The Queen of Everything (13 page)

"Yeah," I said, even though we weren't having
the same conversation.

"I'll call you later," Kale said.
"You
get the phone."

Kale strode off toward the docks. I
was

124

relieved and sorry at the same time, mostly
because I was left alone again. I kicked myself for not asking for a ride. I
picked up my bike; the night was now getting serious about its task I looked
back up the hill and saw that Jackson was gone.

I got on my bike. I started to head toward
home, resigned to the long ride back. And then I heard the bagpipe music again,
a little farther off this time, over toward the woods.

It was the second time that night I had
followed someone without knowing why, and it was even more stupid this time, as
I was using up what little light was left to get around Deception Loop without
being permanently tattooed by a Firestone Radial. Right then I felt like nothing
so much as one of Big Mama's salmon, pulled forward by something no one quite
understood and that no one had any real control over. But that music just took
hold of something inside of me and
urged.
It called to me. Even though
that sounds stupid as something that prune Cora Lee would say, I heard it.
Calling me.

The music got louder as I moved closer, and
then it got more distant again. I walked my bike toward the sound behind the
hotel and to the entrance of the wooded trail just east of it. I knew where he
was heading then; that place was one of the reasons I most loved this part of
the island. But it was somewhere I had visited only

125

in the daytime, and it made you nervous enough
then. Now, with darkness falling and the firs tall and shadowy on either side of
the trail, I was even more edgy and hyper aware. I thought about something else
Big Mama said about her fish, how their feelings caused them to go places and do
things that weren't always good for them--into the rough ocean and the mouths of
mergansers and kingfishers, violently flinging themselves up rocks and inclines.
It occurred to me that maybe what I was doing wasn't the wisest thing, walking
down that dark trail. Big Mama said that most of the salmon don't make it back
to fresh water.

I considered turning around, getting on my bike
and riding the hell out of there. But then I had another thought, a crazy
thought. Maybe, just maybe, it was the sound of bagpipes that calls to the
salmon and guides them, under those deep, murky depths.

If you've ever been alone in a wood at night,
remember that feeling. That's what my heart was doing, trying to be brave in the
darkness, even though we aren't meant to be. My feet made soft thuds on the
trail carpeted with pine needles, and my bike made a slow
tick, tick,
tick,
as I pushed it forward by the handlebars. The woods looked deep, deep,
and the trees whispered amongst themselves and shushed each other. And through
all this floated the flutey

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cries of the bagpipe, muffled by the woods but
sounding the way the moon would if it could call down to the earth.

I kept following after the sound, and I felt
like a child in one of those magical movies, who follows a bird from branch to
branch because it seems to be leading on purpose. The trail to the McKinnon
family plot is long, and one of the reasons it has been mostly left alone,
despite the wooden trail marker carved with the words historic site . Visitors,
not knowing what is at the end, often turn around and go back, thinking the sign
is wrong or that maybe it is the trail itself that is historic.

But I didn't go back. I knew what was set in
the woods at the end of that trail--a large, round stone table surrounded by
stone chairs, set on a platform, and reached by a curve of stone steps. Each
chair had a McKinnon name etched on the back, and the owner of the name buried
underneath. It was a damp, mystical place, a place that seemed as if it had been
in the woods forever, built by knights and ancient kings and forgotten until you
discovered it yourself. It made you feel that maybe some things
are
forever. Forever but just forgotten.

Down the steps, on each side of the platform
were sets of wooden benches, built up like bleachers, and now soft and rotting.
After the mourners had tromped down a wet and muddy

127

trail, this was where they had assembled to do
their job of watching the latest McKinnon sit down to his permanent
dinner.

And that's where Jackson sat when I finally
reached the burial site. On one of the bottom benches. You didn't dare climb
higher, for fear of failing on your ass through rotting wood. His bagpipes were
a pile of jangled bones beside him.

He just sat there, eating a papaya, slicing off
hunks with a little knife and holding it to his mouth and sucking and chewing
with total messy pleasure. He saw me there, looked up and met my eyes, then kept
on with that papaya. I watched him eat; I'd never seen anyone eat like that
before. Juice ran down his wrist and into his sleeve. His mouth was ringed with
wetness. Watching him made me feel what I had felt kissing Kale. A stirring but
a bit of disgust, too.

He cut off a hunk, held it out to me. I took
it, held it to my mouth.

"Taste it," he said.

I took a bite, chewed. "No,
taste
it,"
he said again.

I closed my eyes, concentrated. It was sweet
and sticky as a finger dipped in honey. And warm, probably from the ride in
Jackson's pocket. I opened my eyes, and Jackson nodded.

Jackson wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "He
hurt some cat," he said.

"That's just a rumor," I said.

l27

128

Jackson said nothing. It was true, then. He'd
been watching me with Kale. Jackson finished his fruit, folded up his knife and
put it in his pocket. He wrapped the papaya skin in a napkin that he pulled from
his jacket, tucked the ball this made back inside his pocket. It was the only
thing that reminded me that he was a member of the Beene family: his care not to
litter. He looked nothing like Melissa, or even Diane or Larry. His eyes stared
up from a lowered head, not in a shy way, but direct; dark eyes that looked too
long and let you and you alone in through the door to where he really stood. He
had none of the Beenes' blondness. The Beenes were Santa Barbara and Fort
Lauderdale. But Jackson, he was one of those places in my father's books: a
small ragged church tucked somewhere in the Tuscan hills, decorated with
paintings of a sad-faced Jesus. A place that smelled of wine and salami and the
breath of old, passionate prayers.

"My father is having an affair," I told him.
"With a married woman. He stole something from her house. This photo of her
husband. He ripped it to shreds. I saw these marks." I ran my hand down my neck.
"Bites."

He scratched his head, stared off at the
McKinnon table. Then he looked back at me. "It won't do you any good. Chasing
your own tail," he said.

129

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're doing this." He twirled his
finger around in a circle. I thought of myself, making that same motion to my
father when I told him he was crazy. Jackson grinned and I laughed. Jackson
picked up a pebble and threw it. It sailed past the spot where Gaylord
McKinnon's head should have been, and fell with a
ping
on his ghost lap.
"I mean, he's the guy driving the boat. Man, the wind is blowing. I can see that
by looking at your face. Blo-wing! But he's steering, and you can't do a thing
about that."

"So what am I, the passenger?"

"Not even."

"What?"

"Some guy in another boat."

I thought about this. "No one should get to
drive their own boat unless they know what they're doing."

"Probably," he said.

"It's a bad plan," I said.

"Yeah, well." Jackson threw another pebble. It
bit the small of Gaylord's back. If I were him, I'd be getting pissed by now,
but his chair just sat there all stony and calm.

"Come on," Jackson said.

"Where are we going?"

"Home," he said. He lifted up the bagpipes
again. "Too dark to ride."

"I'm not afraid," I said. I was, but I
wanted

130

him to know how brave I could be.

Jackson only laughed. "You can be not-afraid in
my truck."

I picked up my bike. We walked back toward the
path. Jackson put one hand on the bagpipes as he walked, as if he were a father
carrying a baby in a front-pack, only this baby was a pouchy alien with four
thin arms that clattered to the beat of our steps.

It was so dark now that you could see only the
barest lacy outline of tree limbs, spread out like the wings on Nathan's dragon.
It wasn't scary out there anymore; shivery, but not scary. It's funny how just
having another person nearby can make you feel fearless. I mean, it's not like
you ever see dogs walking next to other dogs for support when they are in some
nervous situation. But people? It's like inside every one of us is that girl who
takes her friend with her on a trip to the bathroom. I never liked those kinds
of girls.

Jackson, with his thin frame and scraggly hair,
well, he was not the type you imagine saving you against bad creepy stuff. But I
felt calm with him there, walking on the path, my bike
tick
,
tick,
tick
ing again and the sky so black and filled with stars it looked like
nothing so much as a huge mug of rich dark coffee just given a good shake of
sugar crystals.

We didn't say anything for a long time.
And

131

then, because I'm an idiot sometimes, I started
to feel that the silence needed something. An idiot, because silence can be more
rich than words.

"It was really great, you know, when I heard
you playing in the woods," I said. "Yeah?" he said.

"Yeah. I couldn't see you, but I heard the
music. It was really strange but great. Definitely."

He nodded a little. More silence. "Just this
music, floating in front of me," I said. My voice sounded high, a little silly.
"I thought, maybe that was what it was like when you got lost hiking, hearing
the bagpipes."

Stupid. Stupid, stupid. I knew it the second
the words slipped out. Melissa had told me it was something he never talked
about. His step lost its rhythm; I thought he might stop walking altogether, but
he didn't. The abruptness of a slammed door sat suddenly between us. I could
feel my face get hot. We kept walking in silence. All the noises of the forest
seemed too loud. It was the kind of silence where every second lasts a thousand,
the kind of silence that makes you want to run away and stick a pillow over your
head, pretending it was yesterday.

Finally he spoke. "Be real with me," he said.
"That's the thing I like best about you."

We reached his truck, in the Hotel Delgado lot.
Jackson didn't seem mad anymore. He lifted

132

my bike and set it in the back of the pickup.
His license-plate holder said, catch and release wild trout . I pointed to it.
"You fish?"

"Naw. Slim Wilkins?" He looked at me to ask if
I knew the man and I shook my head. "He's the guy I bought the truck from.
Actually his wife, Slim being dead. He's the fisherman."

Jackson unlocked the car door, and I stepped up
into the cab. Jackson climbed up into the driver's seat, shut the door with a
loud metallic slam. "All this stuff is his." Jackson flicked his finger at a
round compass ball on the dashboard and a fuzzy creature with google eyes
hanging from the rearview mirror. "Look" he said, with obvious pleasure. He
opened up the glove compartment. "Maps." Maps and fast-food paper napkins and
little foil pouches with those stinky wet cloths for wiping your
hands.

"This Slim was a good friend of yours?" I
asked.

"Oh, no." Jackson did a half-laugh. "Never even
met him. I just like having the stuff around. There's this book he wrote in, the
dates he changed the oil and got tune-ups. I like that." Jackson turned the key
and started the engine. "All written down, right there. Slim's a good guy. Nice
to drive around with."

Okay, this was weird. But more weird was that I
kind of knew what he meant. I could

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almost picture Slim, riding around with one tan
hairy arm out of the window, shirtsleeves rolled up. I could see a bunch of
rakes and tools sliding around the back of the truck, and a couple of thick
branches he'd just pruned off some tree that was starting to take advantage.
Happy at his day's work, and singing out loud the wrong words to some
country-and-western songs he'd turned up high on the radio. I too liked this
idea. It was funny, but I guess I saw myself in the unusual package that was
Jackson Beene.

I watched Jackson work the clutch and
accelerator. His window was rolled down just an inch, enough that I could hear
the rush of the wheels on pavement outside, and enough to make the top of
Jackson's hair blow around as if it were trying to coax him into an adventure he
was reluctant about.