Stephen King - Duma Key

"Sorry," I said. "I had an accident. Banged my head. Sometimes my mind stutters."

"Don't worry about it," Jack said. "No biggie."

"B- and-C is Building and Code. Basically they're the guys who decide if your building is going to fall down or not."

"You talking about bribes?" My new young employee looked glum. "Well, I'm sure it happens, especially down here. Money talks."

"Don't be so cynical. Sometimes it's just a matter of friendship. Your builders, your contractors, your building-code inspectors, even your OSHA guys... they usually drink in the same bars, and they all went to the same schools." I laughed. "Reform schools, in some cases."

Jack said, "They condemned a couple beach houses at the north end of Casey Key when the erosion there sped up. One of em actually did fall into the drink."

"Well, as you say, I'll probably hear it groaning, and it looks safe enough for the time being. Let's get my stuff inside."

I opened my door, got out, then staggered as my bad hip locked up. If I hadn't gotten my crutch planted in time, I would have said hello to Big Pink by sprawling on her stone doorstep.

" I'll get the stuff in," Jack said. "You better go in and sit down, Mr. Freemantle. A cold drink wouldn't hurt, either. You look really tired."

iv

The traveling had caught up with me, and I was more than tired. By the time I eased into a living room armchair (listing to the left, as usual, and trying to keep my right leg as straight as possible), I was willing to admit to myself that I was exhausted.

Yet not homesick, at least not yet. As Jack went back and forth, stowing my bags in the bigger of the two bedrooms and putting the laptop on the desk in the smaller one, my eye kept being drawn to the living room's western wall, which was all glass, and the Florida room beyond it, and the Gulf of Mexico beyond that. It was a vast blue expanse, flat as a plate on that hot November afternoon, and even with the sliding glass window-wall shut, I could hear its mild and steady sighing. I thought, It has no memory. It was an odd thought, and strangely optimistic. When it came to memory - and anger - I still had my issues.

Jack came back from the guest room and sat on the arm of the couch - the perch, I thought, of a young man who wants to be gone. "You've got all your basic staples," he said, "plus salad-in-a-bag, hamburger, and one of those cooked chickens in a plastic capsule - we call em Astronaut Chickens at my house. I hope that's okay with you."

"Fine."

"Two per cent milk-"

"Also fine."

" - and Half-n-Half. I can get you real cream next time, if you want it."

"You want to clog my one remaining artery?"

He laughed. "There's a little pantry with all kinds of canned shi... stuff. The cable's hooked up, the computer's Internet-ready - I got you Wi-Fi, costs a little extra, but it's way cool - and I can get satellite installed if you want it."

I shook my head. He was a good kid, but I wanted to listen to the Gulf, sweet-talking me with words it wouldn't remember a minute later. And I wanted to listen to the house, see if it had anything to say. I had an idea maybe it did.

"The keys're in an envelope on the kitchen table - car keys, too - and a list of numbers you might need are on the fridge. I've got classes at FSU in Sarasota every day except Monday, but I'll be carrying my cell, and I'll be coming by Tuesdays and Thursdays at five unless we make a different arrangement. Is that okay?"

"Yes." I reached in my pocket and brought out my money-clip. "I want to give you a little extra. You've been great."

He waved it away. "Nah. This is a sweet gig, Mr. Freemantle. Good pay and good hours. I'd feel like a hound taking any extra."

That made me laugh, and I put my dough back in my pocket. "Okay."

"Maybe you ought to take a nap," he said, getting up.

"Maybe I will." It was odd to be treated like Grandpa Walton, but I supposed I'd better get used to it. "What happened to the other house at the north end of Casey Key?"

"Huh?"

"You said one went into the drink. What happened to the other one?"

"Far as I know, it's still there. Although if a big storm like Charley ever hits this part of the coast dead-on, it's gonna be like a going-out-of-business sale: everything must go." He walked over to me, and stuck out his hand. "Anyway, Mr. Freemantle, welcome to Florida. I hope it treats you real well."

I shook with him. "Thank you..." I hesitated, probably not long enough for him to notice, and I didn't get angry. Not at him, anyway. "Thanks for everything."

"Sure." He gave me the smallest of puzzled looks as he went out, so maybe he did notice. Maybe he did notice, at that. I didn't care. I was on my own at last. I listened to shells and gravel popping under his tires as his car started to roll. I listened to the motor fade. Less, least, gone. Now there was only the mild steady sighing of the Gulf. And the beat of my own heart, soft and low. No clocks. Not ringing, not bonging, not even ticking. I breathed deep and smelled the musty, slightly damp aroma of a place that's been shut up for a fairly long time except for the weekly (or bi-weekly) ritual airing. I thought I could also smell salt and subtropical grasses for which I as yet had no names.

Mostly I listened to the sigh of the waves, so like the breath of some large sleeping creature, and looked out through the glass wall that fronted on the water. Because of Big Pink's elevation, I couldn't see the beach at all from where I was sitting, fairly deep in the living room; from my armchair I might have been on one of those big tankers that trudge their oily courses from Venezuela to Galveston. A high haze had crept over the dome of the sky, muting the pinpricks of light on the water. To the left were three palm trees silhouetted against the sky, their fronds ruffling in the mildest of breezes: the subjects of my first tentative post-accident sketch. Don't look much like Minnesota, dere, Tom Riley had said.

Looking at them made me want to draw again - it was like a dry hunger, but not precisely in the belly; it made my mind itch. And, oddly, the stump of my amputated arm. "Not now," I said. "Later. I'm whipped."

I heaved myself out of the chair on my second try, glad the kid wasn't there to see the first backward flop and hear my childish ("Cunt licker! ") cry of exasperation. Once I was up I stood swaying on my crutch for a moment, marveling at just how tired I was. Usually "whipped" was just something you said, but at that moment it was exactly how I felt.

Moving slowly - I had no intention of falling in here on my first day - I made my way into the master bedroom. The bed was a king, and I wanted nothing more than to go to it, sit on it, sweep the foolish decorative throw-pillows (one bearing the likenessness of two cavorting Cockers and the rather startling idea that MAYBE DOGS ARE ONLY PEOPLE AT THEIR BEST) to the floor with my crutch, lie down, and sleep for two hours. Maybe three. But first I went to the bench at the end of the bed - still moving carefully, knowing how very easy it would be to tangle my feet and fall when I was at this level of exhaustion - where the kid had stacked two of my three suitcases. The one I wanted was on the bottom, of course. I shoved the one on top to the floor without hesitation and unzipped the front pocket of the other.

Glassy blue eyes looked out with their expression of eternal disapproving surprise: Oouuu, you nasty man! I been in here all this time! A fluff of lifeless orange-red hair sprang from confinement. Reba the Anger-Management Doll in her best blue dress and black Mary Janes.

I lay on the bed with her crooked between my stump and my side. When I had made an adequate space for myself among the ornamental pillows (it was mostly the cavorting Cockers I'd wanted on the floor), I laid her beside me.

"I forgot his name," I said. "I remembered it the whole way out here, then forgot it." Reba looked up at the ceiling, where the blades of the overhead fan were still and unmoving. I'd forgotten to turn it on. Reba didn't care if my new part-time hired man was Ike, Mike, or Andy Van Slyke. It was all the same to her, she was just rags stuffed into a pink body, probably by some unhappy child laborer in Cambodia or fucking Uruguay.

"What is it?" I asked her. Tired as I was, I could feel the old dismal panic setting in. The old dismal anger. The fear that this would go on for the rest of my life. Or get worse! Yes, possible! They'd take me back into the convalescent home, which was really just hell with a fresh coat of paint.

Reba didn't answer, that boneless bitch.

"I can do this," I said, although I didn't believe it. And I thought: Jerry. No, Jeff. Then You're thinking about Jerry Jeff Walker, asshole. Johnson? Gerald? Great Jumping Jehosaphat?

Starting to drift away. Starting to drift into sleep in spite of the anger and panic. Tuning in to the mild respiration of the Gulf.

I can do this, I thought. Crosspatch. Like when you remembered what B-and-C stood for.

I thought of the kid saying They condemned a couple beach houses at the north end of Casey Key and there was something there. My stump was itching like a mad bastard. But pretend that's some other guy's stump in some other universe, meantime chase that thing, that rag, that bone, that connection -

- drifting away -

Although if a big storm like Charley ever hits this part of the coast dead-on -

And bingo.

Charley was a hurricane, and when hurricanes struck, I peeked at The Weather Channel, like the rest of America, and their hurricane guy was...

I picked up Reba. She seemed to weigh at least twenty pounds in my soupy, half-asleep state. "The hurricane guy is Jim Cantore," I said. "My help-out guy is Jack Cantori. Case fuckin closed." I flopped her back down and closed my eyes. I might have heard that faint sigh from the Gulf for another ten or fifteen seconds. Then I was asleep.

I slept until sundown. It was the deepest, most satisfying sleep I'd had in eight months.

v

I had done no more than nibble on the plane, and consequently woke up ravenous. I did a dozen heel-slides instead of the usual twenty-five to loosen my hip, made a quick trip to the bathroom, then lurched toward the kitchen. I was leaning on my crutch, but not as heavily as I might have expected, given the length of my nap. My plan was to make myself a sandwich, maybe two. I hoped for sliced bologna, but reckoned any lunchmeat I found in the fridge would be okay. I'd call Ilse after I ate and tell her I'd arrived safely. Ilse could be depended upon to e-mail everyone else with an interest in the welfare of Edgar Freemantle. Then I could take tonight's dose of pain medication and explore the rest of my new environment. The whole second floor awaited.

What my plan hadn't taken into account was how the westward view had changed.

The sun was gone, but there was still a brilliant orange band above the flat line of the Gulf. It was broken in only one place, by the silhouette of some large ship. Its shape was as simple as a first-grader's drawing. A cable stretched taut from the bow to what I assumed was the radio tower, creating a triangle of light. As that light skied upward, orange faded to a breathless Maxfield Parrish blue-green that I had never seen before with my own eyes... and yet I had a sense of d j vu, as if maybe I had seen it, in my dreams. Maybe we all see skies like that in our dreams, and our waking minds can never quite translate them into colors that have names.

Above, in the deepening black, the first stars.

I was no longer hungry, and no longer wanted to call Ilse. All I wanted to do was draw what I was looking at. I knew I couldn't get all of it, but I didn't care - that was the beauty part. I didn't give Shit One.