Dragonfly

by Farris, John

  The lamps in the room seemed to be fading into a dense black fog. He heard nothing but the beating, of his heart. Then there was one last heartbeat extending to eternity. Ghosts moved around Joe, transparent shapes without identities. He felt a thumb on one eyelid, peeling it up and back. His mother's slim hand on his feverish brow. You're burning up, Joely-Moly. Would you like some ice cream? Strawberry, he said. Then he asked her, If I was ice cream, what flavor would I be? She smiled. Peach, she said. Sweet peach. Then he knew it had to be her, because it was the right answer. She would sit with him and give him spoonsful of ice cream to cool his parched tongue, and he would sleep with his head on her perfumed breast, snub nose pressed against a half-exposed nipple, until he was bathed in her perspiration and his own on a muggy unseasonably warm winter's day in New Orleans, and the fever had burned itself out.

  Chapter Forty-One

  When Lucas Thomason returned to the Barony around one in the morning, Bruiser the Neapolitan mastiff was outside running in nervous circles in the garden and occasionally stopping to bark at something, or nothing, the way dogs will do when a large storm is threatening. The winds were brisk and rising, but as yet there was no whiplash certainty that a killer hurricane was inbound to his home and sanctuary. In any event, his polo ponies were stabled ten miles away from the island, and would be secure. He walked around the grounds, illuminated with hidden floods and Malibu lights along the paths, regretting all the glass in the conservatory Abby had wanted to build; but Walter Lee or one of the boys had had the foresight to stock up on plywood, a stack of four-by-eight, half-inch sheets covered with a tarp next to the tool and potting sheds.

  As he was looking back at the house a hundred yards away, the fact of murder, indistinct as an old dream in the brightened angles of the beach house, now struck him in the dark—standing still, his body trembled like a bell. His heart was as hot as an isotope. Bending over, he threw up on the ground.

  When he returned, Lillian was on the veranda in her carpet slippers and bathrobe; her pursed mouth held the wages of another's sins.

  "What's keeping you up so late?" Thomason asked her.

  "Miss Charlene is in the front parlor acting peculiar."

  "How do you mean that?"

  "She pushed all the furniture to the middle of the room, and she's stripping wallpaper."

  He felt so weary he could barely hold his head up. The isotope was still burning in his chest; the arteries of his neck felt swollen, black with char. "The wallpaper she put up last month? Jesus, that was a special order, three hundred dollars a roll if I remember correctly."

  "Also she is naked as a peeled egg, Dr. Luke."

  Thomason stopped in the kitchen. Gallingly thirsty, he drank water directly from the sink tap.

  The parlor was ablaze with light. The Aubusson carpet was littered with scraps and scrolls of wallpaper that Charlene was industriously, perhaps maniacally, gouging off the walls with a steel scraper. She had moved all of the furniture except for the white Italian Baroque Revival piano in one corner, and she was standing on tiptoe on the closed lid to reach an untouched area of the wall near the crown molding, her buttocks clenched from effort. Sweat was running down her back. She panted as she worked, mumbling under her breath.

  He picked up a frosted glass from a lowboy and tasied. Piledriver, heavy on the vodka. Glumly he watched her scraping at the wall, pausing to tear strips of paper, huffing and puffing.

  "Charlene, what's this all about?"

  Her heel touched down on the piano lid. She turned, almost lost her balance, and glared at him.

  "Can't sleep thinking about it. All wrong. I screwed up. Got to get it all off, it's driving me crazy."

  "Look at this mess. You're too drunk to know what you're doing. Get down from that piano before you fall."

  "Go away. I'm busy."

  He remembered Charlene on their Italian honeymoon, when she could never be naked enough. Now little bits of flocked wallpaper clung to her elbows, her breasts. "Peeled egg" was certainly accurate. What remained of her pubic hair was like a cruelly clipped vine that had ceased to flower for him. So this was the way it ended, he thought.

  "If you're not a sight. You think I want anyone in this house to see you like this?"

  "They're asleep," Charlene said sullenly. "What's wrong with how I look? When I had my own 'partment, I always did housework in the buff. You don't like to look at me? You got myopia or something. My tits are still great. My ass the best. Also it's the best goddamn pussy you ever had! What's your problem?"

  "Women who drink too much disgust me."

  "Yeah? Your problem's always been, I figured out, you don't know a damn thing about women."

  She was the one who was drunk, but he couldn't seem to keep her in focus. His face was beaded with sweat.

  "I do know this much: offhand I can't think of a single woman in history who deserved a Viking's funeral. But plenty of them should have been buried with a stake through the heart."

  "Oh, that's funny."

  What was left of his self-possession vanished in a rising tide of blood; he felt a sense of loss, of time wasted with a woman he had not loved and didn't want anymore. He needed to go upstairs and sit in a pelting warm shower and not think about anything. But Charlene was like a large awkward plucked bird loose in his house, violating it. He couldn't tolerate her any longer.

  He reached her in two strides and caught her by a wrist as she was trying to back away from him. He yanked hard and threw her head over heels from the piano to the carpet.

  "Oh God! Oh God! You hurt me! My shoulder!"

  "Shut up." He changed his grip to the other wrist and, pulled Charlene to her crossed feet, pulled her halfway across the room until she stumbled and fell again. Then he dragged her on her knees, on one hip, on her back, dragged her out of the house and across the brick veranda, with her screaming all the way, Stop, stop, I'm bleeding! He stopped and said with calamitous calm, Walk, or I'll drag you again, and Charlene got up slowly, whimpering, then stumbled along with him holding her by the wrist, pleading: Luke, Luke, don't, I'm hurt, don't hurt me any more, until they reached the sheds on the far side of the garden. There he threw her down and there she lay, sobbing, unable to move, shallow lacerations from her hips to her ankles as if she had been raked, both elbows bloodied, while he searched for the right key on his ring, opened the padlock on the toolshed door.

  "No, Luke! It's dark in there! There's all kinds of spiders—oh God, I promise, just don't, I couldn't stand it, please!"

  "You're never coming in my house again."

  "I'm sorry! Don't do this!"

  He opened the door, then kicked her butt until she crawled inside on the packed earth floor, squirting golden urine in the dirt while she batted antically at her platinum hair as if she were already in the grip of cobwebs, besieged by the spiders she dreaded. He slammed the door on this spectacle, on a last glimpse of Charlene, hardly able to whimper, stunned by the awfulness of her predicament. He fastened the padlock.

  Charlene was banging weakly on the corrugated steel walls of the windowless shed when he walked back to' the house, feeling relieved but light-bodied, insubstantial, as the weight of the wind against his back staggered him from time to time. They would abide by his rules, they would not interfere in his life, or they would deeply regret their transgressions.

  As he crossed the veranda, Thomason caught a glimpse of Lillian's face at a kitchen window, the round lenses of her glasses flaring from outside light as she turned away, but he did not care for her opinion right now, thank you.

  Inside he turned off the lights of a parlor half in ruins, then went to the infirmary and swallowed a fifteen-milligram tablet of Halcion. Drops of sweat had gathered on his forehead, they rolled down his backbone, but his body was cold except for the isotope in his chest; he had a constant need to clear his seared throat without gagging himself.

  Climbing stairs was such a chore he had to pause a couple of times, hold fast to the curved railing.
He had never doubted his physical stamina but it had been a difficult night so far. The house was awake in the wind, rafters creaking in complaint, a shutter banging somewhere. The Barony had survived many storms as bad as the one headed their way, no need to pack up and move inland. The roof was fastened down with iron straps, and never leaked. The chimneys had been sealed before summer began. The shutters were thick hearts-of-pine. The great old trees gripped the center of the earth with their roots, and they would hold.

  He could hold up too, but he was deathly tired, his own roots withered from the heat of the isotope burning in his chest like a condensing star, inconceivably heavy in its smallness. He carried it, hunching slightly, down the second floor hall to Abby's room, and inside, where its glow, like the speed of his ardor, passed through her closed lids and woke her up. Groping, she pushed the book she had been reading—the poems of Yeats—off her breast and blinked at him. What rough beast...

  "Luke."

  "Hello."

  "Is it late?"

  "I think so."

  "Did I hear Charlene yelling?"

  "It was nothing."

  "Were you fighting?"

  "She was drunk. Never mind about Charlene."

  "Come here and let me kiss you good night."

  He approached the bed. Lizzie lay facedown against Abby's left side. The faintly starchy, animal odor of sleepers was comforting to him. Charlene had always worn cologne to bed. Which seemed as unnatural to Thomason as his last memory of her, tossed out, that was that.

  Abby was wearing a flannel gown with ribbony shoulder straps. When he bent to kiss her he saw by the tightly focused light of her reading lamp the tattoo on her shoulder.

  "What's that?"

  She turned her head and said with a smirk of satisfaction, "That's my little dragonfly."

  "What—you mean you—had yourself tattooed?"

  "I had it done in Myrtle Beach."

  "It's permanent?"

  "Yes, Luke. I think it's so pretty. You don't like it?"

  "No. How could you do that?"

  "I wanted it. Luke, what's wrong, you're glaring."

  "It's—I think it's obscene, to do such a thing to your body." A whore's valentine, cheap as neon. Dismay choked him like an iron —collar. "Was it his idea? Is that what this is all about?"

  Shp seemed shaken by his use of the word obscene, as if he meant something worse, a moral flaw.

  "Yes. Joe has one too. The dragonfly has a very special meaning for both of us."

  "This isn't worthy of you."

  "It's personal," Abby said, and her teeth came together, her lips thinned contentiously. "Private."

  "But there's never been anything to come between us, Abby," he said pleadingly.

  "Nothing's come between us, Luke. Why are you acting this way?"

  He thought of something he'd heard as a child, from a reclusive aunt who always seemed to be bent over her Bible, a deep crease between her stir-crazy eyes: "If yesterday was circumstance, today unplanned, then tomorrow comes the reckoning."Aunt Melva had baby-sat him often when he was a child, and used her switches in response to his bent for mischief. She cut them from hickory saplings and kept them in an umbrella stand in her gloomy front hall. His hatred of her was as raw as turpentine. He undid the fastenings on Melva's toilet seat so that it slid to the floor with her bare ass on it when she sat down. He waited in the tupelo tree at the end of the grape arbor, a walnut in the leather pouch of his hand-carved slingshot, for her to come looking for him. But it was his father who came, and his heart let go of anticipation, stalling in the vastness of his terror. The Old Guy. Paterfamilias. Mariners had been an obsession with him, but failed to obscure a steely dislike of the ruck of humanity, his son one example thereof. It took Lucas's father four hours to talk him down, vowing no retribution, but when his feet had barely touched the ground the Old Guy hit him in the mouth with the back of his hand so hard the blow knocked out three teeth. His upper lip was partially paralyzed for months as a result, and funny-looking after that.

  "Luke, what's wrong?"

  He had climbed down from the tupelo tree. Tomorrow was here and his dictatorial father was long dead, there would be no reckoning. Abby had not moved. There had been no significant change in her condition, and her condition ruled her life. No other man could alter that fact. The dragonfly was a frivolous, foolish thing, but women were entitled to their frivolity. He knew that he would always be in control of Abby's love, and knowing gave him peace.

  "I'm all right. I need some sleep. I have to go into town early tomorrow, pick up a Fed Ex at the Planter's House."

  "What about the hurricane?" Abby said, listening to the wind. "I haven't been watching TV."

  "Coming right for us. But we'll be all right here.

  We'll lose some tree limbs, a few tiles off the roof." Abby yawned. "I feel safe. Where's Bruiser hiding?"

  "Under the bed in Lillian's room, I suppose."

  "Poor old Bruiser."

  "Do you need anything?"

  "Maybe some Lioresal. My legs have been flopping all over tonight. More activity than I can remember. I woke Lizzie up twice."

  "I'll get it for you." He bent to brush his crimped lips against hers. They were cold. He choked off a moment of panic. "Did you feel that?"

  "No," she said. "But it's okay. Just something else to live with, I suppose. Gimp legs and gimp lips."

  Abby turned her head and looked at the cylinder of oxygen nearby, drew a long and heartfelt breath.

  "Do you think Joe's all right at the beach house?"

  Just the sound of his name had a grating effect on Thomason, like the ends of a broken bone coming together. "I suppose so. I haven't seen him."

  He left Abby and made the trip back down the stairs, feeling so enervated it was an effort to pick up his feet. But the isotope in his breast had shrunk to carat-size.

  Lillian, still in her nightclothes, was standing in the middle of the green marble gallery. The wind thumped and bumped against the stout front door.

  They looked at each other for several seconds. Lillian had an aptitude for meaningful silences.

  "All right," Thomason said finally. "Pack some of her things, sober her up and clean her up. Then call Lonnie or Aldous, see that she gets to the Planter's House okay. That's all I'm going to do, understand?"

  Chapter Forty-Two

  By the light of a hurricane lamp on the floor of the toolshed, Lillian worked on Charlene for the better part of an hour. She rinsed old blood and dirt from her tender, bruised body until the water in the pail she had brought with her was rusty brown in color. She had wrapped Charlene in a bedsheet with a fleur-de-lis design and worked on one area at a time, pausing to give Charlene draughts of hot coffee laced with 150-proof rum. This kept her quiet through most of the pain, except when Lillian inadvertently pressed too hard on a deep contusion: then Charlene squawled and cursed her.

  Lillian bore the curses without resentment because she knew Charlene's mind wasn't right. She didn't seem to recall what had happened to her. She talked mostly about flying saucers. Her bedroom was littered with books and magazines on the subject. She didn't read anything else, as far as Lillian knew.

  Charlene's face was swollen but unbruised. Everywhere else she was cut and scratched,blotchy with purple bruises. Lillian didn't think any bones were broken. Lillian remembered lynchings when she was a girl, and the effect they'd had on her and other children in the Gullah community where she had grown up, near the Carolina-Georgia line. Charlene was on a talking jag, but the pupils of her eyes looked huge and hypnotized. She had the gestures, the insecure whine of childhood. Lillian could deal with the external damage, but not the delusions Charlene was protectively spinning, sealing what was left of rationality in a soft white cocoon of the mind. It was all nonsense, about abductees and alien fetuses in her womb, and mother ships: what movie or movies was all that coming from?

  While Lillian was dressing her in soft fawn slacks and a turtleneck cotton sweater, Ch
arlene's outpouring stopped for a little while, although her mouth continued to move, haphazard with unrealized language, and her eyes watered ceaselessly.

  "I never was fair to you, Lillian," she said unexpectedly.

  "That's all right, Charlene. You just try not to talk so much and calm down some."

  "Do you forgive me?"

  "It's Christian to forgive; and I ain't a grudgeful woman."

  "There's an awful wind outside; it doesn't stop."

  "It's going to be a mighty blow."

  "What time is it?"

  "Long about three in the morning."

  Charlene licked her sore flaking lips for the hundredth time. She shuddered uneasily, looking around the toolshed, which was a prefab building about fifteen feet square, large enough to store a small tractor and two riding mowers, and some unused outdoor furniture.

  "I don't know exactly when it's coming," she said. She was brushing her hair, long languid soothing strokes.

  "When what coming? The hurricane?"

  "No, I mean the Mother Ship."

  "Best you not get to talking like that again."

  Charlene gave her a look both chastised and cunning. "Oh, I see."

  "I don't know what you see, lamb. I can make you a nice bed here on the top of this picnic table for the rest of the night, until I raise Aldous to come drive you into town."

  Charlene seemed distraught; her breathing quickened. "Morning? I'm supposed to be gone by then, aren't I?"

  "It don't matter. You need to get some rest."

  Charlene glanced up at the roof of the tool shed, and hunched her shoulders. "They'll find me here okay, won't they?"

  "Who?"

  "The ones who come from the Mother Ship."

  "I—I expect they will. Now what I want you to do is lie back on the table for just a few minutes. I need to go back to the house for bedding, fix you something hot to eat, like soup. How would that be?"

  Charlene nodded. "I need to keep up my strength. I have a sacred duty."

  "You do?"

  She put a hand beneath the bulky sweater, on her belly.