Duma Key

  I had one fleeting thought as I reached the wet and shining hardpack, dotted here and there with tennis balls: The third thing Elizabeth had said to Wireman was You will want to, but you mustn't.

  "Too late," I said, and then the string tethering the Edgar over my head broke. He floated away, and for a little while I knew no more.

  17--The South End of the Key

  i

  I next remember Wireman coming along and picking me up. I remember walking a few steps, then recalling that Ilse was dead and collapsing to my knees. And the most shameful thing was that, even though I was heartbroken, I was also hungry. Starving.

  I remember Wireman helping me in through the open door and telling me it was all a bad dream, that I'd been having the horrors, and when I told him no, it was true, Mary Ire had done it, Mary Ire had drowned Ilse in Ilse's own bathtub, he had laughed and said that now he knew it. For one horrible moment I believed him.

  I pointed to the answering machine. "Play the message," I said, and went into the kitchen. Staggered into the kitchen. When Pam started in again--Edgar, the police called and they say Illy's dead!--I was eating fistfuls of Frosted Mini-Wheats straight from the box. I had a queer sense of being part of a prepared slide. Soon I would be placed under a microscope and studied. In the other room, the message ended. Wireman cursed and played it again. I kept eating cereal. The time I'd spent on the beach before Wireman came along was missing. That part of my memory was as blank as my early hospital stay after my accident.

  I took a final handful of cereal, crammed it into my mouth, and swallowed. It stuck in my throat, and that was good. That was fine. I hoped it would choke me. I deserved to choke. Then it slid down. I went shuffle-limping back into the living room. Wireman was standing beside the answering machine, wide-eyed.

  "Edgar . . . muchacho . . . what in God's name--?"

  "One of the paintings," I said, and kept on shuffling. Now that I had something in my stomach, I wanted some more oblivion. If only for a little while. Only it was more than wanting, actually; it was needing. I had broken the broomhandle . . . then Wireman came along. What was in the ellipsis? I didn't know.

  I decided I didn't want to know.

  "The paintings . . . ?"

  "Mary Ire bought one. I'm sure it was one from the Girl and Ship series. And she took it with her. We should have known. I should have known. Wireman, I need to lie down. I need to sleep. Two hours, okay? Then wake me and we'll go to the south end."

  "Edgar, you can't . . . I don't expect you to after . . ."

  I stopped to look at him. It felt as though my head weighed a hundred pounds, but I managed. "She doesn't expect me to, either, but this ends today. Two hours."

  Big Pink's open door faced east, and the morning sun struck brightly across Wireman's face, lighting a compassion so strong I could barely look at it. "Okay, muchacho. Two hours."

  "In the meantime, try to keep everyone clear." I don't know if he heard that last part or not. I was facing into my bedroom by then, and the words were trailing away. I fell onto my bed, and there was Reba. For a moment I considered throwing her across the room, as I had considered throwing the phone. Instead I gathered her to me and pressed my face against her boneless body and began to cry. I was still crying when I fell asleep.

  ii

  "Wake up." Someone was shaking me. "Wake up, Edgar. If we're going to do this, we have to get rolling."

  "I dunno--I'm not sure he's going to come around." That voice was Jack's.

  "Edgar!" Wireman slapped first one side of my face, then the other. Not gently, either. Bright light struck my closed eyes, flooding my world with red. I tried to get away from all these stimuli--there were bad things waiting on the other side of my eyelids--but Wireman wouldn't let me. "Muchacho! Wake up! It's ten past eleven!"

  That got through. I sat up and looked at him. He was holding the bedside lamp in front of my face, so close I could feel the heat from the bulb. Jack was standing behind him. The realization that Ilse was dead--my Illy--struck at my heart, but I pushed it away. "Eleven! Wireman, I told you two hours! What if some of Elizabeth's relatives decide to--"

  "Easy, muchacho. I called the funeral home and told them to keep everyone off Duma. I said that all three of us had come down with German measles. Very contagious. I also called Dario and told him about your daughter. Everything with the pictures is on hold, at least for now. I doubt if that's a priority with you, but--"

  "Of course it is." I got to my feet and rubbed my hand over my face. "Perse doesn't get to do any more damage than she already has."

  "I'm sorry, Edgar," Jack said. "So damn sorry for your loss. I know that doesn't carry much water, but--"

  "It does," I said, and maybe in time it would. If I kept saying it; if I kept reaching out. My accident really taught me just one thing: the only way to go on is to go on. To say I can do this even when you know you can't.

  I saw that one of them had brought the rest of my clothes, but for today's work I'd want the boots in the closet instead of the sneakers at the foot of the bed. Jack was wearing Georgia Giants and a long-sleeved shirt; that was good.

  "Wireman, will you put on coffee?" I asked.

  "Do we have time?"

  "We'll have to make time. There's stuff I need, but what I need first is to wake up. You guys can use a little fuel, too, maybe. Jack, help me with my boots, would you?"

  Wireman left for the kitchen. Jack knelt, eased on my boots, and tied them for me. "How much do you know?" I asked him.

  "More than I want to," he said. "But I don't understand any of it. I talked to that woman--Mary Ire?--at your show. I liked her."

  "I did, too."

  "Wireman called your wife while you were sleeping. She wouldn't talk to him very long, so then he called some guy he met at your show--Mr. Bozeman?"

  "Tell me."

  "Edgar, are you sure--"

  "Tell me." Pam's version had been broken and fragmentary, and even that was no longer clear in my mind--the details were obscured by an image of Ilse's hair floating on the surface of an overflowing bathtub. That might or might not be accurate, but it was hellishly bright, hellishly particular, and it had blotted out almost everything else.

  "Mr. Bozeman said the police found no sign of forced entry, so they think your daughter must have let her in, even though it was the middle of the night--"

  "Or Mary just hit buzzers until somebody else let her in." My missing arm itched. It was a deep itch. Sleepy. Dreamy, almost. "Then she walked up to Illy's apartment and rang the bell. Let's say that she pretended to be someone else."

  "Edgar, are you guessing, or--"

  "Let's say she pretended to be from a gospel group called The Hummingbirds, and let's say she called through the door that something bad had happened to Carson Jones."

  "Who's--"

  "Only she calls him Smiley, and that's the convincer."

  Wireman was back. So was the floating Edgar. Edgar-down-below saw all the mundane things of a sunshiny Florida morning on Duma Key. Edgar-over-my-head saw more. Not everything; just enough to be too much.

  "What happened then, Edgar?" Wireman asked. He spoke very softly. "What do you think?"

  "Let's say that Illy opens the door, and when she does, she finds a woman pointing a gun at her. She knows this woman from somewhere, but she's been through one bad scare already that night, she's disoriented, and she can't place her--her memory chokes. Maybe it's just as well. Mary tells her to turn around, and when she does . . . when she does that . . ." I began to cry again.

  "Edgar, man, don't," Jack said. He was almost crying himself. "This is just guesswork."

  "It's not guesswork," Wireman said. "Let him talk."

  "But why do we need to know--"

  "Jack . . . muchacho . . . we don't know what we need to know. So let the man talk."

  I heard their voices, but from far away.

  "Let's say Mary hit her with the gun when she turned around." I wiped my cheeks with the heel of my hand.
"Let's say she hit her several times, four or five. In the movies, you get clopped once and you're out like a light. In real life, I doubt if it's like that."

  "No," Wireman murmured, and of course this game of let's-say turned out to be all too accurate. My If-So-Girl's skull had been fractured in three places from repeated overhand blows, and she bled a great deal.

  Mary dragged her. The blood-trail led across the living room/kitchen (the smell of the burnt sketch very likely still hanging in the air) and down the short hallway between the bedroom and the nook that served as Illy's study. In the bathroom at the end of the hall, Mary filled the tub and in it she drowned my unconscious daughter like an orphan kitten. When the job was done, Mary went into the living room, sat down on the sofa, and shot herself in the mouth. The bullet exited the top of her skull, splattering her ideas about art, along with a good deal of her hair, on the living room wall behind her. It was then just shy of four AM. The man downstairs was an insomniac who knew the gunshot for what it was and called the police.

  "Why drown her?" Wireman asked. "I don't understand that."

  Because it's Perse's way, I thought.

  "We're not going to think about that right now," I said. "All right?"

  He reached out and squeezed my remaining hand. "All right, Edgar."

  And if we get this business done, maybe we'll never have to, I thought.

  But I had drawn my daughter. I was sure of it. I'd drawn her on the beach.

  My dead daughter. My drowned daughter. Drawn in sand for the waves to take.

  You will want to, Elizabeth had said, but you mustn't.

  Oh, but Elizabeth.

  Sometimes we have no choice.

  iii

  We swallowed strong coffee in Big Pink's sunny kitchen until sweat was standing out on our cheeks. I took three aspirin, adding another layer of caffeine, then sent Jack to get two Artisan pads. And I told him to sharpen every colored pencil he could find while he was upstairs.

  Wireman filled a plastic carry-sack with supplies from the fridge: carrot stubs, cucumber strips, a six-pack of Pepsi, three large bottles of Evian water, some roast beef, and one of Jack's Astronaut Chickens, still in its see-thru capsule.

  "Surprised you can even think of food," he said, with the tiniest touch of reproach.

  "Food doesn't interest me in the slightest," I said, "but I may have to draw stuff. In fact, I'm positive I'll have to draw stuff. And that seems to burn calories by the carload."

  Jack returned with the pads and pencils. I pawed it over, then sent him back upstairs for art-gum erasers. I suspected there would be more stuff I'd want--isn't there always?--but I couldn't think what it might be. I glanced at the clock. It was ten to twelve.

  "Did you Polaroid the drawbridge?" I asked Jack. "Please tell me you did."

  "Yeah, but I thought . . . the German measles story . . ."

  "Let me see the photos," I said.

  Jack reached into his back pocket and produced some Polaroids. He shuffled through them and handed me four, which I dealt out on the kitchen table like a short hand of solitaire. I grabbed one of the Artisan pads and quickly began sketching the photo that showed the cogs and chains under the opening drawbridge--it was just a dinky little one-lane thing--the most clearly. My right arm continued to itch: a low, sleepy crawl.

  "The German measles story was genius," I said. "It will keep almost everyone away. But almost isn't good enough. Mary wouldn't have stayed away from my daughter if someone had told her Illy had chicken p--Fuck!" My eyes had blurred, and a line that should have been true wandered off into falsehood.

  "Take it easy, Edgar," Wireman said.

  I glanced at the clock. 11:58 now. The drawbridge would go up at noon; it always did. I blinked away the tears and went back to my sketch. Machinery spun itself into existence from the point of the Venus Black, and even now, with Ilse gone, the fascination of seeing something real emerge from nothing--like a shape drifting out of a fogbank--stole over me. And why not? When better? It was refuge.

  "If she's got someone to attack us with and the drawbridge is out of commission, she'll just send them around to the Don Pedro Island footbridge," Wireman said.

  Without looking up from my drawing, I said: "Maybe not. A lot of people don't know about the Sunshine Walkway, and I'm positive Perse doesn't."

  "Why?"

  "Because it was built in the fifties, you told me that, and she was sleeping then."

  He considered this a moment, then said, "You think she can be beaten, don't you?"

  "Yes, I do. Not killed, maybe, but put back to sleep."

  "Do you know how?"

  Find the leak in the table and fix it, I almost said . . . but that made no sense.

  "Not yet. There are more of Libbit's pictures at the other house. The one at the south end of the key. They'll tell us where Perse is and tell me what to do."

  "How do you know there are more?"

  Because there have to be, I would have said, but just then the noon horn went. A quarter of a mile down the road, the drawbridge between Duma Key and Casey Key--the only north link between us and the coast--was going up. I counted to twenty, putting Mississippi between each number as I had when I was a child. Then I erased the biggest cog in my drawing. There was a sensation when I did it--in the missing arm, yes, but also centered between and just above my eyes--of doing some lovely piece of precision work.

  "Okay," I said.

  "Can we go now?" Wireman asked.

  "Not quite yet," I said.

  He glanced at the clock, then back at me. "I thought you were in a hurry, amigo. And given what we saw in here last night, I know that I am. So what else?"

  "I need to draw you both," I said.

  iv

  "I'd love to have you do a picture of me, Edgar," Jack said, "and I'm sure my mom would be totally blissed out--but I think Wireman's right. We ought to get going."

  "Have you ever been to the south end of the Key, Jack?"

  "Uh, no."

  Of that I'd been almost sure. But as I tore the picture of the drawbridge machinery off the top of my pad, I looked at Wireman. In spite of the lead that now seemed to be lining my heart and emotions, I found that this was something I really wanted to know. "What about you? Ever been down to the original Heron's Roost for a little poke-and-pry?"

  "Actually, no." Wireman went to the window and looked out. "Drawbridge is still up--I can see the western leaf against the sky from here. So far, so good."

  I was not to be diverted so easily. "Why not?"

  "Miss Eastlake advised against it," he said, still not turning from the window. "She said the environment was bad. Groundwater, flora, even the air. She said the Army Air Corps did testing off the south end of Duma during World War II and managed to poison that end of the island, which is probably why the foliage grows so rank in most places. She said the poison oak is maybe the worst in America--worse than syphilis before penicillin is how she put it. Takes years to get rid of, if you rub up against it. Looks like it's gone, then it comes back. And it's everywhere. So she said."

  This was mildly interesting, but Wireman still hadn't actually answered my question. So I asked it again.

  "She also claimed there are snakes," he said, finally turning around. "I have a horror of snakes. Have ever since I was a little boy and woke up one morning on a camping trip with my folks to discover I was sharing my sleeping bag with a milkie. It had actually worked its way into my undershirt. It sprayed me with musk. I thought I was fucking poisoned. Are you satisfied?"

  "Yes," I said. "Did you tell her that story before or after she told you about the snake infestation on the south end?"

  Stiffly, he said: "I don't remember." Then he sighed. "Probably before. I see what you're saying--she wanted to keep me away."

  I didn't say it, you did, I thought. What I said was, "It's mostly Jack I'm worried about. But it's better to be safe."

  "Me?" Jack looked startled. "I don't have anything against snakes. And I know what
poison oak and poison ivy look like. I was a Boy Scout."

  "Trust me on this," I said, and began to sketch him. I worked quickly, resisting the urge to go into detail . . . as part of me seemed to want to do. While I was working, the first angry car horn began to honk on the coast side of the drawbridge.

  "Sounds to me like the drawbridge is stuck again," Jack said.

  "Yes," I agreed, not looking up from my drawing.

  v

  I sped along even more quickly with Wireman's sketch, but I again found myself having to fight the urge to fall into the work . . . because when I was in the work, the pain and grief were at bay. The work was like a drug. But there would be only so much daylight, and I didn't want to meet Emery again any more than Wireman did. What I wanted was for this to be over and for the three of us to be off-island--far off-island--by the time those sunset colors started to rise out of the Gulf.

  "Okay," I said. I had done Jack in blue and Wireman in blaze orange. Neither was perfect, but I thought both sketches caught the essentials. "There's just one more thing."

  Wireman groaned. "Edgar!"

  "Nothing I need to draw," I said, and flipped the cover of the pad closed on the two sketches. "Just smile for the artist, Wireman. But before you do, think of something that makes you feel particularly good."

  "Are you serious?"

  "As a heart attack."

  His brow furrowed . . . then smoothed out. He smiled. As always, it lit up his whole face and made him a new man.

  I turned to Jack. "Now you."

  And because I really did feel that he was the more important of the two, I watched him very closely when he did.

  vi

  We didn't have a four-wheel drive, but Elizabeth's old Mercedes sedan seemed a reasonable substitute; it was built like a tank. We drove to El Palacio in Jack's car, and parked just inside the gate. Jack and I switched our supplies over to the SEL 500. Wireman's job was the picnic basket.

  "A few other things while you're in there, if you can," I said. "Bug-spray, and a really good flashlight. Have you got one of those?"

  He nodded. "There's an eight-cell job in the gardening shed. It's a searchlight."

  "Good. And Wireman?"

  He gave me a what now look--the exasperated kind you do mostly with your eyebrows--but said nothing.

  "The spear-pistol?"

  He actually grinned. "Si, senor. Para fijaciono."