Adrift in the Sound (14 page)

“Hey, shithead,” Marian said to Greg as she came in the door. “That salad’s for the party tomorrow. Don’t come in here just taking whatever you see.”

“Don’t get uptight. There’s plenty. Where’ve you been?”

“None of your business. Balling every guy on the island. Where have you been? Or should I say
who’ve
you been with? I’d like to know whose disease I’m sharing. Buy ’em a get-well card.”

Rocket turned to Lizette, who stood frozen in the doorway, asked her quietly, “Mind if I eat down at the cabin?” Lizette grabbed a flashlight from the hook by the door and Rocket took his plate of food. He took a rumpled sleeping bag from the shelf above the washer on the back porch and they headed for the trail. They heard dishes breaking as they picked their way down the slope.

“Hey! Hey! Get down you beast,” Rocket said, pushing Tucker away from the cabin door with his foot, going to the table and setting down his plate and fork, the dog followed, looking for a handout.

Lizette lit the kerosene lantern, turned down the wick and went to the stove to build a fire.

“I hate beggars,” he said to the dog and dangled a piece of salami just above his head, teasing the meat up and down as Tucker snapped at it. “You been working?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“I was talkin’ to the dog. But let’s see what you’ve been doing. What’s that painting? The water?”

“No,” she said, glancing at the canvases tilted against the wall, getting up to take her new piece off the easel.

“Are you just going to hide this stuff down here and not show anybody?” he said, taking a bite from his sandwich, a piece of cheese hanging from the bread. He stuffed it back in with a dirty finger. Tucker whined.

“It’s private,” Lizette said. “It’s how I talk. Through my hands. It’s what I feel. It’s nobody’s business.”

“Don’t you want to sell them?” he said. “Looks like you could use the bread.”

“No,” she sighed. “My mother sold hers. One of her paintings, a seascape, is in the Seattle Art Museum. I visit it sometimes, but I don’t like it. It’s just paint. It doesn’t talk to me. What I’m doing isn’t about money like it was with her.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “My mother’s an artist, too. In San Francisco. Well, mostly an artist, when she’s not crazy or drunk. We grew up with canvases and brushes all over the house. Me and my brother. For a while she thought she was Jackson Pollock, flinging paint all over the floors and walls. Sometimes she even hit the canvas.” He started laughing, coughing at the same time, nearly choked. Lizette got up from the stove, pounded him on the back.

Recovering, he wiped tears from his eyes. “The landlord came in one day to check the place and found garbage and paint spilled everywhere. He wasn’t much of an art lover, if you know what I mean,” and let out another hacking laugh. “We had to move out the next week. Found a place in the Panhandle, next to Golden Gate Park. You ever been to San Francisco?”

“No.”

“Great place until the hippies showed up,” he said, flinging some cheese to the dog. “We used to hang out at the park at night in high school, smoke weed, drink a little beer. It was cool. Go to the Fillmore and hear music, Jefferson Airplane and Sopwith Camel, do you like the Camel?” Lizette stared at him, seeing him move like a marionette, strings lifting his hands and turning his head, working his wooden lips.

“All these freaks and weirdoes started hanging around,” he continued. “Dancing, going ‘far out man’ and ‘righteous brother.’ Like anybody from Michigan or Salt Lake City would know far out from their assholes. Then the cops started rousting us from the park, came riding in on horses, said we couldn’t stay there anymore. Then the freaks started ODing, raping and killing each other in the bushes. It was a bummer, man. Summer of Love, my ass. It was like the place exploded, nothing left but rubble. I got out just in time. But, shit spreads when you step on it. Now they’re up here, all over the place, going back to nature, whatever the shit that is. I didn’t know we’d ever left.”

Lizette went to the stove and blew on the fire, added a few more pieces of wood. When it started crackling she got up and paced before the windows, looking out, trying to see the orca in the dark. The cabin warmed. Rocket finished his food. Lizette blew out the lantern and lay down on her cot. Rocket spread his sleeping bag by the stove, took off his jacket and rolled it into a pillow, stretched out. Tucker climbed into his box.

“You from here?” Rocket asked in the dark, his voice startling Lizette. She pulled her sleeping bag up, covering her shoulders and chin.

“Yes.”

“How long have you known Marian?”

“Always. Let’s sleep.”

“When did you meet her?”

“One day I was sketching, in the far back meadow, near where my father and his students were digging. I didn’t know I was on her family’s land. I was sitting there drawing ferns and wildflowers. She walked up to me and we started talking. We were about seven or eight.”

Her voice trailed off and she floated for a few beats, let the memories wash over her.

“After that we spent every summer together. She had an old palomino horse, Lightfoot, and we’d ride bareback together. We’d ride into town, get ice cream cones. Marian loves maple nut. I like pistachio. She’s like a sister. We’re both only children. Her father made her do chores in the morning, sometimes I’d help her in the barn. I liked to, still do. Then we went everywhere in the afternoons. My parents were working so they were glad I wasn’t around to bother them. They fought a lot, anyway. They liked Marian and her family. My father hunted sometimes with her father and the other ranchers, after harvest. He’d come back up here by himself in the fall and hunt with Poland.”

“Where’d you live the rest of the year?” he said.

“In Seattle.” All the questions irritated her and she changed the subject. “Where’d you get the piano?”

“It was a gift from the Metzgers,” he said. “The first people who took me in when I moved here in ’68. Good people. Kept me off the streets.”

“I know,” she said, meaning anyone who’d give Rocket a piano had to be good.

“You know too much,” Rocket teased. “What’s Marian so pissed at Greg about?”

“I don’t know. Let’s sleep.”

“OK. But, I want you to know I’m sorry about what happened to you … about the attack and all. I know the Dogs haven’t been very nice to you.”

“It’s OK Rocket, really. I understand. I don’t want to talk about it. Poland will come down early tomorrow and get me. Today has been too much. I feel swamped. But, I’m glad you’re here, that I’m not alone. Let’s just be quiet and listen to the water.”

“OK.” He walked on his knees to the side of the cot, leaned over and kissed Lizette on the forehead. “Goodnight.”

She lifted her lips up to him, but he pulled back.

“Rest,” he said gently. “I don’t wanna start anything.”

Lizette longed to be held, to slow her whirling mind, to melt into his body, release.

“See you in the morning,” he said and settled onto the floor, closed his eyes to the moon shining over Orcas Island, knew Looney was breaking the water’s surface somewhere in the night, hunting.

SIXTEEN

GREG PULLED DUSTY PLYWOOD FROM BETWEEN THE BARN STALLS.
Fisher gripped an end. They carried the sheets into the front yard and laid them on rickety sawhorses, then rolled out an extension cord and used the electrical outlet behind the washer on the porch to plug in the stereo. Marian brought a broom and swept the plywood picnic tables, spread torn tablecloths over the worst of the dirt and bird droppings.

“Already looks like a party and it’s not even noon yet,” Greg said, smoothing wrinkles from the faded yellow and aqua cloths.

“Looks like rain,” she said, scanning the gray sky. “What time did you tell people to show up?”

“Hey!” Greg brushed past her, gestured at Fisher who was setting up the turntable and receiver. “Turn the stereo on, man. We need tunes.”

He went back into the barn and got a big aluminum tub and rinsed it out with a garden hose in the side yard. A couple of cars, one with smoke puffing from under the hood, pulled up. He waved them to the side of the barn, signaling the drivers to park away from the dooryard and the front garden where they were setting up. He smoothed his curly black hair with his hands and wiped barn grit from his dark, girlish eyelashes, took a big swig of beer from the bottle he’d set on a hay bale and went to greet Bomber and Stinky.

Lucky was stuck in the backseat of Stinky’s smoking Chevy Nomad and had to be pried from the car. The guys arranged him feet-first and tugged until his ass cleared the door frame, then let go and turned away. Lucky fell to the ground in a heap, feeling around him in the dirt for his cane. He was too drunk to find it by himself so Greg bent and picked it up, wrapped Lucky’s fingers around the shaft. With the cane planted, he hoisted Lucky up, almost erect.

“Get a chair you knuckleheads.” Greg had Lucky under the armpits, supporting his out-flung arms like sticks in a scarecrow, the cane dropped to the ground again. “There’s one in the barn!” he shouted, could hear the men rummaging and knew they were looking in the wrong place, but couldn’t let go of Lucky or he’d be on the ground again. “Help me get him to the house. Hurry up, assholes!” As he propped up Lucky, he looked down to find the man had wet his pants.

“Piss!” Greg let go. Lucky swayed for a few moments before going down. Stepping over his struggling body, Greg stormed into the barn, its weathered siding practically bulging from the hot words that spewed from his mouth. Bomber and Stinky saw an opening in the back of the barn, wiggled through the feed hatch, and ran for the orchard. Lucky writhed in the dirt, further soiling his pants. Another car tore down the ranch’s long driveway, going too fast, spraying mud and gravel. Greg came out sparking like a welder’s arc to see who’d arrived.

The man who got out of the car wore a three-cornered hat with a long white ostrich plume. With a bullfighter’s flourish, he wrapped a black velvet cape around himself, flashing then hiding its fuchsia-colored lining.

“Toulouse!” Greg rushed toward the newcomer and clasped his hand. “Glad you made it. Nothin’s going right today. Come on in and things will get better. Glad you could hang out. You know most of the guys here from Franklin Street. The Dogs? And, there’s a lot of people from the island.”

“Nothing but vain fantasies,” Toulouse said. “What’s the point of this soiree?”

Greg wrinkled his nose, showing the tiny scar he’d gotten when he fell against an open drawer in his childhood bedroom. His dad had been drunk when he shoved him. His mother apologized later. The doctor in the sorry mill town where his father had worked, and ground his mother to sawdust, laid in six stitches. Greg leaned back on his heels, rubbed his scar, and looked up at Toulouse, squinting as if examining a statue in the half-light of the wax museum near Pioneer Square.

Toulouse extended his arm and spread the fullness of his long cape around Greg’s shoulders, pulled him against his chest. “I talk of dreams, child of an idle brain.” He brushed Greg’s hair with his lips. “From Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet?” He unfurled the fabric from Greg’s shoulders and let him go.

Greg shoved his hands in his pockets. He shot a glance toward the house. “Not here!”

Marian came out, stood in the dooryard with her hands on her hips, watched the men embrace, huffed under her breath as Greg and the so-called “famous poet,” the one he’d been waiting for all morning, walked toward her.

“Glad you could come,” Marian said, extending her mayonnaise-smeared hand without wiping it. “Do you want to take your things off?”

“No, if you don’t mind,” he said, pulling his cape closer with a sweep. “Is everyone here?”

“I don’t think so.” Marian rolled her eyes and looked over at Lucky lying in the dirt. “We’re expecting a whole army of bums and winos before this shindig’s done. We’re celebrating the spring awakening, the vernal equinox.”

“Hierogamy?” he asked, smiled at her slyly.

“Excuse me?” Marian said.

“The ultimate celebration,” he said imperiously. “You know. The great mating of god and goddess. The rites of spring.”

“Yeah, well, sure. Fisher and Sandy are playing music in the living room.” She put her hand on his back and pressed him toward the kitchen door. “Come on in.”

“Actually, I want to see Lizette,” he said, pulling away. He smiled and Marian felt a sly vibe. Looks like a vampire, she thought. Marian studied the pinched creases around the man’s eyes, the elasticity of the skin around his throat. “Lizette isn’t here. She’s still at work at the farmers’ market in town.

“Where’s Rocket?”

“I don’t know.” She wiped her hands on the dishtowel she was holding. “You seen him, Greg?”

“He was with Lizette last time I saw him. Check the cabin.”

“Where’s that?” Toulouse said, staring off in the wrong direction as he scanned the orchard and upper pasture.

“It’s down there,” Marian said, flapping the dish towel toward the trees. “Follow the path behind the house down to the cove.” Toulouse moved off with a flourish, tipping a goodbye from the rim of his foolish hat. Marian watched him go, his self-importance shoved up his ass like a mop handle.

Over her shoulder she yelled at Greg, “Get that idiot out of the driveway before somebody runs over him!”

She went inside and slammed the back door. Outside she heard more cars arrive as she sprinkled paprika on the re-mushed potato salad, smoothed over the helpings Greg and Rocket stole. A horn honked, doors slammed, a glass bottle shattered. Marian stretched a kink out of her neck and covered the bowl with a chipped plate, took it outside to the picnic table along with a bag of potato chips.

Toulouse knocked on the cabin door and Rocket got up from the table where he was eating and opened it, Tucker barking around his knees.

“Hey man! What’re you doing here?” Rocket said, recognizing Toulouse and extending his hand. He knew his real name was Henri Toussaint, but because he was French Canadian and styled himself an artist, the Dogs called him Toulouse, after Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the only French artist they could name. Somebody had tacked a torn, water-stained print of Toulouse-Lautrec’s can-can dancers in the bathroom on Franklin Street, right above the cracked toilet. The joke was that Henri was long and tall, Toulouse-Lautrec short and stubby—both equally weird.

“You were bragging about Lizette’s paintings the other day. Since I’m a bit of an art agent, thought I’d come down and take a look,” Toulouse said. “Where are they?”

“Right here,” Rocket said, showing him into the cabin. “I’ll flip them around so you can see. They’re really trippy, man. I don’t know what they are. Underwater landscapes, fantasy, like some kind of acid trip?”

Rocket began turning canvases around to face the room, propping them against the walls as he spread them out. Toulouse gasped when Rocket turned the first, unfinished canvas to the light. “Mon Dieu!” he said. Then as the others were presented, he whispered, “Christ,” and stepped back, bumping Lizette’s cot, nearly falling into it. “These are fantastic. Has anyone else seen them?” Rocket shrugged.

The quality of light in the cabin changed from the sullen gray overcast that had grudged against the window, bursting now into a radiant glow that surrounded the canvases and heated the room, causing the men to rub their eyes.

Toulouse saw areas of abstraction mixed gracefully, sometimes jarringly, with traces of figuration. Much of the imagery reflected the coastal forests of Washington, with fanciful-looking flowers and plants, odd specimens used as organizing—perhaps disorganizing—principles. His main impression was the feeling of looking through veils, or at a fantabulous landscape compressed in a steamed, translucent terrarium. The water, the sloshing, the luminous Salish Sea were cast over this fantastic vision. Toulouse wiped sweat from his forehead.

“Beautiful, ineffectual angel, beating in the void her luminous wings in vain,” Toulouse said, recovering somewhat from the effect and pacing in front of Lizette’s paintings. “Lord Byron, you know?” Rocket considered his poetic outbursts gibberish. Toulouse pondered, asked: “Wonder how much they’ll sell for?”

“She doesn’t like people looking at them, doesn’t want to sell them.” Rocket quickly turned the canvases to face the wall again, slid them back together. “She gets upset. Throws things. Makes bird sounds. That’s what she does when she gets scared.”

“Then it’s better you don’t show them to anyone,” he said. “Can you lock this place? When is she coming back?”

“Hey, I just woke up, man. How should I know?”

“OK. I’m going back to my car and get my camera.” He went out the door and stood on the porch, turned to look Rocket in the eye. “I’ll be right back. If she comes, get her out of here while I take some pictures. I mean, you’re right. This is interesting.”

“Why do you want pictures? That might freak her out.”

“I just want to remember this,” Toulouse lied.

“Lizette really is special,” Rocket said. “Reminds me of my mother, but her stuff is way better. I don’t wanna upset her. She’s been through a lot.”

Toulouse turned and hurried up the trail. As he passed the house on the way to his car, he saw people gathered around the picnic table in the front yard. Music blasted and he waved at Greg then looked for his car in the jam that now lined the ranch’s long entry road.

Wind picked up some loose paper plates and sailed them over the picket fence into the wild grasses beyond. Greg grabbed a beer from the tub and flicked bits of ice from the label, went inside, knocked on the bathroom door, opened it.

Lucky snored in the tub. Greg locked the door behind him and reached above the medicine chest, felt in the dust curds for the screwdriver. In quick turns he loosened the screws that held the light-switch plate to the wall and plucked a plastic bag from the small recess beside the switch. Then he loosened the syringe taped to the back of the toilet’s water tank, sat on the commode and cooked a bit of the white powder in the bowl of a soup spoon.

Lucky stirred, coughed, bubbled saliva under his mustache, turned his head to the wall. Greg singed his fingertips as the matches burned down. He loaded the syringe, shot up and stretched in relief. Someone pounded on the bathroom door. Lucky mumbled, “Buzz off” from the tub. Greg flushed the toilet. More knocking. He spritzed air freshener.

Lizette stood there when he opened the door. “You screwed up my rush,” he growled as he pushed past her. Standing in the hall, she’d heard the scraping on the other side of he wall and then the chink of metal on metal. She locked the bathroom door, placed a hand towel over Lucky’s head for her own modesty.

She checked the room, scanning the metal surfaces, feeling along edges, found the screwdriver and went to the switch plate, removed the already loose screws and pulled the plastic bag from its hiding place. She peed, and, before she flushed, she dropped the plastic bag into the bowl, watched it disappear down the vortex. She washed her hands and dried them on the towel on Lucky’s head. A few drops of water landed on his nose and he mumbled, “Shit.”

In the kitchen, she checked her bag for sketch pad and pastels, headed for the trail that led through the orchard and along the rim above the cove before it looped back to her cabin, Tucker on her heels. She’d been working cooped up in the cabin and wanted to be outside