A Flash of Green (2 page)

When she heard the sound of the wheelbarrow, she left the letter she was writing her sister and went out into the side yard. The lower Gulf Coast, from Tampa to the Keys, was enfolded in an airless July heat which was so merciless it had little flavor of tropic languor. Instead, it seemed to have a humming intensity, an expectancy, as though any moment the Gulf and the bays would be brought to the boiling point and all the roofs would break into flame. Each afternoon the thunderheads made their lazy, ominous, atomic symbols out over the Gulf. Sometimes there would be a riffle of rain-wet air turning the leaves, but all the storms moved ashore across other counties.

Barnett had trundled the wheelbarrow over to the pile of cuttings under the punk trees. She saw that he was wearing one of Van’s discarded shirts, a pale-blue Orlon knit that she had always liked on Van until the sun of Saturday golf had faded it unevenly and he had given it to Barnett. She tested the familiarity of that shirt upon herself, like touching and retouching something which might be a little too hot to hold and then finding, with a certain pride, that you can hold it after all.

Barnett Mayberry was of an unusual muddy saffron hue, and his features seemed more Asiatic than Negroid. When Van had been annoyed with him, he would call him, never to his face, “That damned Manchurian.”

“Fixin’ to tote thisheer bresh over to burn, Miz Hubble.”

“That’s fine, Barnett. I wanted to ask you about this thing that’s growing up into the live oak.”

He followed her across the yard. “I seen him,” Barnett said. “This here a strangle vine.”

“It’s growing awfully fast. Should it come out?”

“Fixin’ to take him out. I’ll cut him off low now, and next week he lets go enough up there, I pull him down easy. Take a long long time to kill that tree, we let it go. By the time it die, all you can see is the strangle vine aholt all over it.”

A car turned into her drive and stopped. It was an old blue Plymouth station wagon. She felt a quick pleasure as she recognized it as Jimmy Wing’s car and saw him clambering languidly out from behind the wheel, grinning at her, lifting his arm in a lazy greeting. He came across the yard toward them, loose-jointed, a sandy man in his middle thirties, a man with a long narrow head, a thrusting, fleshy nose, a face more deeply lined than his years warranted. His hair, brows, lashes and his light-blue eyes were not as dark as the slightly yellowed tan of his face. He had a crooked mouth and an ugly crooked grin—both sweet and wry in an attractive simultaneity. He wore a white short-sleeved sport shirt and light-gray slacks. He had the unconscious knack of giving the most ordinary clothes a look of elegance. She had decided it was partly because of the lazy grace of the way he moved, partly because of his spare bony frame, partly because he was so consistently immaculate.

Whenever he recalled how she had disliked him before Van had been killed, she was astonished at how blind she had been.
Jimmy had been the only one of Van’s close friends she had actively disliked.

“If it’s any help to you, it’s worse in town, Kat. How you, Barnett?”

Barnett’s grin was broad, his voice emphatic. “Fine, Mist’ Wing. Just fine.”

“You get those pictures?”

“I sure thank you, Mist’ Wing.”

“She get in up there to Tuskegee?”

“They said for her to come.”

“That’s one fine girl, Barnett.”

“What’s this all about?” Kat asked.

She found herself walking toward the house with Jimmy and knew he had effortlessly avoided explaining in front of Barnett. And she knew she had once again violated some obscure clause of the protocol.

“His daughter was valedictorian at their high school last month. Sandra Nan. Not much for looks, but hellish bright and energetic. Barlow got a good picture of her, so I had the darkroom make up three glossies and send them to the family.”

“Darn it! I should have known that.”

“He’s got one good boy, and one boy headed for trouble, so he’s batting high in the league.”

“Jimmy, do you know everything about everybody in Palm County?”

“Now, if I did, honey, everybody would be paying me not to work on the paper.”

They went through the screened portion of the cage at the rear of the house. He slid a glass door open and they walked into the roofed portion of the patio.

“Well, now!” he said, looking at her quizzically. “You’ve sissied out, Kat.”

“And every time I turn the noisy thing on I remember how Van hated air conditioning, and I feel immoral and guilty. You know my tenants stayed to the middle of June, and you know it got hot early this year. So they wanted one and we dickered around, and we finally decided I’d pay a hundred dollars against it, and if they take the house again next year, I’ll cut the lease another hundred. It’s a three-ton thing, and it’s sticking in the wall between the living room and the bedroom wing. What can I fix you to drink?”

“Can of beer is fine, if you’ve got it.”

“Coming up.” She went to the kitchen and brought the two opened cans back to the glass-top patio table, sat across from him.

“Will the whosises want the house next season?”

“The Brandts. They say so. They’ll let me know for sure by the first of November. Let me make my full confession on the air conditioner, Jimmy. I wasn’t going to use it. I was just going to let it sit there. But you know how cold they keep the darn bank all day. When I’d get out, I’d just wilt. I held out until last week, wearing my prickly heat rash like a badge of honor or something. Then I woke up in the middle of the night and my hair was sopping wet and it was too hot to go back to sleep. So like a thief I snuck around and closed the windows and plugged the beast in, and slept so hard I nearly didn’t hear the alarm.”

“Now you’re hooked.”

“I’ve fallen so low I even like the noise it makes.”

Jimmy stood up and walked toward the living room to stand and look the length of it. “Looks just the same,” he said.

“It is, and it isn’t. Jean Brandt had different ideas. I suppose any woman would, really. She moved things around, and she stored things away. I’ve been getting things back the way they were, but they won’t be exactly the way they were. It looks a little different, and it feels different. Do you know? It was our house, but
now I feel a little bit as if I were renting it too—from the Brandts. It isn’t as important to me as it was, which is very probably a good thing. I’m glad you talked me out of putting it on the market.”

He came back to the table. “You would have taken a whipping, Kat.”

“I just didn’t think I could endure living here.”

“We can always stand a little more than we think we can. One thing on my mind, Kat, I’ve got to drive up to Sarasota next Sunday. Borklund wants me to do a feature on their public beach program. I’ve got about everything I need, but there’s one fellow I want to talk to. And he won’t take up much time. So how about you and the kids coming along?”

She studied him, wondering if it was coincidence, then saw his casualness was a little too elaborate. “Thank you, dear Jimmy. I know it’s going to be a rough day for me. I’ve been dreading it for weeks. But I’ll manage.”

He shrugged. “But if coming along with me would make it any easier …”

“It would. Indeed it would, and I’m grateful. But, you see, the neighbors have been conspiring to keep me distracted, and I’ve given so many polite refusals I wouldn’t feel right saying yes to you. Van died on July ninth. Once I’m past this one, it will be over a year. I can manage it. The kids and I are going on a beach picnic by ourselves. I’ll have a lot of July ninths to get over. This will only be the second worst. Jimmy, it’s nice to have you stop by. I like seeing you in the bank too, but that’s when I have to keep being the happy hostess. Ready for another beer?”

“I’ll ride with this, thanks.” He frowned at his big, bony, freckled fist for a few moments, then looked at her with an odd expression. “I thought you’d come along on Sunday, and it would have given me a chance to talk to you about something.”

“You act as if it’s something unpleasant.”

“It is, and I better give it to you now. It’s off the record, honey. You’re still active in the S.O.B.’s, aren’t you?”

“Recording secretary, but there hasn’t been anything to record. Save Our Bays, Inc., has sort of been resting on its laurels.”

“It might be a very timely idea for you to resign.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“That project of filling in Grassy Bay is going to be opened up again soon.”

“You can’t mean it, Jimmy! You can’t be serious. Two years ago we licked it. I never worked so darned hard in my life. And Van too. All those phone calls and petitions and ringing doorbells and going to public meetings and taking all that abuse. We whipped them. We mobilized all the conservation groups and we got a bulkhead line established in Palm County, and nobody can fill beyond that line. Nobody can touch Grassy Bay. We
saved
it! You must be joking.”

His smile was bitter. “It’s going to astound a lot of other people too. Let’s say you saved it for two years. It’s a different deal this time. They’ve been setting it up quietly for almost a year. Last time, it was an outfit coming in from outside.”

“Sea ’n Sun Development. From Lauderdale.”

“This time it’s local.”

“Local men?”

“Don’t look so incredulous. And the fill project is a little bigger. Eight hundred acres. They have an option on a good big piece of upland to give them access to the bay. The financing has been arranged for. When the county commissioners set that wonderful bulkhead line, they reserved the right to change it.”

“But they have to have a public hearing.”

“I know. The new syndicate will petition for a change in the bulkhead line along the bay shore of Sandy Key, to swing the line out to enclose eight hundred acres of so-called unsightly mud
flats, and request county permission to buy the bay bottom from the State Internal Improvement Fund. The commissioners will set a date for a public hearing, at which time prominent local businessmen will go to the microphone, one after the other, and say what a great boon this will be to the community, a shot in the arm for the construction business and the retail stores. Captive experts will get up and say the fill will have no effect on fish breeding grounds or bird life, and will not change the tide pattern so as to cause beach erosion. It will be nicely timed, because a lot of the militant bird-watchers and do-gooders will be north for the summer, and they won’t give the ones who are left here much time to organize the opposition. The commissioners will change the bulkhead line and approve the syndicate application to purchase. The trustees of the IIF will sell the bay bottom at an estimated three hundred and fifty dollars an acre, and then the drag lines and dredges will move in. It’s going to be a steamroller operation, Kat, and it’s going to run right over anybody who stands in the way.”

“We can’t let it happen.”

“We can’t stop it this time. Kat, there’s a fortune sitting out there in that bay. I figure total development cost at a max of three million against a total minimum gross sales of lots of six and a half million. Where else along this coast is there water that shallow so close to an urban area?”

“But we must stop them, Jimmy!” She stared at him. “Why do you think I’d resign now?”

He stood up. “Need another beer. Stay where you are.”

She heard the refrigerator door slam. Barnett rapped at the patio door. She got his money from her purse and took it to him. He told her he’d cut the vine off close to the ground, and when he came next Tuesday he’d trim the big pepper hedge.

She walked, frowning, back to the table where Jimmy Wing
sat. “You should resign because it’ll be easier now than later. The new deal is called the Palmland Development Company. Your neighbor, Burton Lesser, is heading it up.”

“Burt! But he was against …”

“Against somebody else doing it. Leroy Shannard is in on it, handling the legal end. He handled Van’s estate, I know. And the uplands they took the option on is part of the Jerome Cable estate, and your neighbor and employer, Martin Cable, is the executor of that estate. A good piece of the financing has been worked out through the Cable Bank and Trust Company. And this time the newspaper isn’t going to be so scrupulously neutral.”

“Ben Killian should have been on our side last time,” she said indignantly.

“He won’t be this time. This is home industry, kid. It’s going to be patriotic to be for it, and like some unspeakable act to oppose it.”

She leaned back in her chair and stared at him in dismay. “But all those men
know
better, Jimmy.”

“And they know how much cash is sitting out there on those flats.”

“Grassy Bay is one of the most unique and beautiful …”

“You don’t have to sell me, honey.”

“You helped us last time.”

“Not this time.”

“Are you scared to, Jimmy?”

“I’m scared of a lot of things. This might as well be one of them. Katherine, you’d better take stock. There’s one hell of a difference between being Mrs. Vance Hubble, wife of an architect, and Mrs. Vance Hubble, the young widow who works at the bank.”

“I should keep my head down?”

“That’s my message. These are men you know, but they aren’t going to fool around. It could get dirty, honey.”

She stood up and walked away from the table, turned and looked back toward him with a puzzled expression. “So I should give up on something Van believed in? Just like that?”

“I know he took a certain risk in taking the stand he did. He lost some contracts. But he got some new ones to make up for it. So you could call it a calculated risk. I can tell you this, Kat. If he could see the way this one is set up, he wouldn’t mess into it.”

“That’s a filthy thing to say!”

“Why so? My God, the world is a practical place and Van was a pretty practical guy.”

“But he fought for what he believed.”

“Most men do, up to a point. But when they stand to lose too much, and gain too little, they think up reasons to stay out of it.”

“Van wasn’t like that.”

“It’s a point we can’t argue. I just don’t want you to get into any kind of … of a memorial campaign. The bay is gone.”