The Hunter and Other Stories Part 10

"You mean," he suggested, "that being on the water makes you a little nervous, perhaps because you're not sure of your swimming?"

"I mean," Linn said, speaking rapidly through tightened, thinned lips, looking Rainey straight in the eye, "that I'm afraid of water as a rat is of a cat. I mean that I am not a little nervous when I am on the water, because I do not go on it. I mean that to cross a bridge even leaves me useless for hours afterwards. I mean, in short, that I am afraid of water."

I looked at Metcalf. The engineer was looking, without moving anything but his eyes, from Linn to Rainey. He looked disgusted with the pair of them, as if he wished they would shut up.

I was enough interested in what was going on that I didn't light my cigarette because I was afraid the flare of light would bring them, or at least Linn, back to normal.

Rainey made a circle in the air with the pink end of his cigar.

"You're exaggerating, of course," he said. "Swim?"

"Swim?" Linn repeated with an angry sort of softness. "How in h.e.l.l can I swim when more water than a bath-tub will hold drives me into lunacy?"

Rainey chuckled.

"Ever try to cure yourself?"

Linn laughed, a low laugh with an insulting purr in it.

"Try to cure myself?" Excitement blurred his words, but he kept his voice pitched very low. "Do you think I like being this way? Oh, yes, I've tried-and succeeded in making myself worse."

"Nonsense," Rainey said, and now the professional mellowness of his voice couldn't hide a sharp-edged undertone of annoyance. "A thing like that can be cured-if its owner is sound at bottom."

Linn's face flushed in the deepening twilight, and then paled again. He didn't say anything.

"I'll bet you," Rainey said, "one thousand dollars I can cure you."

Linn laughed in his throat, without enjoyment.

"It would be worth that and more," he said, "but-" He shrugged and asked: "Do you know what time the last mail goes out?"

"It's simple as can be," Rainey said. "Naturally you're afraid of water if you can't swim. Why shouldn't you be? It's a real enemy if you're helpless in it. But if you learn to swim, then where will your fear come from?"

Linn laughed again.

"Fair enough," he said softly, "but how in h.e.l.l can a man learn to swim when more than a tubful of water turns him into a lunatic? Do you think I've gone all these years without trying to learn? Do you think I like burying my head under Pullman blankets when I hear the roar of a bridge under my train?"

"You've tried to swim, then, and couldn't?" Rainey insisted.

"Of course," Linn said wearily.

"How?"

"How? In the water, of course, going into the water."

"Going slowly in, with fear climbing up into your neck with each step?"

"Something of the sort."

"Exactly the wrong way," Rainey said triumphantly. "No wonder you're still scared silly."

"And how"-Linn's voice was tauntingly mild-"would you suggest going about it in the right way?"

"In the simplest, most sensible way, the way I learned. Listen, Linn, I'll cure you, absolutely, if you'll do what I say. I'll put five hundred dollars against your hundred that I can do it. Or if you don't want to bet I'll put a hundred dollars in either of these gentlemen's hands-yours if it doesn't work."

"How?"

"In the only sensible way. Go out with me in a boat tomorrow, and jump over in the middle of the lake. If you can't jump, let me throw you. You'll swim, no fear."

"My G.o.d," Linn said in an awed tone, "I believe you mean it."

"Certainly I mean it. Why shouldn't I mean it? And it'll work, too. You needn't be afraid of drowning. I'll be there to pull you out if necessary: I'm not exactly an infant in the water. But it's ten to one you won't need pulling out. Swimming isn't a mysterious thing: it's something that all animals do naturally and that a man can do naturally too when he needs to. You'll find yourself somehow moving back to the boat. Are you game?"

The corner of my left eye caught a movement. I turned my head to that side, but saw nothing now except the dark angle of the porch eight or ten feet from us, where it turned to run down the side of the building. I had the impression that somebody had looked, or had started to come, around the corner, and then, seeing us, had withdrawn.

"It isn't a question of gameness," Linn was protesting evenly. "It's simply that I know myself and my terror in water. I'm supposed to be resting just now. It seems foolish that I should tear my nerves to pieces-that's what it would amount to-just to disprove an old theory."

"Well, of course, if you're afraid to take a chance." Rainey shrugged his big shoulders.

"It's not that I'm afraid to." Linn's voice was thin and higher pitched than it had been. "But it's so useless. I've tried everything, and-"

"And you're used to being afraid," Rainey finished for him, bluntly. "Did it ever occur to you that everybody is more or less afraid of nearly everything, and that courage isn't a d.a.m.ned thing but a habit of not dodging things because you're afraid of them?"

Linn started to jump up out of his chair, and then sat there very erect. In the dim light from the window his face showed pale and shiny with sweat. He was trembling from foot to mouth.

"But," the promoter said, and yawned showily, "if you're really too scared to take a first-rate chance of curing yourself, I suppose there's nothing to be done about it."

Linn jumped up out of his chair now and cried angrily: "I tell you, it's more complicated than that. It's not simply a matter of driving myself to do something. That can be done. But it's the after-effect-whether it's worth it or not."

Rainey said, "Oh, h.e.l.l!" and threw the remains of his cigar away. He stood up and looked contemptuously down at Linn. "It's all right with me," he said. He turned his broad back to Linn and addressed Metcalf and me: "Let's see if we can find a billiard table."

Linn put out a hand to Rainey's arm and turned the big man around.

"I'll take you up, Rainey," he said through lips that barely moved. "When shall we try it?"

Rainey grinned down at him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"That's sensible," he said. "That's d.a.m.ned sensible of you, Linn. Tomorrow's Sunday. Suppose we try it first thing in the morning."

Linn nodded without saying anything. His face was still angry.

Rainey said: "I don't suppose you've got a swimming suit. Well, I'll get you one, and we'll go off a little after breakfast. Don't worry about it. You'll see it'll be all right."

Linn nodded again.

Footsteps approached from the end of the porch. Metcalf and I stood as Mrs. Rainey came up. Her face was white at Linn's.

"Please, Mr. Linn," she said earnestly, "I wish you wouldn't. I don't think it's safe to tamper with yourself that way. I wish you'd think it over first, anyway. I honestly think you'd be wiser to let well enough alone."

There was an uncomfortable pause during which n.o.body could think of anything to say. Then Linn bowed awkwardly at Mrs. Rainey and said: "I think perhaps your husband is right, Mrs. Rainey." He spoke stiffly, and his face was flushed: he was embarra.s.sed. "We'll see tomorrow. I'm-I'm really anxious now to try it." He bowed again. "You'll excuse me? I've some letters to get off." He turned toward the door.

Mrs. Rainey went with him, her hand on his arm, saying as she went: "Please, don't, Mr. Linn. I'd never-"

"My dear," Rainey called after her, not succeeding in altogether keeping the snarl out of his voice, "you mustn't intrude. It wasn't nice of you to eavesdrop."

She paid no attention at all to him.

He jerked himself up tall and straight, and took a step forward.

"Pauline," he called, and there wasn't anything in his tone except authority.

Mrs. Rainey turned her head over her shoulder as Linn opened the door. The light fell on her blonde hair and handsome face with its very tired blue eyes.

"Yes, dear," she said to her husband, smiled politely, and went into the hotel with Linn.

Rainey said: "Well, how about billiards?"

His game was terrible that night.

II.

A little to the left of the hotel, a short concrete pier stuck out into the lake like a stubby finger pointing at the other sh.o.r.e. Fifteen or twenty of us-guests of the hotel, a hotel employee or two, a few men from the development company's camp, and some from the village-were on hand to watch the Rainey-Linn experiment the next morning.

The promoter, in red bathing suit and light overcoat, was on the pier when I got there. He was sitting on the railing, smoking a cigar and talking to Metcalf and some of his other hired men.

"Good morning," he said. I had missed him at breakfast. "A swell day, eh?"

"Yeah. Looks like you're going to have plenty of audience."

He chuckled in a satisfied way.

Presently Linn came out of the hotel, in a tan rep bath-robe that hung around his heels. Close behind him came Mrs. Rainey. She caught up with him and began talking to him, walking close to his side. Linn spoke stiffly to her as they came down the pebble walk to the pier. It was plain that she was still trying to persuade him to call the experiment off, and that her interest in it embarra.s.sed him.

I looked at her husband. He was smiling jovially toward the approaching pair, but his blue eyes weren't as jolly as his mouth.

Linn and the woman came up to us. Linn's face was wan, with lines from nose-corners past mouth corners. His mouth was thin and so were his eyes. He kept his eyes on the pier in front of him, never letting them look either right or left, where he might see the water.

"All set?" Rainey greeted him in a loud, too hearty voice.

Linn said: "Yes."

Rainey took off his coat and handed it to Metcalf. In the red swimming suit he seemed larger than ever, a big sun-brown athlete. He had a little too much meat on him everywhere, but under that outer soft covering of flesh he had plenty of muscles everywhere.

Linn dropped his bath-robe on the pier. The suit he wore was a little too loose around the waist and beside Rainey's ruddy bulk he looked almost puny. Nevertheless he was compact and wiry, better set up than he had seemed in his clothes.

Rainey went down first to the boat tethered at the foot of a landing ladder.

"Come on," he called heartily.

That wasn't necessary, because Linn was already following him, but that was like Rainey.

Linn went down the ladder slowly. His knuckles showed tight and white on each rung. His eyes were open very little if at all. His lips moved in and out with his breathing. His face was sallow and damp.

Rainey took the oars. Linn sat in the stern facing him. When Rainey pulled the boat clear of the pier I saw Linn's ghastly frightened face bent toward the bottom of the boat. His eyes were screwed tight.

Rainey rowed the boat farther from the pier than was necessary, building up his act, of course. Linn did not once raise his head. His back was bent, tense, and small in comparison with the rowing promoter's bulk.

Mrs. Rainey was standing beside me, shivering. Twice she muttered something. The second time I thought it polite to say: "I beg your pardon?"

She laughed nervously.

"Talking to myself," she said. "Oh, I wish-"

She didn't finish her wish. She was staring with desperate eyes at the men in the boat, working her fingers together with a force that made one of her knuckles crack sharply.

The others of the audience had been standing around cracking jokes, trying to guess whether the experiment would be a success or not. The postmaster's son-a fidgety slim youth with a bright-eyed, cheerful, pimply face-had bet one of his companions a dollar that Linn would have to be dragged out of the lake. n.o.body took the affair very seriously until it became apparent that Mrs. Rainey was so highly wrought up over it. Then the others began to catch her nervousness, so that by the time the boat stopped we were all quite tense.

Rainey shipped his oars and stood up. He looked like a living statue against the dark trees that bounded the lake on the other side, and I suppose he knew it. The lake was smooth and shiny.

Rainey said something to Linn. The smaller man stood up, facing the pier. His eyes were still shut, with a tightness that drew his brows down and wrinkled his forehead.

Rainey spoke again.

Linn nodded but did not move otherwise.

Rainey laughed and went on talking.

No sound of this came to us. All I could hear was the lapping of the water against the pier, the shuffling of feet among the audience, and Mrs. Rainey's breathing.

Linn bent forward quickly, and as quickly straightened himself again. His knees didn't look very steady.

He put his hands together in front of his chest, rubbing the back of his left nervously with the palm of his right. His eyes were clenched shut.

Rainey spoke again.

Linn nodded emphatically.

Rainey came up behind Lynn, and, in a confusion of flailing arms and legs, the smaller man went out over the side of the boat into the lake.

Mrs. Rainey screamed.

Standing with his legs far apart, Rainey steadied the violently rocking boat and looked down at the turmoil Linn was making in the lake.

The man in the water seemed to have a dozen arms and legs, and all of them working, beating the lake into white froth.

The man in the boat called some laughing thing down to the man in the water.

Linn's head, wet and black as a seal's, came up high out of the water and went down again in an upflung shower of white drops. His arms beat the lake into a whirlpool.