The Delicate Prey (17 page)

Somehow that did not surprise me. I nodded.

“I will tell you very briefly. The people here are simple country folk. They make trouble easily. Right now they are all talking about the young man you have living here with you. He is your son, I hear.” His inflection here was sceptical.

“Certainly he's my son.”

His expression did not change, but his voice grew indignant. “Whoever he is, that is a bad young man.”

“What do you mean?” I cried, but he cut in hotly: “He may be your son; he may not be. I don't care who he is. That is not my affair. But he is bad through and through. W e don't have such things going on here, sir. The people in Orange Walk and Saint Ives Cove are very cross now. You don't know what these folk do when they are aroused.”

I thought it my turn to interrupt. “Please tell me why you say my son is bad. What has he done?” Perhaps the earnestness in my voice reached him, for his face assumed a gentler aspect. He leaned still closer to me and almost whispered.

“He has no shame. He does what he pleases with all the young boys, and the men too, and gives them a shilling so they won't tell about it. But they talk. Of course they talk. Every man for twenty miles up and down the coast knows about it. And the women too, they know about it.” There was a silence.

I had felt myself preparing to get to my feet for the last few seconds because I wanted to go into my room and be alone, to get away from that scandalized stage whisper. I think I mumbled “Good morning” or “Thank you,” as I turned away and began walking toward the house. But he was still beside me, still whispering like an eager conspirator into my ear: “Keep him home, Mister Norton. Or send him away to school, if he is your son. But make him stay out of these towns. For his own sake.”

I shook hands with him and went to lie on my bed. From there I heard his car door slam, heard him drive off. I was painfully trying to formulate an opening sentence to use in speaking to Racky about this, feeling that the opening sentence would define my stand. The attempt was merely a sort of therapeutic action, to avoid thinking about the thing itself. Every attitude seemed impossible. There was no way to broach the subject. I suddenly realized that I should never be able to speak to him directly about it. With the advent of this news he had become another person—an adult, mysterious and formidable. To be sure, it did occur to me that the mulatto's story might not be true, but automatically I rejected the doubt. It was as if I wanted to believe it, almost as if I had already known it, and he had merely confirmed it.

Racky returned at midday, panting and grinning. The inevitable comb appeared and was used on the sweaty, unruly locks. Sitting down to lunch, he exclaimed: “Gosh! Did I find a swell beach this morning! But what a job to get to it!” I tried to look unconcerned as I met his gaze; it was as if our positions had been reversed, and I were hoping to stem his rebuke. He prattled on about thorns and vines and his machete. Throughout the meal I kept telling myself: “Now is the moment. You must say something.” But all I said was: “More salad? Or do you want dessert now?” So the lunch passed and nothing happened. After I had finished my coffee I went into my bedroom and looked at myself in the large mirror. I saw my eyes trying to give their reflected brothers a little courage. As I stood there I heard a commotion in the other wing of the house: voices, bumpings, the sound of a scuffle. Above the noise came Gloria's sharp voice, imperious and excited: “No, mahn! Don't strike him!” And louder: “Peter, mahn, no!”

I went quickly toward the kitchen, where the trouble seemed to be, but on the way I was run into by Racky, who staggered into the hallway with his hands in front of his face.

“What is it, Racky?” I cried.

He pushed past me into the living room without moving his hands away from his face; I turned and followed him. From there he went into his own room, leaving the door open behind him. I heard him in his bathroom running the water. I was undecided what to do. Suddenly Peter appeared in the hall doorway, his hat in his hand. When he raised his head, I was surprised to see that his cheek was bleeding. In his eyes was a strange, confused expression of transient fear and deep hostility. He looked down agan.

“May I please talk with you, sir?”

“What was all the racket? What's been happening?”

“May I talk with you outside, sir?” He said it doggedly, still not looking up.

In view of the circumstances, I humored him. We walked slowly up the cinder road to the main highway, across the bridge, and through the forest while he told me his story. I said nothing.

At the end he said: “I never wanted to, sir, even the first time, but after the first time I was afraid, and Mister Racky was after me every day.”

I stood still, and finally said: “If you had only told me this the first time it happened, it would have been much better for everyone.”

He turned his hat in his hands, studying it intently. “Yes, sir. But I didn't know what everyone was saying about him in Orange Walk until today. You know I always go to the beach at Saint Ives Cove with Mister Racky on my free days. If I had known what they were all saying I wouldn't have been afraid, sir. And I wanted to keep on working here. I needed the money.” Then he repeated what he had already said three times. “Mister Racky said you'd see about it that I was put in the jail. I'm a year older than Mister Racky, sir.”

“I know, I know,” I said impatiently; and deciding that severity was what Peter expected of me at this point I added: “You had better get your things together and go home. You can't work here any longer, you know.”

The hostility in his face assumed terrifying proportions as he said: “If you killed me I would not work any more at Cold Point, sir.”

I turned and walked briskly back to the house, leaving him standing there in the road. It seems he returned at dusk, a little while ago, and got his belongings.

In his room Racky was reading. He had stuck some adhesive tape on his chin and over his cheekbone.

“I've dismissed Peter,” I announced. “He hit you, didn't he?”

He glanced up. His left eye was swollen, but not yet black.

“He sure did. But I landed him one, too. And I guess I deserved it anyway.”

I rested against the table. “Why?” I asked nonchalantly.

“Oh, I had something on him from a long time back that he was afraid I'd tell you.”

“And just now you threatened to tell me?”

“Oh, no! He said he was going to quit the job here, and I kidded him about being yellow.”

“Why did he want to quit? I thought he liked the job.”

“Well, he did, I guess, but he didn't like me.” Racky's candid gaze betrayed a shade of pique. I still leaned against the table.

I persisted. “But I thought you two got on fine together. You seemed to.”

“Nah. He was just scared of losing his job. I had something on him. He was a good guy, though; I liked him all right.” He paused. “Has he gone yet?” A strange quaver crept into his voice as he said the last words, and I understood that for the first time Racky's heretofore impeccable histrionics were not quite equal to the occasion. He was very much upset at losing Peter.

“Yes, he's gone,” I said shortly. “He's not coming back, either.” And as Racky, hearing the unaccustomed inflection in my voice, looked up at me suddenly with faint astonishment in his young eyes, I realized that this was the moment to press on, to say: “What did you have on him?” But as if he had arrived at the same spot in my mind a fraction of a second earlier, he proceeded to snatch away my advantage by jumping up, bursting into loud song, and pulling off all his clothes simultaneously. As he stood before me naked, singing at the top of his lungs, and stepped into his swimming trunks, I was conscious that again I should be incapable of saying to him what I must say.

He was in and out of the house all afternoon: some of the time he read in his room, and most of the time he was down on the diving board. It is strange behavior for him; if I could only know what is in his mind. As evening approached, my problem took on a purely obsessive character. I walked to and fro in my room, always pausing at one end to look out the window over the sea, and at the other end to glance at my face in the mirror. As if that could help me! Then I took a drink. And another. I thought I might be able to do it at dinner, when I felt fortified by the whisky. But no. Soon he will have gone to bed. It is not that I expect to confront him with any accusations. That I know I never can do. But I must find a way to keep him from his wanderings, and I must offer a reason to give him, so that he will never suspect that I know.

We fear for the future of our offspring. It is ludicrous, but only a little more palpably so than anything else in life. A length of time has passed; days which I am content to have known, even if now they are over. I think that this period was what I had always been waiting for life to offer, the recompense I had unconsciously but firmly expected, in return for having been held so closely in the grip of existence all these years.

That evening seems long ago only because I have recalled its details so many times that they have taken on the color of legend. Actually my problem already had been solved for me then, but I did not know it. Because I could not perceive the pattern, I foolishly imagined that I must cudgel my brains to find the right words with which to approach Racky. But it was he who came to me. That same evening, as I was about to go out for a solitary stroll which I thought might help me hit upon a formula, he appeared at my door.

“Going for a walk?” he asked, seeing the stick in my hand. The prospect of making an exit immediately after speaking with him made things seem simpler. “Yes,” I said, “but I'd like to have a word with you first.”

“Sure. What?” I did not look at him because I did not want to see the watchful light I was sure was playing in his eyes at this moment. As I spoke I tapped with my stick along the designs made by the tiles in the floor. “Racky, would you like to go back to school?”

“Are you kidding? You know I hate school.”

I glanced up at him. “No, I'm not kidding. Don't look so horrified. You'd probably enjoy being with a bunch of fellows your own age.” (That was not one of the arguments I had meant to use.)

“I might like to be with guys my own age, but I don't want to have to be in school to do it. I've had school enough.”

I went to the door and said lamely: “I thought I'd get your reactions.”

He laughed. “No, thanks.”

“That doesn't mean you're not going,” I said over my shoulder as I went out.

On my walk I pounded the highway's asphalt with my stick, stood on the bridge having dramatic visions which involved such eventualities as our moving back to the States, Racky's having a bad spill on his bicycle and being paralyzed for some months, and even the possibility of my letting events take their course, which would doubtless mean my having to visit him now and then in the governmental prison with gifts of food, if it meant nothing more tragic and violent. “But none of these things will happen,” I said to myself, and I knew I was wasting precious time; he must not return to Orange Walk tomorrow.

I went back toward the point at a snail's pace. There was no moon and very little breeze. As I approached the house, trying to tread lightly on the cinders so as not to awaken the watchful Ernest and have to explain to him that it was only I, I saw that there were no lights in Racky's room. The house was dark save for the dim lamp on my night table. Instead of going in, I skirted the entire building, colliding with bushes and getting my face sticky with spider webs, and went to sit a while on the terrace where there seemed to be a breath of air. The sound of the sea was far out on the reef, where the breakers sighed. Here below, there were only slight watery chugs and gurgles now and then. It was unusually low tide. I smoked three cigarettes mechanically, having ceased even to think, and then, my mouth tasting bitter from the smoke, I went inside.

My room was airless. I flung my clothes onto a chair and looked at the night table to see if the carafe of water was there. Then my mouth opened. The top sheet of my bed had been stripped back to the foot. There on the far side of the bed, dark against the whiteness of the lower sheet, lay Racky asleep on his side, and naked.

I stood looking at him for a long time, probably holding my breath, for I remember feeling a little dizzy at one point. I was whispering to myself, as my eyes followed the curve of his arm, shoulder, back, thigh, leg: “A child. A child.” Destiny, when one perceives it clearly from very near, has no qualities at all. The recognition of it and the consciousness of the vision's clarity leave no room on the mind's horizon. Finally I turned off the light and softly lay down. The night was absolutely black.

He lay perfectly quiet until dawn. I shall never know whether or not he was really asleep all that time. Of course he couldn't have been, and yet he lay so still. Warm and firm, but still as death. The darkness and silence were heavy around us. As the birds began to sing, I sank into a soft, enveloping slumber; when I awoke in the sunlight later, he was gone.

I found him down by the water, cavorting alone on the springboard; for the first time he had discarded his trunks without my suggesting it. All day we stayed together around the terrace and on the rocks, talking, swimming, reading, and just lying flat in the hot sun. Nor did he return to his room when night came. Instead after the servants were asleep, we brought three bottles of champagne in and set the pail on the night table.

Thus it came about that I was able to touch on the delicate subject that still preoccupied me, and profiting by the new understanding between us, I made my request in the easiest, most natural fashion.

“Racky, would you do me a tremendous favor if I asked you?”

He lay on his back, his hands beneath his head. It seemed to me his regard was circumspect, wanting in candor.