Dagger Key and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  Eventually Mister Jessup reach a point in he fancifyin where he standin atop the world, decidin whether or not to let it spin, and that pear to satisfy him. He lead me back to where my daddy stropped down. Daddy he starin at me like he get loose, the island not goin to be big enough for me to hide in.

  Don’t you worry, boy, Mister Jessup say. He ain’t goin to harm you none.

  He slip Daddy’s gag and inquire of him if the launch can make it to La Ceiba and the weather calm. Daddy reckon it can. Take most of a day, he figures.

  Well, that’s how we’ll go, say Mister Jessup.

  He puts a match to the kerosene lamp by the bed and brings the butterfly people in. Daddy gets to strugglin when he spies them. He callin on Jesus to save him from these devils, but Jesus must be havin the night off.

  The light lend the butterfly people some color and that make them look more regular. But maybe I just accustomed to seein them, cause Daddy he thrash about harder and goes to yellin fierce. Then the one woman touch a hand gainst he cheek, and that calm him of an instant. Mister Jessup push me away from the bed, so I can’t see much, just the three of them gatherin round my daddy and his legs stiffening and then relaxin as they touch he face.

  I goes out in the front room and sits on the stoop, not knowin what else to do. There weren’t no spirit in me to run. Where I goin to run to? Stay or go, it the same story. I either winds up beggin in Coxxen Hole or gettin pounded by my daddy. The lights of Wilton James’ shack shining t’rough the palms, not a hundred feet away, but Wilton a drunk and he can’t cure he own troubles, so what he goin to do for mine? I sits and toes the sand, and the world come to seem an easy place. Waves sloppin on the shingle and the moon, ridin almost full over a palm crown, look like it taken a faceful of buckshot. The wind carry a fresh smell and stir the sea grape growin beside the stoop.

  Soon Mister Jessup call me in and direct me to a chair. Flanked by the butterfly people, my daddy leanin by the bedroom door. He keep passin a hand before his eyes, rubbin he brow. He don’t say nothin, and that tell me they done somet’ing to him with they touches, cause a few minutes earlier he been dyin to curse me. Mister Jessup kneel beside the chair and say, We goin off to La Ceiba, boy. I know I say I’m takin you with me, but I can’t be doin that. I gots too much to deal with and I havin to worry bout you on top of it. But you showed me somet’ing, you did. Boy young as you, faced with all this, you never shed a tear. Not one. So I’m goin to give you a present.

  A present sound like a fine idea, and I don’t let on that my daddy have beat the weepin out of me, or that I small for my age. I can’t be certain, but I pretty sure I goin on eleven, t’ough I could not have told him the day I were born. But eleven or eight, either way I too young to recognize that any present given with that kind of misunderstandin ain’t likely to please.

  You a brave boy, say Mister Jessup. That’s not always a good t’ing, not in these parts. I fraid you gonna wind up a wrecker like your daddy…or worse. You be gettin yourself killed fore you old enough to realize what livin is worth. So I’m goin to take away some of your courage.

  He beckon to one of the women and she come forward with that glidin walk. I shrinks from her, but she smile and that smile smooth out my fear. It have an effect similar to Mister Jessup’s pats-on-the-head. She swayin before me. It almost a dance she doin. And she hummin deep in she throat, the sound some of Daddy’s girlfriends make after he climb atop them. Then she bendin close, bringin with her a sweet, dry scent, and she touch a finger to my cheek. The touch leave a little electric trail, like my cheek sparklin and sparkin both. Cept for that, I all over numb. She eye draw me in til that gray crystal all I seein. I so far in, pear the eye enormous and I floatin in front of it, bout the size of a mite. And what lookin back at me ain’t no butterfly. The woman she may have a pleasin shape, but behind she eye there’s another shape pressin forward, peekin into the world and yearnin to bust out the way the butterfly people busted out of they cocoon. I feels a pulse that ain’t the measure of a beatin heart. It registerin an unnatural rhythm. And yet for all that, I drawn in deeper. I wants her to touch me again, I wants to see the true evil shape of her, and I reckon I’m smiling like Mister Jessup, with that same mixture of terror and delight.

  When I rouse myself, the shack empty. I runs down to the beach and I spies the launch passin trough a break in the reef. Ain’t no use yellin after them. They too far off, but I yells anyway, t’ough who I yellin to, my daddy or the butterfly girl, be a matter for conjecture. And then they swallowed up in the night. I stand there a time, hopin they turn back. It thirty miles and more to La Ceiba, and crossin that much water at night in a leaky launch, that a fearsome t’ing. I falls asleep on the sand waitin for them and in the mornin Fredo Jolly wake me when he drive his cows long the shore to they pasture.

  My daddy return to the island a couple weeks later, but by then I over in Coxxen Hole, doin odd jobs and beggin, and he don’t have the hold on me that once he did. He beat me, but I can tell he heart ain’t in it, and he take up wreckin again, but he heart ain’t in that, neither. He say he can’t find no decent mens to help, but Sandy Bay and Punta Palmetto full of men do that kind of work. Pretty soon, three or four years, it were, I lose track of him, and I never hear of him again, not even on the day he die.

  Mister Jessup have predicted I be hearin bout him in a few years, but it weren’t a week after they leave, word come that a Yankee name of Jessup been found dead in La Ceiba, the top half of he head chopped off by a machete. There ain’t no news of the butterfly people, but the feelin I gots, then and now, they still in the world, and maybe that’s one reason the world how it is. Could be they bust out of they shapes and acquire another, one more reflectin of they nature. There no way of knowin. But one t’ing I do know. All my days, I never show a lick of ambition. I never took no risks, always playin it safe. If there a fight in an alley or riot in a bar, I gone, I out the door. The John Anderson McCrae you sees before you is the same I been every day of my life. Doin odd jobs and beggin. And once the years fill me up sufficient, tellin stories for the tourists. So if Mister Jessup make me a present, it were like most Yankee presents and take away more than it give. But that’s a story been told a thousand times and it be told a thousand more. You won’t cotch me blamin he for my troubles. God Bless America is what I say. Yankees gots they own brand of troubles, and who can say which is the worse.

  Yes, sir. I believe I will have another.

  Naw, that ain’t what makin me sad. God knows, I been livin almost seventy years. That more than a mon can expect. Ain’t no good in regrettin or wishin I had a million dollars or that I been to China and Brazil. One way or another, the world whittle a mon down to he proper size. That’s what it done for Mister Jessup, that’s what it done for me. It just tellin that story set me to rememberin the butterfly girl. How she look in the lantern light, pale and glowin, with hair so black, where it lie across she shoulder, it like an absence in the flesh. How it feel when she touch me and what that say to a mon, even to a boy. It say I knows you, the heart of you, and soon you goin to know bout me. It say I never stray from you, and I going to show you t’ings whose shadows are the glories of this world. Now here it is, all these years later, and I still longin for that touch.

  DAGGER KEY

  The seagull’s wing

  divides the wave

  the lights of Swann’s café

  grow dim…

  …and morning comes to Cay Cuchillo, a dagger-shape of sand and rock off the coast of Belize, a few miles southwest of the Chinchorro Bank. Nine miles long, seven wide at the hilt. The gray sky is pinked in the east, bundles of mauve cloud reflecting the new sun. Venus low on the horizon.

  Rollers break on the beach at Half Shell Bay, the waves sounding like a giant breathing in his sleep. Crossing the tidal margin, a ghost crab pauses in its creep as the thin edge of the water inches up to erase its tracks from the mucky sand. The fronds of a coco palm twitch; the round leaves of sea grape appear to
spin in a sudden freshet. Hummingbirds hover beside the blossoms of a cashew tree.

  Near the hilt of the dagger, shielded from the winds by a hill with a concave rock face, lie the white buildings of a resort. Treasure Cove. A skull-and-crossbones hangs limp above the office, a stucco faux-colonial that also encloses two luxury apartments and a bar-restaurant. It’s set close against the hill and, among palms and jacaranda and flowering shrubs, bungalows are scattered beneath it along the curve of the beach. From the eastern end of the beach, a wooden pier extends into the water—moored to it are several sailboats and a cabin cruiser. Dark-skinned women in head wraps and blue uniform dresses mop the patio that abuts the beachside bar, a construction of poles and thatch. A radio plays softly. Solo tu…siempre solo tu. Astringents mask the smell of brine.

  Swann’s faces the Belizean coast, about two miles from the point of the dagger. It’s a low, derelict building with a thatched roof, a packed sand floor, and boards painted red, green, black. A hill rises inland and clinging to its side, about halfway up, is a shanty with boards painted in identical colors. Inside the café, Fredo Galvez, a slender, small-boned man of middle years, is sweeping up broken glass from last night’s riot with a twig broom. He wears a pair of ragged shorts and a T-shirt from which all but the word Jesus has been bleached. His features and coloration are a mix of Spanish and Indian, yet he has sharp blue eyes and his hair is crispy. Once he’s finished with sweeping, he stows the broom in back of the bar and rights an overturned stool. He surveys his work and, satisfied, steps out onto the beach and lights a cigarette, stands looking at the sea, at the dark coastline melting up from the morning haze. The sun has not yet cleared the horizon and already the morning freshness is burning off.

  Beside the café is a palm tree stripped of its fronds, its trunk shaped roughly like an L, growing more-or-less parallel to the ground for eight or nine feet, then shooting upwards. Fredo sits on the horizontal portion of the trunk to finish his smoke and plan his day. He has to fetch fuel for he generator, meat for the kitchen. They have enough rice and potatoes to get through the week. He spots a solitary figure off toward the point and, though he can’t make her out, he recognizes her by her clothing—a white blouse and tan leggings—and by the thrill that passes across the base of his neck. It’s been three years since she came to him, and he’d been hoping for at least three more. She’s been up in the hills, keeping company with animal spirits and duppies, with the soul-shell of an old Caribe wizard.

  “What you know, Annie?” He whispers the words; she could not possibly hear them, but she does. Neither can he hear her—the words tumble into his head somehow.

  Somebody’s coming at you.

  “A Yankee?”

  Worse.

  “What kind of worse we talking about?”

  You might have to dig me a hole.

  They seem to mingle, the edges of two clouds interpenetrating, yet he has no real sense of her, no clue as to what sort of woman she is. She never lets him near, except when she wears him like a dress and then he can remember no more than bits and pieces. He knows her story, but it’s only a story and has little personal context. The vague apprehension he has of her is fading and, though her image lingers, motionless on the beach, if he turns away for a second, if he even blinks, she’ll be gone. He lowers his head, worried by what she has told him.

  A bell ringing.

  Armed with a long switch, William Jerome, a skinny black man, is driving five cows along the beach toward their grazing ground in the hills inland. As he comes abreast of the cafe, he sings out, “How’s she going, Fredo?”

  “You know, mon. It going and going.”

  The bell cow veers toward the water and William drives her back with a flick of his switch. “Damn,” he says. “If I rule the day, it ain’t going to get no hotter than this.” He waves to Fredo and, as the herd picks up the pace, he breaks into a trot. Fredo sits a while, listening to the hiss of the surf, then he sighs, stands. He’s got work to do.

  Fredo buys turtle meat, conch, and a stalk of bananas in the market at Dever’s Landing, the island’s sole town, a collection of shanties perched on thin posts against the storm tides, like drab long-legged birds carrying their nests on their backs, and, at the foot of a long concrete wharf, a dun-colored stucco building housing the police, the customs office, the bank. Tully Langdon, the man who runs the wharf, is late in rising, so Fredo has to wait for his gas. He sits on an empty oil drum, cooled by the salt breeze.

  A vulture,

  it might be carved

  of shadow or obsidian,

  black wings folded

  atop a creosote-tarred piling,

  turns its head

  toward him and he crosses himself. Tully arrives and, once Fredo has accomplished his business, he catches a ride on the iceman’s truck back to the café. At mid-morning, his wife Emily, a lean black woman in faded print dress and tennis shoes, walks down from the hillside shanty and joins him, their four-year-old, Leona, in tow. Their boys, Jenry and Palace, are at school. Leona plays about Emily’s feet in the kitchen as she cuts the turtle meat into strips and pounds it soft. Shortly after noon, Wilton Barrios, thickset and yellow-skinned, acne scarring on his cheeks, comes in and plants himself at a table, the chair complaining beneath him. Heavy eyelids lend him a sleepy, sated look. He’s one of the island’s few prosperous citizens. Gold rings on his fingers, cell phone clipped to an alligator belt. He sold the land upon which the resort was built and, for the particular character of his prosperity, if for no other reason, he’s not well liked.

  “Got some nice turtle,” Fredo tells him. “If you want, Emily fix you some conch salad, too.”

  Wilton grunts his approval and says, “I’ll take fries with the turtle.” He adjusts his belt beneath the overhang of his belly. “There’s a white mon asking about you at Treasure Cove.”

  “That so?” Fredo carries Wilton a beer.

  “Yeah, a German fella. The mon’s crazy about pirates. ’Pears like he got an interest in talking to you. I tell him I’m going up your way for lunch, I got room for he and his woman in the Jeep. But he just grin and say, ‘No, we going to walk. Walking be good for us.’” Wilton chuckles. “The sun duppy panting in the street, and he think it be good for them.”

  “When they coming?”

  “I seen them toiling up the beach. They be along directly and they don’t die first.”

  A battered truck pulls up outside and two laborers saunter in and sit as far away from Wilton as possible. They order beans and rice, beer. Wilton has almost finished eating and a squall is moving in from the northeast, leaden clouds sweeping over the island, when the German couple arrive. The man is fit and tanned, in his late thirties, dressed in shorts and a sweated through T-shirt, his blond hair pulled into a ponytail; the woman is similarly attired, but her hair is a silky platinum blond, and her skin is pale where her clothing has protected her, face and arms and legs sun-reddened, and she is soft, voluptuous to the point of caricature, with enormous breasts and a rear-end that nearly obscures the seat of the stool onto which she has collapsed. She has the look of an enormous doll, skin dappled with hectic patches, stuffed into garments that must have belonged to a smaller doll. A diamond plump as a cashew on her left hand signals wealth to the world. She orders a Pepsi, which Leona fetches, and, as the little girl gapes, astonished by her milky immensity, she presses the cold bottle to her neck and forehead, and gazes at the thatch, her eyes lidded and lips parted, as if spent by passionate demands.

  Emily darts from the kitchen and snatches Leona back, and the man introduces himself as Alvin Klose (Klo-suh, he says) and asks if he is speaking to Fredo Galvez.

  “That’s my name, all right,” Fredo says.

  Klose divests himself of a small backpack, setting it atop the counter. The woman, whom he introduces as his wife, Selkie, asks if they have a ladies’ room and Fredo tells her there’s a place out back. Klose unzips the pack, extracts a notebook and pen, and says, “I hope y
ou won’t mind if I ask you some questions?”

  “As things allow,” says Fredo, gesturing at the tables.

  “Yes…yes, of course. I understand you’re busy.” He stares at Fredo admiringly. “I want to ask you about Anne Bonny.”

  “Anne Bonny.” Fredo pretends to reflect on the name. “Weren’t that the Yankee girl got herself killed over on the mainland?”

  “No, no. She was a privateer. A pirate.”

  “We don’t tolerate no pirates on the cay.”

  “This was years ago,” Klose said. “Hundreds of years. In the early eighteenth century.”

  “Anne Bonny.” Fredo swipes at the counter with a rag. “Maybe I hear something about her. Yeah.”

  Wilton scrapes back his chair, heaves a sigh, comes over and drops his money onto the bar. He salutes Klose and says to Fredo, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He calls back to the kitchen, “That some fine salad, Emily.” As he makes for the door, thunder growls. He glances back, gives Fredo a wink, and says, “Right on!” The laborers, who have been talking quietly, laugh and one says to Fredo, on hearing the Jeep’s engine turn over, “Now the mon think he Jesus.”

  “Last week he thinks he Bob Marley, so Jesus be a comedown,” says Fredo.

  John Bottomley and his son take stools at the bar. Fredo serves them beer and holds a brief conversation about fishing. Selkie, who looks paler for her experience of Swann’s outhouse, retakes her seat and the couple begin whispering heatedly in German. Fredo’s been around tourists enough to know that Selkie wants to go and Klose insists on staying. They break off their argument. Selkie stares at the wall with a frozen expression. Rain seethes on the thatch. Klose, his tone clenched, says, “We will have lunch now.”