Nightmare Country (36 page)

“Why did she change her name to Jerusha?”

“Sometimes, when we're lucky, we get one movie a month here. Hollywood oldies with Spanish subtitles. Movie
Hawaii
had been here at least twice. Maria Elena had a flair for the dramatic, and she was taken with the Julie Andrews role of Jerusha. No TV. One movie a month, sometimes none. Some of the locals who can afford it see a movie twenty times. Whole population of Mayan Cay might total seven hundred, if you count the dogs. Anyway, she starts calling herself Jerusha. We called her Maria Elena.

“She cleaned cabanas here a year before this old guy came down to marry her. Must have been writing to each other or something. He asked for her the minute he stepped off the plane.”

“He never wrote letters, never went anywhere,” Russ said. “Only way he could of known her was in his dreams.”

“I wonder why Roudan's parrot still says ‘Jerusha,'” Tamara said.

“Roudan and Maria Elena used to have something going. The usual something, I presume. But that's most frowned upon here. Chespita was her parrot. I expected Roudan to be more broken up than he was when she left. He's never married.”

Russ was filling Dixie in on Abner Fistler's death and Jerusha's state in a Cheyenne hospital when Tamara left the room with elation. Perhaps Thad's father was right about Roudan being the key to something. And his connection with Jerusha and her connections with this island ought to prove something to the doubting Backra. Although exactly what it all added up to, Tamara had no idea.

She hurried out of the compound, across the cemetery, and to Backra's house. Surely with this new information he would offer to help, believe in her quest.

Two brown children fought over his hammock. The screen door opened before she got to it. The drone of a small airplane passed above her in the still, soggy heat as a short squat woman emerged from Backra's house with a broom. Rafaela, the woman in the dream church that had no roof.

The shock of recognition on Rafaela's face was unmistakable. She raised the broom over her head. The children scattered. “Thaddeus has gone back to his home. He's escaped you, evil one.”

38

“This is now the house of Lourdes Paz, wife of Aulalio, who is in heaven, and mother of his children,” Rafaela said, and although she'd lowered her broom, she stood at Backra's door obviously ready to fight for it.

“He didn't even leave a message … or anything?” Tamara felt a numbness spreading through her. She suspected this was one shock too many. Rafaela appeared so kindly and motherly. If she'd beaten Tamara with that broom, she couldn't have been more cruel.

“He left something only for one. One thing for one who is called Tomairra.”

“That's me. What is it?”

Rafaela, whose voice was so soft and look for Tamara so hard, reached inside the door for a slab of stone, the one with writing carved into it that Tamara had seen when she'd followed them into the house and Dixie had seduced Backra. It reminded her instantly of the stela in the jungle where she and Backra had seduced each other, and she had an inkling of why people commit suicide.

The stone was heavy, and she staggered as she turned back into the cemetery, where the little dog he had called “My Lady of the Rum Belly” looked at her dully. “Never pays to be somebody's lady, doggie.”

The old man who'd been cutting seaweed with a machete the day before blocked her way into the Mayapan's compound; his sneer had deepened into something more dangerous. His finger traced the markings on the slab. “This does not belong to you.”

“He gave it to me.”

“It was not his to give.”

She dropped it on the sand at his feet. “I don't want it.”

“I've lost him,” she said to Russ when she met him under a palm tree in the compound. She hadn't believed it when Backra said he was leaving today, and still couldn't believe he'd done it.

“Lost who?” Russ guided her to a padded lounge chair. “You look a little sick.”

“Backra. He's left the island.” Somehow, without putting it into coherent thought, Tamara had counted on Backra to solve all her problems. Instant savior. He was kind enough to help her find her daughter. Sensitive enough to help her finish raising her daughter, romantic enough to fulfill all her dreams, and rich enough—she'd assumed, for no reason—to help her out of a very tight financial mess now that she'd broken her first teaching contract and wasn't likely to get another in these days of dwindling job opportunities.

Of course, if she couldn't find Adrian, she wouldn't need much of one. Two island girls stepped off the porch of her cabana with brooms and plastic clothes baskets full of sheets and towels. Their laughter danced on the soft air. She could always do something like that, Tamara supposed. They didn't have to have degrees, and they seemed happy enough.
Quite a comedown from a sunken living room, though
.

“You sure do change fast. You were all steamed up about Jerusha coming from here and knowing this Roudan guy, and now—”

“Russ, do you think there's a possibility of Adrian's being alive?”

“After all this time? No, I don't. Or Fred either. I think they're both still in Iron Mountain and will probably never be found. I think it's about time you faced up to it.”

“You sound like Backra.”

“And it's no use running around badgering people here. They don't know anymore about this whole thing than we do.”

“I guess you're right.”

“But I sure would like to know
why
your girl and my night watchman are—”

“Dead.”

“And who filled in all the tunnels in Iron Mountain. Went in there with a state inspector. You can walk maybe a fourth the way down in the main tunnel, and then it's limestone. Looks purer than anything we've dug in years. And if he ever reported what we saw, I never heard about it.”

Tamara left him with his musings and went in to sit on her bed and stare at the wall. She couldn't even cry.

A rapping on the screen door caught her dozing sitting up. A gaily dressed man with the friendliest smile she'd ever seen stuck his head in. “Ready for da bug?” He stepped in with a canister and hose and started spraying clouds at the wood and thatch of the cone-shaped roof. “You leaf, okay? And I shoot da bug.”

Tamara wandered out onto the long dock, where the water slapped with a hollow sound against the pilings below. She'd given Adrian up. But she wasn't ready to feel it yet.

When she returned to the cabana, Agnes Hanley stood surrounded by a scattered coating of bug bodies, tiny white bodies with brown heads.

“Don't make sense. Clean the place first and then spray for termites.” Agnes looked hot in her gathered housedress and oxfords. The trim of her petticoat showed where the skirt had wrinkled up in back. “Don't make sense, me being here, neither. Fred's not here,” she said helplessly. The circles under her glasses had darkened. “Can't even eat the food. Nothin' but fish.”

Tamara felt again the extra weight of regret at her thoughtless haste in dragging this poor woman down here, holding out hope to her as a lure. Lunch was more fish, which Agnes picked at and Tamara ate without tasting.

Russ came in picking at his teeth with a toothpick and sat down beside Agnes instead of lining up at the buffet table. He grinned and slid the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “Found a place down the street serves hamburgers.”

“But you can get hamburgers at home,” Tamara said. “This is fresh fish.”

“Hamburger.” Agnes set down her fork. “Show me.”

Tamara went with them because she couldn't bring herself to sit alone with the strangers there. She and Russ left Agnes off at a little building with chipped tables in the sand and flies. They strolled on down the street, so familiar and yet strange.

“Russ, why did I come here and make everybody else come too?”

“You didn't want to give up hope. Nobody does. 'Least you get a little vacation out of it.”

“I can't afford this any more than Agnes can. Broke my contract. No money. What am I going to do?”

“You can always come to Colorado with me,” he said uncomfortably.

“No I can't. You'd hate it. I love fish.” She laughed and he chuckled, and then he stood in the middle of the sand street and held her. “She's dead. Oh, God, Russ, she's dead.”

Tamara and Russ stepped into the dark bar of the Hotel de Sueños. “Alcohol is no answer for the way I feel.”

“Have a Coke, then. I'll try one of them Belican beers,” he told Seferino, and found them a corner table where she could look out the window at the sea.

“You in love with this Backra guy?”

“He's gone, and I'll never see him again. And, Russ, do me a favor? Don't tell me everything's going to be all right.”

The two men from Alabama sauntered in and came over to their table. “Hey, Seferino, where's Roudan?”

“He takes the day off.”

“Sure is taking a lot of 'em lately. Ain't no way to run a business.” They coaxed Russ into a game of darts.

“Sure do miss the Doc already,” Harry said, and his dart missed the board. “Can you beat that crazy vet? After all we been through together, and he goes off without even saying good-bye.”

Russ Burnham's last dart hit just outside the bull's-eye, and he leaned against the bar to give Don a turn. The parrot turned upside down and said, “Jeeroosha!”

Russ turned around and blinked. “What about Jerusha, birdie?”

Chespita squawked and fluttered her wings. A livid-green feather floated silently down, to rest on the shiny bar top.

“Doc's a loner. Probably go back to Alaska and be a hermit in the wilderness. Which—the way things have been going—ain't all that bad an idea,” Don said. “I gotta be getting back too. Or I'll lose my job. Been gone too long, the way it is.”

“Your uncle fires you, boy, and your daddy'll foreclose on his mortgage on that car lot,” Harry said when his friend had won the game. “That turkey never played darts in his life till he came here. Now he cleans up on everybody but Roudan.” He sat down with Tamara. “Not like Roudan to be gone so much. Maybe he's sick.”

Russ and Don had joined them at the table in the corner when Rafaela stomped in, still angry but without her broom. She accosted Seferino.
“Donde está Stefano?”
She was so short the bar's rim came up almost to her neck, but she raised her fists to beat on it and castigated the bartender in mixed dialect.

He answered her so rapidly Tamara caught only the words “Roudan” and
“diablo,”
and something about poor souls high up somewhere, and he motioned toward the ceiling.

“You guys been here long enough to catch the language?” Russ drained his second Belican. “We've been trying to talk to people all day.”

“I don't know what she said, but I think he said Stefano comes when Roudan goes and she'd better clap her trap or old Stefano's going to get mad because they gotta help hungry people in the attic.” Don beamed at Harry.

“You may have picked up the game ah darts, but your translatin' is pee-poor. She is pissed-off because she can't find her husband, who is sharing some kind of high-up work with Roudan. Probably taking turns knocking down coconuts from tall palm trees. And she thinks it's all
loco
—which means crazy—and that they are doing the work of the devil.”

None of which made any sense to a grief-drugged Tamara until that evening when she was out pacing the water's edge in front of the cemetery with Dixie. Or rather Dixie was already there when Tamara decided she couldn't abide happier people in the bar hut or the lighted compound. Nor could she stand another minute of listening to Russ Burnham and Don Bodecker try to outdo each other in creative swearing. Tamara and Dixie had fallen in step, each quiet with her own thoughts. They shared at least one common sorrow, even if Dixie didn't know it—Backra.

Dixie stopped suddenly as a shadow figure emerged from the village street next to Backra's house and slid into the side door of the Hotel de Sueños. “Wonder what old Stefano's up to. Rafaela's hopping mad at him.”

The major discussion at dinner had been the fantastic improvement in the food. “Same things are in the kitchen as always, but now Rafaela Paz is in there with them,” Dixie had explained. “With Edward P. and Thad gone, she's finally consented to work for me. I don't know if she makes the sign of the cross over the stove or what, but her cooking's becoming a legend.”

“Seferino said Roudan and Stefano were doing some kind of work with poor people,” Tamara said now. “And that Stefano would come home when Roudan left.”

“You know, I've always found those two highly suspicious. But I could never decide just why.”

Stefano came out of the hotel and walked to the house next to Backra's. Even at night Tamara recognized the old man who didn't want her to have Backra's cruel parting gift.

Agnes Hanley trudged across the cemetery in her oxfords to join them. “Nothing but sand in my shoes since I got here,” she complained, and then sighed and then sniffed. “Mrs. Whelan, I want to go home. I don't like this place, and Fred ain't here.”

“I'll check with Sahsa for a return seat first thing in the morning.” Dixie turned to Tamara. “How about you?”

“I might as well go.”
I'm giving up, Adrian, baby
. “Russ probably will too. There's nothing here for us.”

“May take a few days. Radio's predicting bad weather on the way.” Dixie started pacing again.

“What's that?” Agnes stepped up past the empty grave of Maria Elena Esquivel and bent over. “Always did wonder what could make them funny markings in the sand.”

A lizard, perhaps a foot long from its head to the end of its tapering tail, scuttled across a sandy grave and into shadow. Its narrow body left the spine and its four legs the rib shapes of the leaf-skeleton pattern that had long mystified Tamara too.