Stephen King - Duma Key

“Okay. Thanks. And thanks for listening to me, Wireman.”

“Thanks for reading to the boss. Buena suerte, amigo .”

I set off down the beach and had gotten about fifty yards before something occurred to me. I turned back, thinking Wireman would be gone, but he was still standing there with his hands in his pockets and the wind off the Gulf — increasingly chilly — combing back his long graying hair. “Wireman!”

“What?”

“Was Elizabeth ever an artist herself?”

He said nothing for a long time. There was only the sound of the waves, louder tonight with the wind to push them. Then he said, “That’s an interesting question, Edgar. If you were to ask her — and I’d advise against it — she’d say no. But I don’t think that’s the truth.”

“Why not?”

But he only said, “You’d better get walking, muchacho . Before that hip of yours stiffens up.” He gave me a quick seeya wave, turned, and was gone back up the boardwalk, chasing his lengthening shadow, almost before I was aware he was leaving.

I stood where I was a moment or two longer, then turned north, set my sights on Big Pink, and headed for home. It was a long trip, and before I got there my own absurdly elongated shadow was lost in the sea oats, but in the end I made it. The waves were still building, and under the house the murmur of the shells had again become an argument.

Start with what you know, then re-invent it. Art is magic, no argument there, but all art, no matter how strange, starts in the humble everyday. Just don’t be surprised when weird flowers sprout from common soil. Elizabeth knew that. No one taught her; she learned for herself.

The more she drew, the more she saw. The more she saw, the more she wanted to draw. It works like that. And the more she saw, the more her language came back to her: first the four or five hundred words she knew on the day she fell from the cart and struck her head, then many, many more.

Daddy was amazed by the rapidly growing sophistication of her pictures. So were her sisters — both the Big Meanies and the twins (not Adie; Adie was in Europe with three friends and two trusty chaperones — Emery Paulson, the young man she’ll marry, had not yet come on the scene). The nanny/housekeeper was awed by her, called her la petite obéah fille.

The doctor who attended her case cautioned that the little girl must be very careful about exercise and excitement lest she take a fever, but by January of 1926 she was coursing everywhere on the south end of the Key, carrying her pad and bundled up in her “puddy jacket and thumpums,” drawing everything.

That was the winter she saw her family grow bored with her work — Big Meanies Maria and Hannah first, then Tessie and Lo-Lo, then Daddy, then even Nan Melda. Did she understand that even genius palls, when taken in large doses? Perhaps, in some instinctive child’s way, she did.

What came next, the outgrowth of their boredom, was a determination to make them see the wonder of what she saw by re-inventing it.

Her surrealist phase began; first the birds flying upside-down, then the animals walking on water, then the Smiling Horses that brought her a small measure of renown. And that was when something changed. That was when something dark slipped in, using little Libbit as its channel.

She began to draw her doll, and when she did, her doll began to talk.

Noveen.

By then Adriana was back from Gay Paree, and to begin with, Noveen mostly spoke in Adie’s high and happy lah-de-dah voice, asking Elizabeth if she could hinky-dinky-parley-voo and telling her to ferramay her bush. Sometimes Noveen sang her to sleep while pictures of the doll’s face — large and round and all brown except for the red lips — scattered Elizabeth’s counterpane.

Noveen sings Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, are you sleepun? Are you sleepun? Dormay-voo, dormay-voo?

Sometimes Noveen told her stories — mixed-up but wonderful — where Cinderella wore the red slippers from Oz and the Bobbsey Twins got lost in the Magic Forest and found a sweetie house with a roof made of peppermint candy.

But then Noveen’s voice changed. It stopped being Adie’s voice. It stopped being the voice of anyone Elizabeth knew, and it went right on talking even when Elizabeth told Noveen to ferramay her bush. At first, maybe that voice was pleasant. Maybe it was fun. Strange, but fun.

Then things changed, didn’t they? Because art is magic, and not all magic is white.

Not even for little girls.

There was a bottle of single-malt in the living room liquor cabinet. I wanted a shot and didn’t take it. I wanted to wait, maybe eat one of my egg salad sandwiches and plan out what I was going to say to her, and I didn’t do that, either. Sometimes the only way to do it is to do it. I took the cordless phone out into the Florida room. It was chilly even with the glass sliders shut, but in a way that was good. I thought the cool air might sharpen me up a little. And maybe the sight of the sun dropping toward the horizon and painting its golden track across the water would calm me down. Because I wasn’t calm. My heart was pounding too hard, my cheeks felt hot, my hip hurt like a bastard, and I suddenly realized, with real horror, that my wife’s name had slipped my mind. Every time I dipped for it, all I came up with was peligro, the Spanish word for danger.

I decided there was one thing I did need before calling Minnesota.

I left the phone on the overstuffed couch, limped to the bedroom (using my crutch now; I and my crutch were going to be inseparable until bedtime), and got Reba. One look into her blue eyes was enough to bring Pam’s name back, and my heartbeat slowed. With my best girl clamped between my side and my stump, her boneless pink legs wagging, I made my way back to the Florida room and sat down again. Reba flopped onto my lap and I set her aside with a thump so she faced the westering sun.

“Stare at it too long, you’ll go blind,” I said. “Of course, that’s where the fun is. Bruce Springsteen, 1973 or so, muchacha .”

Reba did not reply.

“I should be upstairs, painting that,” I told her, “Doing fucking art for fucking art’s sake.”

No reply. Reba’s wide eyes suggested to the world in general that she was stuck with America’s nastiest man.

I picked up the cordless and shook it in her face. “I can do this,” I said.

Nothing from Reba, but I thought she looked doubtful. Beneath us, the shells continued their wind-driven argument: You did, I didn’t, oh yes you did .

I wanted to go on discussing the matter with my Anger-Management Doll. Instead I punched in the number of what used to be my house. No problem at all remembering that. I was hoping to get Pam’s answering machine. Instead I got the lady herself, sounding breathless. “Hey, Joanie, thank God you called back. I’m running late and was hoping our three-fifteen could be—”

“It’s not Joanie,” I said. I reached for Reba and drew her back onto my lap without even thinking about it. “It’s Edgar. And you might have to cancel your three-fifteen. We’ve got something to talk about, and it’s important.”

“What’s wrong?”

“With me? Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Edgar, can we talk later? I need to get my hair done and I’m running late. I’ll be back at six.”

“It’s about Tom Riley.”

Silence from Pam’s part of the world. It went on for maybe ten seconds. During those ten seconds, the golden track on the water darkened just a little. Elizabeth Eastlake knew her Emily Dickinson; I wondered if she also knew her Vachel Lindsay.