, here we are, Miss Jeffries,” he said. “Welcome to Corella Island.”

  She looked around her, at us and at the island; at the cocoanut palms and the orange trees and the blooming hibiscus and the long stretches of white sandy beach. It is beautiful, if I do say it. But I thought she looked rather queer.

  “It’s lovely,” she said. “But it does smell fishy, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure it does,” he said happily. “And how!”

  I caught Joe’s eye as the bellboys were taking off their stuff. Mack had his usual leather rod-case and tackle-box, but the Jeffries girl had a bag of golf clubs. Joe looked at them, and I could tell pretty well how he felt. You see, we get two sorts of guests, the fishing crowd and the golf crowd, and the split between would make the Grand Canyon look like a drainage ditch. He took the tackle after Mack had shaken hands with him.

  “Good tide tonight, Mack,” he said. “Slack water at half-past ten.”

  But Mack looked undecided.

  “I’ll let you know, Joe. I’ve had a long trip.”

  Right then and there I knew it was all over. So did Joe. And if you’ll believe me, it was. They had met on the train, the Jeffries girl and Mack, and I gathered that the only time he’d taken his eyes off her since was when he was asleep.

  She was worth looking at, at that. I see all sorts of girls in my business, but Peggy Jeffries was about tops; one of those natural blondes who don’t need a sunshine rinse, and so slim that I went off bread and potatoes that very night at dinner.

  By that time, of course, everybody knew something was wrong. Usually when Mack arrives he is in fishing clothes as soon as he can unpack them, and in the Pass as soon as he can get there. But that evening he put on white flannels and a snappy sports coat, and if you’ll believe me he and the Jeffries girl played backgammon until bedtime. I don’t think he knew what he was playing. I slipped up the stairs once to put a quarter in one of the slot machines and Slim, the bartender, came to the door and winked at me.

  “What will you bet she lands him?” he said. “He isn’t even jumping to throw the hook.”

  “Maybe he’s tired.”

  “Maybe I don’t know a bottle of Scotch when I see it.”

  The worst news came the next morning. When Bill, the golf pro, came to lunch in the staff dining room he said he had bought a set of clubs and was taking lessons, with the girl looking on.

  “How is he?” I asked, my heart sinking.

  “Terrible,” he said. “I left the caddies in bathing trunks, hunting for the six new balls he drove into the water.”

  Well, that’s the way it was, day after day. Joe sitting in his boat waiting, with nothing to do; nobody catching any fish, and Mack on the links, with his face grim and the girl insisting on making a golfer of him if it killed him.

  I saw him myself one morning when I was taking a walk before I started work. He was twisted up like a pretzel, and he was in a bad temper, too. The girl was standing by, watching him anxiously.

  “Look, Mack,” she said. He was Mack to her by that time, of course, and she was Peggy. “You don’t have to kill it. It isn’t Hitler. It’s just a plain little white ball, waiting to be smacked.”

  “I’ll smack it all right,” he said furiously.

  He hauled off and hit at it, and it should have gone three hundred yards. It only rolled about thirty feet however, and he looked as if he couldn’t believe it. Then he turned and gave her a funny sort of smile.

  “Look,” he said. “I can do a few things. I can ride a horse. I can play tennis. I can shoot a gun. I can even fish. Then why the eternal hell can’t I hit that ball?”

  “You’ll get it, Mack. It only needs practice.”

  She teed her ball and sent it clear down the fairway to the edge of the green. She waited until it stopped rolling, and then looked at him. Not patronizing. Not even proud of the shot. She really was a nice girl, only she didn’t understand a man like Mack. Or that any man hates to have a girl make him look like a fool.

  “Of course I’ve played for years,” she said apologetically.

  But he didn’t reply. He stood looking off at the ball. Then he dropped his club.

  “Oh God!” he said, and left her standing there.

  I had a bit of hope then, but the next day she had him back. The plain truth was that, as Slim said, the poor lug was so in love with her that he couldn’t keep away from her. And she hadn’t the faintest idea what she was doing to him. She looked frightfully happy. She never noticed that he was avoiding the other guests. But she simply refused to get in a boat, and he wouldn’t go without her.

  Everybody on the island was watching, of course. The water was warming up, and here were the tarpon coming in—or showing up. Because there is an endless argument about them among the guides, one side believing they are in the Pass all year, but only showing in the spring; the other insisting that they spend the cold weather somewhere out in the Gulf, watching the thermometer until it’s well toward seventy before they move. And here was our last hope playing the infatuated fool: golf and a swim in the morning, a sunbath in the afternoon, bridge or backgammon at night. And the Pass full of boats from everywhere around, waiting to take our record away from us.

  I saw Joe alone at the guide dock one afternoon. All the rest were gone, and he was fishing for pinfish with a speck of shrimp and a hook about the size of my little fingernail. As I watched him he got one about five inches long. He put it carefully in the fish well. Then he looked at me.

  “Can that girl swim, Ethel?” he inquired.

  “Like
a duck,” I said. “Why?”

  He drew a long breath. “I was thinking of taking her somewhere and drowning her.”

  He caught another pinfish and looked at it with anguish. “Look. That’s bait if I ever saw it. I’m loaded with bait. Them fish is going to strike any day.”

  “Maybe I can work on her,” I told him. “I don’t think she really understands, Joe.”

  “You work on her and see where it gets you!”

  I had a try, at that. She came down that afternoon for a manicure, and I told her she had good hands for fishing, strong enough even for tarpon. She just smiled.

  “It’s funny,” she said. “So many people here want me to fish. It’s silly, isn’t it? I can’t see why any man thinks it’s sport to pull some helpless little thing out of the water and gasp itself to death.”

  “There’s nothing little or helpless about a tarpon, Miss Jeffries.”

  “They kill them, don’t they?”

  “Only the first one, or something extra special. They let the others go.”

  I tried to tell her about it. How when the tarpon really come in and you see them, you never forget it; how they come up and roll, and it’s your guess whether they weigh fifty pounds or a hundred and fifty. How when you strike one you think you’re going out of the boat after it, and how it leaps into the air and shakes its head, and the chances are two to one that it will throw the hook and depart for parts unknown.

  But I saw it was no use. She just wasn’t interested. However she gave me a dollar tip, which is unusual, and I had Slim in the bar change it into quarters and took them to the slot machine. I got a lemon every time, and Slim grinned at me from the door of the bar.

  “Why don’t you break the glass?” he said. “That’s the only way you’ll get anything out of it.”

  I went in to the bar and got a coke. Slim’s an old friend of mine.

  “I wish you’d tell me something, Slim,” I said. “What sort of fellow lets a girl make a doormat of him, with welcome on it?”

  “Every fellow, once in a lifetime. Why don’t you let that machine alone?”

  “I’m trying to get my train fare back home.”

  “You might try saving it, just for a change,” he said. “I suppose Mack’s the doormat?”

  “He is.”

  “Give him time. It took a stiff Scotch to get him to that backgammon board last night. And the girl’s all right. Just needs experience. You watch. He’ll break her neck some day and she’ll like it.”

  “I’d like it myself,” I said.

  The truth was we were all pretty much on edge by that time. The fishing crowd was talking about going North, which meant closing the hotel. So every one was grumpy, including the guides, and one day someone put an anonymous sign on the bulletin board.

  “When will Mack break the hoodoo?”

  He tore it down when he saw it, but the next morning things began to happen.

  The tarpon showed up. All at once word came that the Pass was full of them, and I knew what that meant. The hotel simply seethed that day. At the guide dock the bait man was doing a big business in pinfish, crabs and dried mullet. The tackle stand was selling reels and fresh lines, and about noon I met Joe, loaded down with lunch boxes, on the way to his boat. I don’t know when I’ve been so excited.

  “Bring me back a big one, Joe,” I said.

  He stopped and looked at me.

  “What sort?” he inquired. “Angel wings or conch?”

  “Are you being funny?”

  “Funny!” he snarled, “The fish are in. The place is full of them. So we’re going to lunch somewhere on a beach and then gather shells. I’ve been in this business thirty years. I’ve guided for Mack for five. I got him the only diamond-button fish on this island since Wilson was President. So I’m going shelling.”

  He dropped one of the lunch boxes and deliberately put his foot on it.

  “Maybe them hard-boiled eggshells won’t be so good when she gets them,” he said.

  I wanted to howl my head off.

  I watched them start that day, and if ever a man had a hangdog look Mack had. But she still hadn’t an idea what she was doing. She saw me at my window and waved, but to save my soul I couldn’t wave back. I went up and put a quarter in the slot machine, just to work off steam. I got two dollars out, but like a fool I played them back for the jackpot and lost them all.

  Mind you, I don’t think Mack let go without a struggle. He had even coaxed her to troll a line on the way across the bay to the shell beach. According to Joe she got a sea trout, and a big one. But she wouldn’t look at it. She made Joe put it back in the water, which hurt since trout were scarce and it would have made Joe and some of the other guides a supper.

  So I think nobody was surprised when Joe quit that night. You have to get the way a guide’s mind works. He’s there to get fish. It’s his job and he’s proud of it. The first man to bring in a tarpon has it all over the rest. Then too the first tarpon is news. It gets in the papers, and naturally all the resorts try to get it.

  So Joe quit. He waited until all the other boats had gone out to fish the night tide, and he quit right outside my window after I had put out the light and was going up to bed. I suppose he thought I had gone. The first thing I heard was his voice.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mack,” he said. “I thought I’d better tell you. I’m through.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” That was Mack, and madder than a wet hen. But Joe was beyond caring.

  “I’m a fisherman,” said Joe stolidly. “I’m no shell-gatherer, and I can think of better things to do just now than picnicking among the fiddler crabs on a beach. Besides Mr. Renwick’s here, and he needs a guide. So I’m quitting.”

  Well, of course, that just isn’t done. A guide takes you for better or worse. But Joe had made up his mind.

  “I know when I’m licked,” he went on stubbornly. “You haven’t been in the Pass since you came, and I’ve yet to hear of a fish being caught on the gulf course. Or in the hotel either. Mind you,” he went on, “it’s your business. If the young lady doesn’t like to fish that’s all right with me. Only it happens fishing’s my business, and I don’t aim to spend the rest of the time just wearing out the seat of my pants.”

  “Damn it, you’re being paid for it,” said Mack, savagely.

  “Not for wearing out my pants, Mack. I’ll bring your tackle up, and you can leave a check at the desk. I’m through.”

  There is no arguing with Joe when he is in that mood, and Mack knew it. I heard Joe go up the stairs to the lobby, evidently to tell Mr. Renwick, but Mack didn’t move. He stood still for a minute. Then he lit a cigarette and started down the beach. I guessed the Jeffries girl wouldn’t see him again that night, and I was right. I met her on the way up, looking pretty as a picture and rather breathless, and she asked where he was.

  “He was going to play backgammon,” she said. “I wonder where he is?”

  “The last time I saw him,” I said, “he was starting for a walk up the beach.”

  “A walk? But he said—”

  “I don’t think he feels like playing games,” I said coldly. “You see, he’s lost his guide, and I guess it’s upset him.”

  She looked bewildered.

  “Why should that upset him?” she inquired. “He hasn’t fished anyhow.”

  “That seems to be the trouble,” I told her, and left her standing there.

  Well, as I say, she didn’t see him again that night. I undressed for bed, and as I was raising the window I saw her limping back to the hotel alone. She stopped once to empty sand out of her slippers, and I had a good look at her face. I thought she had been crying.

  Then of course the first fish was caught. At one o’clock in the morning I heard a boat horn tooting, and Joe brought old Mr. Renwick in, with the first fish of the year. It weighed only sixty pounds, but it was a tarpon and it was news. Joe didn’t look any too happy; but Amy, the telephone operator, phoned the news to
the New York papers the next morning, and wires for reservations began to come in from all over the country.

  I didn’t sleep much that night. Mack had only three days of his leave left, and that brat of a girl had spoiled them for him.

  He didn’t play golf the next morning. I was in the staff dining room when he came down to breakfast, and as the door into the main dining room was open I could see and hear him as he stopped at her table. She gave him a bright smile.

  “It’s a perfect day,” she said. “If we can get off before the rest—”

  “Sorry, my dear,” he said. “You’d better get somebody who knows how to play golf and likes it. I don’t.”

  She looked stunned.

  “Of course,” she said, “if that’s the way you feel—”

  “That’s the way I feel,” he told her, pleasantly. “You see, I’ll never make a golfer, and I know it. So I’m going fishing, for a change.”

  “But I thought—hasn’t Joe resigned or something?”

  He smiled at that, but it was slightly twisted.

  “I wouldn’t say he’s particularly resigned. He’s quit. That’s all.”

  “Then how can you fish, Mack?”

  “I’ll tell you, if you’re interested,” he said. “I’m going to dig out some fiddler crabs from the beach, and I’m going to try for sheepshead off the old dock by the golf course. The kids have been getting some there.”

  She didn’t get it. Not even that about the children. And of course she didn’t know that to a tarpon fisherman going after sheepshead is as if a tennis champion took up tiddledewinks. She even hoped he would have good luck, although I could see she was puzzled and hurt. Then Minnie came to my table to arrange for a permanent that night, and I missed the rest of it.