Duma Key, Page 57

  Then, as he picks up the dropped harpoon pistol and casts about on the sand near his dead daughter's body for the remaining shaft, another voice calls. This one comes from behind Melda, from the ship anchored out there on the caldo.

  It says You should never have interfered with me.

  Melda, still holding the Tessie-thing by the hair (it fights and kicks, but she's hardly aware of it), spins clumsily in the water and sees her, standing at the rail of her ship in her cloak of red. Her hood is down, and Melda sees she is not even close to human, she is something other, something beyond human understanding. In the moonlight her face is ghastly and full of knowing.

  Rising from the water, thin skeleton arms salute her.

  The breeze blows apart the snakes of her hair; Melda sees the third eye in Perse's forehead; sees it seeing her, and all will to resist is snuffed out in an instant.

  At that moment, however, the head of the bitch-goddess snaps around as if she has heard something or someone tiptoeing up behind her.

  She cries What?

  And then: No! Put that down! Put it down! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!

  But apparently Libbit can--and has--because the shape of the thing at the ship's rail wavers, turns watery . . . and then becomes nothing but moonlight. The skeleton arms slither back beneath the water and are gone.

  The Emery-thing is gone, too--disappeared--but the twins shriek together in shared pain and desolation at their abandonment.

  Melda cries to the Mister It's goan be all right!

  She turns the one she's had by the hair a-loose. She doesn't think it will want anything to do with the living, not now, not for awhile.

  She cries Libbit's done done it! She--

  John Eastlake shrieks GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY DAUGHTERS, YOU BAD NIGGER!

  And he fires the harpoon pistol for the second time.

  Do you see it strike home, piercing Nan Melda through? If so, the picture is complete.

  Ah, God--the picture is complete.

  20--Perse

  i

  The picture--not the last full-blown Edgar Freemantle work of art, but the second-to-last--showed John Eastlake kneeling on Shade Beach with his dead daughter beside him and the sickle moon, just risen above the horizon, behind him. Nan Melda stood thigh-deep in the water, with one little girl on either side of her; their damp, upturned faces were drawn long in expressions of terror and rage. The shaft of one of those short harpoons protruded from between the woman's breasts. Her hands were clasped upon it as she looked unbelievingly at the man whose daughters she had tried so hard to protect, the man who had called her a bad nigger before taking her life.

  "He screamed," I said. "He screamed until his nose bled. Until he bled from one eye. It's a wonder he didn't scream himself into a cerebral hemorrhage."

  "There's no one on the ship," Jack said. "Not in this drawing, at least."

  "No. Perse was gone. What Nan Melda hoped for actually happened. The business on the beach distracted the bitch just long enough for Libbit to take care of her. To drown her to sleep." I tapped Nan Melda's left arm, where I had drawn two quick arcs and made one tiny crisscross to indicate a reflection of weak moonlight. "And mostly because something told her to put on her mother's silver bracelets. Silver, like a certain candlestick." I looked at Wireman. "So maybe there is something on the bright side of the equation, looking out for us a little."

  He nodded, then pointed to the sun. In another moment or two, it would touch the horizon, and the track of light beating across to us, now yellow, would deepen to pure gold. "But dark is when the bad things come out to play. Where is the china Perse now? Any idea where it ended up after all this on the beach?"

  "I don't know exactly what happened after Eastlake killed Nan Melda, but I've got the general gist. Elizabeth . . ." I shrugged. "She'd shot her bolt, at least for awhile. Hit overload. Her father must've heard her screaming, and that's probably the only thing that could still bring him around. He must have remembered that, no matter how awful things were, he still had a live daughter at Heron's Roost. He might even have remembered that he had two more thirty or forty miles away. Which left him with a mess to clean up."

  Jack pointed silently at the horizon, where the sun was now touching.

  "I know, Jack, but we're closer than you think." I shuffled the last sheet of paper to the top of the pile. It was the barest of sketches, but there was no mistaking that knowing smile. It was Charley the Lawn Jockey. I got to my feet and turned them away from the Gulf and the waiting ship, which was now silhouetted, black against gold. "Do you see it?" I asked them. "I saw it, on our way up from the house. The real jockey statue, I mean, not the projection we saw on our way in."

  They looked. "I don't," Wireman said, "and I think I would if it was there, muchacho. I know the grass is high, but that red cap should still stand out. Unless it's in one of the banana groves."

  "Got it!" Jack cried, and actually laughed.

  "The fuck you do," Wireman said, stung. Then: "Where?"

  "Behind the tennis court."

  Wireman looked there, started to say he still didn't see it, then stopped. "I'll be a son of a bitch," he said. "The Christing thing's upside-down, isn't it?"

  "Yes. And since it has no actual feet to stick up, that's the square iron base you see. Charley marks the spot, amigos. But first we need to go to the barn."

  ii

  I had no premonition of what was waiting for us inside the long, overgrown outbuilding, which was dark and stifling hot, and no idea that Wireman had drawn the Desert Eagle automatic until it went off.

  The doors were the kind that slide open on tracks, but these would never slide again; they were rusted in place eight feet apart, and had been for decades. Gray-green Spanish Moss dangled down like a curtain, obscuring the top of the gap between the doors.

  "What we're looking f--" I began, and that was when the heron came flapping out with its blue eyes blazing, its long neck stretched forward, and its yellow beak snapping. It was getting itself into flight as soon as it cleared the doors, and I had no doubt that its target was my eyes. Then the Desert Eagle roared, and the bird's mad blue glare disappeared along with the rest of its head, in a fine spray of blood. It hit me, light as a bundle of wires wrapped around a hollow core, then dropped at my feet. At the same instant I heard a high, silver scream of fury in my head.

  It wasn't just me, either. Wireman winced. Jack dropped the handles of the picnic basket and jammed the heels of his hands against his ears. Then it was gone.

  "One dead heron," Wireman said, his voice not quite steady. He prodded the bundle of feathers, then flipped it off my boots. "For God's sake, don't tell Fish and Wildlife. Shooting one of these'd probably cost me fifty grand and five years in jail."

  "How did you know?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "What does it matter? You told me to shoot it if I saw it. You Lone Ranger, me Tonto."

  "But you had the gun out."

  "I had what Nan Melda might have called 'an intuition' when she was putting on her Mama's silver bracelets," Wireman said, unsmiling. "Something's keeping an eye on us, all right, leave it at that. And after what happened to your daughter, I'd say we're owed a little help. But we have to do our part."

  "Just keep your shootin iron handy while we do it," I said.

  "Oh, you can count on that."

  "And Jack? Can you figure out how to load the speargun?"

  No problem there. We were a go for speargun.

  iii

  The interior of the barn was dark, and not just because the ridge of land between us and the Gulf cut off the direct light of the setting sun. There was still plenty of light in the sky, and there were plenty of cracks and chinks in the slate roof, but the vines had overgrown them. What light did enter from above was green and deep and untrustworthy.

  The outbuilding's central area was empty save for an ancient tractor sitting wheelless on the massive stumps of its axles, but in one of the equipment stalls, the light of our powerful flashl
ight picked out a few rusty, left-over tools and a wooden ladder leaning against the back wall. It was filthy and depressingly short. Jack tried climbing it while Wireman trained the light on him. He bounced up and down on the second rung, and we heard a warning creak.

  "Stop bouncing on it and set it out by the door," I said. "It's a ladder, not a trampoline."

  "I dunno," he said. "Florida's not the ideal climate for preserving wooden ladders."

  "Beggars can't be choosers," Wireman said.

  Jack picked it up, grimacing at the dust and dead insects that showered down from the six filthy steps. "Easy for you to say. You won't be the one climbing on it, not at your weight."

  "I'm the marksman of the group, nino," Wireman said. "Each to his own job." He was striving for airy, but he sounded strained and looked tired. "Where are the rest of the ceramic keglets, Edgar? Because I'm not seeing them."

  "Maybe in back," I said.

  I was right. There were perhaps ten of the ceramic Table Whiskey "keglets" at the very back of the outbuilding. I say perhaps because it was hard to tell. They had been smashed to bits.

  iv

  Surrounding the bigger chunks of white ceramic, and mixed in with them, were glittering heaps and sprays of glass. To the right of this pile were two old-fashioned wooden handcarts, both overturned. To the left, leaning against the wall, was a sledgehammer with a rusty business-end and patches of moss growing up the handle.

  "Someone had a container-smashing party," Wireman said. "Who do you think? Em?"

  "Maybe," I said. "Probably."

  For the first time I started to wonder if she was going to beat us after all. We had some daylight left, but less than I had expected and far less than I was comfortable with. And now . . . in what were we going to drown her china simulacrum? A fucking Evian water bottle? It wasn't a bad idea, in a way--they were plastic, and according to the environmentalists, the damned things are going to last forever--but a china figure would never fit through the hole in the top.

  "So what's the fallback position?" Wireman asked. "The gas tank of that old John Deere? Will that do?"

  The thought of trying to drown Perse in the old tractor's gas tank made me cold all over. It was probably nothing but rusty lace. "No. I don't think that will work."

  He must have heard something close to panic in my voice, because he gripped my arm. "Take it easy. We'll think of something."

  "Sure, but what?"

  "We'll take her back up to Heron's Roost, that's all. There'll be something there."

  But in my mind's eye I kept seeing how the storms had dealt with the mansion that had once dominated this end of Duma Key, turning it into little more than a facade. Then I wondered how many containers we actually would find there, especially with just forty minutes or so before dark came and the Perse sent a landing-party to end our meddling. God, to have forgotten such an elementary item as a watertight container!

  "Fuck!" I said. I kicked a pile of shards and sent them flying. "Fuck!"

  "Easy, vato. That won't help."

  No, it wouldn't. And she'd like me angry, wouldn't she? The old angry Edgar would be easy to manipulate. I tried to get hold of myself, but the I can do this mantra wasn't working. Still, it was all I had. And what do you do when you can't use anger to fall back on? You admit the truth.

  "All right," I said. "But I don't have a clue."

  "Relax, Edgar," Jack said, and he was smiling. "That part's gonna be okay."

  "Why? What do you mean?"

  "Trust me on this," he said.

  v

  As we stood looking at Charley the Lawn Jockey in light that was now taking on a definite purple cast, a nonsense couplet from an old Dave Van Ronk blues occurred to me: "Mama bought a chicken, thought it was a duck; Sat it on the table with the legs stickin up." Charley wasn't a chicken or a duck, but his legs, ending not in shoes but a dark iron pedestal, were indeed sticking up. His head, however, was gone. It had crashed down through a square of ancient moss-and vine-covered boards.

  "What's that, muchacho?" Wireman asked. "Do you know?"

  "I'm pretty sure it's a cistern," I said. "I'm hoping not a septic tank."

  Wireman shook his head. "He wouldn't have put them in a shitheap no matter how bad his mental state was. Never in a million years."

  Jack looked from Wireman to me, his young face full of horror. "Adriana's down there? And the nanny?"

  "Yes," I said. "I thought you understood that. But the most important thing is that Perse's down there. And the reason I think it's a cistern is--"

  "Elizabeth would have insisted on making sure the bitch was in a watery grave," Wireman said grimly. "A fresh-watery one."

  vi

  Charley was heavy, and the boards covering the hole in the high grass were more rotten than the steps of the ladder. Of course they were; unlike the ladder, the wooden cap had been directly exposed to the elements. We worked carefully in spite of the thickening shadows, not knowing how deep it was beneath. At last I was able to push the troublesome jockey far enough to one side so that Wireman and Jack could grab the slightly cocked blue legs. I stepped onto the rotted wooden cap in doing so; someone had to, and I was the lightest. It bent under my weight, gave out a long, warning groan, puffed up sour air.

  "Get off it, Edgar!" Wireman yelled, and at the same instant Jack cried, "Grab it, oh whore, it's gonna fall through!"

  They seized Charley as I stepped off the sagging cap, Wireman around the bent knees and Jack around the waist. For a moment I thought it was going to drop through anyway, dragging them both along. Then they gave a combined shout of effort and tumbled over backward with the lawn jockey on top of them. Its grinning face and red cap were covered with huge lumbering beetles. Several dropped off onto Jack's straining face, and one fell directly into Wireman's mouth. He screamed, spat it out, and leaped to his feet, still spitting and rubbing his lips. Jack was beside him a moment later, dancing around him in a circle and brushing the bugs off his shirt.

  "Water!" Wireman bellowed. "Gimme the water, one of em got in my mouth, I could feel it crawling on my fucking tongue!"

  "No water," I said, rummaging in the considerably depleted bag. Now on my knees, I could smell the air rising through the ragged hole in the cap far better than I wanted to. It was like air from a newly breached tomb. Which, of course, it was. "Pepsi."

  "Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, Pepsi," Jack said. "No Coke." He laughed dazedly.

  I handed Wireman a can of soda. He stared at it unbelievingly for a moment, then raked back the pull tab. He took a mouthful, spat it out in a brown and foamy spray, took another, then spat that one out. The rest of the can he drank in four long swallows.

  "Ay, caramba," he said. "You're a hard man, Van Gogh."

  I was looking at Jack. "What do you think? Can we shift it?"

  Jack studied it, then fell on his knees and began to tear away the vines clinging to the sides. "Yeah," he said. "But we gotta get rid of this shit."

  "We should have brought a crowbar," Wireman said. He was still spitting. I didn't blame him.

  "Wouldn't have helped, I don't think," Jack said. "The wood's too rotted. Help me, Wireman." And when I fell on my knees beside him: "Don't bother, boss. This is a job for guys with two arms."

  I felt another flash of anger at that--the old anger was very close now--and quelled it as best I could. I watched them work their way around the circular cap, tearing away the vines and the weeds as the light faded from the sky. A single bird cruised by with its wings folded. It was upside-down. You saw something like that and felt like checking into the nearest nuthouse. Preferably for a long stay.

  The two of them were working opposite each other, and as Wireman neared the place where Jack had begun and Jack neared the place where Wireman had begun, I said: "Is that speargun loaded, Jack?"

  He looked up. "Yes. Why?"

  "Because this is going to be a photo finish after all."

  vii

  Jack and Wireman knelt on one side of
the cap. I knelt on the other. Above us, the sky had deepened to an indigo that would soon be violet. "My count," Wireman said. "Uno . . . dos . . . TRES!" They pulled and I pushed as well as I could with my remaining arm. That was pretty well, because my remaining arm had grown strong during my months on Duma Key. For a moment the cap resisted. Then it slid toward Wireman and Jack, revealing a crescent of darkness--a black and welcoming smile. This thickened to a half-moon, then a full circle.

  Jack stood up. So did Wireman. He was checking his hands for more bugs. "I know how you feel," I said, "but I don't think we have time for you to do a full delousing."

  "Point taken, but unless you've chewed on one of those maricones, you don't know how I feel."

  "Tell us what to do, boss," Jack said. He was looking uneasily into the pit, from which that sallow stench was still issuing.

  "Wireman, you have fired the speargun--right?"

  "Yes, at targets. With Miss Eastlake. Didn't I say I was the marksman of the group?"

  "Then you're on guard. Jack, shine that light."

  I could see by his face that he didn't want to, but there was no choice--until this was done, there'd be no going back. And if it wasn't done, there'd never be any going back.

  Not by the land route, at least.

  He picked up the long-barreled flashlight, clicked it on, and shone the powerful beam down into the hole. "Ah, God," he whispered.

  It was indeed a cistern lined with coral rock, but at some point during the last eighty years the ground had shifted, a fissure had opened--probably at the very bottom--and the water inside had leaked out. What we saw in the flashlight's beam was a damp, moss-lined gullet eight or ten feet deep and about five feet in diameter. Lying at the bottom, entwined in an embrace that had lasted eighty years, were two skeletons dressed in rotten rags. Beetles crawled busily around them. Whitish toads--small boys--hopped on the bones. A harpoon lay beside one skeleton. The tip of the second harpoon was still buried in Nan Melda's yellowing spine.

  The light began to sway. Because the young man holding it was swaying.

  "Don't you faint on us, Jack!" I said sharply. "That's an order!"

  "I'm okay, boss." But his eyes were huge, glassy, and behind the flashlight--still not quite steady in his hand--his face was parchment white. "Really."

  "Good. Shine it down there again. No, left. A little more . . . there."