Dead on the Island

by Bill Crider

  By the time I was released, I'd finished Absalom, Absalom. It bothered me more than I wanted to tell anyone, and I hoped Vicky wouldn't ask me about it. Colonel Sutpen's son, tainted by the wrong blood, denied by his father, eventually killed by his half-brother--it all reminded me a little too much of Ray and Dino. And even a little bit of myself. Goodhue Coldfield, living out his life in his attic and dying there, well, at least Dino and Sally West hadn't retreated that far yet. Not quite. I left the book in the cell. Maybe the next inmate would find it more enlightening than I had. Or less.

  I went by the hospital to see Dino, who was ready to leave. "It's not too bad here now," he said. "I got a TV, at least." He pointed to the color set that was held high on the wall opposite his bed on some sort of metal holder. The controls were pinned to his bed. "I'll have some more money for you when I get out of this place."

  "Don't worry about the money," I said.

  "I know what you mean," he said. "Old Ray." He shook his head. "I've been thinking about what he said, you know? And what worries me is that he might even have been right. I mean, I did order him around a lot. But hell, I did that with everybody. When you grow up like I did, you get to thinking it's all right. I'd even forgotten that I'd asked him to pick up some beers on the night of that wreck. I'm not the one who caused it, though. That wasn't my fault." He looked around the hospital room. "Or was it?"

  I couldn't help him there. I was wondering how much of it was mine. "What about you and Evelyn?" I said.

  "What does that mean?"

  I felt awkward. "I don't know. I just thought, well, maybe the two of you . . . . " I didn't know how to finish.

  Dino reached for the TV control and fiddled with it. I could tell he wanted to turn the set on, but he resisted.

  "I don't know," he said finally. "All those years. You were right about me. I was one step from being a hermit. But it wouldn't be easy to change. Not now. I'm not too sure about Sharon, either. I don't think she likes me very much. This whole thing wouldn't have happened if she hadn't wanted to get back at me. It wouldn't be easy to make up for all those years."

  I didn't try to reassure him the way I had Evelyn. "I see what you mean," I said.

  "Yeah. And Evelyn, she's OK, and she saved my ass twice, but I'm not sure that she'd want me around all the time. There'd be a lot of talk."

  I laughed. "There was a lot of talk before, remember. I'm sure half the town knew about you and Evelyn. And these days no one would be surprised by anything. If you two got together, it wouldn't make a ripple. People have got a lot more to talk about than your love life."

  Dino managed a wry grin. "You may be right about that. My family's not exactly front-page news around the Island anymore."

  "You must not have seen a paper lately," I said.

  "Sure I have, and you'll notice that I was able to keep most of what happened out of it. It was just an ordinary kidnapping as far as anyone knows."

  "Don't count on that," I said. I was thinking about Sally West. "Not everyone gets the news from the papers. But in a week or two, everyone will be talking about something else. There's nothing as boring as old news."

  "I guess so," he said. "Still--"

  I left it like that. What Dino did with his life was his own business, and maybe Evelyn and Sharon's business, but it wasn't mine. Not any longer.

  I left the hospital and bought a bottle of Mogen David. Then I drove to Sally West's home and told her the whole thing, more or less unedited.

  "You know," she said, taking a sip of the sweet wine, "hearing that story almost makes me feel young again." She sipped again. "Almost."

  "Not me," I said. "It makes me feel a hundred years old."

  "You don't remember the old days," she said. "Not the way I do, at any rate. Dino's uncles were always living on the edge. Oh, not of kidnapping or anything like that, but it made life on the Island exciting. The place had personality then, even if it did mean that the Texas Rangers were always trying to close things down. It could be that way again, you know."

  "I wouldn't want it to be," I said. "Not if it meant doing what I've had to do."

  "No, I suppose you wouldn't." She sipped. "What do you suppose Ray meant by that remark?"

  I didn't have to ask her which remark she meant. She was the only one I'd told about what Ray said just before he died.

  "I don't know," I said. "Maybe someday I'll find out."

  "You'll be sure to let me know, won't you?"

  "You'll be the first," I said.

  ~ * ~

  My sweatshirt was soaked, and the cardboard box holding the cheese had just about turned to mush in my hand, but there was still no sign of the rat.

  There was a rumble of thunder, and a gust of wind blew the rain right through the legs of my jeans.

  I looked over the seawall one last time, and I thought I saw a shadow move from one of the granite boulders to the next. The rain slid over their slick pink and black surfaces.

  I took the cheese out of the box. Then I mashed up the box and stuck it in my back pocket. No sense in adding to the clutter already there. I peeled the cellophane off the cheese and put the cellophane in my pocket with the box.

  "That you down there, rat?" I said.

  There was no answer, but of course I hadn't really expected one. I tossed the eight ounces of cheese down to where I'd seen the shadow move, turned, and jogged away.

  The rain stung my face, but my knee hardly hurt at all.