Lost Man's River (14 page)

Lucius's heart gave a small kick—not just that casual mention in the second paragraph—
Leslie Cox!
—but the replacement of Cox the Backwoods Killer with Young Leslie, Star Pitcher of the Tolen Team, pockets stuffed—as he imagined it—with a country boy's baseball cards and fishing twine and crumbs and one-penny nails, in those distant days before World War I when every town across the country had a sandlot ball club, when Cy Young, Ty Cobb, and Smoky Joe Wood were the nation's heroes. Leslie Cox, whiffling fastballs past thunderstruck yokels on bygone summer afternoons, doubtless bruising more batters with his untutored hurling than Iron Man Joe McGinnity himself! The crack of a bat in the somnolent August pastures, the yells of boys and cries of girls and the dogs barking, all innocent of the workings of the brain behind the young pitcher's squinted eyes in the shadow of that small-brimmed cap, which was surely all most of the teams had worn in the way of uniform.

A postscript to Kinard's letter said, “Might think about paying a visit pretty soon, because my heart is not exactly on my side, the way it used to be.” Lucius telephoned at once, and Mr. Kinard came on the line. After a few alarming sounds not unlike death rattles, he advised his caller that he was feeling poorly but would agree to entertain a visitor in two days' time. Oh please don't die, prayed Lucius. Keep that ol' ticker going!

He rushed to compare Grover Kinard's letter with the Herlong clipping. “Herlong referred to the Getzens, too,” he told Arbie excitedly.

“You've read me that letter maybe three times already, and now you're reading me Herlong again!” Arbie complained.

That evening he called Sally Brown in Gainesville. He brought her up-to-date on the biography, and told her amusing stories about Arbie, but finally he was defeated by her silence. “You okay?” he said. No, she was not “okay,” Sally said, because she had to go back south and find a lawyer and talk to Whidden Harden and clean the rest of her stuff out of their house for the divorce. “Anyway, you sure took your sweet time before you called me!”

Why, he wondered, did this pretty young woman give a damn whether he called or not? Until now, he had supposed that Sally cared for him only as a friend of the Hardens, or because he was her professor, or because the poor thing, in her distress over her marriage, had shifted her feelings of affection to a “father figure” or whatever. A little perplexed, he said he was sorry, he had not wanted to presume—“Presume!” she exclaimed. He could not tell if she were weeping, but that she had been drinking was quite clear. He told her he was headed south in a few days—would she like to come? “You and me and your mean-mouthed old sidekick? I'll have to think about it.” But she took down the name of the motel.

Watson Dyer, seated squarely in the lobby, turned out to look like nothing so much as his own account of himself over the telephone, a major in the U.S. Marines (Reserve) and an attorney “specializing in large-scale real estate development and state politics.” And in fact, his bulk was clad in the big suit and damp white shirt that Lucius had always associated with politicians. He was a heavyset man but not a fat one, with silvered auburn hair in a hard
brush around a moonish face. Strong brows were hooked down at the corners, hooding pale blue eyes, and the left eyebrow but not the right was lifted quizzically as if in expectation that whatever stood in his way must now get out of it. White crescents beneath the pupils made his eyes seem to protrude, though they did not. The eyes seemed inset in the skin, like stones in hide.

“Major Dyer?” Lucius presented the old man beside him. “Mr. Arbie Collins.” Though Arbie was more or less shined up for the occasion, the Major's hairline was so crisp that Arbie, by contrast, seemed disheveled, and his red neckerchief, lacking its usual flair, made him look raffish, even seedy. “And I'm Lucius Watson.”

Creasing his newspaper, Dyer considered this presentation before responding to it, as if how these people were to be addressed was for W. Dyer to decide. His eyes seemed to be closing very slowly, as in turtles, and when they opened once again, Lucius noticed a rim of darker blue on the pale blue pupils, and also a delicate shiver on the skin surface around the mouth, as if within, for his own fell reasons, this man was trembling with rage. When Dyer grinned, which he did sparingly, inexplicably, those delicate shivers played like mad around a snub nose (like a wen, Arbie said later), though these phenomena had little to do with mirth. It was almost as if he laughed unwittingly, perhaps by accident.

“So you're calling yourself Watson,” Dyer said finally, heaving himself onto his feet in a waft of shaving lotion. Flashing the meaty good-guy grin of the corporate executive or politician, he extended a well-manicured hard hand.

“That's his name,” Arbie said sharply, glaring at Dyer with such bristling suspicion that Dyer stiffened with a bearish grunt. Stepping forward to have his own hand shaken, the old man winked conspiratorially at Lucius, who ignored this.

“R. B. Collins,” the Major pronounced in a flat voice, as if scratching that name off some ultimate list. Again the stone blue eyes closed very slowly, and when they reopened, they were fixed on Lucius. The Major took the historian's elbow and guided him toward the dining room, letting the old man fall in behind. “Let's not beat around the bush,” he said. “The historian I'm sponsoring—the
objective
authority the sugar folks are sponsoring—is L. Watson Collins, the noted author of
A History of Southwest Florida
.” He strode a ways while that sank in, then summoned Arbie alongside to enlist his support. “Now, boys, I ask you,” he complained, “if a biography of E. J. Watson signed by the well-known Florida historian wouldn't have more
impact
? Make the most of a fine reputation in the field?”

“How do you know so much about his reputation?” Arbie demanded.

Lucius said mildly, “I've never pretended to be a professional historian—”

“Avoid any suspicion that the author might be prejudiced? As Watson's son?” Dyer raised those heavy eyebrows, thick as wedges. He leaned in closer as if to peer through Lucius's eyes into his psyche, taking Arbie's elbow in a confidential manner. “To answer your question, sir, I know
all
about him,” Dyer said in a soft voice, “and all about you, too.” He held Arbie's eye for a long moment. “A routine background check.” He raised both palms to fend off any outrage. “Standard business practice. Underwriting a project, you first investigate the background of all participating individuals.”

“Routine background check,”
Arbie exclaimed later in their room, rolling his eyes heavenward for succor.
“Participating individuals.”
When Lucius suggested that Dyer might be bluffing, Arbie shook his head. “You think that guy's bluffing?”

“No,” said Lucius, “I do not.”

Awaiting a table, Major Dyer explained that yes, indeed, he needed affidavits from “the Watson Boys” to expedite the claim to the Watson property, and hoped Lucius would help in obtaining one from Addison, the youngest son. Arbie shot his hand up high like a schoolroom pupil. “What makes you think Bloody Watson
had
good title? How come nobody ever heard about this title until now?”

“Let the Major finish, Arbie.”

“Let the Major
begin
might be more like it,” said the Major, smiling shortly in an attempt at a fresh start. “Bear with me long enough to let me finish what I drove across the whole state to explain.” Again he stared the old man down. “Once our claim to a life estate is established—which avoids condemnation, in recognition of a prior right—why, we'll negotiate for preservation of the house as an historical monument or whatever.”

Arbie said, “What's the ‘whatever' here? And who's the ‘we'?”

Dyer winked at Lucius. “Well? What do you say? First, we get the newspapers to cover the Historical Society meeting at Naples where our famous historian, Professor Collins, will demonstrate that there is no hard proof that E. J. Watson murdered
anybody
! Next, we make a fuss at Smallwood's store in Chokoloskee, get signed petitions from the locals against burning the historic home of the man who brought the sugarcane industry to Florida—”

“Oh, Lord!” Lucius shook his head. “I never claimed that!”

“See? L. Watson Collins just won't be a party to a goddamned swindle!”

Arbie barked this impudence into Dyer's face, and Lucius, afraid for him, recalled what he had witnessed long ago on a bear hunt with his father in the Glades—the morose animal biding its time, then the sudden swipe of
long curved claws that gutted the raucous dog and left it whimpering, in awe of its own blood.

Major Dyer's pale blue eyes considered Arbie. He said in an intense cold voice, “Tell me, sir, what is it that you call yourself, sir?
Arbie?
”

“None of your damned business—”

“Yes, sir,” Dyer insisted quietly, “it is very much my business, do you understand me?” Controlling great anger, he frowned at his watch and whacked his leg hard with his newspaper. When the hostess came for them, he tossed his loose newspaper onto the sand of the cigarette-butt canister and strode ahead.