“We will get this fixed for you. Today.”
Edward nodded his head and forced down another potato wedge while Woodes returned to his forms, telling Edward they’d need a copy of his passport, visa, and work contract.
“Do you have many here?” Edwards asked after a minute.
“What’s that?” Woodes didn’t look up.
“Murders. Do you have many here?”
“No, thank God. Though, plenty of other crimes to keep us busy. But that’s why we’re here.” Woodes raised his pen into the air as if making a pledge.
Five minutes later, Woodes phone rang. He grabbed it.
“Uh huh. Uh huh. Is that right? I see. Are they sure? Is that so? Yes – yes, I’ll tell him.” Woodes hung up and looked at Edward, a broad grin forming across his face. “Looks like the electricity company got out there a week ago. They say they fixed a damaged wire, and you should check the breaker box. Do you know about that?”
Edward nodded, feeling the blood rush into his cheeks. He dipped his head low and made himself busy eating another wedge, remembering how he had taken out the fuses to check them.
~~15~~
He felt himself die in the bed, his face reflected in the television. Once, when he was twelve, he was caught sleep walking. He had remembered it happening, getting up from his bed, walking downstairs and standing there facing the front door. He had stood like that for some time before his mother, on her way to the bathroom, had called out his name and woke him. She had asked from the top of the stairs what he was doing. He had turned and, without a word, walked back to his room, and went back to his bed. His mother had laughed about it in the morning, but it had always bothered him, realizing that what he thought was a dream had actually happened. It was the same strange feeling now of not really being in control of his body, just seeing it happen. What was he doing? Where would his unconsciousness take him in the middle of the night?
He saw himself dead and he couldn’t move. Crabs were crawling on his stomach, but he wasn’t afraid. All he asked for was that someone would draw him. One by one his favorite artists walked by, just a couple feet away. Roy Lichtenstein, Diego Rivera, Modigliani, Matisse, Edward Hopper, Picasso! But they didn’t look down at his body. Edward started to call out. Amedeo, draw me upright and dignified. But a voice – his own – chastised him: shut up! The dead can’t speak.
Edward woke himself from his open-eyed dreaming, having returned to sleeping inside and in his bed, and got up while the sky was a pure gradient of chalk blue to flat black. Feeling he’d slept enough, he got two bananas and his bottle of water from the kitchen and walked outside. He walked over near the pier and sat down on the sand at the top of the berm.
The sliver of glowing blue he could see between dunes and island brightened, its center bulging and slowly turning into a mound of fiery orange. Edward felt the force of it, the temperature rising, bringing up his hand to block the light. For a magic minute all he could see was the golden, blinding brilliance leaking through his fingers. Then the world appeared, taking up colors. The ocean waves, the green of the tree tops, the reds and yellows of flowers dotting the brush. A perfect world was spread across the canvas before him with one infinite, flawless stroke.
The sun’s low angle made the previous day’s activity apparent. Shadows formed by footprints and the dragging stretched into long scars on the smooth sand. The mess of impressions stopped where the surf reached. But on the dry sand they continued up to the pier where the police must have had a boat to carry the body away.
He finished off his bananas, gulped down his bottle of water and then walked for five minutes, following the beach around to the eastern lip of the bay. There, on the unprotected side, the bottom fell away. He took one step out and the water came up to his knees. He took another step and slipped in, feeling the warm water on his bare chest. He took in slow, deep breaths, letting the current move him to feel the surface’s rhythm before he began swimming.
This time he didn’t fight the waves. He waited for the larger ones to lift and drop him before rotating his arms. He took a breath every two strokes on his right side and didn’t bother looking up, passing the spot where he had almost drowned. Stroke, stroke, breathe. After doing it every day for weeks the motion was as natural as walking. He kept it up, thinking of nothing, feeling only the warm water and his heart beating. When his hand brushed sandy bottom he jerked his head up to find himself under the outstretched head of a palm tree.
He crawled onto the beach, found a place on the sand to recline, and looked across the choppy inlet, the bay, the pier, beach and houses, satisfied at his accomplishment, taking in lungfuls of air. After resting, he explored his newly conquered land. The narrow beach was untouched and perfect, except for driftwood and debris littering the back. Palms reached out over the sand at places, their leafy tops shading the lapping water where minnows darted about. Pinned in behind the trees, covering the side of the steep incline, were brush and vines, thick and impenetrable. Behind this was steep rock covered by patches of grass and small ferns sprouting from its crevices. Climbing to the top would be impossible without equipment.
He followed the beach around on the eastern side, stepping over a fallen tree trunk and into water at its narrowest spot. On the easternmost side, the peak leveled off, becoming a wide shelf that sank into the sea on the north side. Where the sandy beach ended was a thick wall of mangrove trees. The finger-like roots planted in the shallow water formed a barrier that made it impossible to continue around the perimeter without swimming. Yet just before this wall was jungle and what looked like an animal’s trail leading into the trees.
Edward stepped into the narrow, grassy path, putting one foot in front of the other, pushing off the trees to keep his balance, expecting to emerge on a northern beach or at the wall of mangroves, but instead he found a hidden clearing on an area of flat ground between the peak and mangrove wall. It wasn’t much of a clearing, just ground between tall trees, but it contained, to his surprise, a wooden storage shack.
He froze, wondering if he was trespassing at some fisherman’s keep or on some reclusive lunatic’s home. The ten-by-ten-foot shack was on cinder blocks. Its weathered wood was grey, the panels rough and splintered. He listened for any sounds, his gaze not leaving the hovel. A few birds cried out from the peak behind him and the tree canopy shuffled and swayed in the breeze. But that was it. He stepped forward, walking onto beams of pure morning turning the ground into a patchwork of dark and emblazoned colors.
It was abandoned. He was sure of it. He found that a single latch held its door closed. And because it was locked on the outside, he felt more assured that no one lived inside. He unlatched and pulled on the door. One of its rusty hinges started with a loud crack and the door opened without much force.
Dust-filled beams branded the floor with lava-colored strips. The air smelled of rotting wood, mildew and something else Edward couldn’t place until he spotted the remains of a cigar in the corner. The half-inch stub was well chewed and looked recently discarded. When his eyes adjusted, he noticed black spots, cigar or cigarette burn marks, notching the ledge of the doorway.
A buzzing appeared on the breeze as he stood there. Edward lifted his head as the sound of the motor filled the quiet grove around him. He waited for it to die away, but the sound of the boat on the other side of the mangrove wall only grew louder. Soon it was close enough for him to hear the power being shifted down into a drumming idle. Then he heard voices. He couldn’t understand the words, but he could tell they were from men.