Do most lives turn on one crucial event? Eddie didn’t think so. But some did-the Mariner’s for one, and his own for another. Now, after talking to Brice, Eddie knew that he didn’t understand his own crucial event any better than he did the Mariner’s. His imprisonment wasn’t simply the result of bad luck and a twisted chain of circumstance, as he had always thought. That left a lot of questions, questions that Jack could have answered.
The twin-engine Piper followed its shadow southeast across a sea smooth as Jell-O. Blue marked deep water, green the sandy shallows, red-brown the coral heads. A long white cruiser cut across the surface on the same course as the plane, like a tab opening a zipper. The shadow of the plane darkened the boat and left it behind.
“There’s beer in the cooler,” the pilot called from the cockpit.
“No, thanks,” Eddie said.
“Mind grabbing one for me?” Pause. “Little joke.”
The pilot looked back at Eddie to see if he got it. He had watery eyes and a puffy face; perhaps the cooler was for the return trip, solo.
“Good thing,” Eddie said. “I’m with the National Safety Board.”
There was no talk after that. The Bahamas appeared like emeralds on blue velvet, and soon came Saint Amour, as he remembered it, banana shaped and outlined in white. The pilot descended, banked, flew so low that Eddie could see a manta ray gliding below the surface, then skimmed down over pine tops and touched down on the strip, now paved, bounced a few times, and rolled to a stop.
Taking the backpack, Eddie got out. He felt the heat right away. It opened his pores, worked itself deep inside, slowed him down. You on island time now.
He looked around. Except for the pavement on the strip, nothing had changed, not the scrub forest, the still air, the floral smells. The strip was deserted but for a single crab sidestepping down the center. Eddie hoisted the pack on his back, crossed the strip, and started down the dirt road. Behind him, the plane gathered speed, roaring as it rose into the sky, then throbbing, then buzzing, then making no sound at all. A big brown bird rose from the trees, orange legs tucked up against its tail. Eddie could hear the heavy wings beating the air.
In five or ten minutes, he came to the flamboyant tree that marked the path leading to JFK’s marijuana patch. The path was gone, lost in a coiling growth of creeper and bush. But the flamboyant tree seemed much bigger, its red-flowered branches now reaching across the road, dappling the sun. He had a strange thought: This would be the place to bury Jack.
Eddie walked on, and a verse of the poem came to him, as though his mind were a CD player programmed on shuffle.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
But Jack, it turned out, hadn’t been beautiful, and he himself didn’t feel slimy. Where were all these beautiful dead people? Louie? The Ozark brothers? Paz’s driver? All dead, none beautiful. Killing might be wrong, but not because of some inherent beauty in the species. Where was it? In Tiffany? Sookray? Paz? El Rojo? No. Not in Gaucho either. Childhood and beauty were not the same; he remembered how he had fallen through the ice in his hockey skates. Then he thought of Karen, how she had kissed him and said, “I’m attracted to you, and I haven’t been attracted to anyone in a long time. Remember that, no matter what happens.” And despite what had happened, despite the fact that she’d been working to bring his brother down, Eddie couldn’t fit her into this new and dismal scheme of things.
The road swung right, toward the sea. He could see patches of it framed by the trees, flashing shapes of blue and gold, like abstract art on the move. He was sweating now; it dripped off his chin the way it had the last time he’d walked this road. The dead pig had weighed much more than $488,220, but he hadn’t been wearing Jack’s winter clothes. He stopped, took off the sweater, rolled up the shirt-sleeves, kept going.
A salty breeze curled across the road. Eddie still hadn’t seen anyone. The island might have been deserted and he a real-life equivalent of Sir Wentworth Staples, watching for a galleon through the trees. The illusion grew stronger and stronger, and with it came the idea of making a life here. Then he heard the thwack of tennis balls.
Eddie shifted the pack on his back, walked a little faster, recalling the red clay court that lay ahead, with its sun-bleached backboard and damp and dark equipment shed. Just ahead: behind that line of scrub pines.
But as Eddie drew closer he saw they were all gone: the dried-out clay court, the cracked backboard, the tumbledown shed. Instead there was an arched gate with a sign: “Pleasure Island Tennis Club”; and through it the sight of a dozen green all-weather courts, a clubhouse with a deck, and suntanned people in tennis outfits. Lots of them: lounging on the deck with drinks, drilling with the pros on the center courts, playing doubles on the side courts.
Eddie didn’t enter the gate. He stayed on the road, paved now and hot under his shoes, as it angled closer to the sea. He knew he was near the old fish camp, close enough, he thought, to hear the ocean. But all he heard was the whine of high-pitched engines. Then he came to the row of casuarinas that shielded the fish camp from the road. He walked through them and saw that the fish camp too was gone. In its place was a go-cart track. Three white kids fishtailed around the far turn, not far from the spot where Jack’s cabin had stood. A black man gassing carts at the side of the track glanced up at Eddie.
Eddie followed the road to its end at Galleon Beach. The beach itself was the same, if you ignored the ranks of glistening bodies flopped on chaises longues. But where the six waterfront cottages, thatch-roofed bar and central building with office, kitchen, dining room, and the Packers’ suite had been, there now stood a slab hotel eight stories high. Behind the hotel Eddie saw fairways, sand traps, greens, and in the distance clusters of white squared-off villas like a hard-shelled growth on the hillsides. Brad Packer’s blueprint had come to life.
“Take your bag, suh?”
A boy in a blue polo shirt with the words “Pleasure Island” on the chest was beside him.
“I’m not staying,” Eddie said.
“Land-crab race tonight, suh.” The boy looked up at him with unblinking eyes.
Eddie smiled. “Who owns this place?”
“Big, big company.” The boy spread his hands.
“What’s it called?”
The boy thought. “United States company,” he said.
“You from this island?” Eddie said.
The boy nodded.
“Know a man named JFK?”
The boy took a step back.
“He’s an old friend,” Eddie said. “I’d like to see him.”
“Ol’ frien’?” said the boy, backing away some more.
“What’s wrong?” Eddie said.
“He got AIDS.”
“I know.”
“You got it too?”
“No.”
The boy relaxed a little.
“Where is he?” Eddie said.
“Down to Cotton Town.” The boy pointed south.
“How far is that?”
“Far,” said the boy, “except when the jitney carry you.”
“Where do I get the jitney?”
The boy pointed his chin at the hotel.
Eddie went inside. There was a newsstand, a gift shop, a bar. A big-bellied man wearing nothing but a bathing suit and a straw hat sat on a stool with a drink in his hand. “I’m gettin’ smashed on Goombay smash,” he said to the bartender. “Is that funny or what?”
The bartender smiled, but her eyes were expressionless.
The big-bellied man leaned over the bar. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
Eddie, walking to the reception counter, missed her reply.
No one was at the counter. Eddie rang the bell. A door opened and a woman came out. She was a big woman, perhaps twenty pounds overweight, with short frosted hair, plucked eyebrows, and a face that had spent too long in the sun. She wore a name pin on her white blouse: “Amanda,” it said, “Assistant Manager.”
“Checking in?” she asked, noticing the backpack.
“No,” Eddie replied. “When’s the next jitney to Cotton Town?”
The woman didn’t answer. She was staring at his face. “You look like someone I used to know,” she said.
“Yeah?” Eddie said, feeling in his pocket for money to pay the fare.
“And sound like him too.” She tilted her head to one side, revealing a wrinkled line at the base of her neck. “I couldn’t forget those eyes. You’re Eddie Nye, aren’t you? Jack’s brother.”
“That’s right,” he said, looking at her face again, hardened and thickened by the sun, and not placing her.
“Have I changed that much?” the woman said.
His eyes went to her name pin: Amanda. “Mandy?”
“The one and only.” They looked at each other. “My God,” she said, “isn’t this something? I mean, what goes around comes around.”
“I’ve got a bad memory for faces,” Eddie said, thinking that a chivalrous phrase might be required but doubting that that was it. He searched her face for the features of the Mandy he had known, and found some; but smudged, blunted, coarsened. Like the others-Jack, Evelyn, Bobby Falardeau-she had aged more quickly than he, as though prison, with its bad food that kept him from eating too much, and its absence of sunlight, which had kept his skin unwrinkled, had slowed the life clock inside him. A nice thought; but it left out his hair, growing in gray.
“Of course I remember you-I never forget anyone I sleep with,” Mandy said, verifying Eddie’s doubt. “There haven’t been all that many, considering.”
The office door opened again and a little man came out, carrying a briefcase. “Not all that many what, dear?” he said.
“Requests for the Cotton Town jitney,” said Mandy. “Say hi to Eddie, an old acquaintance of mine. Eddie-my husband, Farouz.”
They shook hands. Farouz’s name pin read “Manager.”
“Gotta run,” he said, and went out.
Mandy’s eyes were on him again. “You’re lookin’ good,” she said. “Stayed in shape, unlike yours truly. I don’t have the discipline.” She raised her arms hopelessly. “That’s my sad story. What have you been up to?”
A routine question for most people, but not for him. Had he heard it right? “What have I been up to?”
His tone surprised her. “Since I wimped out on you that time up in Lauderdale,” she explained.
“Wimped out?”
She lowered her voice. “When the cops came. You don’t have much of a memory for anything, do you? I heard them come aboard and just grabbed some gear and jumped off. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging and all, but what could I do? Especially since I was hip to what was on board and you weren’t. I just knew you’d be okay.”
“Okay?”
Mandy glanced around to see if anyone was watching. “I know you were pissed off. But you could have answered my letters. After all, there was no harm done.” Eddie was silent, but something in his expression made her say, “What? What is it?”
“You’d better explain,” Eddie said.
“About what?”
“About no harm done.”
Mandy shrugged. “You know. Nothing came of it.”
“Nothing came of it?”
“Brad lost everything to the bank, of course, but I meant nothing came of it in terms of you. I was back at my parents’ in Wisconsin by that time-classic move, right? — but when they dropped the charges I wrote you, more than once, and you didn’t write back.”
“Wrote me where?”
“Care of your brother in Lauderdale. I kept in touch with him for a while. That’s how I knew you got off.”
Eddie leaned on the counter, not trusting his legs to hold him up. “Jack told you I got off?”
“In a postcard or something. That’s when I started writing you. I gave up after a few months. I’m the kind who carries a torch, but not forever.”
Eddie didn’t say anything. He just stared at her, looking for some sign that she was lying. He saw none.
She misread whatever expression was on his face. “Hey! You really couldn’t expect me to, now could you? I mean, you didn’t even answer my letters.”
“It’s all right,” Eddie said. His legs felt a little stronger now; he stepped back from the counter.
“Whew,” said Mandy. “I thought you were going ballistic there for a second.” She looked him up and down. “How about a drink?” she said. “On me.”
“I’ve got to get going.”
She reached across the counter, touched his forearm. “What’s the rush? You’re on vacation, right?”
They went into an air-conditioned bar overlooking a heart-shaped swimming pool. It had green-glass floats hanging from the ceiling, fishnets and harpoons on the walls, and a neon name glowing over the rows of bottles: “Mongo’s.” Jack’s suggestion, outliving him like the work of some great author.
“Do you own this place?”
Mandy laughed. “Are you kidding? It’s owned by AB Gesselschaft. They bought it from the bank, way back.” A waiter arrived. “What’ll it be?” Mandy said. “Cecil makes the best damn planter’s punch in the Bahamas.”
Two planter’s punches arrived, in tall frosted glasses with pineapple wedges stuck on the rims. Mandy raised her glass. “To old times,” she said, taking a big drink.
Eddie drank too; the glass trembled in his hand. It was too bitter.
“We were so young,” Mandy said. “And what a place. Undeveloped then, but still. Irrestistible, I guess. At least, I couldn’t resist it.”
“When did you come back?”
“After the bank took over. I kind of drifted down. It was closed, but they needed someone who knew the history. When the Germans took over I stuck around, answering the phone, working my way up. Then Farouz arrived.” She took another drink. “Jesus, that’s good. You like?”
Eddie made himself drink some more. She watched him, watched his face, his hand, his throat as the liquid went down. “I’ve got a confession to make,” she said. “Promise you won’t tell a soul?”
Eddie smiled. It was such a childish idea. “Promise,” he said.
Mandy smiled too. “Remember that shed by the old tennis court?”
He nodded.
“I still think about it.” Her voice grew husky. “I mean a lot. When I’m in bed, kind of thing.” She tried to meet his gaze boldly, but couldn’t. “With Farouz, I mean. As soon as I start getting all hot, or if I’m not, I just think of that time, and then I do.” Her face, dark and leathery as it was, reddened. She gulped her drink. There was a pause. She leaned toward him. “Are you married?”
“No.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No.”
“I find that hard to believe.” She leaned a little closer. “Do you think about it?” she asked.
She didn’t have to say the shed. He knew. In his cell in F-Block he’d thought about it a lot, not as a hormone booster to get him in the mood for someone else, but just because it was one of the best memories he had. Now he knew he would never think about the shed again, not in the same way. “It’s gone now, isn’t it?”
She leaned back. “What’s gone?”
“The shed.”
She looked at him. Her eyes grew cooler, businesslike. “We’ve got twelve Deco-Turf courts and an outstanding program, if you’d like a lesson sometime.” She glanced at his drink. “You don’t like Cecil’s creation?”
“I do.” He took another sip. “But I’ve got to get going.”
The jitney left from the dock. Eddie sat alone at the back, waiting for the driver to finish saying good-bye to his girlfriend and climb aboard. He kissed her, patted her shoulder, patted her rump, kissed her again, answered a question, then another. Out on the water, a cruiser slowly approached the dock: long, white, multidecked, topped with rotating antennae and satellite dishes; possibly the boat he had flown over. It was much too big to cross the reef. Even as Eddie had the thought, the cruiser swung round, slowed some more, dropped a bow anchor. Eddie could read the name on the stern: El Liberador. Men appeared on deck, began winching down a Boston Whaler.
The driver hopped on the jitney, cranked up his boom box, shot away from the dock. “Cotton Town and all points in between,” he said. “Which is nowhere. Va va voom.”