Free Bright Orange for the Shroud by John D. MacDonald

They had a film strip of him. Standard procedure. He could plead guilty and take a thirty-day knock right now, or plead not guilty and go looseon two hundred dollars bail and wait for circuit court which would be about forty days from now. And he could make one call.
    He could have called Leafy. Or Christine. He elected the thirty days for himself. After four days of lockup, he signed up for road work as the lesser of two evils, swung the brush hook in lazy tempo under the tolerant guards, always turned his face away from the glitter of the tourist cars staring their way by, wore road gang twill too small for him. Out of tension, or despair, or aftereffects of whatever Miss Brown had dolloped his drink with, or the greasy texture of the rice and beans, he could keep little in his stomach. Road gang work gave him a fifty cents a day credit. He bought milk and white bread, and sometimes he kept it down and sometimes he didn’t. Sun and effort dizzied him.
    One bush to be chopped was Stebber, and the next was Watts, then G. Harrison Gisik, Boo Waxwell, Wilma, Miss Brown. As he began to fit the issue work clothes, in afternoon delirium he recalled what Chook had told him about me. And he knew that he’d be a fool to try anything else on his own. Maybe a fool to even ask for help. They gave him back his clothes and let him go, with a dollar thirty left from his work credit. He tried to hitch his way across the peninsula, but something was wrong, somehow, with the way he looked. They would slow down, some of them, then change their minds, roar on into the pavement mirages. Sudden rains soaked him. He bought sandwiches, had to abandon them after the first bite. He got a few short rides, found dry corners to sleep in, remembered very little of the last few days of it, then had the vivid memory of coming aboard the
Busted Flush
, and thedeck swinging up at him, slapping him in the face as he tried to fend it off …
    “Just enough to pay my friends back,” he said. “I understand you take the expenses off the top and divide what else you can recover. If it wasn’t for them, I’d give up, Trav. Maybe it’s hopeless anyway. I had all that money, and now it’s all unreal, as if I never really had it. My great grandfather barged a load of fabrics, furniture and hardware up from New York, rented a warehouse and sold the goods for enough to pay off the loan on the first load and buy a second free and clear. That’s where the money started. Eighteen fifty-one. By nineteen hundred there was a great deal of money. My father wasn’t good with money. It dwindled. I thought I was better. I thought I could make it grow. God!”
    Chook reached and gave his oily shoulder an affectionate, comforting pat. “Some very smart people get terribly cheated, Arthur. And usually it happens far from home.”
    “I just … don’t want to go back there,” he said. “I dream that I’m there and I’m dead. I see myself dead on the sidewalk and people walking around me as they go by, nodding as if they knew all along.”
    Chook took my wrist and turned it to look at my watch. “Time for you to choke down another eggnog, Arthur old buddy. Nicely spiked to give you a big appetite for dinner.”
    After she left, Arthur said, “I guess the biggest part of the expense is feeding me.”
    I laughed more than it was worth. After all, it was his first mild joke. Sign of improvement. Other signs too. Stubble shaved clean. Hair neatly cropped by Chookie McCall, an unexpected talent. Sun burning away the pasty look. Poundscoming back. And Chook had him on some mild exercises, just enough to begin to restore muscle tone.
    She came up with his eggnog and a list. Perishables were dwindling. Eggs, milk, butter, lettuce. Candle Key had a Handy-Dandy-Open-Nights-and-Sunday. The wind would make easy sailing in the dink. The little limey outboard runs like a gold watch. My shoulders felt as if they were webbed with hot wires. So, with an excess of character, I