Scavenger Reef(42)

22


"Did you ever see that experiment they do with the Ping-Pong balls and mousetraps?" Arty Magnus asked his eager but ungifted protege, Freddy McClintock. "They set about a zillion traps, load 'em with Ping Pong balls instead of cheese. Then they drop in one tiny, almost weightless Ping-Pong ball. It lands on a trap and sets it off. Now you've got two balls clattering around. Then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, infinity. It takes about one deep breath to happen, and with all the snapping springs and flying balls and mayhem it very soon becomes impossible to figure out how the whole goddamn thing got started."

The young reporter used the eraser end of his pencil to coax his red hair back from his sweaty forehead. "And you're saying that's how news spreads?"

"Very good, Freddy," said Arty Magnus. He swiveled in his editor's chair, put his feet on the air conditioner that dribbled water more than it pushed air, and wished that he was somewhere else. "You're catching on."

McClintock beamed. He was proud of himself for finding confirmation of the Augie Silver story, though all he'd done was put himself, quite by chance, on a collision course with the bouncing bit of news.

Ray Yates and Robert Natchez, having heard last night's messages from Clay Phipps, had convened for breakfast at Raul's. Their waitress was a lush who finished her workday at 3 p.m. and promptly repaired to the Clove Hitch bar. Making chitchat with Hogfish Mike, she told him of the miracle return she'd heard the two discussing. Curran, amazed that anyone could survive being sucked into a waterspout, told the tale to several customers, Jimmy Gibbs among them. McClintock, nosing around the charter-boat docks somewhat aimlessly, picked up the yarn from a group of skippers who had no customers that day.

"So I'll do a follow-up?" McClintock asked.

"What do you have to add?" said Arty Magnus.

"That the rumor was true," said the young reporter. "That I was right."

"You think anyone gives a flying crap you were right?"

McClintock's hips moved but he found he had no answer. There were in fact some new parts to the story, but the local newshound, moving in his small domain, hadn't collided with them. He didn't know who Claire Steiger was, or that she had spent that morning strategizing with the small group of allies she despised and badly needed. He didn't know that Jimmy Gibbs, now jobless and having torched his bridges, had, in his provincial purity, called Sotheby's to ask if the auction could still be held if the painter was alive.

"Let it rest a day or two," said Arty Magnus. He looked up and saw how crestfallen young McClintock was. That was the bitch of playing mentor: seeing people become disillusioned without getting any smarter. "Look," he said more gently, "if you're right, you'll still be right in forty-eight hours. If he's alive, he'll be alive. What's the hurry?"

During those forty-eight hours, Augie Silver seemed quietly to break through some mysterious barrier that had been retarding his recovery. His ravaged body grew cleverer at relearning things, battered organs remembered their functions, and he felt a mute animal joy at the wonder of recuperation. That a broken thing could fix itself—this was as marvelous a fact as anything under heaven.

He began to sit outside in the mornings, before the days had grown too beastly hot. Reuben brought him coffee and fruit in the shade of the poinciana tree. Augie watched the shadows move across the yard, looked at cloud reflections in the swimming pool when the wind was very still. Sometimes he sketched—pencil drawings of flowers and shrubs, quick life studies of Reuben which he would sign with a flourish then give the young man to take home. When the sun got high, Augie would go inside to nap, and the naps now seemed like earned rest from some activity rather than a mere slipping backward into helpless exhaustion.

On the fourth of June, the convalescent had his best day yet. He ate. He drew. He strolled around his yard on legs that did not tremble. Midday, he took siesta and was ecstatically awakened by the tropical music of a fierce brief downpour clattering on the roof.

That evening, when Nina came home, there were high spirits in the house. Augie's health was a shared crusade, a common mission; everyone partook of his invigoration, as though he were a racehorse. Reuben allowed himself a flush of knightly pride in his care and vigilance. Nina's face softened, the tension in her jaw diminished as she stroked her husband's forehead and found it neither cold nor feverish.

For a little while they sat out by the pool, the three of them. Nina had a glass of wine. Reuben accepted a bit of rum. Augie asked for Scotch and was allowed a few drops in a lot of water. "Cutty Sark," said Fred the parrot as he perched on the back of a lawn chair.