Duma Key

Joe and Rita Mean Dog moved in; the relentless barking of their menagerie commenced. The Baumgartens also moved in, and I often began to pass their boys playing Frisbee on the beach. They were just as Wireman had said: sturdy, handsome, and polite, one maybe eleven and the other maybe thirteen, with builds that would soon make them gigglebait among the junior high cheerleader set, if not already. They were always willing to share their Frisbee with me for a throw or two as I limped past, and the older - Jeff - usually called something encouraging like "Yo, Mr. Freemantle, nice chuck!"

A couple with a sports car moved into the house just south of Big Pink, and the distressing strains of Toby Keith began to waft to me around the cocktail hour. On the whole, I might have preferred Slipknot. The quartet of young people from Toledo had a golf cart they raced up and down the beach when they weren't playing volleyball or off on fishing expeditions.

Wireman was more than busy; he was a dervish. Luckily, he had help. One day Jack lent him a hand unclogging the Mean Dog lawn-sprinklers. A day or two later, I helped him push the Toledo visitors' golf cart out of a dune in which it had gotten stuck - those responsible had left it to go get a six-pack, and the tide was threatening to take it. My hip and leg were still mending, but there was nothing wrong with my remaining arm.

Bad hip and leg or not, I took Great Beach Walks. Some days - mostly when the fog came in during the late afternoon, first obliterating the Gulf with cold amnesia and then taking the houses, as well - I took pain pills from my diminishing stock. Most days I didn't. Wireman was rarely parked in his beach chair drinking green tea that February, but Elizabeth Eastlake was always in her parlor, she almost always knew who I was, and she usually had a book of poetry near to hand. It wasn't always Keillor's Good Poems, but that was the one she liked the best. I liked it, too. Merwin and Sexton and Frost, oh-my.

I did plenty of reading myself that February and March. I read more than I had in years - novels, short stories, three long nonfiction books about how we had stumbled into the Iraq mess (the short answer appeared to have W for a middle initial and a dick for a Vice President). But mostly what I did was paint. Every afternoon and evening I painted until I could barely lift my strengthening arm. Beachscapes, seascapes, still lifes, and sunsets, sunsets, sunsets.

But that fuse continued to smolder. The heat had been turned down but not off. The matter of Candy Brown wasn't the next thing, only the next obvious thing. And that didn't come until Valentine's Day. A hideous irony when you think of it.

Hideous.

iii

ifsogirl88 to EFree19

10:19 AM

February 3

Dear Daddy, It was great to hear you got a "thumbs up" on your paintings! Hooray! And if they DO offer you a show, I'll catch the next plane and be there in my "little black dress" (I have one, believe it or not). Got to stay put for now and study my butt off because - here is a secret - I'm hoping to surprise Carson when Spring Break rolls around in April. The Hummingbirds will be in Tennessee and Arkansas then (he sez the tour is off to a great start). I'm thinking that if I do okay on my mid-terms, I could catch up with the tour in either Memphis or Little Rock. What do you think?

Ilse

My misgivings about the Baptist Hummingbird hadn't faded, and what I thought was she was asking for trouble. But if she was making a mistake about him, it might be better for her to find out sooner rather than later. So - hoping to God I wasn't making a mistake - I e-mailed back and told her that sounded like an interesting idea, assuming she was okay on her course-work. (I couldn't bring myself to go balls-out and tell my beloved younger daughter that spending a week in the company of her boyfriend, even assuming said boyfriend was chaperoned by hardshell Baptists, was a good idea.) I also suggested it might be bad policy to share her plan with her mother. This brought a prompt response.

ifsogirl88 to EFree19

12:02 PM

February 3

Daddy Dearest: Do you think I've lost my freakin' MIND???

Illy

No, I didn't think that... but if she caught her tenor doing the horizontal bop with one of the altos when she got to Little Rock, she was going to be one very unhappy If-So-Girl. I had no doubt that everything would then come out to her mother, engagement and all, and Pam would find a lot to say on the subject of my own sanity. I had already asked myself some questions on that score, and mostly decided to give myself a pass. When it comes to your kids, you find yourself making some weird calls from time to time and just hoping they turn out all right - calls and kids. Parenting is the greatest of hum-a-few-bars-and-I'll-fake-it skills.