Dagger Key and Other Stories

“Don’t talk that way to me! Don’t make out it’s only you gots to bear this burden! I bearing it, too. Difference is, I glad to bear it for the boys.”

Fredo has another bite, chews. “Sorry.”

“I don’t need your sorry, I needs you to be a man.”

“Ain’t I proved that to you? You can’t allow me to have a bad feeling about things?”

Emily comes around to his side of the counter, puts her arms around him and kisses his cheek. “We both of us on edge. Things going to go better now.”

“This thing with Wilton,” Fredo says. “I can’t get it out of my head.”

“What about Wilton?”

He relates his clouded memory of a struggle between he and Wilton up at the notch.

“I’m not going to waste tears over Wilton,” says Emily. “If it happen, it were because he try and steal from us. The same with the Germans. Two days, Fredo. You gone two days. You know they must try and cheat you.”

“True,” he says.

“No matter her evil ways, Annie always protect this family. We in the clear—you can trust her to make certain of that. All that’s left is for us to live with what she done.” Emily cups his face in both her hands. “Together, we strong enough. It take some doing, but we’ll manage.”

The flickering light softens the iron of her expression. He seems to see down to her irresolute self and understands that she’s as frightened as he of the mortal consequences of Annie’s crimes. Oddly enough, that comforts him more than her assurances. He kisses the knuckles of her hands and sighs.

“If it up to me,” he says, “I throw that damn cup into the sea. The dagger, too.”

She pulls away, sits on a stool beside him. “Maybe we should take the money and leave the island behind. Maybe that be best for everyone.”

“It’s something to think about,” he says. “But I too weary to make decisions now. We got time to work it through.”

“Why don’t you go on up and get some sleep? I finish with the cleaning.”

“I ain’t ready to sleep. You need anything from town?”

“Some fish would be nice. Maybe a barracuda head for a stew.”

“Nothing else?”

“The usual. Bread, bananas…you know.”

They settle back into their familiar roles, discussing the functioning of the café, the household, taking refuge in gentle talk that seems to rise up like smoke to conceal the strangeness of the past days, Emily laughing as Fredo tells her about Garnett Steadman, his story of how he saw a vast congregation of mackerel off the reef, and Fredo chuckling over Emily’s gossip about Annabelle Lister and her several lovers.

Outside, the sky is purpling. Some of the stars have disappeared. A solitary wave crunches on the reef. The wind has all but died, an occasional breeze lifting a palm frond, causing a hibiscus blossom to nod. Crabs glide and scuttle across the beach, pausing in their race, hearkening to an indefinite signal. Somewhere inland, an engine sputters to life. Beneath the dock at Treasure Cove, the night watchman floats in murky water, tiny fish swimming in and out of his eyeless sockets. In the notch, the vine matte writhes, clacking its braided cowrie shells, and grows still. Fifty feet below, in a thicket of thorny shrubs, the corpse of Wilton Barrios has been rendered unrecognizable by dogs. Vultures soar on an aerial above hills that are starting to show green. The morning widens, the eastern sky is pinked. All the mysteries of Dagger Key are being obscured beneath the semblance of an ordinary day, buried in light. What’s true remains unknown, what’s false is abundantly clear. Fredo steps from the café, fires up a cigarette, and stares toward Belize. His exhalation suggests an expansive measure of relief. A pariah dog ambling along the edge of the water pauses to sniff at the still-pulsing body of a jellyfish.

The seagull’s wing

divides the wave,

the lights of Swann’s Café

grow dim…

STORY NOTES

Stars Seen Through Stone

I made my living for a decade as a rock musician, mostly in the Detroit area. Though many of my collaborators were excellent technicians, most of the musicians I played with were not terrific human beings. Speaking generally, they had enormous egos and the attention span of gerbils, and tended to sulk when their every whim wasn’t being catered to. A case in point, I recall a rhythm guitar player who had been in a mood, unresponsive and scowling and occasionally belligerent. After a couple of weeks, he made his difficulty known to me, drawing me aside and asking in a surly tone, “How come you write all the songs?”

I was surprised, since he had never expressed any previous interest in writing, and I said, “I don’t know, man. Why don’t you write one?”

He was nonplussed by this, having expected me to argue for my creative primacy, but soon recovered and said that he would get right on it. I never heard any more about songwriting from him, but his mood improved immeasurably.