Duma Key(68)

"Wave of the future, that's what it is. I've got it. Jack took care of it. Wave of the father-raping, mother-stabbing future."

"Good one. Arlo Guthrie, 1967."

"Movie was 1969, I think," I said.

"Whenever it was, viva the wave of the mother-raping, froggy-stabbing future. Doesn't change the fact that I'm busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest... plus come on, Edgar. You know it's going to be more than a quick tap and peek with the old doctor-flashlight. That's just where it starts."

"But if you need it-"

"For the time being I'm good to go."

"Sure. That's why I'm the one reading her poems every afternoon."

"A little literary culture won't hurt you, you f**king cannibal."

"I know it won't, and you know that's not what I'm talking about." I thought and not for the first time that Wireman was one of the very few men I ever met in my adult life who could consistently tell me no without making me angry. He was a genius of no. Sometimes I thought it was him; sometimes I thought the accident had changed something in me; sometimes I thought it was both.

"I can read, you know," Wireman said. "In short bursts. Enough to get by. Medicine bottle labels, phone numbers, things like that. And I will get looked at, so relax that Type-A compulsion of yours to set the whole world straight. Christ, you must have driven your wife crazy." He glanced at me sideways and said, "Oops. Did Wireman step on a corn there?"

"Ready to talk about that little round scar on the side of your head yet? Muchacho? "

He grinned. " Touch , touch . All apologies."

"Kurt Cobain," I said. "1993. Or thereabouts."

He blinked. "Really? I would have said '95, but rock music has largely left me behind. Wireman got old, sad but true. As for the seizure thing... sorry, Edgar, I just don't believe it."

He did, though. I could see it in his eyes. But before I could say anything else, he climbed down from the sawhorse and pointed north. "Look! White van! I think the Forces of Cable TV have arrived!"

ii

I believed Wireman when he said he had no idea what Elizabeth Eastlake had been talking about on the answering machine tape after I played it for him. He continued to think that her concern for my daughter had something to do with her own long-deceased sisters. He professed to be completely puzzled about why she didn't want me to stockpile my pictures on the island. About that, he said, he didn't have a clue.

Joe and Rita Mean Dog moved in; the relentless barking of their menagerie commenced. The Baumgartens also moved in, and I often began to pass their boys playing Frisbee on the beach. They were just as Wireman had said: sturdy, handsome, and polite, one maybe eleven and the other maybe thirteen, with builds that would soon make them gigglebait among the junior high cheerleader set, if not already. They were always willing to share their Frisbee with me for a throw or two as I limped past, and the older Jeff usually called something encouraging like "Yo, Mr. Freemantle, nice chuck!"

A couple with a sports car moved into the house just south of Big Pink, and the distressing strains of Toby Keith began to waft to me around the cocktail hour. On the whole, I might have preferred Slipknot. The quartet of young people from Toledo had a golf cart they raced up and down the beach when they weren't playing volleyball or off on fishing expeditions.

Wireman was more than busy; he was a dervish. Luckily, he had help. One day Jack lent him a hand unclogging the Mean Dog lawn-sprinklers. A day or two later, I helped him push the Toledo visitors' golf cart out of a dune in which it had gotten stuck those responsible had left it to go get a six-pack, and the tide was threatening to take it. My hip and leg were still mending, but there was nothing wrong with my remaining arm.

Bad hip and leg or not, I took Great Beach Walks. Some days mostly when the fog came in during the late afternoon, first obliterating the Gulf with cold amnesia and then taking the houses, as well I took pain pills from my diminishing stock. Most days I didn't. Wireman was rarely parked in his beach chair drinking green tea that February, but Elizabeth Eastlake was always in her parlor, she almost always knew who I was, and she usually had a book of poetry near to hand. It wasn't always Keillor's Good Poems, but that was the one she liked the best. I liked it, too. Merwin and Sexton and Frost, oh-my.

I did plenty of reading myself that February and March. I read more than I had in years novels, short stories, three long nonfiction books about how we had stumbled into the Iraq mess (the short answer appeared to have W for a middle initial and a dick for a Vice President). But mostly what I did was paint. Every afternoon and evening I painted until I could barely lift my strengthening arm. Beachscapes, seascapes, still lifes, and sunsets, sunsets, sunsets.

But that fuse continued to smolder. The heat had been turned down but not off. The matter of Candy Brown wasn't the next thing, only the next obvious thing. And that didn't come until Valentine's Day. A hideous irony when you think of it.

Hideous.

iii

ifsogirl88 to EFree19

10:19 AM

February 3

Dear Daddy, It was great to hear you got a "thumbs up" on your paintings! Hooray! And if they DO offer you a show, I'll catch the next plane and be there in my "little black dress" (I have one, believe it or not). Got to stay put for now and study my butt off because here is a secret I'm hoping to surprise Carson when Spring Break rolls around in April. The Hummingbirds will be in Tennessee and Arkansas then (he sez the tour is off to a great start). I'm thinking that if I do okay on my mid-terms, I could catch up with the tour in either Memphis or Little Rock. What do you think?