Dragonfly

by Farris, John

  "Amateur bouts. I had quick hands. But I never had the desire."

  The dog came out of nowhere at them, swift as a cloud shadow through leathery magnolia leaves lying on the Bermuda lawn in front of the house. Joe's blood ran cold when he saw it, because of the lather around the brute's muzzle. But Walter Lee whistled sharply and the dog stopped a few feet shy of them. A moment later they heard a girl's voice calling.

  "Bruiser! You get back here, finish your damn bath!"

  The dog appeared to be some kind of mastiff, bulky at the shoulders and with a flattened black muzzle on the order of a boxer dog. But Bruiser probably weighed twice what the average boxer would weigh. He'd been in his bath, all right, which accounted for the suds Joe had momentarily mistaken for hydrophobia. Then he shook himself all over, showering both Joe and Walter Lee. This made Bruiser happy, and he sat back with tongue lolling, heedless of the young girl who now came charging after him with his collar and chain leash.

  "Bruiser!"

  The mastiff lay down and wormed his way through some fallen leaves.

  "Now look at you! We've got to start all over again!"

  She was about thirteen, and tall, with no real shape apparent yet in her Grateful Dead T-shirt and frayed denim shorts. Her hair was a frizzy strawberry blond. She had red-rimmed blue eyes and sun-raw cheekbones and a nice curvy mouth to go with a pugnacious jaw.

  Joe brushed suds from the front of his knit shirt and said, "Do you have room in Bruiser's bath for me?"

  She took him in with a slightly startled expression, from the mud on his shoes to his hairline; still looking at him, she stooped to wrestle the now-accommodating Bruiser into his choke collar.

  "You are a mess, aren't you?" Her voice was high and tended to sound aggrieved. "Are you the decorator from—"

  "Charleston? No, I'm Joe Bryce from Chicago. What's your name?"

  She pushed and pulled until Bruiser was on his feet.

  "Elizabeth Abelard. You might as well call me Lizzie, everybody else does." She expressed her distaste with a squint and wrinkling of her nose. "What happened to you?"

  Walter Lee said, "His car got stuck off the road there."

  "I was trying to get out of the way of—"

  "The Queen Crab?" Lizzie looked at the Range Rover, parked beside a pristine '62 Cadillac in beige and black, its engine still ticking in the sun. "I heard her pitching a fit about the driveway being blocked, or something."

  Bruiser, belatedly, began to growl at Joe.

  "Oh, shut up, he looks okay to me."

  "What kind of dog is that?"

  "Neapolitan mastiff. If you tried to sneak in here at night he'd kill you."

  "Oh, come on, Miss Lizzie," Walter Lee said.

  "Well—" She gave the dog a hug, wetting down her T-shirt. "He bites a little, but he can't chew. Walter Lee, you gonna help this man with his stuck car?"

  "Yes, I'll take care of it."

  Lizzie looked soberly atJoe, then at the book he was protecting under one arm.

  "Okay. He'll be with me." To Joe she said, "Let me hose down Bruiser, and we'll do something about your shoes. Are they washable?"

  "I think so."

  "Let's go, Joe."

  He followed Lizzie and Bruiser across the motor court and along a brick garden walkway chinked with moss. There was a vine-covered trellis overhead. Tree ferns, Spanish moss and mistletoe grew in the great boughs of the oaks that shaded the garden. Water trickled into a pool edged with red and purple impatiens. They came to the spigot and a garden hose where Lizzie had been bathing the dog.

  She tied the chain leash to the spigot and went back to work. Joe sat down on a stone bench nearby and put his book aside.

  "That youra?" Lizzie said, squinting in the sun that shone through hollies behind Joe.

  "Uh-huh. I was going to have it signed and send it to my sister."

  "Oh. I didn't think you were the sort to be reading that stuff. Ninety-nine percent of her readers are either old maids or sex-starved housewives. You ought to read some of the fan letters Abby gets, are they a piss."

  Joe unknotted and took off his shoes. "Is Abby your sister?"

  "Hold still, Bruiser. No, we're second cousins. My stepfather got a snootful and fell off the back of his boat down around Daufuskie Island last year. Drowned. My mother's never been able to handle adversity, which includes me, so I'm staying here until she gets her wits together. Which may or may not ever happen. It's okay. But the damn school bus takes an hour each way." She swatted a mosquito that had alighted on the back of one thigh, looked around at Joe for the third or fourth time and said, "Did anybody ever tell you you've got really terrific eyes?"

  "Lots of times. Do you always say everything that comes into your head?"

  Lizzie shrugged. "Sure, why not? Who's gonna sue me, I don't have any money."

  A station wagon had pulled up in the motor court, and a slim young guy up to date on manly fashions got out with blueprints under one arm, looked at the front of the house with a calculating eye.

  "That must be the decorator from Charleston," Lizzie said. "We've had 'em from all over, believe me. They last about a week."

  "Lot of work going on inside?"

  "The Queen Crab's never satisfied."

  She stood back to spray the soap off Bruiser, waited until she was sure the decorator from Charleston was safely in the house, then let the mastiff off his leash to roll on the mossy ground. Lizzie coiled the hose neatly. By now she was soaking wet, from the hose and the humidity in the garden.

  "Come on, let's find something to put on. We'll throw those running shoes in the washing machine. Pluff mud doesn't stain, like the red clay where I come from. I guess you want to meet Abby while you're here."

  "The word is she's kind of hard to see."

  Lizzie offered a knowing smile, and flipped a few soggy curls off her forehead with the back of her hand.

  "I can arrange it for you, Joe."

  Chapter Eleven

  There was a service porch tacked to the house off the kitchen; it was not heated and there was no air-conditioning. The walls were old brick, in a lattice pattern to allow for the passage of breezes on the sweltering Low Country days. A glass storm door opened to the gardens that surrounded the house on three sides, but the porch had no windows. The laundry and ironing were done by girls who came in three days a week.

  It was an in-between day for laundry, so Lillian, the housekeeper, attended to Joe's running shoes and muddied clothing. Joe, not quite at home in his boxer shorts and a white terry-cloth pool robe, glanced at the sports section of the previous Sunday's Columbia State, waiting for Lizzie to return with some clothes for him to wear while his own things were in the wash.

  "Have you worked here long?" he asked Lillian. She was a thin mannerly woman, Gullah-black, her skin as lightless as a seam of buried coal, her forehead popped with small wens like fleshly afterthoughts. She wore thick glasses. Her feet were in such poor shape from age and the climate she could only wear carpet slippers.

  "For the family, twenty-eight years. We move ourselves to the Barony from Beaufort, let's see, it's five years now. This house was falling down before then. Would you like some coffee?"

  "I can't drink coffee. It's hard on my stomach lining."

  "Some grape-juice lemonade?"

  "That sounds like a winner."

  While Lillian was in the kitchen, Lizzie came bustling back and tossed him a folded T-shirt.

  "I got this one at the State Fair last weekend. Extra large, I like to sleep in 'em." Lizzie had changed from the skin out, and brushed her hair. In the diffused morning light it looked as pink and fluffy as cotton candy.

  Joe unfolded the shirt, which had a block-letter inscription. MY BODY IS AN OUTLAW. IT'S WANTED ALL OVER TOWN.

  Lillian, shuffling back from the kitchen with an old-fashioned metal soda-fountain tray and a pitcher of lemonade, looked at the shirt and said mildly, "Lizabeth, that don't hardly seem appropriate."

  "What'
s wrong? I think it's awesome." She smiled at Joe as he turned his back to take off the robe and slip the shirt on. She wore orthodontic braces, the transparent kind, which he hadn't noticed before. "I don't have any pants that would fit you, and we're kind of short of men around here. I could look in Luke's closet; he's in Columbia today sucking up to the state legislature. Luke's a little taller than you, probably, but he keeps himself in good shape for somebody as old as he is."

  "Don't go to any more trouble, Lizzie."

  She shrugged. "You look incredible in those boxers anyway. How old are you Joe?"

  "Over twenty-one."

  "Are you married?"

  "No."

  "Divorced?"

  "No. No kids, either."

  "Mind if I ask you what you do for a living?" she said with her nonchalant nosiness, sitting on the corner of a laundry-folding table next to Joe, who had sat down again in a wicker basket chair.

  "You are giving us both the earache," Lillian grumbled, looking into one of the heavy-duty driers where Joe's Nikes were tumbling around.

  "I'm a doctor."

  "Hey. No kidding. Brain surgeon?"

  "Pediatrics."

  "Oh," Lizzie said, a little disappointed. Then she brightened. "I have the worst rashes. It's because I'm so fair. I've got one now, in the middle of my back where I can't scratch—" She twisted her upper body like a soul in deep torment, then hiked the loose-fitting shirt she was wearing. "See it?"

  "Doesn't look so bad."

  "But it's driving me nuts! Is there something you could put on it?"

  "Baby powder."

  "Baby powder?"

  "Same remedy mothers have been using forever. Cornstarch and a little talc."

  Lizzie dropped her shirt just as a blond woman walked onto the porch from the kitchen. She gave Lizzie a sharp look and did a slight double-take at Joe, who smiled, but not quick enough to catch her eye as she turned to Lillian and said, "Lillian, I can't find my new swatches anywhere!"

  "What new swatches?" Lillian said, in a voice that was on the edge of indifference, but still polite.

  Lizzie leaned over to Joe and said in a low voice, "Hold on to your cojones, señor."

  Charlene Thomason whirled on her. "Excuse me, Lizzie?"

  "Nothing. I was just talking to Joe in Spanish. I'm taking Spanish this year."

  Without getting up, Joe said, "Mrs. Thomason, my name is Joe Bryce. I'm sorry to intrude like this."

  "Somebody," Lizzie said, "ran him off the road this morning."

  "Oh," Charlene said with a slight frown, "was that you in the Jeep? But I—I thought there was room. I was in a hurry, I needed to—"

  "Pee?" Lizzie suggested.

  Charlene ignored her. She was very blond, and so pale she looked as if she had no body temperature. Her paleness made the beauty mark on one cheek stand out as hot as a sunspot. Her eyes were large and dark and round and when she looked directly at Joe he could see a rim of sclera beneath each pupil, which gave her a sensuous, unearthly look, like a high priestess of conspicuous consumption. She reveled in gold jewelry, and, even if her suit was a Chanel knockoff, she had the figure to wear it superbly. The Carolina accent was a delightful, earthy touch, but the pampered face, the type, was very familiar toJoe. They were seen most often getting into or out of Rolls-Royces. They congregated at the fringes of show business like fleas around a dog's muzzle. Most of them seemed to have the longevity of Dracula. And they all could get alimony from a stone.

  Joe stood up slowly, the hell with the boxer shorts and the T-shirt, and saw her expression change in just the way he knew it would. He was wary of Charlene Thomason, but he said in a relaxed, easy manner, as if it were his house and she were visiting, "What happened was my fault. I got a little too deep into theshoulder and—"

  "I see. Are you a friend of my husband's?"

  Lizzie, perched on her corner of the table, swung a long thin leg back and forth and said, "He came to see Abby. He's a fan."

  "Oh." Charlene half-closed her eyes, conserving on power. "I'm afraid that Pamela is—"

  Lizzie said in her high, hostile voice, "It's okay. I already talked to her."

  Charlene looked at her with a deliberation that returned the hostility. This family was getting more interesting all the time, Joe thought.

  "Lizzie, you haven't been with us very long, but it really is time that you learned not to impose—"

  Lizzie ducked her head, one side of her face scrunched as if she had 'a toothache. Then she said, more rapidly than most Southerners can talk, "I've been here long enough to know that if it's what Abby wants then it's what everybody wants. And I already told you, she's dying to meet Joe."

  Charlene's chin came up a millimeter, the only expression of annoyance she allowed herself. Lizzie kept her head down, reached out and plucked at a ragged nail on her big toe. Her face was flushed.

  Charlene turned to Lillian and said, "Lillian, if you can possibly spare the time right now, I need for you to help me locate my swatches. I can't keep Mr. Loeffler waiting the rest of the day."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "One other thing."

  Lillian took Joe's Nikes out of the drier and straightened slowly.

  "We're having barbecue for a hundred people tonight, and this house is nowhere near ready to receive guests. That's your fault, Lillian."

  Lillian's jaw worked, as if she were chewing this bitter pill 'before swallowing it. "I'll see to it, right away."

  Charlene cast around for an opportunity to vent a little more spleen.

  "I hate this tacky porch. It's such an eyesore. I'm going to tear it down at the first opportunity and build a nice orangerie with lots of glass." Then, refreshed and on top of things, she turned to Joe.

  "So nice to have met you, Mr.—"

  "Bryce. Dr. Joe Bryce."

  Her smile tilted more in his favor. "Oh, you're a doctor? My husband's a doctor."

  Lizzie made a small but negative noise through flubbering lips.

  "I'm sorry you won't have a chance to meet him," Charlene went on, getting a visible grip on her patience, but not as if Lizzie meant any more to her than a dead fly on the table. "He won't be home until late this afternoon."

  "I'm glad to have had this opportunity to meet you, Mrs. Thomason."

  She nodded and turned blithely, with a signal to Lillian that she wanted to be followed. "Enjoy your little chat with Pamela. Bye now."

  Lizzie said, after Charlene and Lillian had cleared the kitchen, "I usually win bigger than that. But it was getting to be embarrassing."

  "Thanks for sparing me."

  "I'll see if your pants are dry yet," Lizzie mumbled, springing from the table and rubbing the back of her thigh where the edge of the table had left a welt.

  "What have you got against Mrs. Thomason?" Joe asked her.

  "Did you notice the way she was looking at you?"

  "I didn't mind it."

  "Well, men wouldn't," Lizzie said scornfully. "But that's one of the reasons I can't bear her. There's others."

  "I see."

  Lizzie glanced over her shoulder. "You don't, and I can't tell you. Even if you are a doctor." Immediately after this testimony to her integrity, Lizzie added, "But you probably noticed anyway."

  "Noticed something about Mrs. T?"

  Lizzie took his Dockers and knit shirt out of the other drier. "I ought to run the iron over these before you put them on. Won't take a second."

  "Thanks."

  "Aren't doctors supposed to be able to tell when somebody's on drugs?"

  "Depends on the substance, usually. Are you still talking about—"

  "Oh, well, let's skip it. Doesn't matter. I'm probably going to go nuts too, it's so isolated here. I think that's why Charlene puts up wallpaper, and takes down wallpaper, and goes around obsessing over her swatches. Either she's hyper, or she stays in her room for a couple of days at a time and won't talk to anybody. Maybe they'll go live in the governor's mansion next year, and she'll get her
act together. He could get elected. Really, that's what I heard. Stranger things have happened in South Carolina politics. We have all kinds of relatives up there in the legislature. My great uncle Woodrow T. Plover ran on what he called the Truth Platform a long time ago. He's famous for making a campaign speech and saying he foresaw the day when only the living could vote."

  "Dr. Thomason's running for governor?"

  "Yes."Unexpectedly, Lizzie had a fit of the giggles. "I'm telling you, Joe, everybody in this house is certifiable. Lillian sees ghosts all the time. Knows their names too. I'm afraid I'll start seeing them. That'd freak me so bad I probably never will get my period."

  "And Abby?"

  "Oh, Abby. I think she's the most courageous person I've ever met. But how long can it last?" Lizzie's eloquent face was screwed up again, either from dismay or concentration as she pressed Joe's pants. She set the iron upright and brought the Dockers to him. "She's probably about finished with her morning swim. Let's see if we can catch her in the pool house."

  Chapter Twelve

  The gardens behind the house were more extensive, and formal, than anything Joe had seen yet. There were hedges of thickly budded camellias, stone and brick portals covered with ivy and jasmine, fruit trees, huge beds of roses, trickling fountains and shady moss-covered banks beside a pond. Serpentine brick walkways went in all directions—to a gazebo with a stone and bronze sundial in front of it, to the gated entrance of the walled cemetery, to a converted carriage house, and to a larger, newer building designed with the power and simplicity of a Cistercian church: it had a-high, gabled roof, clerestory windows and window-walls at each end. The pool pavilion was connected to a wing of the main house by a glass conservatory. Through the middle of the gardens there was a visual passage to the sparkling bay a few hundred yards away. Fifteen million, Joe thought. On top of perhaps ten or twelve million she'd earned so far. The portion of Pamela Abelard's royalties that had gone into the revitalizing of this venerable estate had been well spent.