Home is the Sailor by Day Keene Read Free Book Online

you; locked away in a cell, kissing me once a month through a screen on visiting days. Both of us slowly going mad. Then there’s another thing, Swede.”
    “What’s that?”
    Her voice was so low I had to lean forward to hear her. “You ought to know. Do I look like the kind of girl who would enjoy going into court and standing before a jury of twelve men and a judge, all of them smirking at me, undressing me with their eyes, thinking nasty thoughts? Do I? Do you think I would enjoy admitting, ‘Yes. Jerry Wolkowysk forced me into bed with him. My own bed. At the point of a gun. The night before I was going to be married.’ž” She flung my hands away, screaming the two words. “Do I?”
    I got up and walked across the room. I took the bottle from the shelf and let rye gurgle down my throat. “All right. That does it.”
    “Does what?”
    “We won’t call Sheriff Cooper. We’ll get rid of the body.”
    “Where?”
    I tilted the bottle again. Whisky dribbled off my chin onto my chest. I mixed it in with the sweat and hair, rubbing it with my fingers. “I don’t know. But get dressed and be ready to go. Meanwhile I’ll think of something.”
    Corliss buried her face in her hands.
    I opened the door and crossed the grass to my cottage, through the re-teat, re-teat of the crickets and the funereal smell of the flowers. I had trouble putting on my shoes and shirt and coat. I wasn’t as sober as I’d thought I was. I was glad I wasn’t. Regardless of what I did with the body, it was going to be a nasty business.
    As I put on my coat, my wallet fell out of my pocket, and with it the bus ticket to Hibbing.
    I looked at the ticket for a long time. Then I went back to take care of Wolkowysk.

Chapter Seven
    Corliss was standing in front of her dressing table, giving her hair and make-up a quick once-over, trying to hide the swelling under her eye with face powder.
    I said, “Never mind your eye. Get dressed.”
    She said, “Yes, Swede,” meekly, and slipped out of her torn yellow dress. There was nothing under it but her. Long hours in the hot Southern California sun had tanned her legs and back a rich copper. But as she padded across the floor to the clothes closet it looked as if she were wearing white satin briefs.
    She took a pale green dress from the closet and, holding it in front of her, she crossed the room and kissed me. “I love you, Swede.”
    “I love you, Corliss,” I told her.
    We kissed for a long time, straining against each other.
    Then I rolled Wolkowysk in the white pile rug on which he’d died. I had to unroll him again, gagging and fighting for breath, when I remembered that his clothes were lying on the chair beside the bed.
    Corliss tried to help dress him and couldn’t. Her hands shook too badly. She said, “Just the feel of his flesh makes me sick.”
    I told her to sit on the bed while I dressed him. She sat on a chair instead, watching me with brooding eyes.
    I put on his socks and his underwear. I zipped up his pants. I forced his arms into his shirt and coat. I tied his tie. Handling his body revolted me as much as it did Corliss. But for a different reason.
    So he was only a dead man. I’d handled lots of dead men. In Africa. In Central and South America. At sea. But this dead man was different. Wolkowysk was my baby. This one was charged to me. So far it was only manslaughter. But once I dumped his body, no one would believe our story. It was up to me to do a good job of hiding him. For my own sake. If and when his body was found, the tab would read first degree.
    When I had him dressed I went to the head and lost the rye. Then I rolled him in the white rug again, being careful to wad most of it around his head to keep blood from dripping on the floor while I carried him out the side door opening into the carport and put him in the turtle back of Corliss’ green Caddy.
    I locked the turtle back and, at Corliss’ suggestion, we went over the cottage on our hands and knees,