Lucky You (34 page)

“Who’s it supposed to be?”

“One of the apostles, maybe a saint. Don’t really matter.” Demencio was despondently buffing a tiny carapace to perfection.

Trish added: “The paint comes right off with Windex and water. It won’t hurt ‘em.”

Tom Krome carefully placed the cooter in the tank with the others. “Need some help?”

Trish said no, thanks, they were almost done. She remarked upon how attached they’d become to the little buggers. “They’ll eat right out of your fingers.”

“Is that right.”

“Lettuce and even raw hamburger.”

“What my wife’s trying to say,” Demencio cut in, “is we’d like to make JoLayne an offer. We’d appreciate the opportunity.”

“To do what?”

“Buy ‘em. All forty-five,” he said. “How’s two grand for the bunch?”

The man wasn’t joking. He wanted to own the turtles.

Trish chirped: “They’ll have a good home here, Mr. Krome.”

“I’m sure they would. But I can’t sell them, I’m sorry. JoLayne has her heart set.”

The couple plainly were disappointed. Krome took out his billfold. “It wouldn’t be hard to catch your own. The lakes are full of’em.”

Demencio said, “Yeah, yeah.” He finished cleaning the last turtle and stepped to the sink to wash up. “I told you,” he muttered to his wife.

Tom Krome paid the baby-sitting fee with hundred-dollar bills. Demencio took the money without counting it; Trish’s job.

“How about some coffee cake?” she offered.

Krome said sure. He figured JoLayne would be tied up at the real estate office for a while. Also, he felt the need to act friendly after squelching the couple’s cooter enterprise.

To give Demencio a boost, he said: “I like what you did with the Madonna. Those red tears.”

“Yeah? You think it looks real?”

“One-hundred-proof jugular.”

“Food coloring,” Trish confided. She set two slices of walnut cinnamon coffee cake in front of Krome. “It took a day or so for us to get the mixture just right,” she added, “but we did it. Nobody else in Florida’s got one that cries blood.
Perfumed
blood! You want butter or margarine?”

“Butter’s fine.”

Demencio said the morning’s first busload of Christian pilgrims was due soon. “From South Carolina—we’re talkin’ hellfire and brimstone, a damn tough crowd,” he mused.
“If they
go for it, we’ll know it’s good.”

“Oh, it’s good,” Trish said, loyally.

As Krome buttered the coffee cake, Demencio asked: “You see the papers? They said you was dead. Burned up in a house.”

“So I heard. It was news to me.”

“What was that all about? How does somethin’ screwy like that happen?” He sounded suspicious.

Tom Krome said, “It was another man who died. A case of mistaken identity.”

Trish was intrigued. “Just like in the movies!”

“Yep.” Krome ate quickly.

Demencio made a skeptical remark about the bruise on Krome’s cheek—Bodean Gazzer’s last earthly footprint. Trish said it must hurt like the dickens.

“Fell off a boat. No big deal,” Krome said, rising. “Thanks for the breakfast. I’d better run—JoLayne’s waiting on her cooters.”

“Don’t you wanna count ‘em?”

Of course, Krome already had. “Naw, I trust you,” he said to Demencio.

He grabbed the corners of the big aquarium and hoisted it. Trish held the front door open. Krome didn’t make it to the first step before he heard the cry, quavering and subhuman; the sound of distilled suffering, something from a torture pit.

Krome froze in the doorway.

Trish, staring past him: “Uh-oh. I thought he was asleep.” A slender figure in white moved across the living room toward them. Demencio swiftly intervened, prodding it backward with a long-handled tuna gaff.

“Nyyahh froohhmmmm! Hoodey nyyahh!”
the frail figure yodeled.

Demencio said, sternly: “That’ll be enough from you.”

Incredulous, Tom Krome edged back into the house. “Sinclair?”

The prospect of losing the cooters had put him into a tailspin. Trish had prepared hot tea and led him to the spare bedroom, so he wouldn’t see them swabbing the holy faces off the turtle shells. That (she’d warned Demencio) might send the poor guy off the deep end.

To make sure Sinclair slept, she’d spiked his chamomile with a buffalo-sized dose of NyQuil. It wasn’t enough. He shuffled groggily into the living room at the worst possible moment, just as the baby cooters were being carried away. Sinclair’s initial advance was repelled by Demencio and the rounded side of the gaff. A second lunge aborted when the crusty bedsheet in which Sinclair had cloaked himself became snagged on Demencio’s golf bag. The turtle fondler was slammed hard to the floor, where he thrashed about until the others subdued him. They lifted him to Demencio’s La-Z-Boy and adjusted it to the fully reclined position.

When Sinclair’s eyes fluttered open, he blurted at the face he saw: “But you’re dead!”

“Not really,” Tom Krome said.

“It’s a blessed miracle!”

“Actually, the newspaper just screwed up.”

“Praise God!”

“They should’ve waited on the DNA,” said Krome, unaware of his editor’s recent spiritual conversion.

“Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Lord!” Sinclair, crooning and swaying.

Krome said: “Excuse me, but have you gone insane?”

Demencio and his wife pulled him aside and explained what had happened; how Sinclair had come to Grange searching for Tom and had become enraptured by the apostolic cooters.

“He’s a whole different person,” Trish whispered.

“Good,” Krome said. “He needed to be.”

“You should see: He lies in the water with them. He speaks in tongues. He … what’s that word, honey?”

Demencio said, ” ‘Exudes.’ “

His wife nodded excitedly. “Yes! He exudes serenity.”

“Plus he brings in a shitload of money,” Demencio added. “The pilgrims, they love it—Turtle Boy is what they call him. We even had some T-shirts in the works.”

“T-shirts?” said Krome, as if this were an everyday conversation.

“You bet. Guy who does silk screen over on Cocoa Beach—surfer stuff mostly, so he was hot for a crack at something new.” Demencio sighed. “It’s all down the crapper now, since your girlfriend won’t sell us them turtles. What the hell use are T-shirts?”

Trish, in the true Christian spirit: “Honey, it’s not JoLayne’s fault.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said her husband.

Krome eyed the linen-draped lump in the recliner. Sinclair had covered his head and retracted into a fetal curl.

Turtle Boy? It was poignant, in a way. Sinclair peeked out and, with a pallid finger, motioned him closer. When Krome approached he said, “Tom, I’m begging you.”

“But they don’t belong to me.”

“You don’t understand—they’re miraculous, those little fellas. You were dead and now you’re alive. All because I prayed.”

Krome said, “I wasn’t dead, I—”

“All because of those turtles. Tom, please. You owe me. You owe
them.”
Sinclair’s hand darted out and snatched Krome by the wrist. “The inner calm I feel, floating in that moat, surrounded by those delicate perfect creatures, God’s creatures … My whole life, Tom, I’ve never felt such a peace. It’s like … an epiphany!”

Demencio gave Trish a sly wink that said:
Write that one down. Epiphany
.

Krome said to Sinclair: “So you’re here to stay?”

“Oh my, yes. Roddy and Joan rented me a room.”

“And you’re never coming back to the newspaper?”

“No way.” Sinclair gave a bemused snort.

“You promise?”

“On a stack of Bibles, my brother.”

“OK, then. Here’s what I’ll do.” Krome pulled free and went to the aquarium. He returned with a single baby turtle, a yellow-bellied slider, which he placed in his editor’s upturned palm.

“This one’s yours,” Krome told him. “You want more, catch your own.”

“God bless you, Tom!” Sinclair, cupping the gaily striped cooter as if it were a gem. “Look, it’s Bartholomew!”

Of course there was no face to be seen on the turtle’s shell; no painted face, at least. Demencio had sponged it clean.

Tom Krome slipped away from Sinclair and lifted the aquarium tank off the floor. As he left the house, Trish said, “Mr. Krome, that was a really kind thing to do. Wasn’t it, honey?”

“Yeah, it was,” Demencio said. One cooter was better than none. “JoLayne won’t be pissed?”

“No, I think she’ll understand perfectly.”

Tom Krome told them goodbye and carried the heavy tank down the front steps.

The two women arrived in Grange on Tuesday night, too late for Katie Battenkill’s sightseeing. They rented a room at a darling bed-and-breakfast, where they were served a hearty pot-roast supper with a peppy Caesar salad. Over dessert (pecan pie with a scoop of vanilla) they tried to make conversation with the only other guest, a well-dressed businessman from Chicago. He was taciturn and so preoccupied that he didn’t make a pass at either of them; the women were surprised but not disappointed.

In the morning Katie asked Mrs. Hendricks for directions to the shrine. Mary Andrea Finley Krome pretended to be annoyed at the detour, but truthfully she was grateful. She needed more time to rehearse what to say to her estranged husband, if they found him. Katie was confident they would.

“In the meantime, you won’t be sorry.”

“Should we bring something?” Mary Andrea asked.

“Just an open mind.”

The visitation was only a few blocks away. Katie parked behind a long silver bus that was disgorging the eager faithful. They carried prayer books and crucifixes and umbrellas (for the sun) and, of course, cameras of all types. Some of the men wore loose-fitting walking shorts and some of the women had wide-brimmed hats. Their faces were open and friendly and uncluttered by worry. Mary Andrea thought they were the happiest group she’d ever seen; happier even than
Cats
audiences.

Katie said, “Let’s get in line.”

The Virgin Mary shrine was in the lawn of an average-looking suburban house. The four-foot icon stood on a homemade platform beyond a water-filled trench. A cordial woman in a flower-print pants suit moved among the waiting pilgrims and offered soft drinks, snacks and sunscreen. Mary Andrea purchased a Snapple and a tube of Hawaiian Tropic #30. Katie went for a Diet Coke.

Word came down the line that the weeping Madonna was between jags. The tourist ahead of Katie leaned back and said, “Gripes, I hope it’s not another dry day.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what happened last time I was here, in the spring—she never cried once, not one darn teardrop. Then the morning after we leave, look out. Some friends mailed us pictures—it looked like Old Faithful!”

Mary Andrea was diverted by a weather-beaten woman in a bridal gown. Perched on a stool beneath a tree, the woman was expounding in low tones and gesticulating theatrically. A half dozen of the bus tourists stood around her, though not too close. As an actress Mary Andrea had always been drawn to such colorful real-life characters. She asked Katie Battenkill to hold her place in line.

Shiner’s mother was alerted by the click of high heels, for the typical pilgrim didn’t dress so glamorously. The brevity of the newcomer’s skirt also raised doubts about her piety, yet Shiner’s mother wasn’t ready to pass judgment. Couldn’t redheaded rich girls be born again? And couldn’t they, even as sinners, be generous with offerings?

“Hello. My name’s Mary Andrea.”

“Welcome to Grange. I’m Marva,” said Shiner’s mother, from the stool.

“I love your gown. Did you make it yourself?”

“I’m married to the Word of the Lord.”

“What’ve you got there,” Mary Andrea inquired, “in the dish?”

Other tourists began moving in the direction of the Madonna statue, where there seemed to be a flurry of activity. With both arms Shiner’s mother raised the object of her own reverence. It was a Tupperware pie holder; sea green and opaque.

“Behold the Son of God!” she proclaimed.

“No kidding? May I peek?”

“The face of Jesus Christ!”

“Yes, yes,” Mary Andrea said. She opened her handbag and removed three dollar bills, which she folded into the slot of the woman’s collection box.

“We thank you, child.” Shiner’s mother centered the Tupperware on her lap and, with a grunt, prized off the lid.

“Behold!”

“Isn’t that an omelette?” Mary Andrea cocked her head.

“Do you not see Him?”

“No, Marva, I do not.”

“Here … now look.” Shiner’s mother rotated the Tupperware half a turn. Instructively she began pointing out the features: “That’s His hair … and them’s His eyebrows … “

“The bell peppers?”

“No, no, the ham … Look here, that’s His crown of thorns.”

“The diced tomatoes.”