Whirlaway
Page 17
We ate the turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, and pumpkin pie — all very good, by the way. I’d like to thank the staff for that, for though these facilities deserve their reputations for savagery, debauchery, corruption, and abuse, you’ll also find kindness and even acts of heroism and altruism here. Clive very much liked the pie, especially the whipped cream, and had two slices. Though he called me Daddy, I don’t believe he remembered me.
Sofia was going to try to keep the two thoroughbred yearlings I had bought to train, and Clive would soon be enrolled in Montessori. Her parents were helping out financially. My father, who’d sold the Island and all its hothouses and groves of old-growth oak, had also sent a generous check, though he was too disgusted with me to venture through the sally port and the metal detectors to actually visit me. Good behavior and a positive attitude were paramount for my release, so I resisted the temptation to believe he and I would be permanently estranged.
The dinner was over too quickly. As tables were being cleared and stacked and metal chairs were being folded, I kissed my son and wife and promised to send her my almost finished novel soon. She thought Whirlaway a good title and hoped that I’d treated her character favorably.
I told her I’d designated her Queen of the Peacocks and Chief Refuter of Salvador Dalí.
“What an asshole that Dalí,” she said.
“And tell Sweets I’m sorry for breaking my promise.”
She pressed her fingers to her temples, closed her eyes, and said somberly: “I will communicate it to him. But don’t you worry about Tortilla Boy. He is very enamored of your son.”
Watching her leaving me once again through the gates to freedom and wondering if I would ever see her again, I felt suddenly desolate.
She seemed to understand and turned to touch me lightly. “It won’t be long this time, Eddie,” she said. “I know it in my heart.”
My nose began to run, my eyes to burn, and I had to turn away, wishing I was not so thick and confounded by drugs.
Before Jungler left, he gave me a stack of postcards. They were years old, all of them from Shelly who had sent them to cabin number 7 at the Island. I read them in my room as best as I could in the order in which they’d been sent. The last one, postmarked a year before, read:
Dear Eddie: Donny died today, melanoma. He was forty-two. He went so fast. Unbelievable that my whole family would be gone within the year. Looks like I’ll be staying here a lot longer than planned, funeral arrangements, these fly by night policies, one I’m collecting on I told you about that paid three million if Donny died of melanoma before age forty-five, which he went and did. More money than I know what to do with or even care to have, though I expect I’ll probably die of cancer here in the next year myself. Until then, Bay Minette is home. I suppose this is my roots, and I’ve got all my family here, and they’ve finally stopped haunting me.
Take care. Shelly
Acknowledgments
IT WAS THE READERS IN THE END WHO MADE THE DIFFERENCE IN this book: Marion Winik, who put the ending back on the rails; Steve Taylor, who helped me with my Scottish; Ralph McCarthy, who said whatever you do don’t give up on this and recommended I expound on the telepathic dog; Dave Jannetta, who lent me his cinematic eye and told me to get rid of all the instruments of torture; Dave Reutter, who shared with me his expertise on horseracing and the American Loner; my wife, Cristina, who checked all my Spanish; my son, Tom, who listened patiently and often wondrously and reminded me wherever possible to be kind; Scott Parker, who furiously waved those flags as I came in for the landing; Professor Ken Millard, the first of the Great Intellectuals to propose that my work might have scholarly merit; and my publisher and editor, Rhonda Hughes, who doubled the value of this novel with scores of fresh ideas and suggestions on clarity and readability.