Effortfully, Fredo says, “Best you go from here, Wilton.”
“Now what I want to do that for? You going to shoot me with that rock?” He draws the revolver, trains it on Fredo’s chest, and nods at the sack. “This what you been hiding up here? Mon, you got to show me where you hide it. I been searching three years, ever since you put the fear of god in that professor, and I ain’t never find it.”
“You not going to steal my property, mon.”
“I ain’t going to do nothing but. Drunk as you is, think you stop me?” Again, he indicates the sack. “What you got in there? The professor say it a bag of pirate gold. You shouldn’t have scared that mon so bad. He couldn’t leave off talking, and him so angry with you.”
The vine matte shifts, rattling its shells, but Wilton does not appear to have noticed. He sidles toward the sack, keeping an eye on Fredo, and picks it up. “Heavy,” he says. “How much you got in here?”
When Fredo does not respond, Wilton says, “Tell you what. After I fix my problems, if there’s anything left over, I split it with you.”
Fredo grips the rock more tightly, trying to maintain consciousness and balance.
“You might wind up with more money that way than if you sell it on your own,” says Wilton.
“Listen here!” Fredo slurs badly and the words come out Liss’hyeer. He’s strangely concerned for Wilton’s well-being and wants to tell him to get away, to run, because nothing good can happen to him in this place, and he’s baffled by Wilton’s attempt to smooth things over. Wilton knows that stealing a man’s property, be it pirate treasure or an engine part, constitutes a blood crime on Dagger Key.
The vine matte shifts again, and this time Fredo sees that the vines are draped over the frame of a wizened black Caribe, a frail, bony old man, his face so withered and wrinkled, it appears inhuman, a crafty disguise contrived by a lizard or a spider. The wizard shakes his vines, clatters his shells. He capers, moving with unnatural agility, as if he’s light as a thistle, adrift on a breeze, the clacking of the shells counterfeiting a dry cackle. Wilton sees him, too. The big man gives forth with a guttural cry, the sound of abject fear, and fires twice in the direction of the wizard…and Fredo, fueled by an anger not entirely his own, steps forward and, with all the force at his command, slams the rock against Wilton’s head, catching him on the temple. As Wilton falls, Fredo is on him, striking again and again with animal ferocity. He feels the skull collapse, the cracking impact of rock on bone yielding to a soft, plush noise that brings to mind Emily pounding on turtle meat to tenderize it. In horror, he scrambles away from the body. One whole side of Wilton’s face is covered in blood. A brown eye stares up at Fredo, the mouth open in awed regard, tongue lolling, and, overwhelmed by terror at his mortal sin, by drink, by things less nameable, he loses consciousness.
Flies,
tiny black emperors of nature,
gather to their work,
crawling black on red—
their religious droning
adds a monastic note;
a heretic beetle walks up the cooling tongue
into the damp cavity of the mouth,
never to return,
losing its way amid the intricacies
of the flesh,
the garden of the flaccid organs.
Twilight…
…and Annie wakes, stunned by a newly elaborate sense of the world, though not relishing it, not comfortable with the sudden wealth of impressions. She squats beside the body, reflecting on the uses of violence, remembering her violent life, arriving at a sketchy understanding of what has happened here, aligning her memories with Fredo’s. She takes Wilton by the arms, drags him to the lip of the notch, pushes him over the edge with her foot and watches him roll away into the brush. Fredo’s body does not suit her, but she approves of its strength. She picks up his gun, studies it briefly, then flings it after him. A gun has never been her weapon of choice. She goes to the sack, removes an object wrapped in rags of linen. She reaches deeper into the sack and brings forth a smaller object, which she unwraps. A dagger with a thin, double-edged blade, its hilt fashioned of horn, chased with filigrees of silver. Mary. She says the name to herself, tasting its bitter flavors. She tucks the dagger into Fredo’s boot, carries the sack to the vine matte and thrusts it in among the vines, deeper than one would think it could be thrust—they writhe, seeming to welcome it, the shells clacking ever so slightly. Moved by the notion of a duty sacred to her, she bows her head and prays to the blur of memory in which God is concealed, asking that His blessings be not so dire as is His wont. And then she is off, making her way with a stride that might strike the eye as less purposeful than Fredo’s, somewhat delicate and mincing, not quite a woman’s walk, nor yet a man’s.
Inside the shadow
of a fragrant jacaranda,
the ground at her feet,
carpeted by its lilac blossoms,
Annie watches the window
of the Germans’ bungalow,
her attention held by the woman—
how she sits with one leg raised,
her knee drawn up, foot braced on a rung
of a wooden chair,
and the other leg outflung,
as if she were in her petticoats,
her stink doused with perfume,
reclining on a harlot’s couch
in New Providence.
Framed by the lighted rectangle of the window, the Germans’ mood is easy to read. The man, Klose, is negligible. Weakness shines out of him. He fingers his wedding ring, plucks at his shirt, his anxiety displayed in every gesture. But Annie recognizes in the woman, Selkie, a strength akin to her own. The way she looks down at her breasts, inspecting the white cloth that covers them and flicking off a speck of imperfection, then restores her gaze to the window and smiles—like a woman who knows she’s being watched and enjoys the experience. Another couple walks past, headed for the bar, and Annie steps deeper into the shadow. Once she is certain no one else is about, she enters the bungalow. The Germans stare at her expectantly; their eyes fall to the cloth bundle under her arm.
“Is that it?” Selkie half-stands, then sits back down.
Annie holds up her hand, cautioning them to stay put; she quicksteps into the bedroom, has a look around, then retreats into the outer room and lowers the window shade.
“There’s no one else here,” says Klose.
“Where’s me brass?” asks Annie.
The Germans are confounded by the question, and Klose says, “What do you mean?”
“Me brass,” says Annie impatiently. “The money.”