Duma Key

Jack said, "That's a little cold, don't you think?"

I shook my head. "I don't, actually. Children don't mourn like adults."

Jack nodded. "Yeah. I guess. But I'm surprised..." He fell silent.

"What?" I asked. "What surprises you?"

"That Perse let them go," Jack said.

"She didn't, not really. They were only going to Bradenton."

Wireman tapped the sketch. "Where's Elizabeth in this?"

"Everywhere," I said. "We're looking through her eyes."

iv

"There's not much more, but the rest is pretty bad."

I showed them the next sketch. It was as hurried as the other ones, and the male figure in it was depicted back-to, but I had no doubt it was the living version of the thing that had clamped a manacle on my wrist in the kitchen of Big Pink. We were looking down on him. Jack looked from the picture to Shade Beach, now eroded to a mere strip, then back to the picture. Finally he looked at me.

"Here?" he asked in a low voice. "The point of view in this one is from right here?"

"Yes."

"That's Emery," Wireman said, touching the figure. His voice was even lower than Jack's. Sweat had sprung up on his brow.

"Yes."

"The thing that was in your house."

"Yes."

He moved his finger. "And those are Tessie and Laura?"

"Tessie and Lo-Lo. Yes."

"They... what? Lured him in? Like sirens in one of those old Greek fairy tales?"

"Yes."

"This really happened," Jack said. As if to get the sense of it.

"It really did," I agreed. "Never doubt her strength."

Wireman looked toward the sun, which was nearer the horizon than ever. Its track had begun to tarnish at last. "Then finish up, muchacho, quick as you can. So we can do our business and get the hell out of here."

"I don't have much more to tell you, anyway," I said. I shuffled through a number of sketches that were little more than vague scribbles. "The real heroine was Nan Melda, and we don't even know her last name."

I showed them one of the half-finished sketches: Nan Melda, recognizable by the kerchief around her head and a perfunctory dash of color across the brow and one cheek, talking to a young woman in the front hallway. Noveen was propped nearby, on a table that was nothing but six or eight lines with a quick oval shape to bind them together.

"Here she is, telling Adriana some tall tale about Emery, after he disappeared. That he was called suddenly back to Atlanta? That he went to Tampa to get a surprise wedding present? I don't know. Anything to keep Adie in the house, or at least close by."

"Nan Melda was playing for time," Jack said.

"It was all she could do." I pointed toward the crowding jungle overgrowth between us and the north end of the Key, growth that had no business being there - not, at least, without a team of horticulturalists working overtime to provide its upkeep. "All that wasn't there in 1927, but Elizabeth was here, and she was at the peak of her talents. I don't think anyone trying to use the road that went off-island would have stood a chance. God knows what Perse had made Elizabeth draw into existence between here and the drawbridge."

"Adriana was supposed to be next?" Wireman asked.

"Then John. Maria and Hannah after them. Because Perse meant to have all of them except - maybe - Elizabeth herself. Nan Melda must have known she could only hold Adie a single day. But a day was all she needed."

I showed them another picture. Although much more hurried, it was once again Nan Melda and Libbit standing in the shallow end of the pool. Noveen lay on the edge with one rag arm trailing in the water. And beside Noveen, sitting on its fat belly, was a wide-mouth ceramic keg with TABLE printed on the side in a semicircle.

"Nan Melda told Libbit what she had to do. And she told Libbit she had to do it no matter what she saw in her head or how loud Perse screamed for her to stop... because she would scream, Nan Melda said, if she found out. She said they'd just have to hope Perse found out too late to make any difference. And then Melda said..." I stopped. The track of the lowering sun was growing brighter and brighter. I had to go on, but it was hard now. It was very, very hard.

"What, muchacho?" Wireman said gently. "What did she say?"

"She said that she might scream, too. And Adie. And her Daddy. But she couldn't stop. 'Dassn't stop, child,' she said. 'Dassn't stop or it's all for nothing.'" As if of its own accord, my hand plucked the Venus Black from my pocket and scrawled two words beneath the primitive drawing of the girl and the woman in the swimming pool:

dassn't stop

My eyes blurred with tears. I dropped the pencil into the sea oats and wiped the tears away. So far as I know, that pencil is still where I dropped it.

"Edgar, what about the silver-tipped harpoons?" Jack asked. "You never said anything about them."

"There weren't any magic goddam harpoons," I said tiredly. "They must have come years later, when Eastlake and Elizabeth returned to Duma Key. God knows which of them got the idea, and whichever one it was may not have even been completely sure why it seemed important."