Duma Key (78 page)

Jack said, “That's a little cold, don't you think?”

I shook my head. “I don't, actually. Children don't mourn like adults.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. I guess. But I'm surprised . . .” He fell silent.

“What?” I asked. “What surprises you?”

“That Perse let them go,” Jack said.

“She didn't, not really. They were only going to Bradenton.”

Wireman tapped the sketch. “Where's Elizabeth in this?”

“Everywhere,” I said. “We're looking through her eyes.”

iv

“There's not much more, but the rest is pretty bad.”

I showed them the next sketch. It was as hurried as the other ones, and the male figure in it was depicted back-to, but I had no doubt it was the living version of the thing that had clamped a manacle on my wrist in the kitchen of Big Pink. We were looking down on him. Jack looked from the picture to Shade
Beach, now eroded to a mere strip, then back to the picture. Finally he looked at me.

“Here?” he asked in a low voice. “The point of view in this one is from right here?”

“Yes.”

“That's Emery,” Wireman said, touching the figure. His voice was even lower than Jack's. Sweat had sprung up on his brow.

“Yes.”

“The thing that was in your house.”

“Yes.”

He moved his finger. “And those are Tessie and Laura?”

“Tessie and Lo-Lo. Yes.”

“They . . . what? Lured him in? Like sirens in one of those old Greek fairy tales?”

“Yes.”

“This really happened,” Jack said. As if to get the sense of it.

“It really did,” I agreed. “Never doubt her strength.”

Wireman looked toward the sun, which was nearer the horizon than ever. Its track had begun to tarnish at last. “Then finish up,
muchacho,
quick as you can. So we can do our business and get the hell out of here.”

“I don't have much more to tell you, anyway,” I said. I shuffled through a number of sketches that were little more than vague scribbles. “The real heroine was Nan Melda, and we don't even know her last name.”

I showed them one of the half-finished sketches: Nan Melda, recognizable by the kerchief around her head and a perfunctory dash of color across the brow
and one cheek, talking to a young woman in the front hallway. Noveen was propped nearby, on a table that was nothing but six or eight lines with a quick oval shape to bind them together.

“Here she is, telling Adriana some tall tale about Emery, after he disappeared. That he was called suddenly back to Atlanta? That he went to Tampa to get a surprise wedding present? I don't know. Anything to keep Adie in the house, or at least close by.”

“Nan Melda was playing for time,” Jack said.

“It was all she could do.” I pointed toward the crowding jungle overgrowth between us and the north end of the Key, growth that had no business being there—not, at least, without a team of horticulturalists working overtime to provide its upkeep. “All that wasn't there in 1927, but
Elizabeth
was here, and she was at the peak of her talents. I don't think anyone trying to use the road that went off-island would have stood a chance. God knows what Perse had made Elizabeth draw into existence between here and the drawbridge.”

“Adriana was supposed to be next?” Wireman asked.

“Then John. Maria and Hannah after them. Because Perse meant to have all of them except—maybe—Elizabeth herself. Nan Melda must have known she could only hold Adie a single day. But a day was all she needed.”

I showed them another picture. Although much more hurried, it was once again Nan Melda and Libbit standing in the shallow end of the pool. Noveen lay on the edge with one rag arm trailing in the water. And beside Noveen, sitting on its fat belly, was a
wide-mouth ceramic keg with TABLE printed on the side in a semicircle.

“Nan Melda told Libbit what she had to do. And she told Libbit she had to do it no matter what she saw in her head or how loud Perse screamed for her to stop . . . because she
would
scream, Nan Melda said, if she found out. She said they'd just have to hope Perse found out too late to make any difference. And then Melda said . . .” I stopped. The track of the lowering sun was growing brighter and brighter. I had to go on, but it was hard now. It was very, very hard.

“What,
muchacho
?” Wireman said gently. “What did she say?”

“She said that
she
might scream, too. And Adie. And her Daddy. But she couldn't stop. ‘Dassn't stop, child,' she said. ‘Dassn't stop or it's all for nothing.' ” As if of its own accord, my hand plucked the Venus Black from my pocket and scrawled two words beneath the primitive drawing of the girl and the woman in the swimming pool:

dassn't stop

My eyes blurred with tears. I dropped the pencil into the sea oats and wiped the tears away. So far as I know, that pencil is still where I dropped it.

“Edgar, what about the silver-tipped harpoons?” Jack asked. “You never said anything about them.”

“There weren't any magic goddam harpoons,” I said tiredly. “They must have come years later, when Eastlake and Elizabeth returned to Duma Key. God knows which of them got the idea, and whichever one it was may not have even been completely sure why it seemed important.”

“But . . .” Jack was frowning again. “If they didn't have the silver harpoons in 1927 . . . then how . . .”

“No silver harpoons, Jack, but plenty of water.”

“I still don't follow that. Perse
came
from the water. She's
of
water.” He looked at the ship, as if to make sure it was still there. It was.

“Right. But at the pool,
her hold slipped
. Elizabeth knew it, but didn't understand the implications. Why would she? She was just a child.”

“Oh, fuck,” Wireman said. He slapped his forehead. “The swimming pool. Fresh water. It was a freshwater pool. Fresh as opposed to salt.”

I pointed a finger at him.

Wireman touched the picture I'd drawn of the ceramic keg sitting beside the doll. “This keg was an
empty
? Which they filled from the pool?”

“I have no doubt.” I shuffled the swimming-pool sketch aside and showed them the next one. The perspective was again from almost exactly where we were sitting. Above the horizon, a just-risen sickle moon shone between the masts of a rotting ship I hoped I would never have to draw again. And on the beach, at the edge of the water—

“Christ, that's awful,” Wireman said. “I can't even see it clearly and it's still awful.”

My right arm was itching, throbbing.
Burning.
I reached down and touched the picture with the hand I hoped I would never have to see again . . . although I was afraid I might.

“I can see it for all of us,” I said.

Don't quit until the picture's complete. I
can't tell you if that's the cardinal rule of art or not, I'm no teacher, but I believe those six words sum up all I've been trying to tell you. Talent is a wonderful thing, but it
won't carry a quitter. And there always comes a time
—
if the work is sincere, if it comes from that magic place where thought, memory, and emotion all merge
—
when you will want to quit, when you will think that if you put your pencil down your eye will dull, your memory will lapse, and the pain will end. I know all this from the last picture I drew that day
—
the one of the gathering on the beach. It was only a sketch, but I think that when
you're mapping hell, a sketch is all you need.

I started with Adriana.

All day long she has been frantic about Em, her emotions ranging from wild anger at him to fear for him. It has even crossed her mind that Daddy has Done Something Rash, although that seems unlikely; his grief has made him torpid and unresponsive ever since the search ended.

When sunset comes and there's still no sign of Em, you'd think she'd become more nervous than ever, but instead she grows calm, almost cheerful. She tells Nan Melda that Em will be back directly, she's sure of it. She feels it in her bones and hears it in her head, where it sounds like a small, chiming bell. She supposes that bell is what they mean by “woman's intuition,” and you
don't become fully aware of it until
you're married. She tells Nanny this, too.

Nan Melda nods and smiles, but she watches Adie narrowly.
She's been watching her all day. The girl's man is gone for good, Libbit has told her this and Melda believes her, but Melda also believes that the rest of the family may be saved
 . . . 
that she herself may be saved.

Much, however, depends on Libbit herself.

Nan Melda goes up to check on her remaining babby-un, touching the bracelets on her left arm as she climbs the stairs. The silver bracelets are from her Mama, and Melda wears them to church every Sunday. Perhaps that's why she took them from her special-things box today, slipping them on and pushing them up until they stuck on the swell of her forearm instead of letting them dangle loose above her wrist. Perhaps she wanted to feel a little closer to her Mama, to borrow a little of Mama's quiet strength, or perhaps she just wanted the association of something holy.

Libbit is in her room, drawing. She is drawing her family, Tessie and Lo-Lo very much included. The eight of them (Nan Melda is also family, as far as Libbit is concerned) stand on the beach where they have spent so many happy times swimming and picnicking and building sand castles, their hands linked like paper dolls and great big smiles running off the sides of their faces. It's as if she thinks she can draw them back to life and happiness by the pure force of her will.

Nan Melda could almost believe it possible. The child is powerful. Re-creating life, however, is beyond her. Recreating real life is even beyond the thing from the Gulf. Nan Melda's eyes drift to Libbit's special-things box before going back to Libbit herself again. She has only seen the figurine that came from the Gulf once, a tiny woman in a faded pink wrap that might once have been scarlet and a hood from which hair spills, hiding her brow.

She asks Libbit if everything is all right. It's all she dares to say, as far as she dares to go. If there really is a
third eye hidden under the curls of the thing in the box
—
a far-seeing mojo eye
—
it is impossible to be too careful.

Libbit says
Good. I just drawin, Nan Melda.

Has she forgotten what she's supposed to do? Nan Melda can only hope she
hasn't. She has to go back downstairs now, and keep an eye on Adie. Her man will be calling for her soon.

Part of her cannot believe this is happening; part of her feels as if her whole life has been a preparation for it.

Melda says
You may hear me call yo Daddy. If I do, you want to go pick up those things you lef' by the pool. Don't leave em out all night for the dew t'git at.

Still drawing, not looking up. But then she says something that gladdens Melda's frightened heart.
No'm. I'll take Perse. Then I won't be scared if it's dark.

Melda says
You take whoever you want, jus' bring in Noveen, she still out there.

It's all she has time for, all she dares when she thinks about that special probing mojo eye, and how it might be trying to see inside her head.

Melda touches her bracelets again as she goes downstairs. She is very glad she had them on while she was in Libbit's room, even though the little china woman was put away in the tin box.

She is just in time to see the swirl of Adie's dress at the end of the back hall as Adie turns into the kitchen.

It is time. This is going to play out.

Instead of following Adie to the kitchen, Melda runs down the front hall to the Mister's study, where, for the first time in the seven years she's worked for the family, she enters without knocking. The Mister is sitting behind his desk with his tie off and his collar undone and his braces hanging down in slack loops. He has the folding gold-framed
pictures of Tessie and Lo-Lo in his hands. He looks up at her, his eyes red in a face that is already thinner. He
doesn't seem surprised that his housekeeper should come bursting in unannounced; he has the air of a man beyond surprise, beyond shock, but of course this will turn out not to be so.

He says
What is it, Melda Lou?

She says
You got to come right away.

He looks at her from his streaming eyes with a calm and infuriating stupidity.
Come where?

She says
To the beach. And bring at-ere.

She points to the harpoon pistol, which hangs on the wall, along with several short harpoons. The tips are steel, not silver, and the shafts are heavy. She knows;
hasn't she carried them in the basket enough times?

He says
What are you talking about?

She says
I cain't be takin time to explain. You got to come to the beach right now, less you want to lose another one.

He goes. He
doesn't ask which daughter, or inquire again why he should want the harpoon pistol; he just snatches it off the wall, takes two of the harpoons in his other hand, and strides out through the open study door, first beside Melda and then ahead of her. By the time he reaches the kitchen, where Melda has last seen Adie, he's at a full-out run and she is falling behind even though she's running herself, holding her skirts before her in both hands. And is she surprised by this sudden break in his torpor, this sudden galvanizing action? No. Because, despite the blanket of his grief, the Mister has also known that something here is wrong and going wronger all the time.