Duma Key(185)

"Got all the time in the world," I told him. I think I sounded calm, but my heart was thudding harder than ever. Part of what I was feeling was fear for Jack. If this worked, it might be dangerous for him.

He stretched out his throat and used his free hand to massage his Adam's apple. He looked like a tenor getting ready to sing. Or like a bird, I thought. A Gospel Hummingbird, maybe. Then he said, "Hello, boys." It was better, but -

"No," he said. "Shit-on-toast. Sounds like that old blond chick, Mae West. Wait."

He massaged his throat again. He was looking up into the cascading bright as he did it, and I'm not sure he knew that his other hand the one on the doll was moving. Noveen looked first at me, then at Wireman, then back at me. Black shoebutton eyes. Black beribboned hair cascading around a chocolate-cookie face. Red O of a mouth. An Ouuu, you nasty man mouth if ever there was one.

Wireman's hand gripped mine. It was cold.

"Hello, boys," Noveen said, and although Jack's Adam's apple bobbed up and down, his lips barely moved on the b at all.

"Hey! How was that?"

"Good." Wireman said, sounding as calm as I didn't feel. "Have her say something else."

"I get paid extra for this, don't I, boss?"

"Sure," I said. "Time and a ha-"

"Ain't you gone draw nuthin?" Noveen asked, looking at me with those round black eyes. They really were shoebuttons, I was almost sure of it.

"I have nothing to draw," I said. "Noveen."

"I tell you sumpin you c'n draw. Whereat yo pad?" Jack was now looking off to the side, into the shadows leading to the ruined parlor, bemused, eyes distant. He looked neither conscious nor unconscious; he looked someplace between.

Wireman let go of me and reached into the food-bag, where I had stowed the two Artisan pads. He handed me one. Jack's hand flexed a bit, and Noveen appeared to bend her head slightly to study it as I first flipped back the cover and then unzipped the pouch that held my pencils. I took one.

"Naw, naw. Use one of hers."

I rummaged again, and took out Libbit's pale green. It was the only one still long enough to afford a decent grip. It must not have been her favorite color. Or maybe it was just that Duma's greens were darker.

"All right, now what?"

"Draw me in the kitchen. Put me up agin the breadbox, that do fine."

"On the counter, do you mean?"

"Think I was talkin bout on the flo?"

"Christ," Wireman muttered. The voice had been changing steadily with each exchange; now it wasn't Jack's at all. And whose was it, given the fact that in its prime the only ventriloquism available to make the doll speak had been provided by a little girl's imagination? I thought it had been Nan Melda's then, and that we were listening to a version of that voice now.

As soon as I began to work, the itch swept down my missing arm, defining it, making it there. I sketched her sitting against an old-fashioned breadbox, then drew her legs dangling over the edge of the counter. With no pause or hesitation something deep inside me, where the pictures came from, said that to hesitate would be to break the spell while it was still forming, while it was still fragile I went on and drew the little girl standing beside the counter. Standing beside the counter and looking up. Little four-year-old girl in a pinafore. I could not have told you what a pinafore was before I drew one over little Libbit's dress as she stood there in the kitchen beside her doll, as she stood there looking up, as she stood there

Shhhhh -

- with one finger to her lips.

Now, moving quicker than ever, the pencil racing, I added Nan Melda, seeing her for the first time outside that photograph where she was holding the red picnic basket bunched in her arms. Nan Melda bent over the little girl, her face set and angry.

No, not angry-

vi

Scared.

That's what Nan Melda is, scared near to death. She knows something is going on, Libbit knows something is going on, and the twins know, too Tessie and Lo-Lo are as scared as she is. Even that fool Shannington knows something's wrong. That's why he's taken to staying away as much as he can, preferring to work on the farm shoreside instead of coming out to the Key.

And the Mister? When he's here, the Mister's too mad about Adie, who's run off to Atlanta, to see what's right in front of his eyes.

At first Nan Melda thought what was in front of her eyes was just her own imagination, picking up on the babby-uns' games; surely she never really saw no pelicans or herons flying upside-down, or the hosses smiling at her when Shannington brought over the two-team from Nokomis to give the girls a ride. And she guessed she knew why the little ones were scairt of Charley; there might be mysteries on Duma now, but that ain't one of em. That was her own fault, although she meant well -

vii

"Charley!" I said. "His name's Charley!"

Noveen cawed her laughing assent.

I took the other pad out of the food-sack almost ripped it out and threw back the cover so savagely that I tore it half off. I groped among the pencils and found the stub of Libbit's black. I wanted black for this side-drawing, and there was just enough to pinch between my thumb and finger.

"Edgar," Wireman said. "For a minute there I thought I saw... it looked like-"

"Shut up!" Noveen cried. "Ne'mine no mojo arm! You gone want to see this, I bet!"