Free The Quick Red Fox by John D. MacDonald Page B

inexplicable worthlessness. So they establish the pattern of proving themselves worthless. For this child it was sex and drink. The guilts made her emotionally unstable. She was after destruction. The shock treatments and the spasms have done the job for her. She’s a destroyed personality. Where can she go? Nothing much can be done for her now. Here is as good as anywhere. Sometimes she is very sweet.”
    “I don’t want to upset her.”
    “What do you want to ask her?”
    “If she can remember some names. If she can remember some pictures being taken.”
    “Pictures?”
    I opened the envelope, sorted out two of them and handed them to him. His face puckered with concern and sorrow. “The poor kid. See what she’s saying, in effect? Love me, love me. Rejection by the father, rejection by the young husband, a butchered abortion, a year in an institution when she was seventeen, for hit and run.”
    “What would showing her these do?”
    “Trav, nothing can do her much good or much harm.”
    “Will she talk to me?”
    “In this part of the cycle she’s very outgoing. She might getagitated. It might strike her as funny. I don’t know. It might accelerate this phase of the cycle. I can’t see as that would do any harm.”
    “Should you be there?”
    “I think you’d get more out of her alone. When there’s two people or more she wants to be entertaining. She reacts too much. She talks better to one. My God, boy, those are some pictures! A year and a half ago? I guess she was bad off then, but it would take a trained man to see it. Now anybody can see it.”
    “What’s the best attitude toward her, Stan?”
    “Just natural, friendly. If she says nutty things, just steer her back to what you want to talk about. Don’t look shocked and don’t laugh. We’re used to Nancy around here, and every drunk in the world has heard everything there is to hear. Treat her as if she was … a bright, sweet, imaginative child.”
    “Where is she?”
    He took me over to the office and pointed. “Go around the dining hall and the path to the beach starts on the other side of it. I saw her heading that way about twenty minutes or so ago.”
    I heard her before I saw her. It was a narrow beach, more shell than sand. It was a lovely contralto voice, very rich and full, singing, with maximum feeling, that cigarette commercial about filter, flavor, flip-top box. She was sitting on a palm log about a hundred feet up the bright beach from where the path exited. As I walked toward her, she heard my steps crunching the shell, stopped singing, turned and stared at me, and then stood up and came toward me with a warm and lovely smile of welcome, teeth very white in her sun-darkened face. “
Hello
there!” she said. “I’m Nancy. Are you one of the new ones?”
    She wore pale blue Bermudas, and a man’s white shirt with the tails knotted around her waist. Her dark hair was in braids. She was tall and lithe, and her eyes were a dark clear blue. After a mental hesitation, I realized she made me think of Jane in the very oldest Tarzan movies. She was barefoot, unwincing on the shells.
    “I’m just visiting. My name is Trav.”
    “Are you visiting Jackie? She doesn’t throw up as much. Maybe she can go home. Just to visit.”
    “As a matter of fact, I’m here to visit you.”
    All the warmth and light went out of her face. “He just sends people. Tell him I don’t give a damn. Not now. Not ever. Screw him. Tell him that.”
    “Nobody sent me. I just know some people who know you. I was down this way. So I stopped in. That’s all, Nancy.”
    “What people?”
    “Carl Abelle. Vance and Patty M’Gruder.”
    Scowling, she turned away from me and went back and sat on the log. I followed and stood near her. She squinted up at me. “I know that Carl. A strong back and a weak mind, believe me. He had that stupid idea. The perfect orgasm. Can you imagine? Maybe he thought it worked me up. Damned coward. Too scared to light a