The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

‘Maybe you see why I go back and forth in my mind about where the magic lies,’ Beecher says. ‘I knew Robbie, and the misspelling of his name was my misspelling. But I didn’t know this window washer from Adam. In any case, that’s when the dune really started to get a hold on me. I began going out almost every day, a habit that’s continued into my very old age. I respect the place, I fear the place, and most of all, I’m addicted to the place.

‘Over the years, many names have appeared on that dune, and the people the names belong to always die. Sometimes it’s within the week, sometimes it’s two, but it’s never more than a month. Some have been people I knew, and if it’s by a nickname I knew them, it’s the nickname I see. One day in nineteen forty I paddled out there and saw GRAMPY BEECHER drawn into the sand. He died in Key West three days later. It was a heart attack.’

With the air of someone humoring a man who is mentally unbalanced but not actually dangerous, Wayland asks, ‘Did you never try to interfere with this … this process? Call your grandfather, for instance, and tell him to see a doctor?’

Beecher shakes his head. ‘I didn’t know it was a heart attack until we got word from the Monroe County medical examiner, did I? It could have been an accident, or even a murder. Certainly there were people who had reasons to hate my grandfather; his dealings were not of the purest sort.’

‘Still …’

‘Also, I was afraid. I felt, I still feel, as if there on that island, there’s a hatch that’s come ajar. On this side is what we’re pleased to call “the real world.” On the other is all the machinery of the universe, running at top speed. Only a fool would stick his hand into such machinery in an attempt to stop it.’

‘Judge Beecher, if you want your paperwork to sail through probate, I’d keep quiet about all this. You might think there’s no one to contest your will, but when large amounts of money are at stake, third and fourth cousins have a way of appearing like rabbits from a magician’s hat. And you know the time-honored criterion: “being of sound mind.”’

‘I’ve kept it to myself for eighty years,’ Beecher says, and in his voice Wayland can hear objection overruled. ‘Never a word until now. And – perhaps I need to point it out again, although I shouldn’t – whatever I say to you falls under the umbrella of privilege.’

‘All right,’ Wayland says. ‘Fine.’

‘I was always excited on days when names appeared in the sand – unhealthily excited, I’m sure – but terrified of the phenomenon only once. That single time I was deeply terrified, and fled back to the Point in my canoe as if devils were after me. Shall I tell you?’

‘Please.’ Wayland lifts his drink and sips. Why not? Billable hours are, after all, billable hours.

‘It was nineteen fifty-nine. I was still on the Point. I’ve always lived here except for the years in Tallahassee, and it’s better not to speak of them … although I now think part of the hate I felt for that provincial backwater of a town, perhaps even most of it, was simply a masked longing for the island, and the dune. I kept wondering what I was missing, you see. Who I was missing. Being able to read obituaries in advance gives a man an extraordinary sense of power. Perhaps you find that unlovely, but there it is.

‘So. Nineteen fifty-nine. Harvey Beecher lawyering in Sarasota and living at Pelican Point. If it wasn’t pouring down rain when I got home, I’d always change into old clothes and paddle out to the island for a look-see before supper. On this particular day I’d been kept at the office late, and by the time I’d gotten out to the island, tied up, and walked over to the dune side, the sun was going down big and red, as it so often does over the Gulf. What I saw stunned me. I literally could not move.

‘There wasn’t just one name written in the sand that evening but many, and in that red sunset light they looked as if they had been written in blood. They were crammed together, they wove in and out, they were written over and above and up and down. The whole length and breadth of the dune was covered with a tapestry of names. The ones down by the water had been half erased.

‘I think I screamed. I can’t remember for sure, but yes, I think so. What I do remember is breaking the paralysis and running away as fast as I could, down the path to where my canoe was tied up. It seemed to take me forever to unpluck the knot, and when I did, I pushed the canoe out into the water before I climbed in. I was soaked from head to toe, and it’s a wonder I didn’t tump it over. Although in those days I could have easily swum to shore, and pushing the canoe ahead of me. Not these days; if I tipped my kayak over now, that would be all she wrote.’ He grins. ‘Speaking of writing, as we are.’

‘Then I suggest you stay onshore, at least until your will is signed, witnessed, and notarized.’