Dragonfly

by Farris, John

  "Twelve."

  "Chiefs, and the over."

  "You're on," Abby said, and under her breath added, "patsy." To Joe she said, "Do you like pro football?"

  "Yes, but I'm out of touch."

  "I bet on three or four games a week. I've even got a bookie in Vegas. So far this season I'm ahead. I still owe you ten bucks, don't I? Remind me. I always—"

  "Pay your debts," Joe said, smiling. He glanced at Dr. Lucas Thomason as he was getting down from his thoroughbred black gelding.

  "Luke, we need casino gambling in South Carolina," Abby said.

  "You know I won't touch that one." He hitched his horse to a cannon ring and walked over to Abby, smiled at Joe in passing. He leaned down to kiss his niece on the cheek. "I'd never get you out of the casinos. What have you been up to this fine afternoon?"

  "Just having a good time. Luke, I'd like you to meet Dr. Joe Bryce."

  "A pleasure, sir." Lucas Thomason gave Joe the sincere, but not the excessively flattering, politician's one-handed, one-pump shake. A big hand but unexpectedly hard, even callused; not soft from scrubbing up like the hands of most doctors. He was a tall man of late middle age who kept himself reasonably in trim. His hair was gray and cut short, to minimize the fact that he'd lost about half of it from the crown of his head. No one would call him handsome, but it was an oddly attractive face, from markedly triangular, blueberry eyes to a commanding jaw to a humorously crimped mouth, the long upper lip protruding slightly and wavy like the edge of a dogwinkle shell. It looked as if he had once caught his mouth in a can opener.

  "Bryce? I was acquainted with a slew of Bryces up Walterboro way when I attended the Citadel."

  "I don't think we're related. I'm from the Chicago area."

  "I recognize that in your voice." His own voice was soft, breathy and fluent, with the cadences of one of the more sophisticated, politicized preachers like Robertson or Falwell. "I had a good friend, Dr. Blame Conacher, a cardiologist, who practiced in Chicago. He was Chief of Service at St. Mary's of Nazareth. Died an untimely death about sixteen months ago. He liked to build and fly those little airplanes, what do you call them—?"

  "Ultralights," Abby said.

  "Well, a bolt sheared off, or something, when he was at twelve hundred feet over an Illinois cornfield. You will never convince me that air is man's element. Give me a good horse with four feet on the ground, any day."

  "How's the campaign shaping up, Luke?"

  "As you can probably tell, my throat's a little raw. Pierce Folsby and his damned cheap cigars. He won't smoke anything better, even though I offered him one of my contraband double coronas. But we got down to cases, in a four-hour session. The upshot is, I can count on Pierce."

  Abby clapped her hands, startling both Bruiser and the black gelding.

  "You're in!"

  "Next year's primary is looking better all the time," he agreed, and twinkled somewhat at Joe. Not quite a smile. "Excuse us for talking politics, but that's about all we do talk around here these days. What hospital are you affiliated with, Dr. Bryce?"

  "North Shore, in Winnetka."

  "Oh, yes, I've heard that's a very fine facility." Joe got out a card for Lucas Thomason.

  "I see. Pediatric oncology. Welcome to South Carolina, Dr.—"

  "Joe."

  "Joe. Are you on vacation?"

  "In a way. Trying to make up my mind about a couple of things."

  "He helped run a clinic in Africa," Abby said. "And he's lucky to be alive, what he went through."

  Thomason gazed at Joe with heightened interest. "I'd like to hear more about it. Is there a chance you might be staying for the barbecue tonight, Joe?"

  "I already invited him," Abby said smugly.

  "Good. Look forward to chatting with you. Right now I need to get Diacono back to the barn and put my party clothes on. Abby, got a joke for you."

  "One that's fit for mixed company?"

  "Surely. Can you tell me the difference between an evangelist and a rabid dog?"

  "No," Abby said. "What's the difference?"

  "You can shoot a rabid dog."

  Abby groaned. "I like the dirty jokes better."

  Thomason untied his black horse and swung up into the saddle. It wouldn't have been effortless, at his age, but he had the height to make it look effortless, perhaps for Joe's benefit. He saluted casually with his left hand and rode off down the breastwork to the woods.

  "One great guy," Abby said, watching him. "I don't know how I would have made it through the bad times, without Luke."

  "He's late getting into the political arena."

  "Yes, but the desire has been there for ten years or more. It's not an ego thing." She looked into the air as if the question had always been hanging around, like an insatiable mosquito. "Ask Luke anything—mental health, the budget, education, the environment, he's studied all sides of the issues. See, Luke and I are a pair of insomniacs, up until all hours, and we're both indiscriminate readers. Every night I insert a book into my brain like a suppository. Greasing the talent, I suppose?" She wrinkled her nose amusedly. "But Luke concentrates on reeducating himself. He took graduate courses on economic and political theory at USC this summer, driving back and forth, back and forth, so I wouldn't be alone too much."

  "What about the rest of his medical practice?"

  "Oh, he's only had one patient for a few years now."

  "You?"

  The look in her eyes was pure adulation.

  "He does the required work to maintain his medical license. But to tell the truth, I don't think he ever enjoyed medicine. It was a family thing—his father, his father's father, both prominent doctors. Luke always felt he had a higher purpose in life. Now I'm sure it's going to happen."

  "A political campaign can be a big expense."

  "I don't care what I have to spend! I've told Luke that. The literary business is a lottery, Joe. Four thousand new novels were published in this country last year. So I hit on my first try. Why me? Maybe God said, Okay, you don't walk again, you don't have a husband or children, but here's the good news. Two million people are going to buy your first novel."

  She bowed her head for a few moments; then the tears welled up. Her face was a study in joy and anguish.

  Joe took her hand. "You shouldn't devalue yourself sexually. Paraplegic women get married. They have genital sex. And they sometimes have perfectly healthy babies, by C-section."

  "I know, but—would I live to see them grow up? Or even make it to Lizzie's age?"

  "What do you mean, Abby?"

  "I have this horrible—this ontological nightmare sometimes. That I'm going to drift out of my body to a place where there are demons. Things made of fear, as Rilke put it. They will ask me who I am, and I won't be able to remember. Then they'll claim me as one of their own."

  With his other hand Joe cradled her cheek, wondering if her demons were of guilt or shame. Abby pressed hard against his palm.

  "Sorry. I don't know why I'm like this lately. And I don't know you. Are you sure I won't be reading about myself in the National Intruder next week? Sorry again. That was very paranoid. But there's only the thinnest of lines separating paranoia and genius, isn't there?"

  Her lips parted when she looked at him. Her anxiety had sensitized her in a predictable manner. He liked the way her lips were shaped. All of her curves were complementary, from her breasts to the whorls in her large ears, the smoothed-down sable thickness of each eyebrow. He kissed her.

  Abby didn't move or close her eyes. But she had stopped crying. Their faces were close, hers in shadow. The gray eyes seethed with doubt, and, finally, approval.

  "Why did you do that?"

  "It seemed a shame not to."

  "Yes. I know exactly what you mean. I was thinking it too. I'll be sorry if he doesn't kiss me, because tomorrow—he could be gone."

  Chapter Sixteen

  After twice calling Walter Lee to eat, Frosty Clemons finally sent one of the twins outside to
the covered front porch to wake him up from his nap. Taura looked at him, sprawled and snoring in a patio lounger, a stadium cushion with the Clemson Tigers' logo propped behind his graying head. She wrapped two hands around a convenient finger and tugged until the snoring stopped and he cracked open an eye.

  "Mama says time for dinna."

  He smiled at her. "Help me up, Taura."

  "Granpa. You know I'm not big enough to move you."

  Sabina appeared behind the door screen. "Is he coming? Mama says he has to eat old fish heads if he don't come now."

  "I like old fish heads," Walter Lee said, turning on the lounger and pretending to go back to sleep.

  "Granpa!" they screamed in unison. Walter Lee jumped up, as spry as his knees would permit, and looked around in bewilderment.

  "What's the matter? Are we burning down? Cat catch a booger bear?"

  Sabina turned her head and called to her mother at the rear of the house, "Granpa's being silly!"

  "I want everybody sitting down to the table right now."

  With a twin on each side of him, leading him by the hand, Walter Lee made it to the kitchen and pulled up a chair.

  "What do we have here? Umm-hmm. Baked beans and ham. Slice tomato. Umm-hmm. Them good tomatoes just keep comin' and comin' this year."

  Sabina, the bookish twin, pushed a crayoned drawing toward him.

  "I made this for you at nussy school."

  "Well, that's something. It sure is. What is it, a booger bear?"

  "No such thing as booger bears. It's a dragon."

  "Oh, yeah. Look at that fire come out of his nose."

  "I made you a Popsicle-stick clown," Taura said, nuzzling up to his side. Then she said, in a doleful voice, "I left it."

  "Oh, that's okay. Bring it home next time."

  Frosty, wearing an apron, carried a pan of corn bread to the table.

  "Where's my stinky old fish heads?" Walter Lee inquired, making the girls giggle.

  Frosty gave him a kiss on the forehead. "You got to get out there and catch me some fishes first."

  "Tomorra morning," Walter Lee promised. "Early."

  "You working tomorrow, Daddy?"

  "Part of the day, I reckon. Dr. Luke's looking to buy polo ponies, and he want me along. You know he ain't got a good eye for horseflesh."

  "He's too old for that game. He'll fall off and bust his head. Like Prince Charles did one time."

  "It was his arm, I think. They all wear helmets anyhow, and Dr. Luke, he can ride with the best of 'em."Frosty made sure the girls were served without getting any food on the oilcloth, then sat down with a sigh at her end of the table.

  "Hard day?" Walter Lee inquired. "—Reach me the ice tea pitcher, Sabina."

  "Well, you know. I got to do more and more of the business with the agents nowadays. She plain don't want to talk to 'em. I tell Abby, 'Gal, you're not just a business, you're a whole industry to yourself.' She say, 'Well, you handle it, Frosty.'"

  "That's what it's like, to be such a creative person. God love her."

  Frosty took off her gold-rimmed glasses and rubbed her eyes. She had a dour, moping expression.

  "You don't want to eat?" Walter Lee asked her.

  "Not yet. I'd like for you to hear something."

  From her apron pocket Frosty took out a Walkman tape player, and a cassette. Walter Lee looked at the cassette with a wary eye.

  "Why do I think this is no business of mine?"

  "Daddy, please. What's on the cassette here, it's part of the trouble that I have been trying to tell you about. I'm at my wits' end. Don't go deaf on me again."

  "I just want to eat my dinner in peace."

  "Why you so stubborn? Why do you refuse to see there is something wrong in that house?"

  Walter Lee had trouble swallowing a forkful of beans, and reached for a napkin to cough into. Sabina was patiently buttering all sides of her corn bread, careful not to get any butter on her fingers. Taura ate while alertly watching first her mother, then Walter Lee.

  He put down the napkin and sipped iced tea. His massive shoulders were hunched as he stared at his plate.

  "Why you looking to get fired from your job? Which is what it will come down to, if you meddle."

  "Meddle? I'm telling you I am worried out of my head over Abby. She is not right, Daddy. And getting worse all the time."

  Walter Lee scraped at his plate with his fork, listened to the sink faucet drip and the wall clock tick.

  Frosty said to Sabina, "Time to stop buttering and eat some of that."

  "I like butter."

  Walter Lee said, "You tell the doctor what you suspicion?"

  "I mentioned it to him."

  "What did Dr. Luke have to say?"

  "Says, 'Thank you, Frosty. But you know, she is a creative person, and she does have these sinking spells.'"

  Walter Lee breathed easier. "What I said too. Everybody knows creative persons is different from the rest of us."

  "What does that word mean?" Taura asked.

  "Sinking spells! My Lord! I have worked for Abby nearly four years now, think I don't know the difference?"

  "Mama! What does 'craytiff' mean?"

  "It's like when someone has the talent to write or draw or sing. Creative."

  "I can play the piano at nussy school."

  "I know you can, darlin'. One of these days, we're gonna have a piano right here in this house."

  "Let me dig a little more ham out of that bean pot," Walter Lee said. Taura offered him a bite on her fork instead. He leaned toward it, making gobbling noises. Frosty put her head in her hands.

  "Do we have to play at the table?"

  "Sorry," Walter Lee said, and smiled at Taura. He took the bean pot down from the lazy Susan in the middle of the table.

  Frosty straightened with a new resolve, and put the cassette into the Walkman. Walter Lee looked disgruntled.

  "Told you I don't want to hear—"

  "Hush, Daddy! Just—hush."

  She turned the Walkman on. They heard tape hiss, then Pamela Abelard saying, in a rather mournful voice, smaller than her normal speaking voice:

  "'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.'" After a short pause, she repeated it. Then a third time.

  "'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.'"

  Frosty switched the Walkman off. Walter Lee scowled, because Frosty was staring at him.

  "Well, that don't mean a thing to me. What is it supposed to be?"

  "It is supposed to be a chapter from Abby's new book that she is dictating." Frosty paused for breath and touched her breast, as if she felt a panic rising there. "What it is, is the first line from one of Abby's favorite novels, which happens to be Rebecca, by Miss Daphne du Manner."

  Walter Lee swallowed, and sucked at a tooth that was giving off twinges lately.

  "Don't have the foggiest notion what you're driving at."

  Frosty nodded, acknowledging this. "Listen, Daddy, the tape goes on for almost an hour, and that's all she says—over and over. 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.' In that tone of voice, like she don't know what she's saying! When she's supposed to be writing her own book! And I'll tell you something else—nothing she's dictated in the past couple weeks makes much sense either. She forgets the names of her characters—she repeats herself."

  Taura, for no discernible reason, was down from her chair and looking under the table. Frosty reached out and sat her down again. She looked at Walter Lee.

  "It's like she just can't concentrate anymore."

  "It'll pass. It's bound to pass."

  "I think what's causing this problem is something Dr. Luke's been giving her. I'd swear to that. One of those injections he's always—"

  Walter Lee slammed his hand down on the table hard enough to make the plates jump. The girls got stiff and quiet and looked at him in fearful surprise.

  "Don't you know," he said, glaring at his daughter, "what kind of trouble you can get this whole family into?"
/>
  Taura looked at Sabina and murmured, "Granpa's mad."

  Frosty shot back, "No, I don't know! What are you talking about? All I care about is Abby—"

  Walter Lee might have been inclined to back down, but he glanced at the children's faces; old grievances boiled from his heart, and he leveled a full-bore gaze at his daughter.

  "You think that low-life Delmus is ever coming back from Dee-troit City, help you raise these sweethearts, see that they get the education they deserve? They ain't a black woman in ten counties makes the kind of living you do—but you want to just throw it all away, 'cause you gots to meddle, get people stirred up against you—against us—"

  Whether his words were fair or not, her eyes brimmed with frustrated tears.

  "No, Daddy—!"

  Walter Lee put both hands on the table, and made fists.

  Sabina said, "I need to go to the bafroom."

  "So do I."

  Walter Lee shook his head grimly, and the twins were like stone, watching him out of the corners of their eyes.

  "What else you been up to?" he accused Frosty. "You been up to something."

  "No, Daddy."

  "What's that?"

  "I swear!"

  Walter Lee's hands relaxed. He slid them off the table. He did not look at his loved ones.

  "I'm just so worried—" Frosty had difficulty coming up with her next breath. "—and I been afraid for her the longest time, Daddy."

  "All right."

  "Poor lamb. I suffer for her."

  "All right," Walter Lee said again, with the stern finality of a hellfire preacher slamming shut the Good Book in his pulpit: "My advice is, worry about your ownself. And these children. That's all I gots to say." He pushed his chair back and rose from the table as if he were climbing a cliff that had just been put in his way, his eyes raised to heaven. "Fine supper. If they be any of that hand-cranked peach ice cream left, I'll have mine on the porch, when y'alI ready."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Politics was on everyone's mind, and entered into almost every conversation, at the Thomasons' barbecue Friday night.

  An elderly woman who got around with the aid of two black canes and cataract glasses said to the gubernatorial hopeful, "Well, now, I hope you're gonna run a clean campaign, Lucas. None of that character assassination."