Nightmare Country

  “What do you think happened to him?”

  “I think he drowned while swimming, although Rafaela swears both pairs of his swim trunks were still home, or he had an accident and fell into the sea or became lost in the jungle—got mired in a sinkhole. Or at his age he could easily have had a heart attack somewhere and his body just hasn’t been found.” Backra handed her a mask, rubber fins, and a tube with a mouthpiece. He took his own over the side with him. “Come on in. Have you back in plenty of time to play detective.”

  Swimming to Tamara was crawling reluctantly down a cold metal ladder into a chilly swimming pool, knowing the safety of the side was near to hand when her untrained strokes took her into deep water. Hefting herself over the side of a boat, instantly submerging herself in a sea full of suspicious creatures, and struggling to put on the fins made her wish she hadn’t begun this adventure. “How can I even think of being out here with you when Adrian—”

  He interrupted to explain how to breathe through the mouth with the snorkel, how to fit the mask so it wouldn’t leak, rub saliva on the plastic window so it wouldn’t fog over, how to relax and float in the water above the view of natural treasures, how to kick with the fins instead of stroking with the arms. “It’ll seem a little strange at first, but in fifteen minutes you’ll feel as at home as the fish.”

  Before she could make further protest, he clamped his teeth around the mouthpiece of his snorkel and did a surface dive, his fins splashing water in her face. Tamara considered trying to crawl back into the outboard, but the rim looked so far away she doubted her strength to do it without his help. Perhaps for just a little while … and she’d stay very close to that boat. Wishing Backra had not gone off so far, Tamara flattened out.

  The sound of breakers on the reef and water sloshing at the anchored boat was magnified with her face and ears in the water. The rubber mouthpiece tasted unpleasantly of salt. The rise and fall of the cool water cushion beneath her tried to drive her against the boat. Sun warmed the backs of her legs. Tamara kicked with the fins and was surprised at how far a small effort could take her.

  But the scene below made her hold her breath until she realized what she was doing, and then there wasn’t enough air in the snorkel. She put her head up, removed the mouthpiece and gulped, put it back, and stretched out again.

  White, yellow, red, black, purple, rust, beige, orange. Clumps of color growing out of clumps of different colors. Lacy fans that waved with the same current she did, treelike antlers of hard coral that reached up to her but were far away and untouchable when she reached back, not the inches from her fingers they appeared to be, but whole feet away. The colors under the sun rays piercing the water were so vibrant they made the lush world above seem washed out in comparison.

  For a while Tamara forgot even Adrian as schools of transparent fish—like giant guppies but with yellow streaks along their sides—swam beneath her as though they didn’t mind her intrusion. Bright-colored fish nibbled on coral while tiny, darting fish nibbled on them. A fish so thin it couldn’t have room for the necessary organs inspected the window in her mask as if to discover whether she had eyes.

  Another world of unreality. How could there be so many?

  A veritable mountain of coral humps filled with holes and crevices and a different-shaped and colored creature in every opening. All beautiful, but some were eating the others. A regular carnival of beauty and death, and all the while the rolling motion of the sea, lifting and dropping her gently like a vast water bed. More lulling than a dream … dangerous! Every instinct warned her. She dropped her legs and looked up at the surface world through water droplets on her mask. Where was the boat? Panic surged over her, and she gasped in drops of salt water that waves had leaked over the top of the snorkel. Her knee hit something stinging, and she choked.

  “Everything’s fine. You’re all right.” A warm body wrapped around her from behind. Why was he always reassuring her that things were all right when they weren’t.

  He turned her around. The boat was there, but it seemed an eternity away. The sun was sill on the water, but she was cold and suddenly tired. “Just kick with those fins. I’ll stay right with you.”

  Backra hoisted himself into the boat and then pulled her up and over the side. “Now, little mermaid, didn’t you enjoy that just a bit?”

  “I did not come to this island to enjoy myself.” She squealed as he applied stinging salve to her coral cuts. “Take me back to the hotel.”

  “Not till after breakfast. Even detectives have to eat for strength.”

  “My daughter’s life is at stake.”

  “Is it?” Ash-colored eyes regarded her somberly as he started the engine, and the warm wind felt cold in her wet hair.

  He did not head back for the dock with the outhouse but followed the shoreline away from the village. Tamara seethed inside but could hardly interrupt him when he began to speak of the death of his son. In a monotone, husky with an emotion that did not show on his face or even in his eyes, pitched over the noise of the engine and the boat bottom slapping the sea. In simple undramatic words that dripped pain with every monosyllable.

  She knew Backra was sharing with her something he’d shared with few others. It was a shattering story, and before he dropped anchor and helped her out of the boat into waist-deep water, Tamara was crying. “I’m so sorry for—”

  “Sorry is not what I’m asking you for.” He lifted the picnic bag from the boat, and they waded to a strip of beach overhung with jungle and along it to a point of black coral twisting and jutting into an aquamarine Caribbean. They sat on a patch of sand behind the coral point and next to a great heap of dead palm fronds that looked as if they’d been stacked like cornstalks for an old-fashioned harvest but had collapsed instead. There was an odd marking in the sand not far from it that reminded Tamara of a television antenna, and she wondered if some wild creature could have made it. Thad poured champagne into plastic glasses, spread out a feast of hard-boiled eggs, oranges, and hunks of soggy bread.

  “But you know Ricky is … gone. You saw his body buried. Adrian …”

  “I know my father is dead too, and with no body to prove it. I have learned to live with the fact. As you must. I’m not trying to hurt you, Tamara.”

  “But what if it had been Ricky you hadn’t found? Would it be so easy then? You said you hadn’t seen your father in years. You’d already learned to live without him. He was old. Adrian is young. It’s not the same.”

  “You might start with Roudan,” he said when they packed up the remains of their breakfast, but she could feel his withdrawal. “My father wrote in his notes that Roudan was the key—to what, I don’t know.”

  He was silent as he maneuvered Ramael’s boat back to the dock. When they’d beached it, he kissed her in a brusque, fatherly way. He left her at the steps to her cabana with champagne bubbles in her head and walked into the cemetery.

  Tamara watched as Backra stooped to feed scraps from their breakfast to the little dog who lived there.

  37

  Dixie was not in her office. Don and Harry had gone diving. Agnes sat in the dining room under a ceiling fan. She declared it too hot to go “traipsing” through the village asking silly questions. She didn’t know where Russ was.

  Tamara set off for the Hotel de Sueños, feeling she’d wasted precious hours already. Hours? It was over three weeks since she’d last seen Adrian. A sort of sick depression weighed down on her like the hot wet air she moved through. Backra was probably right. No he’s not! Just because he’d lost his child, he wanted it to happen to her too. Misery loved company. She was disappointed that he hadn’t offered to help her. Perhaps he would when he realized how determined she was.

  The darkened bar was empty. She crossed to the door of the dining room, wishing the parrot a frustrated “Hoppy burday” as she passed the cage.

  “Jeeroosha,” the bird answered.

  Tamara had entered the dining room and approached a boy carrying a stack of dir
ty plates before the parrot’s utterance registered. She backed out to the barroom and the cage. “What did you say?”

  “Hoppy burday to you, hoppy …” The bird righted itself, began nibbling seeds out of a whitish fruit cut in half on the floor of its cage.

  “No, the other one—Jerusha.”

  The bird nibbled and ignored her. Tamara crawled onto a bar stool and stared at the fiery-colored feathers until she had double vision and saw two birds. She must have been mistaken, but it had sounded just like—“Jerusha,” she insisted.

  “Chespita,” the parrot answered, and eyed her suspiciously with one eye.

  “You wan’ drink, lady?” A man stepped from the dining room and slipped behind the bar.

  “Uh … no. I’m looking for a Mr. Roudan Perdomo. Is that you?”

  “He takes the day off. Seferino, he’s in charge today. Who is me.”

  “I must talk to him. Is there any way I can contact him? It’s—”

  “No, lady. Maybe tomorrow. You come back tomorrow, yes?”

  “But there’s no time to waste.… I must … Well, maybe you can help me.…” Tamara described Adrian and asked if he’d seen or heard of anyone who fit that description on the island. He shook his head. She could detect no sign of recognition on Seferino’s face. Out in the open—spoken flat out—her questions sounded silly even to Tamara. Discouraged again, she slid off the stool and walked to the door that led to the beach.

  “Jeeroosha!” said the parrot behind her.

  Tamara whirled. “Mr. Seferino, do you know a woman named Jerusha?”

  But the man was no longer even in the room.

  She turned again and caught sight of a familiar figure in the cemetery. Russ Burnham wandered among gravestones, bending down to read inscriptions. She called him over to meet the parrot. “Russ, I heard it say the name Jerusha twice.”

  Russ and the bird stared at each other for long minutes, only the coins Russ jingled in his pocket making any sound. They turned away and were out on the porch before the parrot screeched derisively and said, “I hypocrite dem.”

  “Well, I thought it said ‘Jerusha.’”

  Russ had been wandering around the village asking if anyone had seen Fred or Adrian. “They all thought I was nuts. Couldn’t understand half the answers but everybody shook their heads no while they talked. They got one policeman here, and he’s on another island trying to scare up parts for his boat. Supposed to be back tomorrow or the next day.”

  He took her down the street and pointed out shops or stores he hadn’t tried. Tamara talked to the proprietors of these and had no more luck than he’d had. “Do you think there’s any way we could search the houses?”

  “Don’t you think you’re overdoing this a little?”

  She’d sensed Russ had gone along with her this far only to humor her. “You think it’s hopeless, don’t you?”

  “I still don’t get the connection between the dreams and why Fred and Adrian should be here.”

  “I don’t know … it’s just the only lead we have.” She knocked on doors, questioned women at their washboards under houses, stopped people on the street. Most of the answers were incomprehensible. “Let’s go see if Dixie’s back yet. At least she speaks English.”

  Dixie was not in her office, but when they knocked on the door that said “Private,” she opened it. Her Afro looked brushed up and trimmed for a change. She wore lipstick and eye shadow. She stood stiff and proud and looked like a different person. But the whites of her eyes were streaked with red and her voice had that nasal tone of recently shed tears. “What can I do for you?”

  “Damned if I know,” Russ answered.

  “It’s about the dreams we’ve had of each other and the fact that my daughter and Agnes Hanley’s husband are missing and we need desperately to talk to you.”

  Dixie invited them in to her bed-sitting-room without much enthusiasm and remained standing after she’d motioned them to be seated. But she listened patiently to Tamara’s descriptions of Fred and Adrian.

  “I dreamed once of you and your girl, but I’ve never seen her or Mr. Hanley on the island. I’ll admit the dreams are strange, but what makes you think those two should turn up here?”

  “Miss Grosswyler,” Tamara cut in before Russ could agree with Dixie, “have you ever heard of a woman by the name of Jerusha?”

  “Well, I used to know one.” Dixie sat down across from them and finally showed some interest. “But her real name was Maria Elena Esquivel.”

  “The same Maria Elena buried under the Virgin in the cemetery?”

  “An empty sarcophagus. This old geezer came down here from the States a few years ago, married her. Took her away. Like ninety percent of the population of the third world, she’d always wanted to live in the United States.”

  “The geezer’s name Abner Fistler?” Russ leaned forward.

  “Abner … right. Had a cough that’d make your eyes water just to hear it. Her father was on his last leg too. He was George, the bastard of an Englishman, white as Stefano Paz, but his mom was an Esquivel. Family’s died out now, except for Maria Elena. George Esquivel decided when she left she was dead. Had a mock funeral and everything. Roudan played priest and I suppose paid for the tombstone statue of the Virgin. George was dirt poor. He died two months later, and his grave isn’t even marked.”

  “Why did she change her name to Jerusha?”

  “Sometimes, when we’re lucky, we get one movie a month here. Hollywood oldies with Spanish subtitles. Movie Hawaii had been here at least twice. Maria Elena had a flair for the dramatic, and she was taken with the Julie Andrews role of Jerusha. No TV. One movie a month, sometimes none. Some of the locals who can afford it see a movie twenty times. Whole population of Mayan Cay might total seven hundred, if you count the dogs. Anyway, she starts calling herself Jerusha. We called her Maria Elena.

  “She cleaned cabanas here a year before this old guy came down to marry her. Must have been writing to each other or something. He asked for her the minute he stepped off the plane.”

  “He never wrote letters, never went anywhere,” Russ said. “Only way he could of known her was in his dreams.”

  “I wonder why Roudan’s parrot still says ‘Jerusha,’” Tamara said.

  “Roudan and Maria Elena used to have something going. The usual something, I presume. But that’s most frowned upon here. Chespita was her parrot. I expected Roudan to be more broken up than he was when she left. He’s never married.”

  Russ was filling Dixie in on Abner Fistler’s death and Jerusha’s state in a Cheyenne hospital when Tamara left the room with elation. Perhaps Thad’s father was right about Roudan being the key to something. And his connection with Jerusha and her connections with this island ought to prove something to the doubting Backra. Although exactly what it all added up to, Tamara had no idea.

  She hurried out of the compound, across the cemetery, and to Backra’s house. Surely with this new information he would offer to help, believe in her quest.

  Two brown children fought over his hammock. The screen door opened before she got to it. The drone of a small airplane passed above her in the still, soggy heat as a short squat woman emerged from Backra’s house with a broom. Rafaela, the woman in the dream church that had no roof.

  The shock of recognition on Rafaela’s face was unmistakable. She raised the broom over her head. The children scattered. “Thaddeus has gone back to his home. He’s escaped you, evil one.”

  38

  “This is now the house of Lourdes Paz, wife of Aulalio, who is in heaven, and mother of his children,” Rafaela said, and although she’d lowered her broom, she stood at Backra’s door obviously ready to fight for it.

  “He didn’t even leave a message … or anything?” Tamara felt a numbness spreading through her. She suspected this was one shock too many. Rafaela appeared so kindly and motherly. If she’d beaten Tamara with that broom, she couldn’t have been more cruel.

  “He left something
only for one. One thing for one who is called Tomairra.”

  “That’s me. What is it?”

  Rafaela, whose voice was so soft and look for Tamara so hard, reached inside the door for a slab of stone, the one with writing carved into it that Tamara had seen when she’d followed them into the house and Dixie had seduced Backra. It reminded her instantly of the stela in the jungle where she and Backra had seduced each other, and she had an inkling of why people commit suicide.

  The stone was heavy, and she staggered as she turned back into the cemetery, where the little dog he had called “My Lady of the Rum Belly” looked at her dully. “Never pays to be somebody’s lady, doggie.”

  The old man who’d been cutting seaweed with a machete the day before blocked her way into the Mayapan’s compound; his sneer had deepened into something more dangerous. His finger traced the markings on the slab. “This does not belong to you.”

  “He gave it to me.”

  “It was not his to give.”

  She dropped it on the sand at his feet. “I don’t want it.”

  “I’ve lost him,” she said to Russ when she met him under a palm tree in the compound. She hadn’t believed it when Backra said he was leaving today, and still couldn’t believe he’d done it.

  “Lost who?” Russ guided her to a padded lounge chair. “You look a little sick.”

  “Backra. He’s left the island.” Somehow, without putting it into coherent thought, Tamara had counted on Backra to solve all her problems. Instant savior. He was kind enough to help her find her daughter. Sensitive enough to help her finish raising her daughter, romantic enough to fulfill all her dreams, and rich enough—she’d assumed, for no reason—to help her out of a very tight financial mess now that she’d broken her first teaching contract and wasn’t likely to get another in these days of dwindling job opportunities.

  Of course, if she couldn’t find Adrian, she wouldn’t need much of one. Two island girls stepped off the porch of her cabana with brooms and plastic clothes baskets full of sheets and towels. Their laughter danced on the soft air. She could always do something like that, Tamara supposed. They didn’t have to have degrees, and they seemed happy enough. Quite a comedown from a sunken living room, though.