Stephen King - Duma Key

Ilse coming to Duma Key, to Big Pink. Yippee, she was excited, and yippee, I was, too. Jack had found me a stout lady named Juanita to clean twice a week, and I had her make up the guest bedroom. I also asked her if she’d bring some fresh flowers the day after Christmas. Smiling, she suggested something that sounded like creamus cackus. My brain, by then quite comfortable with the fine art of cross-connection, was stopped by this for no more than five seconds; I told Juanita I was sure Ilse would love a Christmas cactus.

On Christmas Eve I found myself re-reading Ilse’s original e-mail. The sun was westering, beating a long and brilliant track across the water, but it was still at least two hours to sundown, and I was sitting in the Florida room. The tide was high. Beneath me, the deep drifts of shell shifted and grated, making that sound that was so like breath or hoarse confidential speaking. I ran my thumb over the postscript — I have some special news — and my right arm, the one that was no longer there, began to tingle. The location of that tingle was clearly, almost exquisitely, defined. It began in the fold of the elbow and spiraled to an end on the outside of the wrist. It deepened to an itch I longed to reach over and scratch.

I closed my eyes and snapped the thumb of my right hand against the second finger. There was no sound, but I could feel the snap. I rubbed my arm against my side and could feel the rub. I lowered my right hand, long since burned in the incinerator of a St. Paul hospital, to the arm of my chair and drummed the fingers. No sound, but the sensation was there: skin on wicker. I would have sworn to it in the name of God.

All at once I wanted to draw.

I thought about the big room upstairs, but Little Pink seemed too far to go. I went into the living room and took an Artisan pad off a stack of them sitting on the coffee table. Most of my art supplies were upstairs, but there were a few boxes of colored pencils in one of the drawers of the living room desk, and I took one of those, as well.

Back in the Florida room (which I would always think of as a porch), I sat down and closed my eyes. I listened to the waves do their work beneath me, lifting the shells and turning them into new patterns, each one different from the one before. With my eyes shut, that grating was more than ever like talk: the water giving temporary tongue to the edge of the land. And the land itself was temporary, because if you took the geological view, Duma wouldn’t last long. None of the Keys would; in the end the Gulf would take them all and new ones would rise in new locations. It was probably true of Florida itself. The land was low, and on loan.

Ah, but that sound was restful. Hypnotic.

Without opening my eyes, I felt for Ilse’s e-mail and ran the tips of my fingers over it again. I did this with my right hand. Then I opened my eyes, brushed the e-mail printout aside with the hand that was there, and pulled the Artisan pad onto my lap. I flipped back the cover, shook all twelve of the pre-sharpened Venus pencils onto the table in front of me, and began to draw. I had an idea I meant to draw Ilse — who had I been thinking of, after all? — and thought I’d make a spectacularly bad job of it, because I hadn’t attempted a single human figure since starting to draw again. But it wasn’t Ilse, and it wasn’t bad. Not great, maybe, not Rembrandt (not even Norman Rockwell), but not bad.

It was a young man in jeans and a Minnesota Twins tee-shirt. The number on the tee was 48, which meant nothing to me; in my old life I used to go to as many T-Wolves games as I could, but I’ve never been a baseball fan. The guy had blond hair which I knew wasn’t quite right; I didn’t have the colors to get the exact darkening-toward-brown shade. He was carrying a book in one hand. He was smiling. I knew who he was. He was Ilse’s special news. That was what the shells were saying as the tide lifted them and turned them and dropped them again. Engaged, engaged. She had a ring, a diamond, he had bought it at —

I had been shading the young man’s jeans with Venus Blue. Now I dropped it, picked up the black, and stroked the word

at the bottom of the sheet. It was information; it was also the name of the picture. Naming lends power.

Then, without a pause, I dropped the black, picked up orange, and added workboots. The orange was too bright, it made the boots look new when they weren’t, but the idea was right.

I scratched at my right arm, scratched through my right arm, and got my ribs instead. I muttered “Fuck” under my breath. Beneath me, the shells seemed to grate a name. Was it Connor? No. And something was wrong here. I didn’t know where that sense of wrongness was coming from, but all at once the phantom itch in my right arm became a cold ache.

I tossed back the top sheet on the pad and sketched again, this time using just the red pencil. Red, red, it was RED! The pencil raced, spilling out a human figure like blood from a cut. It was back-to, dressed in a red robe with a kind of scalloped collar. I colored the hair red, too, because it looked like blood and this person felt like blood. Like danger. Not for me but —

“For Ilse,” I muttered. “Danger for Ilse. Is it the guy? The special-news guy?”

There was something not right about the special-news guy, but I didn’t think that was what was creeping me out. For one thing, the figure in the red robe didn’t look like a guy. It was hard to tell for sure, but yes — I thought… female. So maybe not a robe at all. Maybe a dress? A long red dress?

I flipped back to the first figure and looked at the book the special-news guy was holding. I threw my red pencil on the floor and colored the book black. Then I looked at the guy again, and suddenly printed

in scripty-looking letters above him. Then I threw my black pencil on the floor. I raised my shaking hands and covered my face with them. I called out my daughter’s name, the way you’d call out if you saw someone too close to a steep drop or busy street.

Maybe I was just crazy. Probably I was crazy.

Eventually I became aware that there was — of course — only one hand over my eyes. The phantom ache and itching had departed. The idea that I might be going crazy — hell, that I might have already gone — remained. One thing was beyond doubt: I was hungry. Ravenous.

Ilse’s plane arrived ten minutes ahead of schedule. She was radiant in faded jeans and a Brown University tee-shirt, and I didn’t see how Jack could keep from falling in love with her right there in Terminal B. She threw herself into my arms, covered my face with kisses, then laughed and grabbed me when I started listing to port on my crutch. I introduced her to Jack and pretended not to see the small diamond (purchased at Zales, I had no doubt) flashing on the third finger of her left hand when they shook.

“You look wonderful, Daddy,” she said as we stepped out into the balmy December evening. “You’ve got a tan. First time since you built that rec center in Lilydale Park. And you’ve put on weight. At least ten pounds. Don’t you think so, Jack?”

“You’d be the best judge of that,” Jack said, smiling. “I’ll go get the car. You okay to stand, boss? This may take awhile.”

“I’m good.”

We waited on the curb with her two carry-ons and her computer. She was smiling into my eyes.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” she asked. “Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

“If you mean the ring, I saw. Unless you won it in one of those quarter drop-the-claw games, I’d say congratulations are in order. Does Lin know?”