Duma Key

  "Yeah, but you've got her on your knee, and it's just us chickens, so go ahead."

  "Well, shit." He blew hair off his forehead. "What do you want her to say?"

  Wireman said, very quietly indeed: "Why don't we just see what comes out?"

  v

  Jack sat with Noveen on his knee for a moment longer, their heads in the sun, little bits of disturbed dust from the stairs and the ancient hall carpet floating around their faces. Then he shifted his grip so that his fingers were on the doll's rudiment of a neck and her cloth shoulders. Her head came up.

  "Hello, boys," Jack said, only he was trying not to move his lips and it came out Hello, oys.

  He shook his head; the disturbed dust flew. "Wait a minute," he said. "That sucks."

  "Got all the time in the world," I told him. I think I sounded calm, but my heart was thudding harder than ever. Part of what I was feeling was fear for Jack. If this worked, it might be dangerous for him.

  He stretched out his throat and used his free hand to massage his Adam's apple. He looked like a tenor getting ready to sing. Or like a bird, I thought. A Gospel Hummingbird, maybe. Then he said, "Hello, boys." It was better, but--

  "No," he said. "Shit-on-toast. Sounds like that old blond chick, Mae West. Wait."

  He massaged his throat again. He was looking up into the cascading bright as he did it, and I'm not sure he knew that his other hand--the one on the doll--was moving. Noveen looked first at me, then at Wireman, then back at me. Black shoebutton eyes. Black beribboned hair cascading around a chocolate-cookie face. Red O of a mouth. An Ouuu, you nasty man mouth if ever there was one.

  Wireman's hand gripped mine. It was cold.

  "Hello, boys," Noveen said, and although Jack's Adam's apple bobbed up and down, his lips barely moved on the b at all.

  "Hey! How was that?"

  "Good." Wireman said, sounding as calm as I didn't feel. "Have her say something else."

  "I get paid extra for this, don't I, boss?"

  "Sure," I said. "Time and a ha--"

  "Ain't you gone draw nuthin?" Noveen asked, looking at me with those round black eyes. They really were shoebuttons, I was almost sure of it.

  "I have nothing to draw," I said. "Noveen."

  "I tell you sumpin you c'n draw. Whereat yo pad?" Jack was now looking off to the side, into the shadows leading to the ruined parlor, bemused, eyes distant. He looked neither conscious nor unconscious; he looked someplace between.

  Wireman let go of me and reached into the food-bag, where I had stowed the two Artisan pads. He handed me one. Jack's hand flexed a bit, and Noveen appeared to bend her head slightly to study it as I first flipped back the cover and then unzipped the pouch that held my pencils. I took one.

  "Naw, naw. Use one of hers."

  I rummaged again, and took out Libbit's pale green. It was the only one still long enough to afford a decent grip. It must not have been her favorite color. Or maybe it was just that Duma's greens were darker.

  "All right, now what?"

  "Draw me in the kitchen. Put me up agin the breadbox, that do fine."

  "On the counter, do you mean?"

  "Think I was talkin bout on the flo?"

  "Christ," Wireman muttered. The voice had been changing steadily with each exchange; now it wasn't Jack's at all. And whose was it, given the fact that in its prime the only ventriloquism available to make the doll speak had been provided by a little girl's imagination? I thought it had been Nan Melda's then, and that we were listening to a version of that voice now.

  As soon as I began to work, the itch swept down my missing arm, defining it, making it there. I sketched her sitting against an old-fashioned breadbox, then drew her legs dangling over the edge of the counter. With no pause or hesitation--something deep inside me, where the pictures came from, said that to hesitate would be to break the spell while it was still forming, while it was still fragile--I went on and drew the little girl standing beside the counter. Standing beside the counter and looking up. Little four-year-old girl in a pinafore. I could not have told you what a pinafore was before I drew one over little Libbit's dress as she stood there in the kitchen beside her doll, as she stood there looking up, as she stood there--

  Shhhhh--

  --with one finger to her lips.

  Now, moving quicker than ever, the pencil racing, I added Nan Melda, seeing her for the first time outside that photograph where she was holding the red picnic basket bunched in her arms. Nan Melda bent over the little girl, her face set and angry.

  No, not angry--

  vi

  Scared.

  That's what Nan Melda is, scared near to death. She knows something is going on, Libbit knows something is going on, and the twins know, too--Tessie and Lo-Lo are as scared as she is. Even that fool Shannington knows something's wrong. That's why he's taken to staying away as much as he can, preferring to work on the farm shoreside instead of coming out to the Key.

  And the Mister? When he's here, the Mister's too mad about Adie, who's run off to Atlanta, to see what's right in front of his eyes.

  At first Nan Melda thought what was in front of her eyes was just her own imagination, picking up on the babbyuns' games; surely she never really saw no pelicans or herons flying upside-down, or the hosses smiling at her when Shannington brought over the two-team from Nokomis to give the girls a ride. And she guessed she knew why the little ones were scairt of Charley; there might be mysteries on Duma now, but that ain't one of em. That was her own fault, although she meant well--

  vii

  "Charley!" I said. "His name's Charley!"

  Noveen cawed her laughing assent.

  I took the other pad out of the food-sack--almost ripped it out--and threw back the cover so savagely that I tore it half off. I groped among the pencils and found the stub of Libbit's black. I wanted black for this side-drawing, and there was just enough to pinch between my thumb and finger.

  "Edgar," Wireman said. "For a minute there I thought I saw . . . it looked like--"

  "Shut up!" Noveen cried. "Ne'mine no mojo arm! You gone want to see this, I bet!"

  I drew quickly, and the jockey came out of the white like a figure out of heavy fog. It was quick, the strokes careless and hurried, but the essence was there: the knowing eyes and the broad lips that might have been grinning with either mirth or malevolence. I had no time to color the shirt and the breeches, but I fumbled for the pencil stamped Plain Red (one of mine) along its barrel and added the awful cap, scribbling it in. And once the cap was there you knew what that grin really was: a nightmare.

  "Show me!" Noveen cried. "I want to see if y'got it right!"

  I held the picture up to the doll, who now sat straight on Jack's leg while Jack slumped against the wall beside the staircase, looking off into the parlor.

  "Yep," Noveen said. "That's the bugger who scared Melda's girls. Mos' certainly."

  "What--?" Wireman began, and shook his head. "I'm lost."

  "Melda seen the frog, too," Noveen said. "The one the babbies call the big boy. The one wit d'teef. That's when Melda finally corner Libbit in d'kitchen. To make her talk."

  "At first Melda thought the stuff about Charley was just little kids scaring each other, didn't she?"

  Noveen cawed again, but her shoebutton eyes stared with what could have been horror. Of course, eyes like that can look like anything you want them to, can't they? "That's right, sugar. But when she seen ole Big Boy down there at the foot of the lawn, crossin the driveway and goin into the trees . . ."

  Jack's hand flexed. Noveen's head shook slowly back and forth, indicating the collapse of Nan Melda's defenses.

  I shuffled the pad with Charley the jockey on it to the bottom and went back to the picture of the kitchen: Nan Melda looking down, the little girl looking up with her finger on her lips--Shhhh!--and the doll bearing silent witness from her place against the breadbox. "Do you see it?" I asked Wireman. "Do you understand?"

  "Sort of . . ."

  "Su
gar-candy was mos'ly done, once she was out," Noveen said. "Thass what it come down to."

  "Maybe at first Melda thought Shannington was moving the lawn jockey around as a kind of joke--because he knew the three little girls were scared of it."

  "Why in God's name would they be?" Wireman asked.

  Noveen said nothing, so I passed my missing hand over the Noveen in my drawing--the Noveen leaning against the breadbox--and then the one on Jack's knee spoke up. As I sort of knew she would.

  "Nanny din' mean nothin bad. She knew they 'us scairt of Charley--this 'us befo the bad things started--an so she tole em a bedtime story to try an make it better. Made it worse instead, as sometimes happens with small chirrun. Then the bad woman come--the bad white woman from the sea--n dat bitch made it worse still. She made Libbit draw Charley alive, for a joke. She had other jokes, too."

  I threw back the sheet with Libbit going Shhhh, seized my Burnt Umber from my pack--now it didn't seem to matter whose pencils I used--and sketched the kitchen again. Here was the table, with Noveen lying on her side, one arm cast up over her head, as if in supplication. Here was Libbit, now wearing a sundress and an expression of dismay achieved in no more than half a dozen racing lines. And here was Nan Melda, backing away from the open breadbox and screaming, because inside--

  "Is that a rat?" Wireman asked.

  "Big ole blind woodchuck," Noveen said. "Same thing as Charley, really. She got Libbit to draw it in the breadbox, and it was in the breadbox. A joke. Libbit 'us sorry, but the bad water-woman? Nuh-uh. She never sorry."

  "And Elizabeth--Libbit--had to draw," I said. "Didn't she?"

  "You know dat," Noveen said. "Don't you?"

  I did. Because the gift is hungry.

  viii

  Once upon a time, a little girl fell and did her head wrong in just the right way. And that allowed something--something female--to reach out and make contact with her. The amazing drawings that followed had been the come-on, the carrot dangling at the end of the stick. There had been smiling horses and troops of rainbow-colored frogs. But once Perse was out--what had Noveen said?--sugar-candy was mos'ly done. Libbit Eastlake's talent had turned in her hand like a knife. Except it was no longer really her hand. Her father didn't know. Adie was gone. Maria and Hannah were away at the Braden School. The twins couldn't understand. But Nan Melda began to suspect, and . . .

  I flipped back and looked at the little girl with the finger on her lips.

  She's listening, so shhhh. If you talk, she'll hear, so shhhh. Bad things can happen, and worse things are waiting. Terrible things in the Gulf, waiting to drown you and take you to a ship where you'll live something that's not life. And if I try to tell? Then the bad things may happen to all of us, and all at once.

  Wireman was perfectly still beside me. Only his eyes moved, sometimes looking at Noveen, sometimes looking at the pallid arm that flickered in and out of view on the right side of my body.

  "But there was a safe place, wasn't there?" I asked. "A place where she could talk. Where?"

  "You know," Noveen said.

  "No, I--"

  "Yessir, you do. You sho do. You only forgot awhile. Draw it and you see."

  Yes, she was right. Drawing was how I'd reinvented myself. In that way, Libbit

  (where our sister)

  was my kin. For both of us, drawing was how we remembered how to remember.

  I flipped to a clean sheet. "Do I have to use one of her pencils?" I asked.

  "Not no mo. You be fine with any."

  So I rummaged in my pack, found my Indigo, and began drawing. I drew the Eastlake swimming pool with no hesitation--it was like giving up thought and allowing muscle memory to punch in a phone number. I drew it as it had been when it had been bright and new and full of clean water. The pool, where for some reason Perse's hold slipped and her hearing failed.

  I drew Nan Melda, up to her shins, and Libbit up to her waist, with Noveen tucked under her arm and her pinafore floating around her. Words floated out of my strokes.

  Where yo new doll now? The china doll?

  In my special treasure-box. My heart-box.

  So it had been there, at least for awhile.

  And what her name?

  Her name is Perse.

  Percy a boy's name.

  And Libbit, firm and sure: I can't help it. Her name is Perse.

  All right den. And you say she can't hear us here.

  I don't think so . . .

  That's good. You say you c'n make things come. But listen to me, child--

  ix

  "Oh my God," I said. "It wasn't Elizabeth's idea. It was never Elizabeth's idea. We should have known."

  I looked up from the picture I had drawn of Nan Melda and Libbit standing in the pool. I realized, in a distant way, that I was very hungry.

  "What are you talking about, Edgar?" Wireman asked.

  "Getting rid of Perse was Nan Melda's idea." I turned to Noveen, still sitting on Jack's knee. "I'm right, aren't I?"

  Noveen said nothing, so I passed my right hand over the figures in my swimming-pool drawing. For a moment I saw that hand, long fingernails and all.

  "Nanny didn't know no better," Noveen said an instant later from Jack's leg. "And Libbit be trustin Nanny."

  "Of course she did," Wireman said. "Melda was almost the child's mother."

  I had visualized the drawing and erasing as happening in Elizabeth's room, but now I knew better. It had happened at the pool. Perhaps even in the pool. Because the pool had been, for some reason, safe. Or so little Libbit had believed.

  Noveen said, "It din' make Perse gone, but it sholy did get her attention. I think it hoit dat bitch." The voice sounded tired now, croaky, and I could see Jack's Adam's apple sliding up and down in his throat again. "I hope it did!"

  "Yes," I said. "Probably it did. So . . . what came next?" But I knew. Not the details, but I knew. The logic was grim and irrefutable. "Perse took her revenge on the twins. And Elizabeth and Nan Melda knew. They knew what they did. Nan Melda knew what she did."

  "She knew," Noveen said. It was still a female voice, but it was edging closer to Jack's all the time. Whatever the spell was, it wouldn't hold much longer. "She held on until the Mister found their tracks down on Shade Beach--tracks goin into the water--but after that she couldn't hold on no longer. She felt she got her babbyuns killed."

  "Did she see the ship?" I asked.

  "Seen it that night. You cain't see that boat at night and not believe."

  I thought of my Girl and Ship paintings and knew that was the truth.

  "But even before the Mister rung the high sheriff on the s'change to say his twins was missin and probably drownded, Perse done spoke to Libbit. Tole her how it was. An' Libbit tole Nanny."

  The doll slumped, its round cookie-face seeming to study the heart-shaped box from which it had been exhumed.

  "Told her what, Noveen?" Wireman asked. "I don't understand."

  Noveen said nothing. Jack, I thought, looked exhausted even though he hadn't moved at all.

  I answered for Noveen. "Perse said, 'Try to get rid of me again and the twins are just the beginning. Try again and I'll take your whole family, one by one, and save you for last.' Isn't that right?"

  Jack's fingers flexed. Noveen's rag head nodded slowly up and down.

  Wireman licked his lips. "That doll," he said. "Exactly whose ghost is it?"

  "There are no ghosts here, Wireman," I said.

  Jack moaned.

  "I don't know what he's been doing, amigo, but he's done," Wireman said.

  "Yes, but we're not." I reached for the doll--the one that had gone everywhere with the child artist. And as I did, Noveen spoke to me for the last time, in a voice that was half hers and half Jack's, as if both of them were struggling to come through at the same time.

  "Nuh-uh, not dat hand--you need dat hand to draw wit'."

  And so I reached out the arm I used to lift Monica Goldstein's dying dog out of the street six months ago, in
another life and universe. I used that hand to grasp Elizabeth Eastlake's doll and lift it off Jack's knee.

  "Edgar?" Jack said, straightening up. "Edgar, how in hell did you get your--"

  --arm back, I suppose he said, but I don't know for sure; I didn't hear the finish. What I saw were those black eyes and that black maw of a mouth ringed with red. Noveen. All these years she had been down there in the double dark--under the stair and in the tin box--waiting to spill her secrets, and her lipstick had stayed fresh all the while.

  Are you set? she whispered inside my head, and that voice wasn't Noveen's, wasn't Nan Melda's (I was sure of that), wasn't even Elizabeth's; that was all Reba. You all set and ready to draw, you nasty man? Are you ready to see the rest? Are you ready to see it all?

  I wasn't . . . but I would have to be.

  For Ilse.

  "Show me your pictures," I whispered, and that red mouth swallowed me whole.

  How to Draw a Picture (X)

  Be prepared to see it all. If you want to create--God help you if you do, God help you if you can--don't you dare commit the immorality of stopping on the surface. Go deep and take your fair salvage. Do it no matter how much it hurts.

  You can draw two little girls--twins--but anyone can do that. Don't stop there just because the rest is a nightmare. Do not neglect to add the fact that they are standing thigh-deep in water that should be over their heads. A witness--Emery Paulson, for instance--could see this if he looked, but so many people aren't prepared to see what is right in front of their eyes.

  Until, of course, it's too late.

  He's come down to the beach to smoke a cigar. He can do this on the back porch or on the veranda, but some strong compulsion has urged him down the rutted road Adie calls Drunkard's Boulevard and then down the steeper, sandy path to the beach. This voice has suggested his cigar will taste better here. He can sit on a fallen log the waves have cast up and watch the after-ashes of the sunset, as orange fades to tangerine and the stars go blue. The Gulf will look pleasant in such light, the voice suggests, even if the Gulf has had the bad taste to mark the beginning of his marriage by swallowing two of his beloved's little sisters.

  But there's more to watch than just a sunset, it seems. There's a ship out there. It's an old-fashioned one, a pretty, slim-hulled thing with three masts and furled sails. Instead of sitting on the log, he walks down the beach to where the dry sand becomes wet and firm and packed, marveling at that swallow-shape against the fading sunset. Some trick of the air makes it seem as if the day's last red is shining right through the hull.