East is East

He felt better as he glided over the little bridge that spanned Pumpkin Hammock and saw the cooters and mud turtles lined up like dominoes on a log beneath him—he could have spit on them if he wanted to—and he thought of himself and Wheeler as boys spearing turtles with an old window hook and the taste of the soup and gumbo his mama would make and the way they nailed the hollow shells up along the south side of the house till the place was shingled with them. And then he was passing Hollieway’s Meadow, where the live oaks grew up in clusters out of the stumps of the old trees they’d taken down to build ships for the Confederate navy, his bony old knees pumping, and the noose eased up a notch or two.

He’d taken a pet screech owl out of one of those stumps when he was a boy, an unfledged chick, the runt out of a clutch of three. It was going to die anyway, trampled under by the spiky feet of its siblings, its head pecked till it was one big blister. He’d given it fish, which it didn’t like, and mice, which it did. He remembered his mama thinking he was crazy, dicing up a mouse with his daddy’s long knife, but he clipped that owl’s wings and it grew up to love him, till the dog got it, anyway. That must have been sixty years ago, and now, as he glided through the gates of Tupelo Shores Estates and turned left on Salt Air Drive, he wondered at the memory of it, at the power of human recollection that could take him off his bicycle and out of the heat and send him back through all those long worn-out years. But then he wobbled into the Woosters’ driveway and a swarm of greenhead flies came up on him out of nowhere and the noose tightened again and he was back in the here and now. He could taste the sweat at the corners of his mouth.

All right. He would squat and rest a minute in the shade where the grass was deep and cool, and then he’d have a long drink from the hose and get to work. No need to say anything to anybody. They’d see him outside the window, the machete flashing in the sun, and they’d hear him when he fired up the lawn machine, and they’d say, It’s Olmstead White out there working in this heat and maybe we’ll just get him a tall glass of lemonade with a finger of vodka in it the way he likes it.

He squatted, and the noose eased up a little. And then he bent to the hose and the cool water quickened him and he was ready for work, but there was that damn stab in the hip again, and the salt sweat was just like liquid fire on his hand. To hell with the doctor, he thought, and he held the bandage tight with his good hand and he let the water run over the burning one till the salt was gone and the sharpness of the pain fell off a bit. Then he unsheathed the machete and started nicking at the bushes with short quick drops of his wrist.

He must have been at it half an hour or more by the time he worked himself round to the ocean side of the house, where the pool stood behind a waist-high gate all overgrown with wisteria. There was somebody sitting out by the pool, and that surprised him—not just because of the heat, but because the old lady and her husband never paid any attention to the thing, except to let it go green as a duckpond between the pool man’s visits. It must be the grandson, he thought, visiting from college. He’d seen the boy now and again over the past few years, hanging round the house, waiting for the ferry, driving his red sports car hellbent-for-leather up and down the street to Cribbs’ store—a likable enough kid, even if his eyes were spaced too wide apart and he wore his hair as if it was 1950 still. Hell, and he had to chuckle at the thought, the kid wouldn’t know a MTV haircut if it grew up around his ears. The machete flicked and there was a splash and Olmstead White turned briefly to see the froth of the water, the slick kicking limbs, hair flattened out like an otter’s, but he thought no more about it.