Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide

by Michaela Thompson

  Harry hated to admit it, but when he and Scooter first got into the house, he had walked around the whole place, running his hand over the banister rail, opening the kitchen cabinets. As many times as he had made love to Isabel, he had never been in the house where she lived. Miss Merriam wouldn’t let her have company or go anywhere except school and church.

  Scooter had sat down on the floor. He looked up at Harry, his eyes narrowed. “How long will she be here?”

  Harry raised his shoulders.

  “Great,” Scooter said.

  Pretty soon, Harry knew, Scooter would work it out to be Harry’s fault. Harry said, “Don’t blame me. I didn’t invite her.” He wanted to be rid of her at least as much as Scooter did. More.

  “She could screw us up, Harry.” Scooter’s tone was casual, but Harry wasn’t fooled.

  “Not unless we let her. And we aren’t going to let her.” Harry was not about to let Isabel Anders mess him up again.

  “I could take care of her. Easy.”

  “Sure you could.”

  “I could. No problem.”

  Harry caught the challenging look Scooter gave him. He ignored it and walked to the bedroom door. It opened on the landing, which was ringed with closed doors. Harry went to the door at the head of the stairs, which was the bathroom. He opened it a crack and peered in. “Did you feed Sis?” he called softly to Scooter.

  “Yesterday. Frogs.”

  Harry peered at the big tub. Through the chicken-wire screen over the top, he could see part of the water pan and a curve of Sis’s greenish brown coils. She seemed quiet, drowsing. She got active sometimes, slithering up and down the length of the tub. That mostly happened when she got hungry.

  Scooter and Harry had trapped Sis, a cottonmouth moccasin, out back near the slough and carried her to the house in the extra ice chest. It had been a crazy thing to do, which fit in with Harry’s recent mood. He watched a minute longer, then closed the door. When he returned to the bedroom, Scooter had opened the tackle box and was crouched on his knees in front of it, fingering the coins.

  It made Harry uncomfortable to see Scooter doing that. He didn’t like the sight of Scooter’s long fingers moving over those gleaming surfaces. He averted his eyes and said, “I heard the forecast. Rain.”

  Scooter’s expression was remote. He didn’t answer.

  Rain was good news. Bad weather meant no dive parties. It also meant Harry and Scooter could go out to the wreck with less chance of snoopers spotting them and wondering what they were up to. There was a trade-off, though. In bad weather, visibility was terrible. There was more chance of getting tangled up in the lines, and the water was rough and you had to fight the surge. You were likely to get thrown into things if you weren’t careful, and you could get scraped badly. None of it was what you’d call fun.

  Still— Harry crossed the room and picked up the enamel dishpan from the shelf. He took it back to the window and knelt down where the most light came in.

  The dishpan was half full of fragments of blue-and-white porcelain. Some of the pieces were big enough to reveal a pattern of flowering branches and birds in flight.

  Harry picked up a rounded piece of a bowl. He remembered finding this one, thinking it might be whole, and fanning the sand away gently while his breath rattled through the tube. It was only half a bowl, though— broken, like the rest.

  Chinese porcelain. Who would imagine Harry knowing about porcelain? But he had gotten interested.

  K’ang-hsi, this kind was called. K’ang-hsi was the Chinese emperor when this porcelain was made and shipped out from Canton and finally came to rest on the shoals off Cape St. Elmo. Around the early 1700s, it would have been.

  Canton to Manila, they sailed. Manila to Acapulco, then overland to Veracruz. The plan would have been to sail from Veracruz to Havana and then on to Spain. But a storm blew them off course, more than likely, and the Cape St. Elmo shoals finished them, and all the pretty porcelain ended up in the drink.

  There it lay for more than two centuries, it and all the rest, at the mercy of salt water and sand.

  Harry wished, God how he wished, he had found the wreck himself. Harry wasn’t a treasure hunter. Not then. Harry was a dive captain, trying to make house payments and support a family. He wouldn’t have known an eight reales silver piece if he’d found one in his jockstrap.

  The experience took hold of you. It wasn’t only the possibility of getting rich or keeping it all secret so the state and the archaeologists didn’t push in. It was being down there and finding something— and because you found it, you started to love it.

  Harry remembered his first gold doubloon. Gold doesn’t tarnish. It shines like new, and you know it’s been shining for years, beautiful, unspoiled. You see that glimmer, and right away your body goes chilly and you say to yourself that it can’t be real gold, but in fact nothing else looks the same. When Harry pulled that coin out of the sand, he thought he would never be able to let go of it. Dumb as it seemed, he wanted to hug and kiss it.

  This was what he had needed so badly all his life, even when he didn’t know he needed it. He wouldn’t let anything spoil it, now that he knew.

  EIGHT

  “There’s no reason I know of for anybody to hang around the house,” said Clem Davenant. “Where did you say the gasoline can was?”

  “On the front step. It was there one day, and then I noticed it was gone.” Isabel could feel the effort he was making to show interest.

  Clem studied his uneaten french fries. “Sometimes the teenagers get up to things. They may have been hanging around there after Miss Merriam went to the hospital.”

  Maybe he was right. Isabel drank the last of her iced tea.

  The café had emptied out by this time, and the waitress was desultorily clearing tables. Outside, the sky was dark. Intermittent rain spattered the plate-glass windows.

  Merriam was leaving the hospital this afternoon, moving to Bernice Chatham’s for custodial care. Clem had taken Isabel to meet Bernice this morning. Bernice had struck Isabel as not overly bright, but her small house was clean and she seemed capable. “About the best we can do in St. Elmo,” Clem had said with a trace of apology. Then he had suggested that they have lunch before picking up Merriam.

  Isabel didn’t want to leave without bringing up her most important concern. Taking a deep breath she said, “I’ve been wondering what actually happened to Merriam.”

  The look he gave her was uncharacteristically keen. “Dr. McIntosh told me she fell.”

  “He assumes she fell because she had a concussion, but as far as I’ve heard, nobody saw her fall.”

  He had been fiddling with a french fry. He put it down. “What do you imagine happened, then?”

  His blue gaze made her uncomfortable. “I don’t know. It worries me to see her so violently upset. She’s totally out of control.”

  “The doctor says it isn’t unusual for her to be disoriented.”

  “Disoriented, yes. But she seems terrified.”

  “Terrified,” he repeated. His eyes wavered. “Yes, she does.”

  “She never used to be afraid of anything.”

  To her surprise, he laughed. The sound was brief and bitter. “I guess fear is something we can all learn.” He signaled for the check.

  They drove toward the hospital in silence. Rain was now falling in earnest and the bay was choppy. Isabel watched the sweeping downpour obscure the horizon.

  Clem said, “Nobody really knows what happened.”

  “To Merriam, you mean? I guess not.”

  “It can be so fast, so confusing, and before you know it, something terrible has taken place. Something irrevocable.”

  His hands were tight on the steering wheel. He wasn’t talking about Merriam, was he? He seemed to have veered to the subject of his son’s fatal accident. Isabel tried to get the conversation back on track. “Maybe Merriam will get better. Be able to tell us what happened.”

  He turned in at the hospital. “May
be.”

  Merriam was dressed, sitting in a chair beside her bed. Although her eyes widened when Isabel walked in, she didn’t respond to Isabel’s remarks. It took a few minutes to pack her suitcase and go through the formalities of checking out, and then the two of them walked slowly down the hall to the front door, where Clem was waiting with the car. As he stowed Merriam’s suitcase in the trunk, Isabel decided to risk conversation again. “I’m Isabel, Merriam. Remember me?”

  No answer.

  “We’re taking you to a sort of— nice place where there’s somebody to look after you.”

  Clem came up the steps with an open umbrella. “Okay, Miss Merriam, let’s go for a ride.”

  Merriam’s grip on Isabel’s arm tightened. “Isabel,” she said.

  Isabel’s breath caught. “Yes, it’s me.”

  Merriam’s fingers dug in. “Isabel. Isabel.”

  During the short drive to Bernice Chatham’s, she did not speak again.

  Bernice Chatham’s house was in an older neighborhood where spreading oak trees dwarfed the modest homes beneath. When they pulled up in front of the small bungalow, Bernice appeared on the screen porch. “Well, looky here,” she called. “Have you come to see me, Miss Merriam?”

  Bernice was a fleshy woman in her sixties, with gray hair and the wispy shadow of a mustache on her upper lip. She showed them to a bedroom with windows opening on a verdant backyard. “Here’s your room, sugar!” she said to Merriam.

  Merriam clutched Isabel’s arm. “Isabel.”

  “Yes, that’s Isabel. It sure is.”

  “Isabel. Isabel.”

  “Now, do you need to go to the bathroom?”

  As Merriam allowed Bernice to lead her away, Isabel looked over the room. Modest furniture of pale wood, three big windows, a ceiling fan. It seemed comfortable enough, but still there was something fundamentally terrible about this occasion.

  When it was time for Isabel and Clem to leave, Merriam, seeming dazed, did not make a scene. Bernice saw them on their way with a cheery “Don’t you all worry about anything! We’ll be fine!”

  Back in the car, Isabel leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

  “So that’s that,” said Clem. He sounded as wiped out as she felt. “It’s hard,” he went on. “You’re doing the best you can.”

  Isabel opened her eyes. He actually seemed to be talking to her. “Merriam and I weren’t exactly best friends. I keep asking myself why I’m here.”

  “Have you come up with an answer?”

  “I have excuses but no answers.”

  “Excuses are worthless. They look solid, but they crumble and then you’re left without anything to hold on to.” He started the car.

  As they drove through the drenched streets, Isabel, on impulse, said, “I’ve heard about your son.”

  The corners of his mouth jerked. “Name me one person who has spent twenty-four hours in St. Elmo and hasn’t heard.”

  “And I’m sorry.”

  “I appreciate that.” He sounded unmoved. “I’m going through the motions, that’s all. Therapy? Hell, I’ve had therapy. There’s just one thing they can’t make me understand.”

  “What?”

  “Why I should be alive.”

  The windshield wipers slashed back and forth. Isabel said, “I imagine a lot of people have argued with you about that. Anything I could say, you’d have a comeback ready.”

  “Probably.”

  They had reached Clem’s office, where Isabel had left her car. Before she got out, Isabel said, “Do you think Merriam really recognized me?”

  He considered. “I couldn’t tell.”

  “I think she knew who I was,” Isabel said, but when she thought back on it, she wasn’t really sure.

  ***

  Back at the trailer, Isabel changed into shorts, lay down, and fell instantly asleep. She awoke an hour or so later to the sound of knocking. She got up, splashed water on her face, and opened the door to Kimmie Dee Burke.

  The rain had stopped and the vegetation was steaming. Isabel was too groggy to be delighted to see Kimmie Dee, but Kimmie Dee didn’t seem to care how Isabel felt. “Maybe you can do me a favor,” the girl said without preamble.

  “What favor?”

  “I need to borrow a pencil and some writing paper.”

  “A pencil, some—”

  “And an envelope and a stamp. I know where Miss Merriam keeps them.”

  There seemed little choice but to stand back and let Kimmie Dee in. The girl opened a drawer in an end table and brought out a pad of paper, a pencil, a package of envelopes, and a book of stamps. She carried them to the dining table. “I’m going to write a letter,” she said. She pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Make yourself at home,” said Isabel, but the irony was lost on Kimmie Dee. She had already opened the pad and bent over her work, her hair brushing the tabletop.

  Unneeded for the moment, Isabel picked up her sketch pad and a pencil and doodled a couple of studies of Kimmie Dee. The girl was all angles: sharp elbows, sharp knees—

  “Could you do me another favor?”

  Isabel sighed. “What is it?”

  Kimmie Dee raised her T-shirt and extracted a crumpled envelope from beneath the elastic waistband of her shorts. She held out the envelope to Isabel. “Write the address for me. I can’t do real writing yet.”

  Isabel took the envelope. It was addressed to Mrs. Joy Burke at Cape St. Elmo. “This letter is to your mother,” she said.

  “No, the other address. My daddy.”

  The return address was a Buddy Burke, at the Regional Correctional Facility in Tallahassee. Kimmie Dee said, “It’s the Regional Correctional Facility. That’s a jail.”

  The girl’s tone was matter-of-fact. Isabel tried to match it. “I see.” She wondered what crime Kimmie Dee’s father had committed.

  She sat at the table. Kimmie Dee’s letter, the lines sloping down the page, was lying in front of her:

  Daddy can I have boots. Please. I dont like Mr. S.

  Love Kimmie Dee

  I don’t like Mr. S. Mr. S., surely, was Ted Stiles. Looking over Isabel’s shoulder, Kimmie Dee said, “I need the boots before the contest. July Fourth.” She touched the letter. “Can you mail it for me?”

  Isabel hesitated. She wasn’t sure what she had wandered into. “Does your mother know you’re writing this?”

  Kimmie Dee’s jaw jutted. She didn’t answer the question. “I thought you could mail it.”

  Isabel had given Kimmie Dee a pencil, paper, an envelope, and a stamp. She had addressed the envelope. Was she going to refuse to mail the letter? “All right,” she said, and the girl’s face pinkened.

  Together, they folded the letter, sealed it, and put the stamp on. Kimmie Dee went home and Isabel took a walk down the beach, past the Beachcomber to the Cape St. Elmo postal substation. There, she dropped Kimmie Dee’s letter in the mail.

  I don’t like Mr. S. Who was Ted Stiles, and what was his relationship to Kimmie Dee and her family? If Isabel got to know Kimmie Dee better, which looked highly likely, she would ask about Ted Stiles. Isabel could see that there was a lot of upheaval in Kimmie Dee’s life. She had begun to understand that Merriam— critical, censorious Merriam— had provided a haven for the girl. Isabel couldn’t help asking herself who, when Isabel had needed one, had provided a haven for Isabel?

  At dinner that night, at the Beachcomber, Isabel saw Harry Mercer.

  The sky was darkening to violet as she walked along the damp beach after mailing Kimmie Dee’s letter. Waves broke with a foamy slosh, and out on the water, buoys flashed to mark the channel. The lights at the Beachcomber winked through the dusk. It was time to eat, and her refrigerator held nothing of interest. She climbed the steps to the dock and went inside.

  Fishnets festooned with seashells hung on the walls of the dining room. A waitres led Isabel to a table at a window with a view of the bay and the dock. The laminated menu offered fried grouper, frie
d oysters, fried shrimp, fried mullet, fried crab claws, french fries, and a “Capeburger Deluxe.”

  She ordered the Capeburger and a beer, sat back, and eased her feet out of her sandals. The jukebox wailed. Her thoughts ranged over the events of the day— Merriam, Kimmie Dee and her letter, Clem Davenant.

  Her thoughts lingered on Clem. She felt daunted by his despair. Yet today he had spoken to her frankly, almost as a friend.

  Her burger arrived, a rock-hard pattie of greasy meat on an untoasted bun. She gnawed at it, looking out at the dock. Through the dusk, she saw the yellow lamp of an approaching boat. It pulled into a berth and a shadowy figure jumped out to tie up. She watched idly as two people unloaded gear and an ice chest. After a while, one of them, carrying diving equipment, walked toward her. When he was close enough, she saw that it was a lean man, tanned golden, with curly shoulder-length hair. He unlocked a door, went inside for a minute, and returned empty-handed to the boat. Soon, he and another man came back, carrying an ice chest between them. The other man was Harry Mercer.

  Isabel sat with the unappetizing burger suspended in her fingers. Harry was not looking her way. He wore a black wetsuit top and swimming trunks, and he was bending sideways with the weight of the chest. His brown hair was wet and unruly, falling over his forehead.

  Yes, it was Harry, the last person she had expected to see here. If there was anything Harry Mercer had been clear about, it was that he did not intend to spend his life in St. Elmo and environs. He was going to join the Coast Guard, maybe, or get a job with an oil company and go to Saudi Arabia. Harry planned to search for adventure.

  So he had told her, in the whispered conversations they had had after they made love.

  Isabel put down the hamburger. Harry was close now, passing the window. She averted her face. She wasn’t ready to greet him with a friendly “How’ve you been?” And she wasn’t at all sure how he would greet her.

  She and Harry had been insane, both of them. Surely some of their intensity had come from putting one over on the ever-vigilant Merriam, yet in the end it had been more than that.