I keep kitchen matches and cleaners in the pipe compartment of the pouch. I lit it. The pulsing flame illuminated my face.
An angular girl-shape walking along the dock stopped and said, “Hey, Trav. Hey, Meyer.”
“How you, Sandy?”
“Oh, just fine. Didn’t know you got back.”
“Tied up about dark. What’s new?”
“Babs made it. Twins like the doe said it would be. Twin boys. Day before yesterday. And Barney was out on a half-day charter last week, Thursday I think, fifteen miles southeast, and a waterspout ran right over him, over the transom and off over the bow and swung around and nearly got him again. Didn’t hurt anybody. Tore the outriggers off, turned his aerial into a pretzel, lifted up all the loose gear and took away. You got to hear him tell about it; honest to God, it’s the funniest thing I ever heard. I’m looking for Lew. You seen him?”
“No, we haven’t.”
“I was just checking to see if maybe he was having a drink with the Tiger. You see him, please tell him I’m home and that doctor phoned from Orlando and wants to start that three-day charter tomorrow noon, a party of three.”
She walked away into the night. We heard discordances music, night laughter, and somebody firing his fifty-six shooter on television. Meyer went below and returned with 2 cold brews, sat down with a heavy sigh and said, “What it is, of course, is a question of involvement.”
“Keep talking. I know how I’m going to vote.”
“I wrote that all out to organize it in my mind. She’s not aware of how much she told us. Maybe it’s enough, maybe not. That’s more in your line. You’d know the next step. I don’t. That is, if anybody takes that step. Question. Should a reasonable man, knowing what we know, and guessing what we have guessed, involve himself? Going down after the girl into that water was a clear-cut problem, and your response was instinctive. What we are talking about, I suppose, is the lives of a bunch of men we’ve never seen, men walking around. Thirty people watch a girl get knifed. A man lies dying of a coronary on a New York sidewalk, with the pedestrian traffic parting to move around him, like a stream moving around a boulder.”
“And,” I said, “you have this button and if you push it you get ten grand and ten thousand Chinamen die. And if a man is dumb enough to get himself mousetrapped”
“And if a tree falls in the desert and there is nobody to hear it, does it actually make any sound?”
“Meyer, I’ve changed my mind. I was going to vote no. I am not going to vote yes. I am just going to think about that no until this time tomorrow. I have nice green stuff in my lockbox, enough so it will be next Christmas before I have to think of beginning to look around for somebody who needs somebody to handle a little problem. But.”
“Yes indeed. But.”
“Aren’t you the one who says that’s a dangerous word?”
He ignored the question.
“Our Vangie, case-hardened though she is, got herself involved in something that dismayed her, and her revulsion built until she finally tried to pull down the whole structure. The impulse that made her do it was essentially suicidal. Consider her totally antisocial attitude prior to the past two years, Travis. To her mind, the world was corrupt and indifferent. As a child whore she knew the only imperative was to survive. She probably took some kind of hard pride in thinking herself capable of anything. She tried to tell herself that murder for profit was fine, if you could get away with it. But, over two years, actually being a part of such a thing eroded her false image of herself. And there, my friend, I think we have the reason for all the talk. Woman in search of herself. Trying to explain herself to herself-in front of witnesses. She had been a stoic about being dropped off the bridge because she had a guilt that required punishment. And even while she kept saying she wouldn’t tell us anything about the past two years, the little bits kept coming into her monologues. Names. Terry, Griff, DeeDee. Hints and allusions. It was a two-day confessional, Travis. And