by Stephen King
I said nothing. He wiped his eyes again with his forearm and drew in a long, watery breath. Then he said, "I looked into the story of John Eastlake, and how his daughters were drowned, and what happened after--do you remember asking me to do that?"
I did, but it seemed long ago, and unimportant. What I think now is that something wanted it to seem that way to me.
"I went surfing around on the Internet and came up with a good deal from the local newspapers and a couple of memoirs that are available for download. One of them--I shit you not, muchacho--is called Boat Trips and Beeswax, A Girlhood in Nokomis, by Stephanie Weider Gravel-Miller."
"Sounds like quite a trip down memory lane."
"It was. She talks about 'the happy darkies, picking oranges and singing simple songs of praise in their mellifluous voices.' "
"I guess that was before Jay-Z."
"Got that right. Even better, I talked to Chris Shannington, over on Casey Key--you've almost certainly seen him. Colorful old geezer who walks everyplace with this gnarled briarwood cane, almost as tall as he is, and a big straw hat on his head. His father, Ellis Shannington, was John Eastlake's gardener. According to Chris, it was Ellis who took Maria and Hannah, Elizabeth's two older sisters, back to the Braden School ten days or so after the drowning. He said, 'Those chirrun were heartbroken for the babby-uns.' "
Wireman's imitation of the old man's southern accent was eerily good, and I found myself for some reason thinking of the Walrus and the Carpenter again, walking up the beach with the little Oysters. The only part of the poem I could remember clearly was the Carpenter telling them they'd had a pleasant run, but of course the Oysters couldn't answer, for they'd been eaten--every one.
"Do you want to hear this now?" Wireman asked.
"Have you got time to tell me now?"
"Sure. Annmarie's got the duty until seven, although as a matter of practical fact, we share it most days. Why don't we walk up to the house? I've got a file. There isn't much in it, but there's at least one picture that's worth looking at. Chris Shannington had it in a box of his father's things. I walked up to the Casey Key Public Library with him and copied it." He paused. "It's a picture of Heron's Roost."
"As it was back then, you mean?"
We had started to stroll back up the boardwalk, but Wireman stopped. "No, amigo, you misunderstand. I'm talking about the original Heron's Roost. El Palacio is the second Roost, built almost twenty-five years after the little girls drowned. By then, John Eastlake's ten or twenty million had grown to a hundred and fifty million or so. War Is Good Business, Invest Your Son."
"Vietnam protest movement, 1969," I said. "Often seen in tandem with A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle."
"Good, amigo," Wireman said. He waved a hand toward the riotous greenery that began just south of us. "The first Heron's Roost was out there, back when the world was young and flappers said poopoopie-doop."
I thought of Mary Ire, not just tiddly or squiffy but downright drunk, saying Just the one house, sitting up there and looking like something you'd see on the Gracious Homes Tour in Charleston or Mobile.
"What happened to it?" I asked.
"So far as I know, nothing but time and decay," he said. "When John Eastlake gave up on recovering the bodies of his twins, he gave up on Duma Key, too. He paid off most of the help, packed his traps, took the three daughters who remained to him, got in his Rolls-Royce--he really had one--and drove away. A novel F. Scott Fitzgerald never wrote, that's what Chris Shannington said. Told me Eastlake was never at peace until Elizabeth brought him back here."
"Do you think that's something Shannington actually knows, or just a story he's gotten used to hearing himself tell?"
"Quien sabe?" Wireman said. He stopped again and waved toward the southern end of Duma Key. "No overgrowth back then. You could see the original house from the mainland and vice-versa. And so far as I know, amigo, the house is still there. Whatever's left of it. Sitting and rotting." He reached the kitchen door and looked at me, unsmiling. "That would be something to paint, wouldn't it? A ghost-ship on dry land."
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe it would."
viii
He took me into the library with the suit of armor in the corner and the museum-quality weapons on the wall. There, on the table next to the telephone, was a folder marked JOHN EASTLAKE/HERON'S ROOST I. He opened it and removed a photograph showing a house that bore an unmistakable similarity to the one we were in--the similarity, say, of first cousins. Yet there was one basic difference between the two, and the similarities--the same basic footprint for both houses, I thought, and the same roof of bright orange Spanish tile--only underlined it.
The current Palacio hid from the world behind a high wall broken by only a single gate--there wasn't even a tradesman's entrance. It had a beautiful interior courtyard which few people other than Wireman, Annmarie, the pool girl, and the twice-weekly gardener ever saw; it was like the body of a beautiful woman hidden under a shapeless piece of clothing.
The first Heron's Roost was very different. Like Elizabeth's mansion in China Town, it featured half a dozen pillars and a broad, welcoming veranda. It had a wide drive sweeping boldly up to it, splitting what looked like two acres of lawn. Not a gravel drive, either, as Mary Ire had told me, but rosy crushed shells. The original had invited the world in. Its successor--El Palacio--told the world to stay the hell out. Ilse had seen that at once, and so had I, but that day we had been looking from the road. Since then my view had changed, and with good reason: I had gotten used to seeing it from the beach. To coming upon it from its unarmored side.
The first Heron's Roost had also been higher, three stories in front and four in back, so--if it really did stand on a rise, as Mary had said--people on the top floor would have had a breathtaking three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the Gulf, the mainland, Casey Key, and Don Pedro Island. Not bad. But the lawn looked strangely ragged--unkempt--and there were holes in the line of ornamental palms dancing like hula girls on either side of the house. I looked closer and saw that some of the upper windows had been boarded up. The roofline had a strangely unbalanced look, too. It took a second to realize why. There was a chimney at the east end. There should have been another at the west end, but there wasn't.
"Was this taken after they left?" I asked.
He shook his head. "According to Shannington, it was snapped in March of 1927, before the little girls drowned, when everyone was still happy and well. That isn't dilapidation you see, it's storm-damage. From an Alice."
"Which is what?"
"Hurricane season officially starts June fifteenth down here and lasts about five months. Out-of-season storms with torrential rains and high winds . . . as far as the old-timers are concerned, they're all Alice. As in Hurricane Alice. It's kind of a joke."
"You're making that up."
"Nope. Esther--the big one in '26--missed Duma completely, but the Alice in March of '27 hit it pretty much dead-on. Then it blew inland and drowned in the Glades. It did the damage you see in this picture--not much, really; blew down some palms, knocked out some glass, tore up the lawn. But in another way, its effects are still being felt. Because it seems pretty certain it was that Alice that led to the drowning deaths of Tessie and Laura, and that led to everything else. Including you and me standing here now."
"Explain."
"Remember this?"
He took another photo from his folder, and I certainly did remember it. The big one was on the second-floor landing of the main staircase. This was a smaller, sharper copy. It was the Eastlake family, with John Eastlake wearing a black bathing singlet and looking like a Hollywood B-list actor who might have specialized in detective movies and jungle epics. He was holding Elizabeth. One hand cupped her plump little bottom. The other held that harpoon pistol, and a face-mask with an attached snorkel.
"Judging just by Elizabeth, I'm going to guess this might have been taken around 1925," Wireman said. "She looks two, going on three. And Adriana"--he ta
pped the eldest--"looks like she might be seventeen going on thirty-four, wouldn't you say?"
Indeed. Seventeen and ripe, even in her it-covers-damn-near-everything bathing suit.
"She's already got that sulky, pouty I-want-to-be-somewhere-else look, too," Wireman said. "I wonder just how surprised her father was when she up and eloped with one of his plant managers. And I wonder if he wasn't, in his heart of hearts, glad to see her go." He put on his Chris Shannington drawl. "Run off to Atlanta with a boy in a tie and an eyeshade." Then he quit it. I guessed the subject of little dead girls, even ones lost eighty years ago, was still a tender one with him. "She and her new hubby came back, but by then it was just a hunt for the bodies."
I tapped the grim-faced black nanny. "Who was this?"
"Melda or Tilda or maybe even, God save us, Hecuba, according to Chris Shannington. His father knew, but Chris no longer remembers."
"Nice bracelets."
He glanced at them without much interest. "If you say so."
"Maybe John Eastlake was sleeping with her," I said. "Maybe the bracelets were a little present."
"Quien sabe? Rich widower, young woman--it's been known to happen."
I tapped the picnic basket, which the young black woman was holding with both hands, her arms bunched as though it was heavy. Heavier than just a few sandwiches could account for, you'd think . . . but maybe there was a whole chicken in there. And maybe a few bottles of beer for ole massa, as well--a little reward after he'd finished his day's dives. "What color would you say that hamper is? Dark brown? Or is it red?"
Wireman gave me a strange look. "In a black-and-white photograph, it's hard to tell."
"Tell me how the storm led to the deaths of the little girls."
He opened the folder again and handed me an old news story with an accompanying photograph. "This is from the Venice Gondolier, March 28th, 1927. I got the original info on the net. Jack Cantori called the paper, got someone to make a copy and shoot me a fax. Jack's terrific, by the way."
"No argument there," I said. I studied the photo. "Who are these girls? No--don't tell me. The one on his left's Maria. Hannah's on his right."
"A-plus. Hannah's the one with breasts. She was fourteen in '27."
We studied the fax sheet in silence for a few moments. E-mail would have been better. The fax had annoying dark vertical lines running through it, blurring some of the print, but the headline was clear enough: STORM PROVES TREASURE-HUNTING BOON TO AMATEUR DIVER. And the picture was clear enough, too. Eastlake's hairline had receded a little. As if to compensate, his narrow bandleader's mustache was now closer to a walrus. And although he was still wearing the same black bathing singlet, it was now under severe stress . . . and actually popped under one arm, I thought, although the picture's resolution wasn't quite good enough to be certain. It appeared Dad Eastlake had packed on some pork between 1925 and 1927--the B-movie actor would have trouble getting roles if he didn't start skipping desserts and doing more work in the gym. The girls flanking him weren't as sloe-eyed-sexy as their big sister--you looked at Adriana and thought about hot afternoons in a haymow, you looked at these two and wondered if they were getting their schoolwork done--but they were pretty in a not-quite-there-yet way, and their excitement shone out in the picture. Sure it did.
Because, spread before them on the sand, was treasure.
"I can't make it all out, and the damn caption's blurry," I complained.
"There's a magnifying glass in the desk, but let me save you a headache." Wireman picked up a pen and pointed with the tip. "That's a medicine bottle, and that there is a musket-ball--or so Eastlake claims in the story. Maria's got her hand on what appears to be a boot . . . or the remains of one. Next to the boot--"
"Pair of spectacles," I said. "And . . . a necklace-chain?"
"The story claims it's a bracelet. I don't know. All I could swear to is a metal loop of some kind, overgrown with crud. But the older girl's definitely holding out an earring."
I scanned the story. In addition to the stuff on view, Eastlake had found various eating utensils . . . four cups he claimed were "Italianate" . . . a trivet . . . a box of gears (whatever that might mean) . . . and nails without number. He had also found half a China Man. Not a Chinaman; a China Man. It wasn't pictured, at least not that I could see. The story said Eastlake had been diving on the eroded reefs west of Duma Key for fifteen years, sometimes to fish, often just to relax. He said he had found all sorts of litter, but nothing of interest. He said that the Alice (he called it that) had generated some remarkably big waves, and they must have shifted the sand inside the reef just enough to reveal what he called "a dumping field."
"He doesn't call it a wreck," I said.
"It wasn't," Wireman said. "There was no boat. He didn't find one, and neither did the dozens of people who helped him try to recover the bodies of his little girls. Only detritus. They would have found a wreck if there was a wreck to find; the water on the southwest end of the Key is no more than twenty-five feet deep all the way out to what remains of Kitt Reef, and it's pretty clear now. Back then it was like turquoise glass."
"Any theories about how it came to be there?"
"Sure. The best is that some boat close to foundering came blowing in a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years before, shedding shit as it came. Or maybe the crew was tossing stuff overboard to stay afloat. They made repairs after the storm was over and went on their way. It would explain why there was a swath of detritus for Eastlake to find, and also why none of it was particularly valuable. Treasure would have stayed with the ship."
"And the reef wouldn't have ripped the keel out of a boat that got blown in here back in the 1700s? Or 1600s?"
Wireman shrugged. "Chris Shannington says no one knows what the geography of Kitt Reef might have been a hundred and fifty years ago."
I looked at the spread-out loot. The smiling middle daughters. The smiling Daddy, who was soon going to have to buy himself a new bathing costume. And I suddenly decided he hadn't been sleeping with the nanny. No. Even a mistress would have told him he couldn't have a newspaper photo of himself taken in that old thing. She would have found a tactful reason, but the real one was right in front of me, after all these years; even with less-than-perfect vision in my right eye, I could see it. He was too fat. Only he didn't see it, and his daughters didn't see it, either. Loving eyes did not see.
Too fat. Something there, wasn't there? Some A that practically demanded a B.
"I'm surprised he talked about what he found at all," I said. "If you happened on stuff like this today and then blabbed to Channel 6, half of Florida would show up in their little putt-putts, hunting for doubloons and pieces of eight with metal detectors."
"Ah, but this was another Florida," Wireman said, and I remembered Mary Ire using the same phrase. "John Eastlake was a rich man, and Duma Key was his private preserve. Besides, there were no doubloons, no pieces of eight--just moderately interesting junk uncovered by a freak storm. For weeks he went down and dived where that debris was scattered on the floor of the Gulf--and it was close in, according to Shannington; at low tide, you could practically wade to it. And sure, he was probably keeping an eye out for valuables. He was a rich man, but I don't think that vaccinates a man against the treasure-bug."
"No," I said. "I'm sure it doesn't."
"The nanny would have gone with him on his treasure-hunting expeditions. The three still-at-home girls, too: the twins and Elizabeth. Maria and Hannah were back at their boarding school in Bradenton, and big sis had run off to Atlanta. Eastlake and his little ones probably had picnics down there."
"How often?" I began to see where this was going.
"Often. Maybe every day while the debris field was at its richest. They wore a path from the house to what was called Shade Beach. It was half a mile, if that."
"A path two adventurous little girls could follow on their own."
"And one day did. To everyone's sorrow." He swept the pictures back into the f
older. "There's a story here, muchacho, and I suppose it's marginally more interesting than a little girl swallowing a marble, but a tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh."
He brooded a moment.
"What probably happened is that one day in April of 1927, when Tessie and Laura were supposed to be napping, they decided to get up, sneak down the path, and go hunting for treasure at Shade Beach. Probably they meant to do no more than wade in as far as their knees, which is all they were permitted to do--one of the stories quotes John Eastlake as saying that, and Adriana backed him up."
"The married daughter who came back."
"Right. She and her new husband returned a day or two before the search for the bodies was officially called off. That's according to Shannington. Anyway, one of the little girls maybe saw something gleaming a little further out and started to flounder. Then--"
"Then her sister tried to save her." Yes, I could see it. Only I saw Lin and Ilse as they'd been when they were small. Not twins, but for three or four golden years nearly inseparable.
Wireman nodded. "And then the rip took em both. Had to've been that way, amigo; that's why the bodies weren't found. Off they went, heigh-ho for the caldo largo."
I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant by the rip, then remembered a painting by Winslow Homer, romantic but of undeniable power: Undertow.
The intercom on the wall beeped, startling us both. Wireman struck the folder with his arm as he turned around, knocking photocopies and faxes everywhere.
"Mr. Wireman!" It was Annmarie Whistler. "Mr. Wireman, are you there?"
"I'm here," Wireman said.
"Mr. Wireman?" She sounded agitated. Then, as if to herself: "Jesus, where are you?"
"The fucking button," he muttered, and went to the wall unit, not quite running. He pushed the button. "I'm here. What's wrong? What's happened? Did she fall?"