Eddie could see a manta ray gliding below the surface, then skimmed down over pine tops and touched down on the strip, now paved, bounced a few times, and rolled to a stop.
Taking the backpack, Eddie got out. He felt the heat right away. It opened his pores, worked itself deep inside, slowed him down.
He looked around. Except for the pavement on the strip, nothing had changed, not the scrub forest, the still air, the floral smells. The strip was deserted but for a single crab sidestepping down the center. Eddie hoisted the pack on his back, crossed the strip, and started down the dirt road. Behind him, the plane gathered speed, roaring as it rose into the sky, then throbbing, then buzzing, then making no sound at all. A big brown bird rose from the trees, orange legs tucked up against its tail. Eddie could hear the heavy wings beating the air.
In five or ten minutes, he came to the flamboyant tree that marked the path leading to JFK’s marijuana patch. The path was gone, lost in a coiling growth of creeper and bush. But the flamboyant tree seemed much bigger, its red-flowered branches now reaching across the road, dappling the sun. He had a strange thought:
Eddie walked on, and a verse of the poem came to him, as though his mind were a CD player programmed on shuffle.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
But Jack, it turned out, hadn’t been beautiful, and he himself didn’t feel slimy. Where were all these beautiful dead people? Louie? The Ozark brothers? Paz’s driver? All dead, none beautiful. Killing might be wrong, but not because of some inherent beauty in the species. Where was it? In Tiffany? Sookray? Paz? El Rojo? No. Not in Gaucho either. Childhood and beauty were not the same; he remembered how he had fallen through the ice in his hockey skates. Then he thought of Karen, how she had kissed him and said, “I’m attracted to you, and I haven’t been attracted to anyone in a long time. Remember that, no matter what happens.” And despite what had happened, despite the fact that she’d been working to bring his brother down, Eddie couldn’t fit her into this new and dismal scheme of things.
The road swung right, toward the sea. He could see patches of it framed by the trees, flashing shapes of blue and gold, like abstract art on the move. He was sweating now; it dripped off his chin the way it had the last time he’d walked this road. The dead pig had weighed much more than $488,220, but he hadn’t been wearing Jack’s winter clothes. He stopped, took off the sweater, rolled up the shirt-sleeves, kept going.
A salty breeze curled across the road. Eddie still hadn’t seen anyone. The island might have been deserted and he a real-life equivalent of Sir Wentworth Staples, watching for a galleon through the trees. The illusion grew stronger and stronger, and with it came the idea of making a life here. Then he heard the thwack of tennis balls.
Eddie shifted the pack on his back, walked a little faster, recalling the red clay court that lay ahead, with its sun-bleached backboard and damp and dark equipment shed. Just ahead: behind that line of scrub pines.
But as Eddie drew closer he saw they were all gone: the dried-out clay court, the cracked backboard, the tumbledown shed. Instead there was an arched gate with a sign: “Pleasure Island Tennis Club”; and through it the sight of a dozen green all-weather courts, a clubhouse with a deck, and suntanned people in tennis outfits. Lots of them: lounging on the deck with drinks, drilling with the pros on the center courts, playing doubles on the side courts.
Eddie didn’t enter the gate. He stayed on the road, paved now and hot under his shoes, as it angled closer to the sea. He knew he was near the old fish camp, close enough, he thought, to hear the ocean. But all he heard was the whine of high-pitched engines. Then he came to the row of casuarinas that shielded the fish camp from the road. He walked through them and saw that the fish camp too was gone. In its place was a go-cart track. Three white kids fishtailed around the far turn, not far from the spot where Jack’s cabin had stood. A black man gassing carts at the side of the track glanced up at Eddie.
Eddie followed the road to its end at Galleon Beach. The beach itself was the same, if you ignored the ranks of glistening bodies flopped on chaises longues. But where the six waterfront cottages, thatch-roofed bar and central building with office, kitchen, dining room, and the Packers’ suite had been, there now stood a slab hotel eight stories high. Behind the hotel Eddie saw fairways, sand traps, greens, and in the distance clusters of white squared-off villas like a hard-shelled growth on the hillsides. Brad Packer’s blueprint had come to life.
“Take your bag, suh?”
A boy in a blue polo shirt with the words “Pleasure Island” on the chest was beside him.
“I’m not staying,” Eddie said.
“Land-crab race tonight, suh.” The boy looked up at him with unblinking eyes.
Eddie smiled. “Who owns this place?”
“Big, big company.” The boy spread his hands.
“What’s it called?”
The boy thought. “United States company,” he said.
“You from this island?” Eddie said.
The boy nodded.
“Know a man named JFK?”
The boy took a step back.
“He’s an old friend,” Eddie said. “I’d like to see him.”
“Ol’ frien’?” said the boy, backing away some more.
“What’s wrong?” Eddie said.
“He got AIDS.”
“I know.”
“You got it too?”
“No.”
The boy relaxed a little.
“Where is he?” Eddie said.
“Down to Cotton Town.” The boy pointed south.
“How far is that?”
“Far,” said the boy, “except when the jitney carry you.”
“Where do I get the jitney?”
The boy pointed his chin at the hotel.
Eddie went inside. There was a newsstand, a gift shop, a bar. A big-bellied man wearing nothing but a bathing suit and a straw hat sat on a stool with a drink in his hand. “I’m gettin’ smashed on Goombay smash,” he said to the bartender. “Is that funny or what?”
The bartender smiled, but her eyes were expressionless.
The big-bellied man leaned over the bar. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
Eddie, walking to the reception counter, missed her reply.
No one was at the counter. Eddie rang the bell. A door opened and a woman came out. She was a big woman, perhaps twenty pounds overweight, with short frosted hair, plucked eyebrows, and a face that had spent too long in the sun. She wore a name pin on her white blouse: “Amanda,” it said, “Assistant Manager.”
“Checking in?” she asked, noticing the backpack.
“No,” Eddie replied. “When’s the next jitney to Cotton Town?”
The woman didn’t answer. She was staring at his face. “You look like someone I used to know,” she said.
“Yeah?” Eddie said, feeling in his pocket for money to pay the fare.
“And sound like him too.” She tilted her head to one side, revealing a wrinkled line at the base of her neck. “I couldn’t forget those eyes. You’re Eddie Nye, aren’t you? Jack’s brother.”
“That’s right,” he said, looking at her face again, hardened and thickened by the sun, and not placing her.
“Have I changed that much?” the woman said.
