Apparent Wind

by Dallas Murphy

  “What say there, Marvis? Bert?” he asked. Neither replied.

  Doom noticed that Sheriff Plotner didn’t move his lips either, a county of practicing ventriloquists.

  “Why, you must be Denny’s boy. Proud to meet you. Sheriff Plotner’s the name. Lincoln Plotner. Your daddy and me used to play side by side on the line of scrimmage for the Omnium High Alligators. Salad days on the gridiron. Bert can tell you. By the way, you want to watch your ass out in boats with ole Bert here.” Nobody invited him to sit, but he did so anyway, next to Doom. The sheriff stank of something, rotting vegetation or seaweed or something. “Where’d your lovely momma go? I wanted to extend my condolences and fond regards, but she run right off as quick and silent as she come. How’s she taking it? I know they been divorced for years, but hell, still must hurt.”

  “She’s fine,” said Doom, trying not to move his lips.

  “Your momma was some looker in her majorette suit. Right, Bert? Damn right. Buried at sea. Now that ain’t precisely kosher, like your momma’s new beau might put it. County statutes expressly prohibit burial at sea unless you have a whole raft of clearances, variances, and authorizations.”

  “We didn’t bury him at sea,” said Doom. “We distributed his ashes at sea.”

  “Well, we won’t say no more about it. But next time you want to bury your daddy at sea, you give me a jingle first, okay? Just how long you plan to stay in our fair county?”

  “That’s still up in the air,” Doom explained. The sheriff’s strange stench was causing Doom’s eyes to water, as if they were still full of ashes.

  Crooked as hell, Sheriff Plotner determined. Never trust ex-cons who didn’t move their lips when they talked. Here was one of those depressed loner types who’d poison your wife and violate your bird dogs unless you kept him under close scrutiny. “Maybe wait a day or two for better weather, have a swim, then hit the road?”

  “Maybe.”

  “…You look just like your daddy. Anybody ever tell you that? Little sadder, maybe. Dead ringer, otherwise. Right, Bert?” Sheriff Plotner slid out of the booth, the sudden movement throwing off sheets of stink. “Well, I’m off to fight crime. You have a good trip back up north, hear?”

  “What was that odor?” Doom asked after the sheriff left in his black-and-white.

  “That was Sheriff Plotner,” said Bert.

  “Yes, but what is it?”

  “Nobody knows. He’s always stunk like that.”

  “What do you mean I own Omnium Settlement?”

  “You own it,” Bert clarified.

  Marvis Puller leaned in conspiratorially and said, “There exists a corporate entity called Palmetto Properties. Guess who’s president.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  Doom was afraid of that. “Does Palmetto Properties own Omnium Settlement?”

  “Yes. But not directly, of course.”

  This was beginning to sound like one of his father’s numbers, all right.

  Marvis loved to say things like corporate entity. If he had been a WASP, he’d have been dangerous. “You see, your father bought up all the lots in Omnium Settlement as they came available, which was often, since Omnium’s sinking. He covered his identity by forming several dummy corporations in which names the land was purchased.”

  “Where did he get the money?”

  “From two principal investors. Have you ever heard of a cracker named Big Al Broadnax?”

  “Broadnax? As in the county?”

  “The same.”

  Now they’d arrived in an area Bert knew something about, being a lifelong native of Broadnax County. “Big Al’s father dredged out Omnium Settlement back in the twenties, but he didn’t do such a hot job, because it’s sinking back.”

  “And now,” added Marvis, “Big Al’s blocking every effort to dredge it up again.”

  “Who’s the other investor?” Doom asked.

  “A corporate entity called Tamarind Financial Group,” said Marvis.

  “Is it local?”

  “Down on Tequesta Key in a place called the Snowy Egret Shopping Plaza,” said Bert.

  “What Tamarind Financial really is is a cover for Perfection Park,” explained Marvis.

  “Perfection Park?”

  “Just imagine what Small Hope Bay would be worth if it was dry land and if powerful people wanted to build this big hotel complex for overworked executives.”

  Doom was beginning to catch on. His father must have got wind of the plans for this Perfection Park and begun to acquire the future site. “Let’s get back to how I own Omnium.”

  “Your father was a master of the fine print,” Marvis said as if he were talking about somebody great. “He formed two holding companies, one headed by Big Al, the other by Tamarind Financial. They shared voting control of the dummy corporations that own Omnium—unless and to such time as Dennis Loomis should die from any cause whatsoever. In that event, all voting shares revert to Palmetto Properties.”

  “Which I own.”

  “Exactly.”

  Doom considered some of the ramifications of that.

  “Bert thinks somebody murdered your father and made it look like an accident.”

  “Not somebody. Big Al Broadnax.”

  “But why? It wouldn’t be in his interest to do that if my father’s death resulted in his loss.”

  “That’s what I been telling him,” said Marvis Puller.

  “But you don’t understand. You ain’t from around here. You don’t know Big Al. Big Al don’t give a shit about fine print in contracts. He don’t even give a shit about contracts. Big Al does whatever he wants on Omnium Key, and he wanted your daddy dead, sure as hell.”

  “But why?”

  “For trying to gyp him in the first place!”

  It still didn’t make keen sense, and that was only another reason why Doom wanted no part of his father’s flimflam. He was hoping to find something real in his hometown, not more phony things. “Did you tell Sheriff Plotner about your suspicions?”

  “Plotner? That cheap screw rides so deep in Big Al’s pocket, he’s lint. There’s a couple state senators in there with him.” Wearing gas masks, Doom hoped. “Why do you think the Army Corps of Engineers ain’t been in here to dredge the town back up? Because Big Al don’t want it back up. He has other plans!”

  “Like Perfection Park?”

  “Yep.”

  “What has that got to do with me?”

  “What’s it got to do with you!” Captain Bert almost moved his lips with excitement. “Your daddy passed the baton to you!”

  “But I don’t want batons. I’d be happy to appoint you president of Palmetto Properties. Consider it done.”

  “Just what kind of son are you, son?”

  “Come on, Bert,” said Marvis. “You’re way out of line here.”

  “It’s okay, I’ll answer that. I didn’t even know my father. He was a father in name only. And what little I did know about him I didn’t like. I like his boat, however. Would you be interested in teaching me how to sail her? For a fee, of course.”

  SPLENDOR

  The day was done when Doom finally moved aboard Staggerlee, his belongings contained with room to spare in the same duffel he had carried from LaGuardia. Energy fading with the daylight, Doom watched a loose band of revelers gather at the end of the dock to applaud the sunset over Small Hope Bay. Doom positioned himself behind the big aluminum steering wheel to watch his first Florida sunset in twenty-five years. It was pyrotechnical, yet soft and gentle, the kind that draws retirees, dreamers, searchers, romantics, hedonists, and crazies to Florida at the rate of four thousand per day. When the light had faded to dusk, he would explore his boat from stem to stern for his own education and a place to hide Ozzie’s goods, but for now he “steered” dead ahead into the swirls of scarlets and purples burnishing the edges of towering stratocumulus clouds.

  Doom Loomis had been charged with and pleaded nolo contendere to fraud, conspiracy
to defraud, mail fraud, forgery, and literary mischief. A first offender, he might have got off with a suspended sentence and probation had he agreed to testify against Duncan Feeney, who was still at large. Doom did not so agree, thus prompting his lawyer to opine that stand-up guys were just another breed of asshole.

  Doom had been sentenced to five years, commuted to two, at the minimum-security facility in Longfellow, New York, twenty heavily forested miles from the Canadian border. There he was tagged Doom by fellow inmates, a reference to his reading habits and his naturally mournful visage. Except in the dreary depths of winter, Doom spent his sentence maintaining the trails and lean-tos in the Adirondack Park. He went in soft, stiff, and disconsolate; he came out strong and wiry, a trail boss tempered by wilderness rigors, if still disconsolate.

  Doom had written Splendor, a five-hundred-page psychological saga, which his coconspirators—Duncan Feeney and Professor Goode—attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. While supposedly researching a new biography of the late First Lady, Feeney and the professor planted Doom’s manuscript, typed on a convincing 1948 Olivetti, among her more obscure effects. Then they “discovered” it.

  Despite legal hurdles thrown up by the estate, Splendor was published to rave reviews both here and abroad. Typical of the English-speaking press was this from the The New York Times: “…A devastating, spiraling descent into madness. Often funny, always deeply moving, Splendor opens a hitherto unknown chapter in the life of a grand American woman that will leave her biographers scurrying to catch up. It is also one damn fine piece of fiction.” Even the estate was impressed with the reviews. Hollywood snapped up the option.

  Instantly notable, Duncan Feeney and Professor Goode were invited to appear together on late-nite talk shows. Their hosts, waxing earnest, asked them what went through their minds when they realized the enormity of their find. Old Professor Goode appeared fidgety and distracted. Duncan Feeney, however, had a fine TV presence, witty and articulate, urbane yet modest. As a result, he was offered handsome salaries in the medium. He had accepted a position as on-air spokesperson for a Japanese pickup truck manufacturer when the fraud blew up in their faces.

  But before it blew, Splendor and its “author” Eleanor Roosevelt swept the nation. Her portrait appeared simultaneously on the covers of Time and Newsweek—“The Eleanor Roosevelt we knew…and didn’t know.” People devoted an entire special issue to the “life and loves of Eleanor.” Geraldo Rivera hosted a look-alike contest, and all Hollywood was abuzz with rumors as to who would play the Eleanor character. It seemed a perfect role for Goldie Hawn.

  Doom had never imagined it would get that big. It was moving like a juggernaut, and watching the outpouring of sentiment from a nation starved for heroes and heroines, Doom felt morose with guilt. So did Professor Goode, who retreated into the swoony pale of NyQuil addiction.

  The professor had been essential to the scam because of his impeccable breeding and Ivy League manner, which gained them access to Mrs. Roosevelt’s personal effects in the first place, but he had never dreamed that he would find himself lying to Ted Koppel in front of millions.

  A natural, Duncan Feeney smiled and called him “Ted.” “I can’t express to you, Ted, how honored we both are to have discovered Splendor for the American people.”

  The professor, however, was sweating profusely. Then he began to click his dentures, while Duncan bullshitted Ted a mile a minute to keep the camera off his NyQuil-addled associate. But when the professor started humming “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” Duncan knew the jig was up. The professor began to tremble, and like hungry lampreys, the cameras zeroed in on his tormented, twitching face. Bubbles of saliva inflated and popped in the corners of his mouth.

  “It’s all subterfuge!” he keened in extreme close-up. “All of it, all stratagems for deceit! All with malice aforethought!” His head swayed from side to side like a blind piano player’s. He fell to his knees and begged forgiveness of Eleanor Roosevelt. “She’s suffered enough!” he cried.

  Ted turned to glare at Duncan, who at that moment stood for all that was false and cynical in America today. Koppel said in his gravest tones, “How does it feel, Mr. Feeney, to have deceived an entire nation?”

  “Great, Ted,” Duncan said. Then he bolted for parts unknown.

  Doom Loomis turned himself in.

  Doom had seen the woman with the movie camera shooting the sunset and paid no attention, but now she was shooting Doom. He picked up his belongings and went below. He peeked out the port. The photographer was boring in on the boat. Not only that, she had an assistant on sound.

  The camera person was petite and boyish with black, bobbed hair. Doom could see nothing of her face behind the lens. The sound person was stout and strong with great maternal breasts, powerful thighs, and a determined look on her face. Hit women from Hollywood? They marched straight to Staggerlee and knocked on the deck.

  Sweating, Doom stashed Ozzie’s goods in a wet locker, then stuck his head halfway out the companionway, warily. “Yes?”

  “Hello, Mr. Loomis,” said the sound person. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “My name is Anne. And this is Anne.” Anne handed Doom a card across the lifelines. It said CINÉMA VÉRITÉ. “We want to make a movie about you.”

  While Doom was in prison the Annes had attracted considerable attention with their five-hour documentary about a dispossessed family of six who lived in an abandoned Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot of a Houston shopping mall. Called The Midnight Sunbelt, the Annes explained, it won the coveted Harriet Beecher Stowe Prize for concerned social documentary. And before that, there was Mom, an excruciating day-to-day record of Anne’s own mother’s death from uterine cancer.

  “I’m sure they were outstanding. I wish I’d seen them. But I don’t think I’m interested. Thank you anyway.”

  The Annes weren’t about to leave it at that. They went on to explain that they had been moved and exhilarated by the pained voice of Splendor’s narrator. Often, reading, they had wept. But their sadness was mixed with anger, anger because that voice, which must have been so deeply a part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s psyche, had been silenced by sexism and repressive convention during her lifetime.

  “We were stunned when it turned out to be a fraud,” said Anne.

  “Made to feel like chumps for our emotions.”

  “By ruthless exploiters.”

  “By scumbags.”

  However, after gaining some distance from their emotions, they grew fascinated. Ardent artists, brows prematurely furrowed by sensitivity and sincerity, the Annes were fascinated not by the wrenching pathos of Professor Goode or the slippery confidence of Duncan Feeney but by the quiet gloom of the man in handcuffs on “Eyewitness News,” the man who actually wrote Splendor. He was the story here. Thus their documentary on Doom would pose the question: “How could a man write a scorchingly honest portrayal of a woman’s sexual awakening and descent into madness, and having done so, how did it change him?”

  Doom gave that some thought. He had no idea, but he liked the Annes. And there was this: No one would be likely to murder him for Ozzie’s goods, Omnium Settlement, or anything else while he was being filmed. “Please come aboard. Do you plan to follow me around and record my life? Or do you interview me? How does it work?”

  “It’ll evolve,” said Anne.

  “Every subject suggests its own means of approach.”

  “However, we should tell you up front that we’re political. That is to say, we believe that everything that happens is political.”

  “Nothing is apolitical.”

  “Okay,” said Doom. “You wouldn’t know how to sail a boat, would you?”

  “Gee, no, sorry,” said Anne.

  “I’m from Indiana,” added Anne.

  COLONEL A.C. BROADNAX

  September 16, 1926: From high atop the skeletal frame of the central tower on the nearly completed Oseola Hotel, Colonel A.C. Broadnax surveyed his handiwork below.
He wouldn’t yet go so far as to say it was good, but it was on its way, and he wouldn’t rest until it was perfect.

  Actually, the new land looked like hell. The colonel wasn’t blind, he recognized that. From his promontory he peered out across a naked expanse of lifeless sun-baked muck, so hard even rainwater wouldn’t sink in—it just floated there until it evaporated—and he knew from personal probing that six inches beneath the surface the muck was moist and hot. He had created a giant compost heap. While he recognized that there was no way for the subsurface heat to escape, he was not concerned. It was all part of the process.

  Hadn’t he already done what his critics said could never be done? He had, through an ingeniously complex system of dikes, dams, and spillways, diverted the natural flow of water west from the ocean and east from the Everglades, thereby draining Small Hope Bay dry. Naturally, in the absence of water, aquatic vegetation died, and he plowed it away. Aquatic animals followed suit; the stench of putrescence hung like a dome over the bay. Step three, the reclamation of desertified bay bottom into attractive real estate, was now proceeding apace, starting with the hotel. The colonel didn’t care about the hotel; he was building it only to keep Prentiss Throckmorton, a man of limited vision but limitless capital, on the hook. What Broadnax cared about was the new land. Colonel A.C. Broadnax was not overly alarmed at the puffs of smoke belching up from the cracks in his land like miniature fumaroles.

  His work force, housed in tents on the less desirable mainland side of the late bay, had begun to refer to the colonel’s creation as Battlefield Bay, because that’s what it looked like. The stink of rotting herbage, dead fish, and their own shit, as well as numerous snakebite fatalities, had turned the workers restive and sarcastic. Of course, historically, the proletariat could never be expected to appreciate the shape of an original whole while it was still evolving. The colonel had only begun to fulfill his vision, and he, if no one else, was invigorated.