She wondered how long she had been idling in the Mardi Gras. Days? Weeks? Wasting time. She circled the words like a moth around a candle flame. Time wasting, as her mother’s limbs had wasted—time ebbing and dwindling, losing hope, wearing out.
Lost time. Time wandering, rootless, abandoned. The memories of her stay in Mardi Gras disappeared, draining away from her like raindrops vanishing into parched earth. Time lost that could never be recovered. Days gone that could never be made good.
I should have kept that watch.
A young Mexican came hurrying up from a side street, saw her, and stopped. He kissed his trembling fingers, made the sign of the cross, and backed away from her, one slow step at a time, as if she were a rattlesnake hissing in the dust. Sloane stared dumbly after him. Finally she thought to look down at herself. She was wearing one of Sly’s dresses, a gold lamé number that was ripped at the shoulder, splotched with soot and singed at the hip where she had fired Ace’s gun. I’ll be damned. That boy thinks I’m a reveller. Sloane nearly smiled. Which I suppose I am.
She forced herself up to Broadway. A little farther and she would come to Ashton Villa. No, not a good idea. She couldn’t face her mother’s house, not yet. The Ford place, perhaps? Jim would help. Jim would try to set things right. A brewer’s cart came rumbling slowly down the road, drawn by a brace of weary quarter horses. Sweat sparkled on their necks. She watched the horses rumble by, iron-shod hooves flashing and falling, the big cart wheels creaking and crunching along the road behind. She caught herself timing a suicide jump in front of them.
Oh, no you don’t, my girl. She grabbed on to a streetlight to keep herself close to the curb. Not yet. Not so easy as that.
She continued along Broadway until she turned up the walk to the Ford place and knocked on the big front door. Like the double doors at Ashton Villa, it was made of cured cypress, the only wood that wouldn’t rot away under the subtropical sun. Gloria opened the door. Sloane noted automatically that she was wearing one of Clara Ford’s dresses, tailored to fit and with print hemwork liberally added. Probably enough to keep Jim from recognizing it as something that had belonged to his dead first wife; he never was too observant about that kind of thing. “God almighty!” Gloria said. Her eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Is you a ghost?”
“No, ma’am. It’s me, Sloane.”
Gloria reached out and pinched her on the arm, hard. “Ow,” Sloane said, knowing it was expected.
“Hunh. Well, I suppose it is you.” Gloria shook her head. “Leastwise what’s left of you. Come on in, girl, and set down. You look like what the cat drug in.”
TWO hours later Sloane was sitting by Jim Ford in his large carriage, facing forward. Sheriff Denton sat across from them. Deputy Lanier was up on the box, driving. From time to time Sloane could hear him gee up the horses, swishing the traces across their shoulders with a light smack.
It was late afternoon and fiercely hot, even with the white canvas canopy up. They were driving along the Seawall road toward the Balinese Room, but for once no breeze came off the Gulf to cool them. The sea lay flat, a dull green mirror glinting back flashes of the Texas sun. Now there were clouds, though, tall banks of them far to the southeast, the same gunmetal green as the sea. Jim’s horses clopped steadily along. The carriage creaked and swayed, jerking over cracks in the pavement, big wheels grinding through the litter of broken shells on Seawall Boulevard.
It had been six days since Jane Gardner had died, Jim Ford said. Four since they had buried her. Three since Josh had told her of her death. Here in the real world three days had passed while in the Mardi Gras, where time ran strangely, Sly had left Sloane for dead, only to have Sam Cane resurrect her. Damn him.
Sloane had told Jim about the mask, told him that she had been escaping into the Mardi Gras and that her disappearance had nothing to do with Joshua Cane. Now they were all going to see the Recluse. Sheriff Denton said he needed to know why she hadn’t come forward to support Joshua’s story.
“Did you ever know Sam Cane?” Jim asked the sheriff. Sweat had beaded up like dew on his bald head. “Joshua Cane’s daddy. Used to play cards with me every Saturday. The boy would bring Gloria a pill for her arthritis. Good kid, back then. Now he’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of a brick. Something changed him.”
Poverty, Jim? Disappointment? Bitterness? Death? Sloane didn’t say anything.
“I knew Travis Denton,” the sheriff said.
“Of course. Of course you did. Terrible tragedy.”
Sloane looked around the carriage. The bench was upholstered in cream-colored velour. Years of wear had made the color uneven: palest in the two spots where Jim and his wife had sat most often, and in the middle where the most sun had fallen; darker close to the sides, where the doors provided steady shadow. When Sloane was only a very small child, three or four at the oldest, she had noticed that sometimes it was simpler to observe the world than it was to be part of it. Sometimes, when you couldn’t leave a bad place, you could escape it by turning into a watcher, a lizard on the wall. Mute as a shell on the beach.
Jim Ford tried again. “Sloane says she went into the boy’s shop to get something for a cut on her leg. Says she left her stockings there on purpose, on account of they were all torn up.”
“Wish we’d heard that sooner,” the sheriff said.
“Yep.” Jim shook his head sympathetically. Out over the Gulf, a glint of heat lightning sparkled over the distant cloud bank. “Wonder if there might be a drop of rain over yonder.”
“Hope so,” said the sheriff. He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. Sun winked on the crystal face. He frowned and tucked it back in his vest pocket.
Jim said, “It’s a funny thing about that hair of Sloane’s you found in Ham Mather’s boat. Sloane says she was never in a boat.”
“That she remembers,” the sheriff said. “You told me yourself she couldn’t remember much that happened while she was”—he glanced back toward Stewart Beach—“over there.”
Sloane was looking at her shoes. They were grey canvas shoes with rubber soles cut down from a tire. Gloria had sent a maid over to Ashton Villa to get Sloane a change of clothes. For the first time in what seemed like forever she was dressed the way she ought to be: neat white blouse and white cotton jacket to hide the sweat stains under her armpits, plain grey skirt that came a hand’s span below her knees, covering the powder burns on her right leg. She wore no panty hose or stockings. The sun was slanting in from the west side of the carriage, laying a strip of light across Sloane’s leg. She looked at the fine, fine hairs, gold spider-silk threads lying on her tanned legs.
“There may be many things the young lady does not remember,” Sheriff Denton said.
“Maybe.” Jim nodded, watching the cloud bank for more signs of lightning. “It’s not impossible,” he said.
They came to the Balinese Room. Kyle tied the horses to a rust-eaten street sign. When Sloane had been a little girl the sign had read “No Parking 12:00 A.M.-5:00 A.M.”—but salt spray and windblown sand had scoured the writing off. Sloane got out of the carriage, feeling light-headed from the heat.
Sheriff Denton and Deputy Lanier started across the pier. Jim Ford offered Sloane his arm and they followed. Wood planks bleached dull silver by the remorseless sun creaked under their feet. They passed the guard hut, Sheriff Denton solemn and frowning like the Law. Sloane felt one of Sly’s grins cross her face as she imagined a Maceo sentry pushing the hidden buzzer: inside, the band striking up “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You,” Chinese cooks playing deadpan and clogging the restaurant, while back in the casino roulette wheels and blackjack tables folded up into the wall.
Sheriff Denton pulled the front door open for his deputy. Sloane watched the gloom swallow them both. She caught Jim Ford looking at her. “You appear to be cheering up.” he remarked.
Her mouth quirked in a small smile. “Odessa likes me,” she said.
GALVESTON’
S witch was sitting at her workbench. “Hello, Sheriff,” she said without looking up. “Deputy Lanier. And Jim—always a pleasure.”
They picked their way through the dim dining room. What light there was came obliquely through the north windows, raising a few gleams from the dusty silverware and the brightly painted Krewe altars on the raised bandstand. Jim and Jeremiah gave the altars as wide a berth as possible, but Kyle Lanier seemed unconcerned, passing directly in front of the bandstand and stopping to slouch against the back of the Harlequins’ black-and-white checked altar with the mad clown puppet on top.
Hanging over the workbench was the wreath of snake-skins Sloane had seen placed as a sacrifice outside Odessa’s house in the other Galveston. By daylight she could see them better. Water moccasins, mostly, with maybe a copperhead mixed in, on a frame made of what Sloane hoped were deer bones, forelegs and a few ribs. She wondered if the witch had just liked the way the wreath looked, or if it was a sacrifice she had accepted. Maybe she had been doing good works all these years, too, warding some from sickness or bad luck, watching over the families she had broken when she sent some gifted child or magically susceptible father into the moonlit Mardi Gras.
The sheriff took off his straw hat and turned it between his hands. “We have some questions we need answered, Ms. Gibbons.”
For the first time Odessa looked around at them. She was wearing a silk kimono with birds of paradise printed on it. Her lips and nails were bright pre-Flood red, and her foundation was immaculate. Sloane could smell the Revlon AquaNet that kept her hair perfectly in place. In her hand she was holding a Sheriff Denton doll the length of her forearm. It was wearing a black suit and tiny straw hat. Its eyes were made from pale blue chips of shell, its cheeks and jaw covered by a neatly trimmed grey beard of real human hair. A silver star was pinned to its little stuffed chest. “Yes, Jeremiah?”
Kyle fumbled for the gun at his side. “You set that down right now.”
Odessa said, “I wouldn’t threaten me, little boy.”
“The hell—”
“Get your hand off your gun,” Jim Ford said.
Kyle looked at Jeremiah Denton. The sheriff nodded. “Settle down, Kyle. Jim and Ms. Gibbons and me, we go back a while.”
Odessa rose and came over to give Sloane a hug. “Are you okay, sugar?” she said softly. Sloane nodded. Behind her back, still trapped in Odessa’s hand, the Sheriff Denton doll tugged feebly at Sloane’s cotton jacket. Odessa let Sloane go. “Jeremiah, Jim—can I get you boys something to drink? I have Coke and Dr Pepper, rice wine and a few other spirits. Ice, too, which I hear is getting scarce.”
“Ms. Gibbons,” Sheriff Denton said quietly, “what are you doing with that doll?”
The Recluse regarded him. “My duty,” she said.
Jim Ford faked a cough. “Goddamn. I could use a scotch and water if you’ve got it, Odessa.”
“Jeremiah?” The sheriff doll wriggled weakly in Odessa’s hand. She ignored it.
Sloane could see hairs lifting on Sheriff Denton’s wrists. He couldn’t take his eyes off the doll. “I don’t want any of your drink.”
“Suit yourself. Jim, I believe I’ll join you.” Odessa turned and headed for the kitchen. “Y’all just talk amongst yourselves for a spell.”
“Much obliged,” Jim said.
“She’s gonna bolt,” Kyle said. He shouldered through the swinging door into the kitchen. The rest of them followed. Odessa was standing in front of her refrigerator, getting ice from the dispenser in the freezer. The Sheriff Denton doll lay on the counter next to two shot glasses, each of which contained a fat finger of bourbon. A big pot simmered on the stove, sending up coils of fetid steam, as if she were boiling seawater with the kelp and crabs still in it. The trapdoor in the kitchen floor was open; through it Sloane could see the dull green water, beginning to show a little swell now. A white wing flashed by as a gull swooped underneath the pier.
Odessa finished gathering a handful of ice and closed the freezer. A puff of cold air washed over them all. Sheriff Denton cleared his throat. “Ms. Gibbons, there’s two young men been exiled when we couldn’t find Ms. Gardner here. You said you didn’t know anything about her disappearance. If you’d told about the mask, those boys might still be on the Island.”
Odessa put ice in each of her glasses and handed one to Jim Ford. “Sheriff, making that mask was something done in confidence between Sloane and myself. How was I to guess you would make a damn fool of yourself and convict two innocent men?”
“You have a lot of mouth on you for an old lady,” Kyle said, drawing his gun.
“Put it back, for God’s sake!” Jim Ford said. But this time Sheriff Denton did not speak, and his hand was on the grip of his .38.
Kyle kept his gun out. “Power corrupts, I hear tell. I think you’ve gotten used to slinking out here, doing whatever you want.”
“This is Galveston’s only angel, for pity’s sake!”
Kyle’s lips pulled back enough to show his two gold-capped teeth. “Funny, ain’t it, Mr. Ford? If anyone else shows a bit of magic, they don’t last long, do they? Gone to Krewes. The Recluse gets ’em. Some of us youngsters, we can’t figure why we don’t make us a few more angels. If one’s so great, why not let a few more of ’em live? But she never does. Do you, Miss Gibbons? I’m going to take that doll of Mr. Denton now.” He stepped carefully around the trapdoor. “Nobody ever voted for you, old lady.”
Odessa said, “Boy, someone needs to learn you some manners.” She quickly moved to the center of the room and held the Sheriff Denton doll poised over the open trapdoor.
A gun crashed like a blast of thunder and a bullet tore out Odessa’s throat. The air was suddenly red with her blood, and her head fell impossibly on one side. Her body dropped like a heap of rags, blood spurting in horrible jets from the stump of her neck. She still clutched the sheriff doll in her hand. It wiggled and strained, turning its face as streamers of blood slapped against its cotton cheeks.
Only then did Sloane realize it was Sheriff Denton who had fired the shot. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He dropped his .38. His hand was shaking. “I had no choice. You saw what she was going to do. She was going to drop me down the hole. You all saw it.” He swallowed. “I had no choice.”
The blood stopped coming. Odessa’s body went still. Sloane looked at the old witch, lying in a bloody heap in her beautiful kitchen. No more than a doll herself now. A few bits of bone and twists of rag. A silk robe. Some costume jewelry.
House wins again.
Goodbye, ’Dessa.
“SLOANE?” Sloane heard Jim Ford’s voice dimly, as if from a long way off. Ever since falling back from the Mardi Gras, she had been numb. Now she felt deaf as well, as if the crash of Sheriff Denton’s gun had blotted out other sounds. Deep inside her, Odessa’s ghost joined the ghost of her mother, the two of them drawn to her as if sensing her heat, whining and whirring, finding no purchase. She was glass. She was untouchable.
“Sloane, we need a blanket to put over her.”
Sloane rose shakily to her feet and headed for the door which led back to Odessa’s bedroom.
“Reckon I’ll tag along,” Kyle said.
Sloane looked at him. “Haven’t you done enough?”
Kyle held the door open and waved her through with a grin and a flourish. “Just my duty, Ms. Gardner. Just my duty.”
It had been years since Sloane had been in Odessa’s bedroom. It had changed. She remembered it as quilts and dolls and knickknacks, a vanity and a big box of makeup and bottles of hair spray. Now sea and wind and light had spilled through it, washing the human things away. Dried seaweed lay in strands across the floor and furniture. The shutters were open and the mosquito netting around Odessa’s brass bed hung in ribbons, twisting and fluttering in the Gulf breeze. Instead of sheets, her mattress was covered with a layer of cracked white shells. Here and there Sloane could see a sand dollar or a dried anemone. Two pink jellyfish lay where the pillows should have been.
It was as if all these years Odessa had been holding back not only magic, but the Gulf itself, and it had worn her down at last.
A fragment of memory bobbed up, a younger Odessa, confident and matter-of-fact as she stuffed Vinny Tranh’s doll into the Krewe of Thalassar’s shrine. When someone springs a leak, you see, it can’t easily be patched.
Something rustled in Odessa’s walk-in closet. Kyle pulled out his gun and walked warily toward it. He laid his hand lightly on the doorknob and then jerked it open and stood quivering in the entrance with his .38 at the ready. Sloane held her breath. Nothing moved. Kyle edged forward into the dim closet. “Hm. Maybe it was just a rat. Wait a min—ow!”
A little girl with fiery red ringlets scrambled out into the room, raced around Odessa’s bed, and ran smack into Sloane—and it hurt. Sloane had a jumbled impression of flying hair, patent-leather shoes, and a scrap of blue veil. It’s the doll! she thought. The doll with her heart inside.
Then grief and the ground hit her at the same moment and she shattered with the pain.
SLOANE and her mother and ’Dessa are having a picnic on the beach. Sloane is in ’Dessa’s lap while Jane struggles with the Gulf breeze, trying to spread a white linen tablecloth on the sand. She reaches into a picnic basket and carefully pulls out a platter with a birthday cake on it. She sets the cake flat on one corner of the tablecloth, holding down another corner with her hand. Odessa laughs at her, and Jane looks up with a mock growl.
“Why didn’t Sarah come?” Sloane whines.
“This is a special treat just for us,” Jane says. “Honey, can you sit here and hold down this cloth?” Her hair isn’t white yet, it’s still long and brown. The breeze makes it into ribbons.
Sloane clings to Odessa’s lap. “Don’t you like Sarah?”
“Of course I like Sarah, but she’s a servant. Odessa, can you lean over and get the silver out of that basket?”
“I like Sarah. She doesn’t work all the time. She was at my real birthday party,” Sloane says sullenly. She is rewarded by seeing her mother flinch. Jane drops her eyes, and her shoulders sag.