John D. MacDonald

Taste for Mischief

The four things happened at almost the same instant. He felt a thud against the hull. Something took a swift hard yank at his trolled lure, took line and then got free. His outboard motor began to whine and shudder. As he reached to cut it off, he saw in his mild wake a piece of old timber turning slowly as he drifted away from it, timber which had sheared the pin when the prop struck it.

On bright days like this, when the Gulf of Mexico lay calm under the east wind off the Florida coast, Homer Burns liked to take his old skiff out through the pass and troll along the Gulf beach. It was less predictable than bay fishing. He never ventured far from the pass. The weather could change too quickly.

With the motor turned off, he reeled in, discarded the ragged fragment of minnow left his hook, the boat dipping and lifting in the slight off-shore chop. He found the spare shear pins in his tackle box, and realized it would be folly for an old fellow of seventy-seven to try to lean out over the transom and replace the pin amid the dual unsteadiness of sea and age.

It was a sour amusement. In the bright, hot mid-morning, you are some indeterminate age, some vague and contented time of manhood between forty and sixty, perhaps. And a sheared pin locks you back onto the specifics of the time-stream, fastens you firmly to seventy-seven. Another image amused him. Memory of two big bronze wheels chopped up on a coral head near Andros. What had been the name of that hired captain they’d had aboard the Western Way that season? Hodge or Dodge or Lodge or Podge. Made a fine drink but no damn good for anything else. But Ruth had liked him. Lord help us, it was thirty years ago, going overboard in that eerily clear water, affixing the big wheel-puller, putting on the spares, and taking a very silly pleasure in being able to stay under twice as long as Hodgepodge could, seeing the relief on Ruth’s earnest, worried face each time he surfaced for breath.

He moved cautiously to the bow of the skiff and, using the paddle on alternate sides, headed steadily, slowly, directly for the white beach a bundled yards away, toward the bright beach umbrellas, the sunbrown hotel guests, the big oblong of the Derando Beach Hotel beyond the sand.

In the shallows he stepped out and hauled the skiff up, waiting for the assistance of one of the very small waves to wedge it firm. Replace the pin and some of these folks would probably help him launch it again.

“Private beach, Pops. On your way.”

He straightened and looked at them. There were two of them. Hotel employees. Big, muscular young fellows. They were officious in that amused and patronizing way Homer Burns found particularly infuriating. And damned fools in the bargain, if they saw him come paddling in. An old man with a motor doesn’t paddle by choice.

“Eh?” Homer said, tilting his head. He had learned that the imitation of deafness was a splendid device after a certain age.

Some of the guests, the ones who had been beachcombing, moved closer. And the prone and supine ones broiling themselves in oil lifted dazed heads to watch and listen.

“You can’t land here, Pops. Come on now. Shove off.”

Just mention the sheared pin, apologetically. They’d probably even fix it. Save a fuss. But he felt the compulsion for what Ruth had always called mischief. He knew how he must look to them, a tall stringy leathery old man in khaki pants chopped off at knee level, in an unbuttoned cotton shirt so faded that an old pattern of tropical flowers was almost invisible, in ragged old sneakers and a free hat he had picked up in a paint store.

“Up to mean high tide mark, it's public land, isn’t it?”

“Got us another guardhouse shyster,” one of them said to the other. “Come on, Pops. It’s a pretty day. There’s lots of beach up the line. Don’t make us lay the ugly on you in front of the cash customers.”

“Figure to stay a while,” he said blandly. Ruth had called it mischief. He had not had that feeling in a long time. It was curiously welcome. Whatever the instinct was, it had accomplished many strange things over a great many years.

As they both moved closer, looking less amused, Homer said in a lower tone, “Touch me once, lads, and I’ll yell and faint in front of all the people.”

“Get Dressner,” the bigger one said to the other. “Never mind. He’s coming.”

Dressner wore a pale yellow linen jacket, a small black mustache, a manner of nervous impatience. “Well?” he said. “Well?”

“This old crowbait says he’s going to use the beach, Mr. Dressner.”

“Indeed? Our private bench? Well now. And he arrived in that hideous old scow? Really! Old man, remove yourself at once, or I shall have the authorities remove you,” Dressner snapped.

Homer sighed. He leaned into his skiff, opened his lunch and took out a sandwich. He sat on the gunnel and took a bite of it. He smiled up at Dressner, “Guess we’ll do it your way.”

“The creature is senile,” Dressner said, turned on his heel and walked swiftly toward the hotel.

“Very funny, Pops,” the bigger beachboy said.

“It might get even funnier,” Homer Burns said.

Four hours later Homer Burns decided that his audience had reached its peak. In addition to hotel guests, members of the hotel staff, two lawyers from the hotel organization, the county sheriff, two deputies, the county attorney, two Coast Guard officers, a state policeman and a member of the County Recreation Council, there were reporters and photographers from two newspapers and a television station.

In a voice close to hysteria, Mr. Dressner, pointing a shaking accusatory finger at Homer Burns said, “Do you mean to tell me that any wretched old creep who so chooses can come here and... and use our private beach?”

“Long as he stays shy of the high tide line,” the sheriff said.

“That’s right,” the county attorney said. “It’s the law. On all seacoasts in Florida. Below the high tide mark, the beach belongs to the public. Most people get bluffed off these beaches. But this man happened to know the law.”

Homer said, “Just a minute!” They all looked at him. “I was in a vessel in distress on the high sea. Sheared a pin. Came in to change it, that’s all.”

“Why didn’t you say so!” Dressner cried.

“Your muscle boys gave me no chance.”

It was too windy for fishing the next day. But, in the shade of the live oaks in the grove behind the trailer park, there was enough shelter from the wind to make it a comfortable place to play chess with George Hoffman. Homer knew that chess was the best thing for George these days. It kept his mind off remembering how completely he was alone now that Bernice had died. Homer Burns remembered how it had been for him when Ruth died eleven years ago.

This morning his friends had been kidding him about having his name and picture all over the papers. A nervous editorial in one of the papers had amused him. It had said that development money might be scared away from beach hotel projects now that there was a good chance all the private beaches would be invaded by “the public at large.”

As he was pondering his next move, a voice behind him said, “Mr. Burns?” He looked around and saw one of the reporters who had been on the beach, a man considerably older than the others. He was about to ask him what he wanted when he recognized that look he was trying to forget, that avid respect, tinged with alarm.

So Homer excused himself and walked away from the table and stopped fifty feet away, facing the reporter.

“Sir, I did some checking,” the reporter said. He swallowed, wiped his lips. “I mean... it was a long time ago. I interviewed you. With a lot of other reporters. When one of your companies built that ship... the first one... so much faster than anybody thought it could be done. Then yesterday, something about your eyes... You are H. U. Burns, sir, aren’t you?”

“Me? Hurry-Up Burns? In a trailer park? Wouldn’t that be a little too fantastic, my friend?”

“It would turn yesterday into quite a story, sir. It would give me a real follow-up on it. I mean... you could have bought the hotel and fired all those people... if you felt like it. I... I can keep checking on it. A lot of people wonder what happened to H. U. Burns. I guess most of them think... he died.”

Homer shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned a shoulder against a tree. “All old men are supposed to look alike to you. As all young men look alike to me.”

“It will make quite a story, sir. Uh... human interest.”

Homer Burns shook his head sadly. You learn how to do it, and how easy it is to do it, but there is no joy in that kind of power, no joy in doing it, perhaps, for the very last time. But it had to be done. The sons were dead and Ruth was dead. And no old trailer-park men would make jokes with Hurry-Up Burns, help him paint his skiff, bring him a piece of cake from the daughter in Indiana — you remember, Homer, the middle one, Mary Jane.

“What's your name?”

“Mark Staller, sir.”

“You like it here? This was your ambition, Staller? This little paper, this little resort town? Or maybe you’re semi-retired.”

“I... had some bad luck.”

“Why don’t you wait three days and see if you suddenly have some good luck? Why, if the luck was good enough, Staller, it might drive all this nonsense out of your mind.”

Staller stared, “I’m not sure I know what you mean, sir.”

“I mean just what you hope I mean. But one wrong word could spoil your luck. Neither of us want that, do we?”

“No, sir.”

“So run along now.”

The growing awareness of good fortune changes them, Homer remembered. Their eyes shine. The smile comes and goes quickly. It would take one phone call. And this Staller would keep his mouth shut, because this was the last chance he would have, and he knew it.

Ten feet away, Staller turned and looked back and said, “I was just wondering, sir... why didn’t you... throw your weight around?”

“I probably would have, when I was much younger. When I was... only sixty.”

As the old man returned to the interrupted chess game, George glared up at him and said, “You ought to have a little more consideration, Homer. Keeping me sitting here.”

“Come on now, George,” Homer said. “I bet all those years you worked for the post office, you must have kept ten thousand people waiting while you were off having coffee or something.”

“I had a pretty important job,” George said wistfully. “That’s the trouble. When you retire it doesn’t mean a thing to anybody any more. That’s why you made that fuss yesterday, Homer. To be important again, just for a couple hours. Right?”

“You sure that’s where you want to put your rook?”

“Who was that fellow, Homer?”

“Him? He wanted to make me rich.”

“Hah! What was he selling?”

“You’re doing all this talking so I won’t notice why you put your rook there, eh? How about this? Check.”

“Dang you anyways, Homer Burns!”

Content

John D. MacDonald
Taste for Mischief