Duma Key(197)

"Fuck!" I said. I kicked a pile of shards and sent them flying. "Fuck!"

"Easy, vato. That won't help."

No, it wouldn't. And she'd like me angry, wouldn't she? The old angry Edgar would be easy to manipulate. I tried to get hold of myself, but the I can do this mantra wasn't working. Still, it was all I had. And what do you do when you can't use anger to fall back on? You admit the truth.

"All right," I said. "But I don't have a clue."

"Relax, Edgar," Jack said, and he was smiling. "That part's gonna be okay."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"Trust me on this," he said.

v

As we stood looking at Charley the Lawn Jockey in light that was now taking on a definite purple cast, a nonsense couplet from an old Dave Van Ronk blues occurred to me: "Mama bought a chicken, thought it was a duck; Sat it on the table with the legs stickin up." Charley wasn't a chicken or a duck, but his legs, ending not in shoes but a dark iron pedestal, were indeed sticking up. His head, however, was gone. It had crashed down through a square of ancient moss- and vine-covered boards.

"What's that, muchacho?" Wireman asked. "Do you know?"

"I'm pretty sure it's a cistern," I said. "I'm hoping not a septic tank."

Wireman shook his head. "He wouldn't have put them in a shitheap no matter how bad his mental state was. Never in a million years."

Jack looked from Wireman to me, his young face full of horror. "Adriana's down there? And the nanny?"

"Yes," I said. "I thought you understood that. But the most important thing is that Perse 's down there. And the reason I think it's a cistern is-"

"Elizabeth would have insisted on making sure the bitch was in a watery grave," Wireman said grimly. "A fresh -watery one."

vi

Charley was heavy, and the boards covering the hole in the high grass were more rotten than the steps of the ladder. Of course they were; unlike the ladder, the wooden cap had been directly exposed to the elements. We worked carefully in spite of the thickening shadows, not knowing how deep it was beneath. At last I was able to push the troublesome jockey far enough to one side so that Wireman and Jack could grab the slightly cocked blue legs. I stepped onto the rotted wooden cap in doing so; someone had to, and I was the lightest. It bent under my weight, gave out a long, warning groan, puffed up sour air.

"Get off it, Edgar!" Wireman yelled, and at the same instant Jack cried, "Grab it, oh whore, it's gonna fall through!"

They seized Charley as I stepped off the sagging cap, Wireman around the bent knees and Jack around the waist. For a moment I thought it was going to drop through anyway, dragging them both along. Then they gave a combined shout of effort and tumbled over backward with the lawn jockey on top of them. Its grinning face and red cap were covered with huge lumbering beetles. Several dropped off onto Jack's straining face, and one fell directly into Wireman's mouth. He screamed, spat it out, and leaped to his feet, still spitting and rubbing his lips. Jack was beside him a moment later, dancing around him in a circle and brushing the bugs off his shirt.

"Water!" Wireman bellowed. "Gimme the water, one of em got in my mouth, I could feel it crawling on my f**king tongue!"

"No water," I said, rummaging in the considerably depleted bag. Now on my knees, I could smell the air rising through the ragged hole in the cap far better than I wanted to. It was like air from a newly breached tomb. Which, of course, it was. "Pepsi."

"Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, Pepsi," Jack said. "No Coke." He laughed dazedly.

I handed Wireman a can of soda. He stared at it unbelievingly for a moment, then raked back the pull tab. He took a mouthful, spat it out in a brown and foamy spray, took another, then spat that one out. The rest of the can he drank in four long swallows.

"Ay, caramba," he said. "You're a hard man, Van Gogh."

I was looking at Jack. "What do you think? Can we shift it?"

Jack studied it, then fell on his knees and began to tear away the vines clinging to the sides. "Yeah," he said. "But we gotta get rid of this shit."

"We should have brought a crowbar," Wireman said. He was still spitting. I didn't blame him.

"Wouldn't have helped, I don't think," Jack said. "The wood's too rotted. Help me, Wireman." And when I fell on my knees beside him: "Don't bother, boss. This is a job for guys with two arms."

I felt another flash of anger at that the old anger was very close now and quelled it as best I could. I watched them work their way around the circular cap, tearing away the vines and the weeds as the light faded from the sky. A single bird cruised by with its wings folded. It was upside-down. You saw something like that and felt like checking into the nearest nuthouse. Preferably for a long stay.

The two of them were working opposite each other, and as Wireman neared the place where Jack had begun and Jack neared the place where Wireman had begun, I said: "Is that speargun loaded, Jack?"

He looked up. "Yes. Why?"

"Because this is going to be a photo finish after all."

vii

Jack and Wireman knelt on one side of the cap. I knelt on the other. Above us, the sky had deepened to an indigo that would soon be violet. "My count," Wireman said. "Uno... dos... TRES!" They pulled and I pushed as well as I could with my remaining arm. That was pretty well, because my remaining arm had grown strong during my months on Duma Key. For a moment the cap resisted. Then it slid toward Wireman and Jack, revealing a crescent of darkness a black and welcoming smile. This thickened to a half-moon, then a full circle.