Lost Man's River (48 page)

Lucius had always been skillful with his hands, and very competent as a commercial fisherman. In 1919, fishing was poor on this part of the
coast—at least that was his excuse—and late in the year, without warning his Lucy, he left Fort Myers and returned to the Ten Thousand Islands—the last place on earth one would imagine that a son of the late Mr. Watson would care to go. His sudden departure alarmed his family and broke his Lucy's heart. When he returned the following year for Walter Langford's funeral, he discovered that his faithful Miss L had succumbed during his absence to the adoring blandishments of Mr. Summerlin, an older man with a good generous heart as well as a secure place in our society. She had done this—oh Lucius!—because once again our hero had abandoned her without a word and never written even once to say he loved her, until finally his own sister urged the girl to forget this distracted and recalcitrant young man who could only be counted upon to hurt his dear ones.

Poor dear Carrie, who worried so about her baby brother, invited young Mrs. Summerlin to tea on the terrace of the Royal Palm Yacht Club. There his womenfolk agreed that their sweet Lucius was still haunted by his father, and also by the lost home in the Islands, the only place he could remember being happy.

Poor Lucius looked so scruffy at Mr. Langford's funeral—the long wrists in the old dark Sunday suit, always too small for him, the fisherman's weather lines and lumpy hands. What a shame it was, his sister said, that such a sensitive and educated person had lost himself among rough, uneducated people who had killed his father and might do as much for him! He had banished himself, condemned himself, to exile in that lonely wilderness, and for what? for what?

One day a young woman who identified herself as Lucius's half sister came all the way north from Caxambas to seek Carrie's help in persuading “their” brother to leave the Islands for good. This Miss Pearl Watson (Pearl Jenkins, Carrie calls her) also talked with Lucy Summerlin, who joined her plea to theirs. For such a gentle and obliging person, Lucius Watson can be astonishingly stubborn, and on the question of leaving the Islands, he would only say that the Islands were his home! It soon became plain to Lucy Summerlin that he had changed entirely—not only his closed, remote expression but that coarsening of the face and hands as well as clothes and speech, and an ingrained odor of whiskey and tobacco.

Like Carrie Langford, Lucy was distressed that a man of such intelligence and promise had thrown himself away among those people, but he only said, “ ‘Those people' take me as I am.” “So do we!” she cried.
“We!”
he exclaimed, waving her away. His thought was never completed, but plainly he meant that in their hearts, his brother and sister and their families—all the “good families” of Fort Myers—had dismissed Lucius Watson as a hopeless failure.

Everything she'd written in her “Life of Lucius Watson”—the girlish exclamations, the old stories, the longing and sweet lies—was a cry of pain over a bitter loss of hope for which he himself had been responsible.

Lucius sat awhile, sorting himself out.

A faded envelope had fluttered from the journal, to lie as if awaiting him in the white dust. He picked it up. The envelope had Rob's name on it, and a letter from Rob's brother Lucius was still inside.

Lucy had rejoined him. “He never came back,” she murmured. “He never got that letter.” Rob had turned up just that one time, when his freighter was in dry dock in Port Tampa, looking very pale for a man who lived at sea. He had written to Lucius, receiving no response, and was concerned about Lucius's safety in the Islands. On his way south, he planned to stop off at Caxambas to talk with Pearl Watson, having learned that Pearl and Lucius stayed in touch.

“That made Carrie feel terrible, and me, too, I'm afraid. By then I was friends with Carrie, who had taken pity on me. Rob found out from Carrie that I might know where you were. He thought I might know something that the family didn't.” Instead she had to confess to Rob that she had scarcely laid eyes on Lucius since his return from overseas, two years before. Very disturbed, Rob had exclaimed, “He was safer overseas than in the Islands, Miss, I will tell you that!”

“This was the first time you had met him?”

“Yes. I wrote you about our meeting, don't you recall? And after Mr. Langford's funeral, you gave me this letter.”

“And the list.”

“And the list,” she whispered.

“Which you misplaced. In the excitement of getting married, I believe your letter said. And you never found it.”

“I never lost it. Surely you knew that.” Her eyes had been cast down at her lap but now they rose to face him. “Please, Lucius. This inquisition is unworthy of you. With your romantic idea of family honor, we—your family—were already terrified you might do something rash down in those islands! That list was proof!”

“I'd already given up on rash behavior. Doesn't this silly note to Rob make that quite clear?”

Lucy said she wouldn't know, since she'd never felt she had the right to read his note. She took a deep breath, contemplating her own hands. “But I saw the list, saw what it was, and I simply could not bear so much responsibility. I went to Carrie. Poor Carrie became frightened, too, and showed the list to Eddie, telling him he must bring you back at once. But Eddie only shouted, ‘He won't listen to me!' He took the list to Sheriff Tippins, who would not return it, claiming he needed it for evidence—can you imagine? We had no idea that the Sheriff was still brooding over Mr. Watson's death! And finally Eddie told me that before the Sheriff retired and moved over to Miami, that list was stolen. Nobody could imagine who might have wanted it!”

Lucius nodded. “So you are saying that you never read this letter?”

“I told a lie. Feel better? I told a white lie to spare Lucius Watson his absurd
embarrassment over revealing an honest sadness and affection.” She took his hand. “You can still give it to him, Lucius. He's come back. He phoned this morning, asking if you'd been in touch with me. He will be at the bar of your hotel this afternoon, in case you wish to see him.” And she walked away.

“Lucy? I'm sorry! Thank you!” he called after her, groaning when she did not turn. Despite all her innocence and flutter, Lucy had always known when not to turn. Once again, he had driven away the only person he had ever opened his heart to, the only one who knew who he was and loved him anyway.

But she returned, bringing a copy of his
History
. Watching him inscribe it—“For Dearest Miss L”—her eyes filled again. “The hole in my heart was so deep and dark!” She wept in bitterness, and when he reached to take her hand, she made a fist of it, withdrawing. “Everybody needs a place where they belong. Because of gossip”—here she glanced at him, without malevolence—“I lost what little place I had in this community. I have it back, thanks to that kind old man. And now I'm ‘that nice Miss Lucy Summerlin'! The Widow Summerlin!”

She laid her head ever so lightly on his shoulder. Overcome, he did not respond, and in a moment she sat straight again, neatening her cuffs. “I have often wondered if Lucius my darling really knew the first thing about love,” she murmured coolly.

He feared—indeed he had always feared—that what she'd said was true, that when it came to love, he was some sort of cripple. Hearing her speak those words aloud sent his mind spinning into that ever-waiting dread of lost love and life wasted, of a hollow old age and a long lonely death. Somewhere he had missed the point of life entirely.

Sensing the grief in him, she lowered her head to his shoulder again, hugging his arm. “Now never mind, dearest, all the girls adored you, one especially.” But instead of taking her into his arms, he stared at the old hands clenched on his knees. In our need, he thought, we may draw too close before we are really ready. I may do more harm.

He said dully, “And your brother?”

“And my brother.” She sat up, stung by the abrupt change of subject, and the makeshift question, as Lucius described her brother's legal efforts to save the Watson Place. “Did he ever go back to Chatham Bend?”

“He remembers nothing about Chatham. To the best of my knowledge, he has never gone back. He has no interest in the past—too busy manipulatinging
the future, I suppose. My brother is a very ambitious man.” She cocked her head to consider Lucius's face, then gazed away across the white haze of the cemetery. “The truth is, I don't know my brother,” she continued tersely. “We have nothing in common. We lost touch years ago. I think it's safe to say that I don't interest him. He lives over in Miami now, at least that's the address that he uses. He's always on his hunting circuit, like a wolf. He has never married. As for his romantic life, if he has any, I don't care to think about it.”

“You dislike your brother. Our half brother.”

“Well, thank goodness I'm not your half sister!” Her laugh came as a small shriek, like a caught mouse.

“I love you, Lucy Summerlin,” he said, taking her hand. “I always have and always will.”

Lucy nodded, her hand cool and inert. “I understand you've been traveling with a young woman.”

“My research assistant.” Irrepressible Rob must have mentioned Sally Brown. “Anyway, she's gone.”

“Let her stay! What difference does it make!” She turned away. Out of tact, he let go of her hand, which she raised up and inspected like some sort of curio. When he tried to return her journal, she waved him away. “It's yours. It always was. You can burn it if you want.” She was in tears. “It's
this
woman you should have traveled with, Lucius! All your life!”

Sudden and silent as an owl, age had her in its grasp. Before his eyes, age bled, wrinkled, and dried her. Lucy said, “
Everyone
loves Lucius. Is that enough for you? Don't you ever miss the happy man you might have been?” She closed her eyes. “Forgive me.” She gathered up her things. “Life is full of joy and anguish, wouldn't you agree?” Affecting irony and nonchalance, she was straining to subdue hysteria, and her gallantry was of no use to either of them.

“Please go,” she whispered, shutting her eyes tight, gathering herself in a hard knot against his going. He touched her shoulder, rose, and moved away.

At the great banyan, Lucius turned to wave. She had not stirred. Poised on the white gravestone as if just alighted, palpitating like a rare soft moth of faint dusty lavender, she appeared transparent. In the heat shimmer of late afternoon, Death shook her small shoulders, mocking grief and laughter.

At the Gasparilla Inn, he went straight to the bar, a place of refracted light and glitter which overlooked the brown Calusa Hatchee. There he found the resurrected Rob with what was left of his hind end hitched to the farthest stool toward the river windows. He seemed to have had a dispute with the bartender, who was banging bottles and wiping the bar mirror. Other than these two, the place was empty.