Locked Doors (22 page)

“Rufus is going to ruin our lunch.
 
You can’t leave fish out.
 
You
can’t! leave! fish!
OUT!”
 
She sighed.
 
“Your coffee will have to wait, Luther.”

Sitting down across from me at the breakfast table, she picked up one of the fillets.

“I don’t believe it,” she said.
 
“There’s no chili powder in this cornmeal.
 
You know, I’m starting to think your father doesn’t know how to fry bluefish.
 
And be
sides
, you’re not supposed to
fry
bluefish.”
 

She dropped the fillet and stood up.
 
From the spice rack on the counter she plucked a small plastic bottle and returned to her chair.
 
When she’d shaken half the bottle of chili powder into the cornmeal and stirred the mixture with her finger, she looked up at me, bewildered.

“Who are you?” she asked, a completely different person.

“My name’s Alex.
 
Alex Young.
 
I came here to—”

“Who let you in?”

“You did, Mrs. Kite.
 
I knew your son, Luther, at Woodside College.”

“Luther?
 
He’s here?”

“No ma’am.
 
I haven’t seen him in a long time.
 
We were friends at school.
 
Is he in
Ocracoke
right now?
 
I’d really like to see him.”

As the wave of lucidity engulfed her, her eyes traded confusion for sorrow.
 
She pinched the bridge of her nose between her eyes as though her head hurt.

“I’m sorry.
 
Sometimes my brain gets scrambled.
 
What’s your name?”

“Alex.
 
Do you know where—”

“And you were friends with my Luther?”

“Yes ma’am.
 
At Woodside.
 
I came here to see him.”

“He’s not here.”

“Well, do you know where he is?
 
I’d love to—”

“I haven’t seen my son in seven years.”

Her eyes blinked a dozen times in rapid succession.
 
Then she grabbed a handful of cornmeal, sprinkled it onto a fillet, and began
patting
it into the meat.

She slammed her hand down on the table and my heart jumped.
 

“Luther, ass out of the chair, bring me a glass of water.”

I got up and walked over to the sink.
 
It overflowed with smelly dishes.

“When are you heading down to Portsmouth?” she asked as I washed a dirty glass.

“I don’t know.”
 

I filled the glass from the tap and offered it to her.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“You asked for a glass of—”

“The hell I did.
 
Get that out of my face.”
 
I set the glass on the counter.
 
“If you
are
going down to Portsmouth today, I want you to go before it gets late.
 
You got no business being out on the water after dark.
 
And let me tell you another thing.
 
I want the lodge left in immaculate condition.
 
Your father and I are thinking of going down next weekend, and I don’t intend to spend my time cleaning up your shit.”

She started on another fillet and as I watched her in the dreary natural light of the kitchen, I thought of my grandfather, Alexander, stricken with Alzheimer’s in his late 70’s.
 
I knew the symptoms well and in the course of five minutes it had become clear to me that some form of dementia was ravaging the brain of Maxine Kite.
 
It appalled me that she’d been left alone.

I started for the doorway.

“Where you going?” she asked.

“The bathroom.
 
Mom.”

Leaving Luther’s mother to her bluefish, I stepped out of the kitchen into the dark corridor.
 
A door stood cracked at the end and as I walked toward it the house resumed its unnerving silence.
 

I could no longer hear Mrs. Kite in the kitchen or the moan of the wind outside.
         

At the end of the hall I pushed open the door and entered a small bookless library.
 
A dying fire warmed the study, its barren bookshelves gray with dust.
 

An old and soiled American flag was displayed behind glass on one wall.
 
It was shopworn, nearly colorless, riddled with holes made from fire, and so defiled I felt awkward and ashamed for looking at it.

On the stone above the hearth, a photograph caught my attention.
 
It had been framed and mounted.
 
Approaching the fire, I looked up, surprised to see that it was a photograph of the Outer Banks, taken from a satellite.
 
I recognized the long skinny isle of
Ocracoke
by the harbor at its southern tip.

Of greater interest, however, was the collection of uninhabited islands a few miles south across the shallow inlet.
 
I read their names: Casey.
 
Sheep.
 
Whalebone.
 
Portsmouth.

Portsmouth.
 
Turning away from the photograph, I felt the prickling exhilaration of discovery.
 
But my heart stopped as my gaze fell upon the wall opposite the hearth.
 

The black soulless eyes of Luther stared back at me, grotesquely caricatured by the amateurish rendering.
 
Though only a teenager in the oil painting, the vacuum in his eyes was unmistakable, a haunting prophecy of what he would become.

I hurried out of the study, crept past the kitchen where Mrs. Kite was still preparing her fish, and moved quietly through the foyer back out into the cold misty morning.
 
Lifting the bike out of the grass, I mounted the wet seat and pedaled away between the live oaks.

35

IT started to rain on the way back to the Harper Castle—a metallic soul-icing drizzle.
 
Riding into the parking lot, I threw down the bicycle and unlocked the trunk of the Audi.
 
I opened the suitcase holding Orson’s journals and as I stood shivering in the steady rain, came at last across the passage that had been chewing at my subconscious for six days, since my first encounter with it at Brawley’s Self-Storage Co. in Lander, Wyoming.

When I’d finished reading over Orson’s journal entry, I tingled with relief and fear.
 

I could feel it in my bones.
 

I had found Luther Kite.

Wyoming: July 4, 1993

Independence Day.
 
Luther and I drove down to Rock Springs this evening to drink beer at a bar called The Spigot.
 
Met this kid named Henry, a young man about Luther’s age.
 
Shared a few pitchers with him.
 
Said he was working a ranch up near Pinedale for the summer.
 
He got “tow up” as they say ‘round here.
 
When he went to the bathroom to puke, Luther asked if we could take him home.
 
Isn’t that cute?
 
He thinks of the cabin as home.
 

Well, it’s 2:00
a.m.
, and Henry’s in the shed right now, sobering up for what will undoubtedly be the worst, longest, and last night of his short life.
 

Luther’s getting changed into his work clothes, and I’m sitting out here on the front porch where the moon is full and bright enough for me to journal by its light.

Tonight, on the drive back to the cabin, Luther invited me to come spend a few weeks with him in
Ocracoke
over my Christmas break.
 
Wants me to meet his folks.
 
Said they have this lodge on a remote island that would be perfect for the administration of
painings
.
 

Yeah, he calls them
painings
.
 
I don’t know.

There he goes, down to the shed.
 
On account of it being Luther’s last night in Wyoming, he asked me if he could have Henry all to himself.
 
By all means, I said.
 

I’ve probably done too good a job on this one.

Drenched and shivering, I biked over to the Community Store on Silver Lake Harbor and walked to the shack at the end of the dock.
 

The door was closed but I heard the static of a weather radio spilling through the walls.
 
The sign over the door read TATUM BOAT TOURS.

I knocked and waited.
 

A quarter mile across the water I saw the ridiculous façade of the Harper Castle and the
Ocracoke
Light beyond in the foggy distance.

The door finally opened and a
whitebearded
old salt looked me up and down.
 
He smiled and spoke in a coastal Carolina accent laced with Maine, “You’re a sight there.”

“Charlie Tatum?” I asked.

“All my life.”

“Mr. Tatum, I was wondering if you could get me over to Portsmouth this afternoon?”

I glimpsed all the mercury fillings in his molars as he laughed.

“On a beautiful day like this?”

He motioned to the harbor, gray and
untrafficked
and filling with cold rain.

“Well, I mean, I know the conditions aren’t ideal, but—”

“Day after tomorrow, probably the next time I’m going out.
 
Besides, you don’t want to visit Portsmouth when it’s like this.
 
Supposed to rain a few more hours as this low passes offshore.
 
I was just listening to the forecast when you knocked.”

“Mr. Tatum, I have to get to Portsmouth this afternoon.”

“It’ll still be there on Saturday.”

Beth Lancing might not.

“Yes, but—”

“And look, forget the rain, come three o’clock this afternoon, that wind’s
gonna
turn around and start blowing in off the sound at thirty knots.
 
Three, four foot seas, we’re talking.
 
Ain’t
safe in that boat.”
 
He pointed to the thirty foot Island Hopper moored to the rotting timbers of the dock.
 
“
Ya
, you don’t want to be out there in that.
 
For damn sure.”

“Mr. Tatum—”

“
Cha
lie
.”

“Charlie.
 
What do you charge for a boat ride to Portsmouth?”

“Twenty dollars a person.”

“I’ll give you two hundred to take me this afternoon.”
 

He stared at me and blinked.