The Drowning House (27 page)

“No, it’s fine,” he called back. He lowered his voice and said to me, “I phoned. I wanted to thank you.”

I looked at him, surprised.

“What you said about the Island. That it might be hostile to strangers. It made me think. Made me look at some things differently.”

I flushed, remembering what I’d said.
People from the mainland don’t really count. Sometimes we treat them badly
. I could have returned his call.

I felt a curious urge, one I remembered from childhood, when I had said or done a wrong thing, to do another, as if to demonstrate conclusively my wrongness. “Of course it cuts both ways,” I said. “Visitors have been coming here for generations, behaving badly, then going home to their friends and their reputations, telling themselves, ‘It doesn’t matter. No one will know. It’s only a vacation.’ ”

Ty’s reaction was not what I expected. He nodded. “That’s it. That’s the problem. I’m not here on vacation. I came here to work. To live, for a while anyway. But I haven’t been acting that way. I haven’t been paying attention. Not the way I should have. It didn’t seem necessary. I know how that sounds, but I wasn’t even aware that my attitude had changed. My perspective. Everything was moving along so smoothly. What you said was a wake-up call.” Ty gazed at me steadily. “Just because a place feels relaxed and friendly doesn’t mean …”

I thought of the tourists in their childish vacation clothes. Officially, a resort town like Galveston was all about play. And yet it wasn’t. I remembered what had happened at Lafitte’s, Otis’s obscure warnings. “It doesn’t mean you should let your guard down,” I said.

“Exactly.”

The land lay behind us, low and featureless. It was the time of day when, gazing out from a brightly lit window, you believe night has fallen. But as you watch, the yellow and green lights of ships, the red lights of drilling rigs, gradually take on color, and the sky and water become truly black. And you realize you have no measure of darkness.

Will made his way to the bow, bent, and picked up a long-handled fork. “Ever used one of these?” he asked. He held it out for us to inspect. Each of its three prongs was threaded like a screw.

Kellums cut the engine and raised it out of the water. He turned on the fan that was mounted above it and picked up another fork. “We’re coming up on a likely spot. The flounder will be laying on the bottom. You want to gig him right behind the eyes. You know what a flounder looks like? Flat, with both eyes on one side?” He was about to pass
a fork to Ty, but I stepped forward and took it. It was lighter than I’d expected. I would have to push hard with it to stick a fish. “You get one, the threads will keep him on the gig. You want to turn around and put him in the box, here. Keep your gig north and south and no one will get hurt.”

Brightness burst around us as the boat’s lights came on. I could see that we were alongside a rib of what looked like rock that extended across the middle of the bay for several hundred feet. The shallow water around the boat was alive with darting bait fish. The fan roared in my ears.

“What are those?” Ty asked.

“Mullet,” I said.

Kellums leaned over. “And needle-nose gar. And over there’s a crab.”

“And that?”

It was a curved shape, heavily encrusted. Kellums grinned. “An old tire.”

Will said, “We might see a ray.”

“If we get lucky.” Kellums was peering over the side of the boat. I looked too and saw nothing but sand and water. All at once he plunged his gig down. When he raised it, there was a flat, spotted fish flailing on the end. He turned and lowered it into the box and withdrew the gig through a slot. “Your turn,” he said. From the box came a hollow slapping sound.

“I don’t see anything.”

“That’s because the wind’s up. On a still night the water’s clearer. Plus, flounders are tricky. They dig in. But we’ll find you one.” The boat proceeded slowly along the edge of the shell reef, the fan moving us forward. Will and Kellums pushed off, using the gigs as poles. After a few minutes, Kellums beckoned me forward and pointed.

In the glow of the lights, I saw a motionless, fish-shaped outline. Then the smallest shiver along its edge. Without taking the gig from me, Kellums maneuvered it into position.

“Now,” he said, and I pushed down hard. The fish jerked and fought, the water exploded into a chaos of swirling sand, and I leaned
on the gig. “Whoa, easy there,” said Kellums. “You’re good. You got yourself a flattie.” He guided the flounder, flapping, its underside gleaming white, into the box and passed the gig to Ty. “Don’t hesitate,” he said. “That’s the key. Now you see him, now you don’t.” The sounds from the box were muffled. There was bright-red blood on its metal rim. Ty stepped forward.

Kellums spotted another flounder and Ty went for it and missed. Then Kellums took the gig and added another fish to the box. Ty didn’t seem to care whether he caught anything or not. It seemed to me that his mind was elsewhere.

There were lights moving in the tall grass along the shore. Kellums saw me looking, and before I could ask, he said, “People gigging on foot. Wading. With lanterns.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure. It’s peaceful. You don’t have the engine, the fan. Just the water, the night birds, and so on.” Then Kellums seemed to remember himself, his professional role. “It’s not too efficient though.”

Ty said, “I thought they might be …”

Will finished his sentence. “Wreckers? Smugglers?” His manner was upbeat, the way Islanders always sounded when they discussed Galveston’s lively past.

“No need to do that at night,” said Kellums. “Take a fellow like Shotgun. Lives off the grid, doesn’t own a photo ID. It’s a cash business, fishing. He doesn’t pay taxes. Maybe he brings in something else too. Who’s going to know?”

Will said, “But you pay taxes, Red.”

“Sure do,” said Kellums, and winked. He turned off the fan.

I sensed Ty’s uneasy presence next to me, and I turned. The moon was a pale shape over his shoulder. Ty was gazing fixedly at Will.

Will smiled and beckoned and I went to him, leaving Ty alone in the bow.

The boat lay beside a grass island that rose about eighteen inches above the water. Land, of a sort. Land that could come and go in a season. Will reached for me. He held his finger to his lips and pointed to the water, and I saw the rays—one, two, then three of them—glide
silently past, their fins rippling, their slender, spiny tails trailing. Will put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close, letting me know that this sight was a private pleasure, a gift for me only.

IF ELEANOR FELT LEFT OUT
, she didn’t show it. When Will dropped me off, around midnight, she was on her way upstairs. She smiled over her shoulder, showing me one high cheekbone and the upturned corner of her mouth. “Someone named Jules called,” she said. Her voice was warm, her step full of energy. She kept climbing. “He’d like to talk to you about a show. I told him you’d get back to him. I was sure you’d want to. He said you have his number.”

I followed her up, wondering if I really should call. I wished there were a way to know what Jules wanted without talking to him about it. Our conversations generated their own set of pressures.

My head was full of what I’d seen on and in the water. I could still feel Will’s arm around me, his breath in my hair. The boat moving gently back and forth beneath us, so that we rocked together.

I made a brief, halfhearted attempt to tidy my room, then I undressed and got into bed. But my body wasn’t ready to sleep. I felt warm, as if I’d gotten too much sun, a sensation that somehow wasn’t unpleasant. I would willingly have given myself over to it. If only I could forget Ty gazing at Will, the look on his face. I threw off the sheet and lay on my back, breathing hard. I heard Eleanor’s door open and close. Then her step on the stairs.

After a while I fell asleep briefly, dreamed of falling, and woke again, my mouth furred with thirst. I stumbled to the bathroom, leaned down, and drank from the faucet. The water came out with a rush, warm at first, tasting of the Island. The brackish smell of marsh, of the tidal night, seemed to rise from the drain. With it came images—low trees blasted by the wind. In them ancient nests, carpeted with bird felt.

I discovered that I was hungry, so I went downstairs, through the empty kitchen to the pantry. I rummaged among the boxes and bags, and came away with a handful of crackers. The overhead light was
painfully bright, and I switched it off. There was no sign of Eleanor. I wondered what exactly Jules had said to her. What had made her so happy.

Phosphorescence from the streetlamps outside fell in watery sheets through the tall windows. In the half-light, the ordinary spaces were changed, full of some unexpressed meaning. I felt again the need to search for something, I didn’t know what.

At first it was enough to move through the half-familiar rooms, to touch the light-drenched, mysterious furniture. To shift and examine the everyday objects, hoping that they might speak to me. But not for long. Soon I was opening everything I could.

In my father’s study, the books still slept heavily on their shelves, but there was nothing in the desk or in the mahogany file cabinet. I went to the front hall closet. There were both men’s and women’s clothes hanging there. Were some of them Will’s? I turned the pockets inside out, but found nothing.

I went back to the kitchen and pulled open the cupboards and drawers, making the glasses ring and the silverware chatter. Carefully, I removed the tray from the silverware drawer. Underneath was a handful of papers—an invitation from the local garden club, a flyer for a museum in New York, a train schedule. Everything that had a date seemed to be several years old. Then I found a folded sheet, heavy and cream-colored.

I held it to the window. There was just one line written in ink.
My heart is in your hands
. A man’s writing, even and bold.

Of course Will would have thought of Eleanor’s hands. They were what I thought of too when I summoned her image—Eleanor’s hands in the garden, in the house, shaping and arranging, at the piano, drawing the music out.

There was no envelope. Had the note come recently? Had she put it away quickly when I arrived so that I wouldn’t see it? I held the paper up to the light and saw that it had yellowed along one edge.
This thing with Will Carraday has been going on for a long time
. Could Eleanor have forgotten it? Was it possible to feel yourself so loved that you could discard the evidence as easily as you might an old train schedule? Or
was it a talisman, one she had kept hidden in plain sight, concealed by the stuff around it? Did she take it out and examine it from time to time?

Briefly, I considered leaving it on the kitchen table to show that I had been there and had seen it. Then I put it back.

I saw Eleanor at the piano, playing from memory on into the night, long after we had gone upstairs, Will’s words supplying the lyric for her private music. Eleanor, hearing my father at the front door, scraping his feet on the mat. Slipping her lover’s note back into the drawer. Taking it out again from time to time when she was alone and had finished folding our laundry, arranging flowers for the table, preparing our meals.

But any vision of her I could construct was immediately overlaid with borrowed perspectives. My father’s view of her—a kind of infuriated hunger. And Will’s—something his almost courtly treatment of Eleanor only hinted at, something well beyond the companionable, midlife relationship I had imagined.

I still knew so little about her then.

I think now that desire runs like a thread through the fabric of our experience, holding our lives together. And when that thread unravels, everything gathered around it comes apart.

Chapter 24

WITH SUMMER IN FULL SWAY
—the beach parking lots oily and rutted, the seawall a noisy riot of color—I was grateful to have a daily task that set me apart from the tourists. On my way to the library, I found myself exchanging meaningful glances with other Islanders—the forty-something waitress at the café where I sometimes ate lunch, the owner of the corner store where I bought film.
Mainlanders
, we said to each other wordlessly.
None of this matters
.

At the archive, the pile of photos had grown, I’d made progress. I knew what I wanted, I had discovered a frame of reference, like the white lines in the viewfinder of my Leica.

There were many images from the turn of the century, but as I examined them, what I thought about was Stella, her life on the Island. How little of it was truly private. The kind of informal scrutiny I had grown up with hardly counted compared to what she must have experienced. Her appearances in public would have been a topic in the local press, her destinations, her wardrobe discussed. She would not have been able to leave the house alone. She might have seen from her window the streets of the city, full of interest and possibility, and, in the distance, the hazy strip of bay. But those views were entirely notional. She could no more enter into them than she could step into one of the painted landscapes on the walls.