All These Condemned by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

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    I swam a little and drank a lot. Judy Jonah went through a regular conditioning routine, knee bends, back bends,holding one leg straight up, handstands. She had a trim figure. I enjoyed watching her. Wallace Dorn paddled around in the water between the two docks, looking as if he were enduring this indignity for the sake of mingling with the herd. Noel Hess sat fairly near me, ordering her drink freshened each time I did. I wondered about her. She’s dark and small and quiet. You never feel as if you know her. She seems to be watching you all the time. Yet you get a feeling of a lot of slow dark fire burning ’way down underneath all that placidity. She wore a yellow swimsuit and I noticed for the first time the almost textureless purity of her skin. The way she was built seemed to emphasize the ivoried intricacy of ankle joint and wrist and shoulder, making you conscious of the human form as something of delicate and vulnerable design. Wilma swam for a time, with a lot more energy than skill, and then waved in the trio off the lake and whooped up a game of croquet. She appointed Randy scorekeeper and referee, and the rest of us split into two teams of four.
    I was teamed up with Judy, Wallace Dorn, and Noel Hess, with Hayes, Mavis, Wilma, and Steve as the competition. Wallace, playing with bitter concentration, and Noel, with an unexpectedly good eye, kept up our end of the score. Judy clowned it, and I was getting too tight to be much good. There were ground rules. If you captured a ball you could hammer it into the lake. The person knocked into the lake had to chugalug a drink, retrieve the ball, replace it on the edge of the parking area. Whenever one team had gone the length of the course, everybody had a drink. It got pretty blurred for me. They kept knocking me into the lake. The voices started to sound funny, as though wewere all in a tunnel. The stripes on the wooden balls got brighter. The grass got greener. I remember Judy pleading on her knees, hands clasped, while Steve took a gigantic swing and, losing his footing, knocked both her ball and his own down the cliff into the lake. I don’t know who won. I think I had some lunch.
    Then, in some mysterious way, I was in the living room, weaving, trying to focus my eyes, and Judy Jonah was supporting me.
    “Come on, now,” she said. “One big fat foot after the other.”
    “Where’s everybody?”
    “Out being mad and gay. Banging around in the boats. Churning around in the water. Come on, lamb. Judy won’t let you fall on your head.”
    There was another blank and then I was in bed, and Judy was looking down at me, shaking her head. She walked to the foot of the bed and took my shoes off. I was still in my swim trunks. She floated a blanket over me.
    “Preciate it,” I said. “Preciate it.”
    “Poor old bear,” she said. She leaned over me, kissed me lightly on the lips, and then she was gone, the door shutting softly behind her. The bed started to veer dangerously around a circular track. I grabbed hold of it and steered it carefully into sudden sleep.
    When I woke up it was dark. I looked at the window. The outside floodlights were on. I heard laughter. Somebody was running water in our bathroom. The door opened, and through the dressing room I could see Mavis outlinedagainst the lighted bathroom as she turned in the doorway and clicked off the switch.
    As she moved quietly through the room I spoke her name.
    “So you aren’t really dead after all, dahling?”
    “What time is it?”
    “About nine. It’s quite warm. We’re all swimming. I imagine you feel dreadful, I hope.”
    “Thanks so much.”
    “You made a spectacle of yourself, you know. Stumbling around like that. I hope you feel stinking.” She swept out and banged the door shut.
    I drifted off again. When I woke up I had a feeling it was much later. I felt a little better. I drank three glasses of water, put on a bathrobe, and went out into the living room. Two small lights