Dragonfly

by Farris, John

  "No, Luke," Abby said softly. "I'm not assuming. I'm a gimp. But that doesn't matter to Joe. I've seen it in his eyes. He touches me, and I'm whole to him."

  "What's gonna happen—all over again—is that you'll have your heart broken. And I'm telling you, Abby, as a doctor, as a man who has looked after you and loved you since you were a ten-year-old child, in your condition you won't be able to stand it!"

  After a long silence in which he studied his fears like images in a witch's mirror, Abby issued a soft command.

  "Luke, come here to me."

  When he was standing at the foot of the bed gazing sorrowfully at her, Abby said, "Who am I?"

  "You are the little girl who will always be the light of my life."

  "And you know that I love you."

  "I know it," he said tearfully.

  "And you would never interfere with what happiness may be left to me."

  "Don't, Abby. Don't put that burden on me."

  "I have to have your blessing. It's no good otherwise."

  Lucas Thomason wiped his eyes and clenched his hands.

  "Let me be happy," Abby pleaded. "For a little while. I need you both. Be wonderful for me, Luke."

  "You know I never could deny you. I never had the heart."

  "I've been knowing that all my life," she said gratefully. "Now say it, Luke. Please."

  "All right. If Joe Bryce is the one—then he's welcome here. And you will never hear a word from me against him."

  "Bless you, darling. I love you, Luke."

  "All I ever cared about is your welfare. God strike me if that isn't the truth."

  "I think you're a great man," Abby said, her eyes bright with pride. "I've always thought so."

  "I hope I live to be worthy of your respect. I'm gonna try my hardest to get us moved to the governor's mansion."

  "It's a done deal," she said confidently. "Kiss me good night, Luke? I'm feeling a little tired now."

  "Surely." He went to her side of the bed and kissed her. "Abby, there's something I ought to tell you—speaking as your doctor now."

  "What is it, Luke?"

  "Thanks to my own carelessness I'm short the steroids you've been getting. I'll call first thing Monday and order more, but I don't expect the shipment before the end of next week. There's always the possibility of a flareup that could have a permanent effect, leave you worse off than you are now. So I don't want you overexerting yourself."

  "I'll be careful." She raised her head; her lips lingered on his cheek. "Thank you, Luke. Thank you for everything."

  During Lucas Thomason's half hour with Abby, Charlene had undressed and crawled into his bed to wait for him; sleep had overcome her. He made every effort to leave her asleep as he took off his own clothes, but his presence had changed the atmosphere in the bedroom; a subtle pressure weighing on her glossy skin caused her to roll to one side and open her eyes. She saw first a naked hip and dangle of balls, his penis rising in jerks to a stiff salute. Charlene raised her eyes to her husband's face.

  "My God," she said. "Did you just kill somebody?"

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Joe awoke at the crack of dawn in the beach house, disoriented after a night of heavy sleep, wondering for a few moments just where he was and what he was up to. The smell of the sea, a long rush of surf on the nearby sand, mild vertigo as he tried to sit up: the sensory apprehensions led him to think he was aboard the Dragonfly. His head ached dully; there was a stiffness in his shoulders and arms. The muscle-memories were of surf-casting, not sailing; and a firelit image of Pamela Abelard's beguiling profile came to mind, with memories of laughter and good feeling. She had felt free to exhibit a barbed, spontaneous wit. "Most literary readings, "Abby had said, prompted by an undefined pique, "are a fine example of a dog returning to its vomit."And, of a mercenary college chum who had left school in her freshman year to marry a paper-company executive well into his fifties: "She entered into marriage with her meter running." It was all lined out too quickly, with a nice backhand and then an approving grin that was all over her face when she realized what she had said, to have been scripted and stored for a social occasion. He had observed that there also was a streaky, unacknowledged bullying side to her nature, outgrowth of pain and deprivation that would become more of a problem for everyone as she got older. Abby played what was probably a long-running game of emotional chess with those closest to her. It made Joe uneasy to remember that, for the first time since he'd gone haywire at the consciousness-expansion session in Mann County years ago, he'd given so much of his hidden self to a woman in a situation where the possibilities of physical reward were limited. Kissing an upstart ear, the softly throbbing hollow of Abby's throat, he was never without the sad knowledge that half of her was permanently dead, in spite of the unexplainable episodes of spasticity that plagued her. His body reacted, all the same. His testicles were full and warm; his penis rose, and sulked unsatisfied, cramped within layers of clothing against the unfeeling small of her back.

  He was on the second floor of the beach house, in one of three bedrooms furnished as plainly as a barracks. A deep freestanding tub with a walnut-and-brass rail around it took up half of the bathroom. His face in the dulled mirror over the basin looked smudged, half-finished, as if Flora Birdsall had begun to make good on her threat to erase him.

  A long run on the beach was the best cure he'd found for morning megrims.

  Outside he encountered fog, wispy as a steambath, with a darker bank of fog out to sea like a stalled tsunami, in which the disk of the sun was as pale as the pith of a lemon. There were knee-high wavelets along the shore. He jogged just out of reach of the muted surf on wet packed sand, able to see less than twenty feet ahead. A barefoot woman appeared, wearing cutoff jeans. Her skin was sun-blackened, the texture of beef jerky. She was bent over as she worked the beach for shells with a child's play shovel. Her posture accentuated a hump of fat, like a buffalo's hump, on her upper back. She had several casting rods spiked into the sand, lines rippling in the dark water. They eyed each other, strangers in the mist. There was something wadded and mucusy about one of her eyes, while the other flared, like a brief electrical storm, savage in its blueness. He smiled peaceably at her and stepped around a stranded blob of jellyfish, then avoided a yards-long tangle of kelp, agile today, not as clumsy as when he had stepped on the ampule of epidural steroids in Dr. Thomason's infirmary.... Something agitated the skin on the back of his neck, like a mosquito perched there. The separate images kept circling in his mind: the aging woman digging in sand, the drug safe in the infirmary, his carelessness. If there was a connection, he didn't get it. He slowly upped his speed until he was running at a pace sustainable for miles, past the looming decks of a beachfront community, where the flotsam of civilization reappeared in discouraging mass: the so-called disposable baby diapers, foam cups so durable they would still be around when the sun winked out forever, soft-drink cans and baby-food jars, watermelon rinds picked clean by gulls and crabs, a soggy paperback book. The first law of nature seemed to be the more people, the more crap. When he came at last to a wide swash he couldn't cross except by swimming, he returned to his starting point.

  Most of the fog on shore had dissipated; the sun had risen above the low-lying fog bank. Joe found Abby waiting in Rolling Thunder, hooded, bundled up against the morning chill, facing out to sea on the porch of the house, her face warmly alight, as if someone were holding a lantern just above her head, Her eyes were meekly closed; she showed a trace of a smile. He heard a far-off ringing of church bells.

  Abby didn't react when Joe came panting up the four flights of steps from the beach to the floor of the porch; he didn't take his eves off her, wondering if she'd "done a fade," in her words, and was watching them both, from a spirit-level vantage point in the space beyond the porch railing.

  Intent on Abby, he tripped over a floorboard that needed hammering down, staggered, caught himself just as his right foot came down on a paper cup left from their meal th
e day before. He squashed the cup flat. Sorry, Doctor.

  Sorry, Dr. Thomason, but you're a damned liar.

  Abby had opened her-eyes and was laughing at his ineptness when he looked up from the paper cup and stared at her. She stopped laughing abruptly.

  "What is it? Did you hurt yourself?"

  "You're perfect," he said vaguely.

  She laughed again, puzzled. "What?"

  "I said, you're perfect."

  "I'm not, but thanks anyway." When his intent expression didn't change she turned her face away, as if she couldn't bear to be teased. "Stop, Joe. What's with you this morning?"

  "Abby, how long have you been on steroids?"

  She looked blank for a few moments. "Uh... why?"

  "Just tell me."

  "Are you always like this before you've had your coffee? You would have to ask Luke, because I don't know."

  "Well, is it a few months?"

  "Oh, longer."

  "A year or two?"

  Abby reached up and pushed back the bronze-colored hood of her designer sweatshirt. "A lot of years. Different types of steroids. Luke says they're for—"

  "I know what they're for. To arrest inflammation of the spinal cord. So you haven't had any problems."

  "Joe, look, I've been in a wheelchair, for thirteen years, goddamn right I've had problems—"

  "But nothing serious enough to put you in a hospital, nothing life-threatening."

  "Not unless you count Friday night. What's on your mind?"

  Joe sat on the porch railing opposite her. "Too early, to explain. I have to do some thinking."

  "But you will tell me."

  "Of course I will, Abby. Give me a little time."

  They were both quiet, for almost a minute. She wouldn't let go of him with her eyes; she was searching for trouble.

  "I have to ask some questions," he said finally.

  "Dandy. Could we have breakfast first? Nothing fancy, I can manage biscuits, omelets, and pan-fried ham. I'll bet you're starved after all that running. And we've got a terrific day ahead of us. I hope."

  Joe showered and washed his hair in the oversized bathtub while Abby coped with the problems of a kitchen laid out for the convenience of the able-bodied. She'd asked, before he went upstairs, for a list of cookware in hanging cabinets and items stored on refrigerator shelves that were beyond her reach. A couple of things she forgot, but decided not to let the inacessability of a whisk and a measuring cup put her in a bad mood. She blended eggs and milk in a steel bowl in her lap, thinking about her teen years in Beaufort, when she'd often prepared weekend meals for Luke. His second marriage over with, thank God, just the two of them in the centuries-old frame house on Bay Street near the bridge to Lady's Island. He'd had some wry reflections on matrimony following his costly divorce from Teddy, who had thought that marriage to a doctor was the answer to a hypochondriac's prayer. "One marriage is inevitable, two, understandable; but after that the marrying kind are simply throwing caution to the whims." For fifteen years he'd stayed off the well-trod path to the altar, then along came Charleneblond, in her luscious prime—and Luke promptly forgot his own sensible advice, coming to her like a rat in a booby-trapped maze. Not that Charlene didn't have her good points—but Abby wasn't in the mood to give herself a pop quiz this morning. Joe had her concerned, because obviously he was concerned.

  Abby sighed. Prying information out of doctors before they were ready to give it was an exercise in futility. Her left leg flipped out unexpectedly, knocking over the bowl in her lap, foaming yellow egg going allover herself and the floor. She was in tears when Joe came into the kitchen, cheeks shaved and gleaming, hair with its cache of tiny silver needles neatly brushed.

  "I just—it doesn't—so frustrated—I can't stand it sometimes."

  "Go ahead and scream," he said.

  "Huh?" She looked up at him, his image swimming in great orbs of tears.

  "You want to scream. Let's hear it. Don't hold back. Blow out my eardrums."

  "Boy—you don't know what—you're asking for."

  "Do it."

  Abby screamed. At him, at all the standing smugly superior asshole indifferent people she'd wanted to bring to her level for so many years, God damn them all! If they only knew.

  "Go, angel," he urged her, falling to his knees in front of her, and never mind the slippery egg. "That's only half of it. Again."

  She screamed again, delighted, spraying spit that seemed to delight Joe; he leaned into the force of her scream, an expression very like joy transforming his face. He screamed back at her, "You're not hiding any more, are you?"

  "No!" She choked; her breasts heaved. "How do you know so much about me? How do you know—what I feel?"

  "I hide too, Abby."

  "Not you. Oh, no. You've never had a second's doubt about anything or anybody in your whole life."

  "Sure I have. We're all alike. Everybody's got a story, and most of them ain't pretty."

  Two prolonged, taxing screams, bloody murder to anyone passing by on the beach. CRIPPLED NOVELIST BLUDGEONED IN LOVE NEST. She looked spent, but not tormented. He got up to wet a kitchen towel and gently wiped her reddened, glazed face. Abby tried to duck her head, to keep her eyes on the floor. He wouldn't let her.

  "I wanted to do this—for you," she said hoarsely. "I wanted to make your breakfast and pretend—"

  "No pretending," he said, with a firm shake of his head, "about us."

  "But—that's all it can be, it's all a fantasy of mine. I know better."

  The moment passed when he might have objected; chagrin quieted her. He used the towel he'd wiped her face with to clean up the spilled egg and milk. Her right leg began to march, quick-time, in place, pumping up and down erratically. Abby sat back in Rolling Thunder, hands clenched, eyes closed. Joe watched the episode of spasticity until it ended, a slight frown on his face.

  Abby began to twist uncomfortably.

  "God, now my shoulder's cramping."

  Joe untied the running shoe on her right foot and took it off.

  "What're you doing?"

  "Let's try something." Her feet appeared to be in good shape, not fattened by fluid buildup; the skin was healthy and dry. "Do you use an extremity pump?"

  "Five or six nights a week for a couple of hours, when I'm writing. There's a small compressor that's automatic, I don't have to do anything but wear the boots."

  He elevated her foot and began to massage the sole, close to the toes.

  "I don't know why you're doing that," she complained. "It's useless. The wires are down, Joe."

  "Down, but not cut, according to your doctor. Contusions and inflammation of the spinal cord can be tricky. Nothing shows up on a scan, not even an MRI. But the damage is obvious. How's your shoulder cramp?"

  "Well, it feels better," Abby admitted. "Can't be the accupressure, because I don't feel a thing. You could cut my foot off right in front of me, and I wouldn't feel it."

  After twenty more seconds she said with a slightly exasperated smile, "Okay, the cramp's gone now. Thank you, but I don't believe you proved anything. I think all those ancient Oriental remedies are hoaxes anyway. I've had needles stuck into my nerves so many times—"

  "In the wrong places, probably," he said, retying her shoe.

  "Dr. Joe, what's going on in your head?"

  "I'm still trying to put something together. The fact is, I'm out of my depth here, Abby."

  She nodded glumly. Her head stayed down.

  He clapped his hands once, as if commanding a hidden rheostat to bring her back to brightness.

  "Your coffee's perked. What do you say we get going with breakfast again?"

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Pandora's Bay Polo Club traveled in a caravan to Florence, South Carolina, on Sunday morning: horse trailers, Winnebagos, vans, station wagons, a mobile blacksmith's shop. Two dozen horses made the trip. Polo is a sport that tires horses quickly: the outdoor game calls for at least thirty minutes of galloping acti
on, divided into a minimum of four periods, which are called chukkers. The field is three hundred yards long and a hundred and fifty yards wide. Polo horses are routinely called ponies, but some of them are former thoroughbred racehorses, desired for their stamina and strength.

  Lucas Thomason and his trainer took five horses to the match on a gentleman's farm outside of Florence, and all of them had thoroughbred lines.

  "I've got better than forty thousand tied up in my string," he explained to Joe as they were tacking up under the shade oaks at one end of the playing field. "But that's nothing. We had a touring Argentine team come through last month; they whipped the daylights out of us. Their captain, I think his name was Hernandez, said he wouldn't take a quarter million for his best ponies. They all could do one-eighty turns on their forelegs. It's an eye-popping sight—those flashy Latin ponies all but standing on their heads reversing field."

  "How long have you been playing?"

  "Took it up about three years ago," Thomason said, pulling on his boots. "Basketball was my sport in college, but for pure action polo is king." He glanced away from Joe. "Walter Lee!"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I don't like the way that new boy is wrapping Blue Dorado's forelegs. Does he know what he's doing?"

  "He come highly recommended. But I'll check those wraps."

  Thomason reached for knee guards in his trunkful of equipment. The team's captain, a federal judge named Whitney, was already suited up and mounted. He walked his horse over to them. Thomason introduced Joe, and winked before saying, "Joe, you ever see such an uninspired hunk of horseflesh in your life?"

  "Now, don't you start in on Hung Jury," the judge said complacently.

  Joe looked the horse over. He was big and ungainly, probably into late middle age, more than a little swaybacked, with a somnolent expression and a pigeon-toed stance. His testicles were his best feature, which no doubt accounted for half of his name. Joe smiled noncommittally. "What's his secret?"

  "His secret is, he's a polo-playing fool, and out there looks don't count. Timing does. Instinct. Speed. And he has a deep-seated desire to ride every other horse comes his way clear off the field. I traded a '56 Mustang car in pristine condition for Hung Jury, and I never have had a minute's regret. Lucas, we've got our work cut out for us today. A couple of Colonel Oldfield's nephews are down for the weekend from Washington and Lee, and they've got seven goals between them."