Duma Key: A Novel Read online

  Jack drove slowly up to the back door … only with its face hanging over the Gulf of Mexico, that was the only door. “I’m surprised they were ever allowed to build this far out,” he said. “I suppose they did things different in the old days.” To him the old days probably meant the nineteen-eighties. “There’s your car. Hope it’s okay.”

  The car drawn up on the square of cracked pavement to the right of the house was the sort of anonymous American mid-size the rental companies specialize in. I hadn’t driven since the day Mrs. Fevereau hit Gandalf, and barely gave it a glance. I was more interested in the boxy pink elephant I’d rented. “Aren’t there ordinances about building too close to the Gulf of Mexico?”

  “Now, sure, but not when this place went up. From a practical standpoint, it’s all about beach erosion. I doubt if this place hung out that way when it was built.”

  He was undoubtedly right. I thought I could see at least six feet of the pilings supporting the screened porch—the so-called Florida room. Unless those pilings were sunk sixty feet into the underlying bedrock, eventually the place was going into the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a matter of time.

  As I was thinking it, Jack Cantori was saying it. Then he grinned. “Don’t worry, though; I’m sure you’ll get plenty of warning. You’ll hear it groaning.”

  “Like the House of Usher,” I said.

  His grin widened. “But it’s probably good for another five years or so. Otherwise it’d be condemned.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” I said. Jack had reversed to the driveway door, so the trunk would be easy to unload. Not a lot in there; three suitcases, one garment bag, a steel hardcase with my laptop inside, and a knapsack containing some primitive art supplies—mostly pads and colored pencils. I traveled light when I left my other life. I figured what I’d need most in my new one was my checkbook and my American Express card.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Someone who could afford to build here in the first place could probably talk a couple of B-and-C inspectors around.”

  “B-and-C? What’s that?”

  For a moment I couldn’t tell him. I could see what I meant: men in white shirts and ties, wearing yellow hi-impact plastic hardhats on their heads and carrying clipboards in their hands. I could even see the pens in their shirt pockets, and the plastic pocket-protectors to which they were clipped. The devil’s in the details, right? But I couldn’t think of what B-and-C stood for, although I knew it as well as my own name. And instantly I was furious. Instantly it seemed that making my left hand into a fist and driving it sideways into the unprotected Adam’s apple of the young man sitting beside me was the most reasonable thing in the world. Almost imperative. Because it was his question that had hung me up.

  “Mr. Freemantle?”

  “Just a sec,” I said, and thought: I can do this.

  I thought of Don Field, the guy who had inspected at least half of my buildings in the nineties (or so it seemed), and my mind did its crosspatch thing. I realized I’d been sitting bolt upright, my hand clenched in my lap. I could see why the kid had sounded concerned. I looked like a man having a gastric episode. Or a heart attack.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I had an accident. Banged my head. Sometimes my mind stutters.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jack said. “No biggie.”

  “B-and-C is Building and Code. Basically they’re the guys who decide if your building is going to fall down or not.”

  “You talking about bribes?” My new young employee looked glum. “Well, I’m sure it happens, especially down here. Money talks.”

  “Don’t be so cynical. Sometimes it’s just a matter of friendship. Your builders, your contractors, your building-code inspectors, even your OSHA guys … they usually drink in the same bars, and they all went to the same schools.” I laughed. “Reform schools, in some cases.”

  Jack said, “They condemned a couple beach houses at the north end of Casey Key when the erosion there sped up. One of em actually did fall into the drink.”

  “Well, as you say, I’ll probably hear it groaning, and it looks safe enough for the time being. Let’s get my stuff inside.”

  I opened my door, got out, then staggered as my bad hip locked up. If I hadn’t gotten my crutch planted in time, I would have said hello to Big Pink by sprawling on her stone doorstep.

  “I’ll get the stuff in,” Jack said. “You better go in and sit down, Mr. Freemantle. A cold drink wouldn’t hurt, either. You look really tired.”

  iv

  The traveling had caught up with me, and I was more than tired. By the time I eased into a living room armchair (listing to the left, as usual, and trying to keep my right leg as straight as possible), I was willing to admit to myself that I was exhausted.

  Yet not homesick, at least not yet. As Jack went back and forth, stowing my bags in the bigger of the two bedrooms and putting the laptop on the desk in the smaller one, my eye kept being drawn to the living room’s western wall, which was all glass, and the Florida room beyond it, and the Gulf of Mexico beyond that. It was a vast blue expanse, flat as a plate on that hot November afternoon, and even with the sliding glass window-wall shut, I could hear its mild and steady sighing. I thought, It has no memory. It was an odd thought, and strangely optimistic. When it came to memory—and anger—I still had my issues.

  Jack came back from the guest room and sat on the arm of the couch—the perch, I thought, of a young man who wants to be gone. “You’ve got all your basic staples,” he said, “plus salad-in-a-bag, hamburger, and one of those cooked chickens in a plastic capsule—we call em Astronaut Chickens at my house. I hope that’s okay with you.”

  “Fine.”

  “Two per cent milk—”

  “Also fine.”

  “—and Half-n-Half. I can get you real cream next time, if you want it.”

  “You want to clog my one remaining artery?”

  He laughed. “There’s a little pantry with all kinds of canned shi … stuff. The cable’s hooked up, the computer’s Internet-ready—I got you Wi-Fi, costs a little extra, but it’s way cool—and I can get satellite installed if you want it.”

  I shook my head. He was a good kid, but I wanted to listen to the Gulf, sweet-talking me with words it wouldn’t remember a minute later. And I wanted to listen to the house, see if it had anything to say. I had an idea maybe it did.

  “The keys’re in an envelope on the kitchen table—car keys, too—and a list of numbers you might need are on the fridge. I’ve got classes at FSU in Sarasota every day except Monday, but I’ll be carrying my cell, and I’ll be coming by Tuesdays and Thursdays at five unless we make a different arrangement. Is that okay?”

  “Yes.” I reached in my pocket and brought out my money-clip. “I want to give you a little extra. You’ve been great.”

  He waved it away. “Nah. This is a sweet gig, Mr. Freemantle. Good pay and good hours. I’d feel like a hound taking any extra.”

  That made me laugh, and I put my dough back in my pocket. “Okay.”

  “Maybe you ought to take a nap,” he said, getting up.

  “Maybe I will.” It was odd to be treated like Grandpa Walton, but I supposed I’d better get used to it. “What happened to the other house at the north end of Casey Key?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said one went into the drink. What happened to the other one?”

  “Far as I know, it’s still there. Although if a big storm like Charley ever hits this part of the coast dead-on, it’s gonna be like a going-out-of-business sale: everything must go.” He walked over to me, and stuck out his hand. “Anyway, Mr. Freemantle, welcome to Florida. I hope it treats you real well.”

  I shook with him. “Thank you …” I hesitated, probably not long enough for him to notice, and I didn’t get angry. Not at him, anyway. “Thanks for everything.”

  “Sure.” He gave me the smallest of puzzled looks as he went out, so maybe he did notice. Maybe he did notice, at that. I didn’t c
are. I was on my own at last. I listened to shells and gravel popping under his tires as his car started to roll. I listened to the motor fade. Less, least, gone. Now there was only the mild steady sighing of the Gulf. And the beat of my own heart, soft and low. No clocks. Not ringing, not bonging, not even ticking. I breathed deep and smelled the musty, slightly damp aroma of a place that’s been shut up for a fairly long time except for the weekly (or bi-weekly) ritual airing. I thought I could also smell salt and subtropical grasses for which I as yet had no names.

  Mostly I listened to the sigh of the waves, so like the breath of some large sleeping creature, and looked out through the glass wall that fronted on the water. Because of Big Pink’s elevation, I couldn’t see the beach at all from where I was sitting, fairly deep in the living room; from my armchair I might have been on one of those big tankers that trudge their oily courses from Venezuela to Galveston. A high haze had crept over the dome of the sky, muting the pinpricks of light on the water. To the left were three palm trees silhouetted against the sky, their fronds ruffling in the mildest of breezes: the subjects of my first tentative post-accident sketch. Don’t look much like Minnesota, dere, Tom Riley had said.

  Looking at them made me want to draw again—it was like a dry hunger, but not precisely in the belly; it made my mind itch. And, oddly, the stump of my amputated arm. “Not now,” I said. “Later. I’m whipped.”

  I heaved myself out of the chair on my second try, glad the kid wasn’t there to see the first backward flop and hear my childish (“Cuntlicker!”) cry of exasperation. Once I was up I stood swaying on my crutch for a moment, marveling at just how tired I was. Usually “whipped” was just something you said, but at that moment it was exactly how I felt.

  Moving slowly—I had no intention of falling in here on my first day—I made my way into the master bedroom. The bed was a king, and I wanted nothing more than to go to it, sit on it, sweep the foolish decorative throw-pillows (one bearing the likenesses of two cavorting Cockers and the rather startling idea that MAYBE DOGS ARE ONLY PEOPLE AT THEIR BEST) to the floor with my crutch, lie down, and sleep for two hours. Maybe three. But first I went to the bench at the end of the bed—still moving carefully, knowing how very easy it would be to tangle my feet and fall when I was at this level of exhaustion—where the kid had stacked two of my three suitcases. The one I wanted was on the bottom, of course. I shoved the one on top to the floor without hesitation and unzipped the front pocket of the other.

  Glassy blue eyes looked out with their expression of eternal disapproving surprise: Oouuu, you nasty man! I been in here all this time! A fluff of lifeless orangered hair sprang from confinement. Reba the Anger-Management Doll in her best blue dress and black Mary Janes.

  I lay on the bed with her crooked between my stump and my side. When I had made an adequate space for myself among the ornamental pillows (it was mostly the cavorting Cockers I’d wanted on the floor), I laid her beside me.

  “I forgot his name,” I said. “I remembered it the whole way out here, then forgot it.” Reba looked up at the ceiling, where the blades of the overhead fan were still and unmoving. I’d forgotten to turn it on. Reba didn’t care if my new part-time hired man was Ike, Mike, or Andy Van Slyke. It was all the same to her, she was just rags stuffed into a pink body, probably by some unhappy child laborer in Cambodia or fucking Uruguay.

  “What is it?” I asked her. Tired as I was, I could feel the old dismal panic setting in. The old dismal anger. The fear that this would go on for the rest of my life. Or get worse! Yes, possible! They’d take me back into the convalescent home, which was really just hell with a fresh coat of paint.

  Reba didn’t answer, that boneless bitch.

  “I can do this,” I said, although I didn’t believe it. And I thought: Jerry. No, Jeff. Then You’re thinking about Jerry Jeff Walker, asshole. Johnson? Gerald? Great Jumping Jehosaphat?

  Starting to drift away. Starting to drift into sleep in spite of the anger and panic. Tuning in to the mild respiration of the Gulf.

  I can do this, I thought. Crosspatch. Like when you remembered what B-and-C stood for.

  I thought of the kid saying They condemned a couple beach houses at the north end of Casey Key and there was something there. My stump was itching like a mad bastard. But pretend that’s some other guy’s stump in some other universe, meantime chase that thing, that rag, that bone, that connection—

  —drifting away—

  Although if a big storm like Charley ever hits this part of the coast dead-on—

  And bingo.

  Charley was a hurricane, and when hurricanes struck, I peeked at The Weather Channel, like the rest of America, and their hurricane guy was …

  I picked up Reba. She seemed to weigh at least twenty pounds in my soupy, half-asleep state. “The hurricane guy is Jim Cantore,” I said. “My help-out guy is Jack Cantori. Case fuckin closed.” I flopped her back down and closed my eyes. I might have heard that faint sigh from the Gulf for another ten or fifteen seconds. Then I was asleep.

  I slept until sundown. It was the deepest, most satisfying sleep I’d had in eight months.

  v

  I had done no more than nibble on the plane, and consequently woke up ravenous. I did a dozen heel-slides instead of the usual twenty-five to loosen my hip, made a quick trip to the bathroom, then lurched toward the kitchen. I was leaning on my crutch, but not as heavily as I might have expected, given the length of my nap. My plan was to make myself a sandwich, maybe two. I hoped for sliced bologna, but reckoned any lunchmeat I found in the fridge would be okay. I’d call Ilse after I ate and tell her I’d arrived safely. Ilse could be depended upon to e-mail everyone else with an interest in the welfare of Edgar Freemantle. Then I could take tonight’s dose of pain medication and explore the rest of my new environment. The whole second floor awaited.

  What my plan hadn’t taken into account was how the westward view had changed.

  The sun was gone, but there was still a brilliant orange band above the flat line of the Gulf. It was broken in only one place, by the silhouette of some large ship. Its shape was as simple as a first-grader’s drawing. A cable stretched taut from the bow to what I assumed was the radio tower, creating a triangle of light. As that light skied upward, orange faded to a breathless Maxfield Parrish blue-green that I had never seen before with my own eyes … and yet I had a sense of déjà vu, as if maybe I had seen it, in my dreams. Maybe we all see skies like that in our dreams, and our waking minds can never quite translate them into colors that have names.

  Above, in the deepening black, the first stars.

  I was no longer hungry, and no longer wanted to call Ilse. All I wanted to do was draw what I was looking at. I knew I couldn’t get all of it, but I didn’t care—that was the beauty part. I didn’t give Shit One.

  My new employee (for a moment I blanked on his name again, then I thought Weather Channel, then I thought Jack: case fuckin closed) had put my knapsack of art supplies in the second bedroom. I flailed my way out to the Florida room with it, carrying it awkwardly and trying to use my crutch at the same time. A mildly curious breeze lifted my hair. The idea that such a breeze and snow in St. Paul might exist at the same time, in the same world, seemed absurd to me—science fiction.

  I set the sack down on the long, rough wooden table, thought about snapping on a light, and decided against it. I would draw until I couldn’t see to draw, and then call it a night. I sat in my awkward fashion, unzipped the bag, pulled out my pad. ARTISAN, it said on the front. Given the level of my current skills, that was a joke. I grubbed deeper and brought out my box of colored pencils.

  I drew and colored quickly, hardly looking at what I was doing. I shaded up from an arbitrary horizon-line, stroking my Venus Yellow from side to side with wild abandon, sometimes going over the ship (it would be the first tanker in the world to come down with yellow jaundice, I reckoned) and not caring. When I had the sunset band to what seemed like the right depth—it was dying fast now—I g
rabbed the orange and shaded more, and heavier. Then I went back to the ship, not thinking, just putting a series of angular black lines on my paper. That was what I saw.

  When I was done, it was almost full dark.

  To the left, the three palms clattered.

  Below and beyond me—but not so far beyond now, the tide was coming back in—the Gulf of Mexico sighed, as if it had had a long day and there was more work to do yet.

  Overhead there were now thousands of stars, and more appearing even as I looked.

  This was here all the time, I thought, and recalled something Melinda used to say when she heard a song she really liked on the radio: It had me from hello. Below my rudimentary tanker, I scratched the word HELLO in small letters. So far as I can remember (and I’m better at that now), it was the first time in my life I named a picture. And as names go, it’s a good one, isn’t it? In spite of all the damage that followed, I still think that’s the perfect name for a picture drawn by a man who was trying his best not to be sad anymore—who was trying to remember how it felt to be happy.

  It was done. I put my pencil down, and that was when Big Pink spoke to me for the first time. Its voice was softer than the sigh of the Gulf’s breathing, but I heard it quite well just the same.

  I’ve been waiting for you, it said.

  vi

  That was my year for talking to myself, and answering myself back. Sometimes other voices answered back as well, but that night it was just me, myself, and I.

  “Houston, this is Freemantle, do you copy, Houston?” Leaning into the fridge. Thinking, Christ, if this is basic staples, I’d hate to see what it would look like if the kid really decided to load up—I could wait out World War III.

  “Ah, roger, Freemantle, we copy.”

  “Ah, we have bologna, Houston, that’s a go on the bologna, do you copy?”

  “Roger, Freemantle, we read you loud and clear. What’s your mayo situation?”

  We were a go for mayo, too. I made two bologna sandwiches on white—where I grew up, children are raised to believe mayonnaise, bologna, and white bread are the food of the gods—and ate them at the kitchen table. In the pantry I found a stack of Table Talk Pies, both apple and blueberry. I began to think of changing my will in favor of Jack Cantori.