Cotton Town was an hour away. In that hour, the road degenerated to a rutted track, and Western civilization, except for flattened beer cans flashing in the sun, disappeared. Eddie caught a glimpse of one house along the route, standing on a bluff over a quiet bay. It was white with closed shutters, a verandah, and a peace sign painted large on the slanted roof.
“Who lives there?” Eddie asked.
“In the old gin house?” said the driver, turning down his boom box. “Nobody now. The hippies they crash in it when there was hippies.”
“Does anyone own it?”
“Everything be owned,” said the driver, “even the mangoes hanging from the trees.” He glanced at Eddie in his mirror. “You in the market for a house?”
Eddie looked down at the bay, sheltered by two curving arms that ended in sandy points about half a mile apart. He could picture himself swimming back and forth between them. “How much would it cost?”
“The old gin house? Thousands and thousands.”
He had thousands and thousands. Why not? Then he thought of Mandy. Would he want to settle in so close to her? There were other islands, with other bays perfect for swimming.
“That be the problem, man,” said the driver. “Where to get those thousands and thousands.”
The road ended in front of a pink church the size of a two-car garage. “Cotton Town Tabernacle Kirk of Redemption,” read big blue letters on the wall.
“End of the line,” said the driver. “Tipping permitted.”
Eddie gave him five dollars-too much? he didn’t know, not having been in many tipping situations-and got off the jitney, carrying the backpack. The jitney backed, turned, departed. That left Eddie alone with a brown chicken, pecking at the dirt outside the open door of the church.
Music came through the doorway, one of those familiar pieces that appear on classical-highlight records not sold in stores. Eddie went inside.
A little girl with a bow in her hair sat at an upright piano, her back to the door, her eyes on the sheet music. She sensed his presence; her hands flew off the yellowed keys and her head snapped around.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Eddie said.
She stared at him.
“I’m looking for a man named JFK.”
“You the doctor?” Her voice was so soft he could barely hear her.
“Just a friend.”
The girl stared at him. It was quiet in the church; he heard something land with a thump outside, a coconut perhaps. Just when he’d decided she wasn’t going to respond, the girl said, “The house after the Fantastic.”
“Where’s that?”
She pointed with her skinny arm.
Eddie went outside, slipped on the backpack, and set off on a path that led beyond the church, in the direction the girl had pointed. He went past an overgrown garden, a half-built cinder-block house with weeds growing through the holes in the blocks, and a lopsided dwelling with an open window through which he saw a woman slumped forward at a table, her head in her arms. He came to an unpainted wooden structure with a sign over the door in big childish letters: “Fantastic Bar and Club.” He heard a man hawking inside, saw a gob of spit fly out a side window.
The path led through a grove of four or five sawtooth-leaved palms to a small house painted in broad vertical stripes of red, green, and black. A curtain hung where the door should have been. Eddie knocked on the doorjamb.
The house was silent. Eddie knocked again. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone here?”
No answer. He brushed the curtain aside and went in.
He was in a small room with a cement floor and unfinished wooden walls. There was nothing in it but an icebox, a card table, two card-table chairs, and a rusty bicycle leaning against the wall. “Hello?” he called again. Silence. He opened the icebox. It was empty except for an oblong yellow-green fruit of a kind he didn’t know.
Eddie crossed the room, entered a short hall with two doors off it, both closed. He opened the first. A bathroom; he shut the door, but not before the smell reached him. A ball of nausea rose up inside him. He stood in the hall, took a few deep breaths, kept it down. Then he opened the second door.
He looked into a darkened room. A strip of tar paper hung over the single window, but there were coin-sized holes in it, and golden rays of sunshine poked through, spotlighting a Bob Marley poster taped to the wall, an L.A. Lakers sweatshirt rumpled on the floor, and a man lying on a bare mattress, eyes closed. A fly buzzed in the shadows.
Eddie had seen AIDS before. There was lots of it inside, although the victims were usually removed by the time they reached the point that the man on the mattress had come to. Eddie went a little closer, gazed down at him.
Was it JFK? Eddie couldn’t tell. The image of JFK in his memory was blurred, and what was left of this man bore it no resemblance, other than in race and sex. The man wore only a pair of white briefs; on the mattress near his still hand lay another oblong yellow-green fruit, with one piece bitten out. As Eddie watched, a shudder went through the man. The expression on his face, which had been peaceful, grew anxious. His eyes opened.
He saw Eddie. “I in a dream about L.A., doctor,” he said. “Universal Studio, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm-I be knowing all these places in my past traveling life.”
It was JFK.
“I’m not a doctor,” Eddie said.
JFK looked him over. “No problem,” he said. “Intern? Resident? Fellow? I got it all down, toute that jive, the hospital jive, man. Fellow the best. You looks like a fellow.”
“You don’t remember me?”
The eyes, big as a child’s in that hollow face, gazed up at Eddie. “What hospital you be from?”
“No hospital,” Eddie said.
“No hospital?”
Eddie shook his head. “Maybe you remember the wild pig.”
Pause. Then JFK smiled. “Boar, not pig,” he said. “Hemingway himself, he come to hunt the wild boar on this very island.” JFK’s teeth, probably just normal teeth, looked extrabig, extra-healthy. That they would long survive him, Eddie knew, was only a function of the hardness of teeth; but there was something macabre about that smile, as though JFK’s teeth were mocking the body they lived in.
The smile faded. When JFK spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I remember that creature. Cook him up real nice. Onions, garlic, pineapple, herb. The herb what does it.” He paused, then spoke again, quieter still. “I remember you. You done lost all that hippie hair, but I remember you.”
JFK turned his head away, toward the tar-papered window with the rays shining through like the blades of gold swords. The room was silent, except for the buzzing of the fly. Then JFK spoke: “Don’t be having the idea JFK is a gay man. Needles. Needles be the source of my disease.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes,” Eddie said.
Slowly his head turned back. “No difference?” he said.
“No.”
There was another card-table chair in the corner. Eddie pulled it up, sat by the mattress. The big child-eyes watched him. “You lose your trial, man. That right?”
Eddie nodded.
“Same thing be happening to my brothers. Dime he die in Fox Hill. Franco he get shot in Miami. And me … soon I shuffle off this earthly skin.” His eyes went to the Bob Marley poster, lit with golden rays. The words on the poster read: “One World.” There was a long silence. JFK’s eyes closed.
“Can I get you anything?” Eddie said.
“Water,” JFK replied. “For my thirst.”
Eddie went into the stinking bathroom. A dirty glass sat on a shelf above the sink. Eddie turned on the tap. Rusty water trickled out. After a minute or so it cleared slightly. Eddie washed the glass, rubbing it clean inside and out with his fingers, then filled it.
He returned to the bedroom. JFK’s eyes were still closed.
“Water,” Eddie said.
Not opening his eyes, JFK said, “You know we all ninety-nine percent water? All humanity? So it be the water have this disease, not me. All I be needing to do is piss out that sick water and fill up with clean. Abracadabra-problem solve.” His eyes opened. “You believe there truth in that?” he said.
“I’m not a doctor,” Eddie replied, coming to the side of the mattress and extending the glass.
JFK tried to sit up, could not. He raised his hand. It shook. “So weak, man,” he said. “I was never in this life a big strong white hunter like you, but …” His hand flopped down at his side.
Eddie sat on the mattress. He put his hand behind JFK’s head, feeling the dampness in his tightly curled hair and the fever in the scalp beneath. He raised the glass to JFK’s mouth. JFK’s lips parted. Eddie poured in the water, slowly. JFK’s Adam’s apple, prominent in his fleshless neck, bobbed up and down. He drank half the glass, then grunted and shook his head. Eddie lowered him back down.
JFK breathed rapid, shallow breaths. “Down to ninety-eight percent now, man. Maybe ninety-seven.” His breathing slowed. “Water, water everywhere,” he said. “How true it be, those things they say in church.”
“Water, water everywhere’s not from church,” Eddie said.
“Sure it is,” said JFK, “sure it is. The gospel truth I strayed away from all my born days. Like my brothers, Franco and Dime.” His eyes shifted to Eddie. “You be different from your own brother.”
“In what way?”
“Not the same.” He licked his lips.
“More water?”
JFK shook his head. “Too hard,” he said. His eyes closed.
“You were in New York,” Eddie said.
JFK nodded, barely.
“You saw Jack.”
He nodded again.
Why?”
“Old times,” said JFK. “And him so rich, I be wondering if he could spare a little material advance for old JFK.”
“Did he?”
“Fifty dollars. U.S.” A faint smile appeared on JFK’s face.
Fifty dollars: exactly what Uncle Vic had got. It must have been Jack’s standard handout. “When was this?” Eddie asked.
The smile vanished. “Two years ago. Maybe three. The sickness already have me in its coils then, but not so strong.” He opened his eyes, looked at the Marley poster, then at Eddie. “You be in Switzerland at the time.”
“Switzerland?”
“Doing finance.”
“Who told you that?” said Eddie, rising.
JFK shrank back on the mattress. “Your brother. I aks about you. Feeling bad about how you lose your trial in the distant past. And that what he say. Switzerland.”
Eddie reached down and took JFK’s head in his hands; not hard-at least, he didn’t think it was hard. “Are you listening to me?” he said. “I want you to listen carefully.”
JFK licked his lips. “I be listening,” he said, almost too softly to hear.
“Then get this straight. I just got out. I did fifteen years for a crime I knew nothing about. Your crime.”
“Fifteen years?”
Eddie took his hands off JFK, rose, walked to the tarpapered window, peered through one of the coin-sized holes. He saw a goat straining its tether to get to the leaves of a dusty bush just out of reach.
There was a noise behind him. Eddie turned, saw JFK crawling desperately off the mattress. He got hold of the chair, pulled himself up, his movements weak and agitated at the same time; trying to reach eye level with Eddie. He gasped for breath: “But I tries to warn you, man. On the boat radio.”
“Warn me about what?”
“Mr. Packer he call ahead to the harbor police in Lauderdale, man. For reporting a stolen boat. No problem, except I know what be on this stolen boat, man. I get on the radio in the bar, to be warning you don’ go to no Lauderdale. But Mr. Packer he come in the bar, see me, shut off the radio.”
“Did he know what was on board?”
“No, man. It be just the three of us know.”
“The three of you?”
JFK held up three fingers, long and delicate, counted them off one at a time.
“Me.”
Eddie nodded.
“Mandy.”
Eddie nodded again.
JFK touched his third finger. “And Jack.”
“Jack?”
“Jack your brother.”
“Jack was in on it?” An image came to him, lit by a beach fire: Jack’s hands and forearms, scratched as if by heavy gardening.
“Equal partners,” said JFK. “I the owner of the ganja, Mandy she have the buyer in Miami, Jack have the boat. I be aksing you first, but you was saying no to me.” JFK’s body, supported by his grip on the card-table chair, began to tremble. The feet of the chair rattled on the floor.
Jack had been in on it. That explained why the search for JFK had been a sham-a real investigation would have implicated him too-but it didn’t explain everything. “Did Jack know Packer called the harbor cops?”
“Sure he know. We all right there in the bar-me, Packer, Jack.”
“And Jack didn’t try to stop him?”
“He try. He say why be making it police matters? Packer he say to teach you respect for property. Not just the boat-the girl too, that be his system of thinking. They argue back and forth.”
“But Jack didn’t tell him about the dope?”
“How he do that without he incriminating hisself? Instead he tell Mr. Packer come out on the beach, for talking private. That give me the chance to call you. But Mr. Packer he smart. He come running back in, rip the plug out of the wall.”
“That was all?” Eddie said.
“All?”
“All it took to stop my brother?”
JFK thought for a moment. “Like he could hit Mr. Packer on the head or thing like that?”
“If he had to.”
JFK shook his head. “No way,” he said. “Mr. Packer he use his hold on your brother.”
“What hold?”
“He say one more trick and you don’ be gettin’ the seven and a half percent.”
“That stopped him?”
“Seven and a half percent of everyt’ing, man. The hotel, the time share, the golf, the marina. Could have been millions, maybe. Millions. You understand the forces of the situation?”
Eddie understood. Understanding had a physical component; at first it was all physical: a light-headedness, as though he were much too tall, and fragile, like some strange bird. Then came the mental part, the fact of what Jack had done to him and the way it had happened. But not how Jack could have done it to him. He wanted one thing: to ask Jack that question.
Eddie stood motionless in JFK’s hot room, unconscious of passing time. His mind was far away, in a cold northern place of pirate games, of hockey, of falling through the ice. He thought of all that, and more, but failed to find the reason why. Just the MacGuffin, the bookstore boy had said, a device. There was no explanation. Would he have to accept that, in the poem and in his own life? Silence thickened, tangible, immobilizing. JFK broke it by saying, “Hey! You all right?”
Eddie grew aware of JFK leaning on the card-table chair across the room, separated from him by golden bars of light. The light burnished all his bony parts, as though they were already exposed.
“You better lie down,” Eddie said.
JFK nodded, made his way to the mattress, sat, used his hands to pull up his legs, lay down. Eddie could hear him breathing, fast and shallow. After a few minutes he groaned, then breathed more slowly. He looked at Eddie.
“Too weak, man. But I be wanting you to know.”
“Know what?”
“That it wasn’t me.”
Eddie nodded. “More water?”
“Not a drop to drink.”
“Why not?”
“Too far to go, all the way down from ninety-seven percent. Nine or ten, maybe. I could reach it from there. But not ninety-seven.”
Eddie opened the backpack, took out a wad of bills, put them in JFK’s hand.
“What this?” said JFK.
“For medicine, the doctor, whatever you need.”
“Your brother’s money?”
“Mine.”
“You got money? That be something, anyway.” JFK’s eyes went to the Marley poster: “One World.”
“I be wanting to make a little confession,” he said.
Eddie waited.
“JFK no be a gay man.”
“You said that.”
“But he be doing some gay things at one time, despite his own self.”
“So what?” Eddie said.
There were no buses in Cotton Town, no jitneys, no taxis. Eddie borrowed JFK’s rusty bicycle, promising to send it back from Galleon Beach. In fifteen years he had made no plans other than to quit smoking, to take nothing with him, to have a steam bath. He had realized all of them, not hard to do. The hard part was knowing what you wanted. And now Eddie knew. He wanted a house on a bluff and a bay for swimming. There were other islands. He bicycled north, toward the airstrip and a flight to the next one in the chain.
It was hot, the road bumpy, the pack increasingly heavy on his back. Eddie was aware of all those things, but they didn’t bother him. He was alive, he was free, he had money, all he would ever need. He tried dividing fifteen into $488,220. Thirty-two thousand and something per annum, as though he had spent those years teaching high school: not an excessive return.
Eddie pedaled JFK’s bike. The track widened slightly, grew smoother. Soon he would see the white house on the bluff, the hippie house with the peace sign on the roof. Five or ten minutes had passed without a single thought of Jack. That was good. That was the way it would have to be. He came to the bluff, saw a lane leading up to the house, paused.
A dust cloud rose in the distance, over the treetops. It drew closer, like a small approaching storm. A car appeared beneath the dust cloud, sunlight glinting off the windshield. It topped a rise a few hundred yards from Eddie, going fast, much too fast for the road. He pulled to the side, got off the bike.
The car roared by, so quickly and spewing so much dust that Eddie didn’t see the driver at all. He pushed JFK’s bike back on the road, adjusted the backpack, got ready to remount. Then the car made a shrieking sound. Eddie looked in time to see it skidding sideways, wheels locked, on the edge of control. But not out of it: the car spun around and came toward him, slower now. The dust began to settle, leaving a little smudged dome across the sky.
The car stopped beside him. The door opened. Karen got out.