B0092XNA2Q EBOK (34 page)

Weeks passed. All stories end.

It was Saturday morning. I was sitting with a cup of coffee on my lap, dodging mosquitoes, thinking about my life. Something I’d been given to lately. What had become of it. What kind of life it was. Resigned.

When I heard the small engine and saw the small skiff approaching, I was surprised to see Steady sitting in the back with his hand on the tiller. Even more so since it was neither Monday nor Thursday. Seeing him had me a bit worried.

He cut the engine and I tied off the bowline. “You all right? Something wrong? Katie okay?”

He stepped out, straightened his robes, and stared at me a long time, finally touching his chin with his index finger. “I think you are my greatest failure.”

Even through my sunglasses the sun’s reflection off his robes was brilliant. “What?”

He straightened. “I’m sure of it.”

“Is Katie okay?”

His finger shook when he pointed it at me. “A lifetime wearing this collar and I have had no effect on you.”

“I’m alive, aren’t I?”

He spat in the water. “I’ve seen bleach-white bones more alive than you.”

“Nice to see you, too. Kind of grumpy, aren’t we? Is this really what’s got you out here this time of day?”

His eyes met mine. “It keeps me up nights.”

I knew he was telling the truth. “Can’t save everyone.”

His answer was quick though not rehearsed. He was still pretty fired up. “I’m not trying to save everyone.”

“I thought success and failure sort of went with the collar. You know—win some, lose some.”

He chose his words. Spittle in the corner of his mouth. “I suppose I should probably thank you.”

“For?”

“Katie.”

“I didn’t give you Katie. Katie gave you Katie.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.” He pulled his pipe from inside his robe, packed and lit it, his cheeks pulling the air and drawing the flame. Smoke exited his mouth as he spoke. “There is still the matter of you.”

I said nothing.

Another draw. “Get dressed. We’re going for a ride.”

“You don’t want to fish?”

“I am fishing.”

It was bait. I didn’t bite. “Where’re we going?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You grown particular?”

I showered, pulled on some jeans, a long-sleeved fishing shirt, rolled on some deodorant, and slid into my flip-flops. We putted back to Chokoloskee in his skiff, where the church van sat waiting. The tank indicator rested on full. It was never full.

An hour later, driving south on the Old Dixie Highway, he stopped at the toll plaza, paid the dollar fee, then drove up and over the Card Sound Bridge. It was my first time driving the entire span of the bridge. I’d been up it—just never down. I looked at the concrete patch in the railing. Dull, dirty, fading into the older stuff, but it was visible to the looking eye.

He drove another mile, pulled off on a single lane road. Card Sound sat north of us, the Atlantic to the east. Water on two sides. He wound his way through the trees to an asphalt parking lot. He shifted the stick into park and pulled the keys from the ignition. “Come.”

I followed.

We walked through the soft sand to the water’s edge and my memorial that had been built shortly after my death. A spiraling, black mass of pointed granite the size of a city bus standing on end—or bumper. Paper notes were stuffed into the cracks; memorabilia and plastic-covered books were stacked all around. Because of its general shape, and of what happened here, the locals call it Piet Hein’s Spear. I suppose they think, in the end, that Piet Hein got the best of Pirate Pete. Maybe so. At any rate, I’m told it’s a popular tourist attraction. My name appeared at the top followed by dates of birth and death and then the titles of each of my books.

Steady pointed. “Sit.”

I did.

He stood in front of me. “Close your eyes a minute.”

“What?”

“Close them.”

“Why?”

“Because I said.”

I did.

“They closed?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Steady.”

I heard a rustling of clothing, a grunt, and then Steady’s open palm colliding with my face, slamming me against the granite. The taste of blood filled my mouth. My lip throbbed and instantly swelled.

His bottom lip shook and he stuck his finger in my face. Tears collected. “When are you going to stop feeling sorry for yourself?”

I spat—blood on granite. “Whatever happened to turning the other cheek?”

He struck me a second time.

I saw it coming so I dodged it. “I’m not feeling—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“Okay, then you’re lying to you.”

“Maybe”—my tone changed—“but I’ve never lied to you.”

The thought of me was painful to him. I could see that. His face moved closer to mine. He was screaming now. “Then why do you stay here?”

And so was I. “Because I’m scared!”

“Of?”

I tapped my chest. “Pain.”

“Then you’re a coward.”

I stood, my voice growing louder. “I don’t want to be.”

He backhanded me. My tooth cut his knuckle. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and spoke without looking. “You’re not the only one in this world to have loved and lost.”

I sat back down. “My head knows that—my heart does not.”

He spoke through gritted teeth. “I’ll leave you alone on one condition.”

“Name it.”

He reached inside his robe, grabbed a plastic bag, and handed it to me. “Read this to the kids in the Wyett Wing of River City Hospital.”

My hands shaking, I opened the bag. Inside I found the dried but once-waterlogged pages of my sixth and last novel—the manuscript that had been on the seat next to me when I drove off the bridge. The pages were crinkled. Worn. Somebody had read it—several times. “You’ve had this all along?”

“Been waiting ’til you could read it again.”

“How did you—?”

“You were clutching it when I first found you. It’s how I knew who you were. You were unconscious, so I stowed it in the boat.”

“You mean you stole it.”

He nodded. “In a sense, yes.”

Five hundred pages had never felt so heavy. “Steady, I can’t—”

Steady straightened. He tapped the top page. “Seven pages. You read seven pages then you can leave and do whatever you wish. Drive off another bridge for all I care, but you owe me that much.”

“Why seven?”

“Because—” He leaned in closer. His breath on my face. “If it hasn’t hooked you by then, it never will.”

Seven pages. The intersection of my deepest need and my greatest fear.

I nodded.

S
teady drove six and a half hours north, stopping once for gas, once to let me change our flat tire, and three times to pee due to his swollen prostate. We spoke little. As we neared Jacksonville, I began to shake. I-95 was under construction, routing us around the western side of the city on I-295. We merged east onto I-10, drove over the Fuller Warren Bridge, and the Jacksonville skyline lit on our left.

The hospital sat before us on the south bank. Cranes spiked the air. The sign said something about a new auditorium. The size of the building suggested it was rather large. Steady rolled to a stop below the overpass and I opened the door and vomited on the concrete. When the light turned green, the car behind us honked and I vomited again, which seemed to silence the horn. Steady pulled up in front of the main entrance and said, “I’ll be up in a few.” Then, turning back, he tapped the side of his face and said, “Got some on your mouth.”

I grabbed the manuscript, wiped my mouth on my sleeve, and
stepped inside the hospital. The problem I encountered was that in the last decade, my stories had done well. Very well. And that meant a lot of money went to the hospital. The hospital, in turn, was grateful for that and not wanting to forget where it came from they expressed their gratitude by plastering my picture on almost every wall I walked by. I hid behind my Costas and made my way to the back stairwell, avoiding most of the cameras. I’d never felt more self-conscious in my life. I climbed two floors, exited onto a wide walkway, and turned left, taking me down a new hallway I’d never walked before. The walls were painted in scenes from my books. Each I knew well. The artist was someone named “John T.” and he had done wonders with the pictures that had started in my head. Kids’ rooms lined either side of the hallway. Nurses dressed in colorful garb walked from room to room.

The new wing ended and brought me to the intersection with the older wing. White floor tiles met yellowed and old. A sign on the wall read
PARDON OUR MESS. RENOVATION STARTING SOON.
I slowed. The smell filled me. Sounds, too. Somewhere a child spoke—the echo wafted down the hall.

It had all started right here.

It was nearly eight p.m. when I walked into the empty room where I’d first played video games with Randy and read to Jody and the other island misfits. I sat, manuscript on my knee, and waited but no one appeared. No nurse. No kid. Nobody.

After ten minutes, an older kid, maybe ten or eleven, wandered in on his own two feet and disappeared into the library. He was skinny, curly red hair, and he took no notice of me. I gave him a few minutes, then followed him, where I was greeted by the smell of my books. He stood staring up at the far wall, his eyes focused on a row beyond his reach. He was moving the stepladder into place when I idled up next to him. I said, “See anything you like?”

He nodded. Pointed.

I lifted the book off the shelf and handed it to him. I remember the first time I’d read it—where I was, and how, when I finished,
I immediately turned back to page one and started over. “That’s a good one.”

He nodded, and tucked it under his arm. He eyed the shelves. A look of wonder on his face. “Did you know that one man gave us all these books?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I bet you that guy knew lots of stories.” A look of wonder and amazement. “Bet he had lots of friends.” Then he turned and shuffled back down the hall.

I was scanning the shelves, saying hello to all my old friends, when Steady found me. He was using his cane more. His hair was slicked back and he’d splashed on aftershave. Two of my favorite smells—Vitalis and Old Spice. I glanced at the empty room and whispered, “Nobody here.”

He nodded. “I know.”

I was in the middle of saying, “Can we go now?” when it hit me. I’d been set up.

He sunk his arm into mine and pulled. “Come on.”

We passed a trashcan and I turned, and dry heaved but no vomit came. I dry heaved again and Steady looked disapprovingly at me. “You ’bout done?”

A couple of nurses were staring—whispering back and forth. “I think so.”

“Good, ’cause you can’t be doing that once she gets you onstage.”

“She?”

“Well, of course. Who else would introduce you?”

I steadied myself, both hands on the lid of the can. “If you weren’t wearing that collar—”

“Come on, before I have to pee again.” He shook his head. “Youth is wasted on the young.”

Steady led me down a hallway and then a long ramp. People lined both sides, but none were staring at me. They were trying to get inside the twelve-hundred-seat Wyett Auditorium but couldn’t. Standing room only. Several flat-screen TVs had been set up to
show the stage. Several network cameras were transmitting. Katie had sold out another live show.

We stood in the back. Steady clutching me. Me clutching the plastic bag. The audience stood and whistled and clapped for several minutes when Katie walked out onto the stage. She stood at the microphone, smiling, waiting, comfortable.

When they quieted, she spoke. “Several months ago, I took a bit of a vacation. You may have heard—” More audience response. Extended applause. Whistling. “While there, I met someone, or—” She looked at Steady. “Was introduced to someone. A blind date of sorts. At first, he stopped me from harming myself. Literally, loosened the noose from my neck.” A pause. The camera zoomed in on her neck. “Not one of my finer moments. As the days and weeks passed, he reached down into my heart and met me in places where I’d never let anyone meet me. Then, when I knelt before my young son’s tombstone and hit my bottom, and I do mean my bottom, he did something no other person and certainly no other man had ever done. He returned to me”—she tapped her chest—“
la joie de vivre.
” She paused. “He showed me that—” She stopped and her eyes found mine. And she quoted me verbatim. “ ‘That love, the real kind, the kind only wished for in whispers and the kind our hearts are hardwired to want, is opening up your bag of you and risking the most painful statement ever uttered between the stretched-edges of the universe’ ”—she held out her hand to me—“ ‘This was once me.’ I know him as ‘Sunday’ but you know him as someone else.” She stepped aside and waited. Steady nudged me.

Shaking, I turned to him. “You did this on purpose.”

A nod—a soldier’s look in his eyes from fifty years ago. “Yes, I did.”

I pressed my lips to his forehead. “I love you, old man.”

He reached up, grabbed my arm, and whispered, “
Ego te absolvo, in nomine Patris, et filii et spiritus sancti.
” He brushed my forehead with his thumb and then I turned, beginning the long slow walk to the podium. Three rows from the stage, Rod and Monica stepped out
into the aisle. He’d grayed. She’d put on a few pounds. Three children stood to their right. A boy and two girls. She stepped from her seat, her hands covered her mouth, and she shook her head, crying. After several seconds, she hugged me—clinging. He did, too. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “This is our son. This is our Peter.”

The boy was probably seven. Maybe eight. Thick glasses. Good-looking kid. He extended his hand. “Hi, sir. Are you the writer?” He nudged his glasses up higher on his face. “We’ve read all your books.”

I shook his hand. Monica held me for several seconds. Crying. Sobbing. I kissed her cheek and then knelt—speaking to the boy. Eye to eye. “I was once a writer.” I glanced at the stage. “I think we’re about to find out if I still am.” He nodded.

The nurse who had handed me the birthday cake in the elevator leaned out from the aisle seat. Astonishment on her face. I grabbed her hand. “Your smile… warms me. It’s a truly beautiful smile.” When I turned Liza stood at my feet. Red hair short. Growing out. Julie Andrews as a child. No PICC line. No IV. Her color was good. I knelt on both knees. Eye to eye. She reached up, brushed my cheek with the back of her hand, then clutched the book I’d given her on Christmas Eve.