Duma Key(173)

And if we get this business done, maybe we'll never have to, I thought.

But I had drawn my daughter. I was sure of it. I'd drawn her on the beach.

My dead daughter. My drowned daughter. Drawn in sand for the waves to take.

You will want to, Elizabeth had said, but you mustn't.

Oh, but Elizabeth.

Sometimes we have no choice.

iii

We swallowed strong coffee in Big Pink's sunny kitchen until sweat was standing out on our cheeks. I took three aspirin, adding another layer of caffeine, then sent Jack to get two Artisan pads. And I told him to sharpen every colored pencil he could find while he was upstairs.

Wireman filled a plastic carry-sack with supplies from the fridge: carrot stubs, cucumber strips, a six-pack of Pepsi, three large bottles of Evian water, some roast beef, and one of Jack's Astronaut Chickens, still in its see-thru capsule.

"Surprised you can even think of food," he said, with the tiniest touch of reproach.

"Food doesn't interest me in the slightest," I said, "but I may have to draw stuff. In fact, I'm positive I'll have to draw stuff. And that seems to burn calories by the carload."

Jack returned with the pads and pencils. I pawed it over, then sent him back upstairs for art-gum erasers. I suspected there would be more stuff I'd want isn't there always? but I couldn't think what it might be. I glanced at the clock. It was ten to twelve.

"Did you Polaroid the drawbridge?" I asked Jack. "Please tell me you did."

"Yeah, but I thought... the German measles story..."

"Let me see the photos," I said.

Jack reached into his back pocket and produced some Polaroids. He shuffled through them and handed me four, which I dealt out on the kitchen table like a short hand of solitaire. I grabbed one of the Artisan pads and quickly began sketching the photo that showed the cogs and chains under the opening drawbridge it was just a dinky little one-lane thing the most clearly. My right arm continued to itch: a low, sleepy crawl.

"The German measles story was genius," I said. "It will keep almost everyone away. But almost isn't good enough. Mary wouldn't have stayed away from my daughter if someone had told her Illy had chicken p Fuck! " My eyes had blurred, and a line that should have been true wandered off into falsehood.

"Take it easy, Edgar," Wireman said.

I glanced at the clock. 11:58 now. The drawbridge would go up at noon; it always did. I blinked away the tears and went back to my sketch. Machinery spun itself into existence from the point of the Venus Black, and even now, with Ilse gone, the fascination of seeing something real emerge from nothing like a shape drifting out of a fogbank stole over me. And why not? When better? It was refuge.

"If she's got someone to attack us with and the drawbridge is out of commission, she'll just send them around to the Don Pedro Island footbridge," Wireman said.

Without looking up from my drawing, I said: "Maybe not. A lot of people don't know about the Sunshine Walkway, and I'm positive Perse doesn't."

"Why?"

"Because it was built in the fifties, you told me that, and she was sleeping then."

He considered this a moment, then said, "You think she can be beaten, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. Not killed, maybe, but put back to sleep."

"Do you know how?"

Find the leak in the table and fix it, I almost said... but that made no sense.

"Not yet. There are more of Libbit's pictures at the other house. The one at the south end of the key. They'll tell us where Perse is and tell me what to do."

"How do you know there are more?"

Because there have to be, I would have said, but just then the noon horn went. A quarter of a mile down the road, the drawbridge between Duma Key and Casey Key the only north link between us and the coast was going up. I counted to twenty, putting Mississippi between each number as I had when I was a child. Then I erased the biggest cog in my drawing. There was a sensation when I did it in the missing arm, yes, but also centered between and just above my eyes of doing some lovely piece of precision work.

"Okay," I said.

"Can we go now?" Wireman asked.

"Not quite yet," I said.

He glanced at the clock, then back at me. "I thought you were in a hurry, amigo. And given what we saw in here last night, I know that I am. So what else?"

"I need to draw you both," I said.

iv

"I'd love to have you do a picture of me, Edgar," Jack said, "and I'm sure my mom would be totally blissed out but I think Wireman's right. We ought to get going."

"Have you ever been to the south end of the Key, Jack?"

"Uh, no."

Of that I'd been almost sure. But as I tore the picture of the drawbridge machinery off the top of my pad, I looked at Wireman. In spite of the lead that now seemed to be lining my heart and emotions, I found that this was something I really wanted to know. "What about you? Ever been down to the original Heron's Roost for a little poke-and-pry?"

"Actually, no." Wireman went to the window and looked out. "Drawbridge is still up I can see the western leaf against the sky from here. So far, so good."

I was not to be diverted so easily. "Why not?"

"Miss Eastlake advised against it," he said, still not turning from the window. "She said the environment was bad. Groundwater, flora, even the air. She said the Army Air Corps did testing off the south end of Duma during World War II and managed to poison that end of the island, which is probably why the foliage grows so rank in most places. She said the poison oak is maybe the worst in America worse than syphilis before penicillin is how she put it. Takes years to get rid of, if you rub up against it. Looks like it's gone, then it comes back. And it's everywhere. So she said."