Black Water Read online

  Mommy you see my point don't you?— okay?

  Daddy?

  Okay?

  EVERYWHERE ON GRAYLING ISLAND THERE GREW, RUNning low against the earth, wild rose, flowering wild rose, beautiful rosy-lavender petals and spiny treacherous stems, sharp thorns Kelly drew her fingertips absentmindedly against watching the men play tennis... Rosa rugosa it was, or was it Rosa virginiana.

  Wild rose, everywhere. Blooming. Festooning the dun-colored beach.

  And the fruit of the bushes, like tiny plums, beautiful too, a blood-swollen look to them, an erotic look, these too Kelly touched, running her fingertips over them, digging in her nails.

  Rosehips, The Senator said. Taking pleasure in speaking of them, his grandmother steeping them to make rosehip tea, did Kelly like rosehip tea? herbal teas were very popular today, eh? and his grandmother had made jam, too, from the rosehips, he thought. Unless he was confusing it with something else.

  Rosehips, or maybe currants. Huckleberries.

  In the kitchen Buffy grimaced emptying ice cubes into a container saying, "You and The Senator are getting along very well," with a sidelong smile, and Kelly Kelleher smiled too, feeling her face heat, murmuring, "Well," and there was a pause, and another barrage of ice cubes crashing into the plastic container, then Buffy said something so very Buffylike, you never knew from which direction Buffy was coming, was it a sly sort of joke, a nudging complicity, was it a warning, was it that prickly sort of insult you didn't quite absorb until later, or, simply, bluntly, a statement of fact, "Don't forget, he voted to give aid to the Contras."

  KELLY? KELLY? COME TO ME.

  She could hear him, suddenly. Shouting, somewhere close overhead, tugging at the door on the driver's side of the car, making the car rock with his strength.

  She tried to speak but water filled her mouth, she shook her head, spat the water out, I'm here; I'm here, help me, pulling herself up by sheer tremulous strength of her left arm, the small compact muscle of her left arm, the shoulder, she was trembling with the effort, how many minutes? or had it been hours? time did not pass in this place submerged in black water except as it was recorded in the water's gradual rising, the cruel methodical rising, a digital watch's clicking, and would The Senator see her here?—in such blackness?—in this trap, this pit, this coffin, whatever it was, the name for it lost, squeezing her so small, so tight, so cramped you had to be crippled, your spine bent back upon itself to fit into it?

  Her head, now she was awake, was livid with pain. Splotches of light like tumorous growths behind her eyes, tight-impacted in her skull. It seemed that her face had lost all sensation, she'd held her lips so pursed for so long, gasping, sucking, the air bubble floated away teasing and cruel as a living capricious thing, bobbing and drifting this way, and now that way, and again this way, so she strained, sobbing with the effort, to reach it.

  I'm here. I'm here. Here!

  He had dived into the black water to rescue her but he was far away, and everything was so dark, blind. And she understood she'd offended him, and the insult was irrevocable.

  Her lips playfully shut against his tongue. The ease of it she'd imagined, the banter, the mutual regard, respect, he did respect her she knew, she knew, and then reluctantly parting her lips, his fat thrusting tongue, the hunger in him.

  The shame of it, how desperate she'd been clutching at the man's trouser leg, at his shoe! As he'd kicked to get free! His shoe, soaked, in her hand.

  His shoe!

  Oh Kelly, her girlfriends would laugh, Buffy would shriek with laughter wiping her eyes, —his shoe!

  Limping one shoe on one shoe off fleeing on foot back along the marshland road to the highway from which they'd turned off where there was sure to be a 7-Eleven store, a gas station, a tavern with an outdoor telephone booth.

  No. It had not happened yet. The sun blazing late in the afternoon, this long hilarious day like a pinwheel inexhaustibly throwing off sparks.

  The splendid American flag all flapping silk red-white-and-blue at the top of Edgar St. John's flagpole. The tallest flagpole on Derry Road, very possibly on Grayling Island.

  My daddy's a patriot, Buffy said. Served in the C.I.A. for twenty years and didn't get his ass blown off.

  It had not happened yet because there again was Buffy arranging her guests so she could take Polaroid pictures. Buffy in jeans and bikini top her "faux" ponytail sleek and blackly gleaming falling to the middle of her back, her lewd green-taloned nails curved about the camera, tongue protruding between glistening white teeth. Oh please be still will you, look up here please—and you, Senator, mmm?—like that! Great!

  There were several Polaroids of The Senator standing at a picnic table, one foot on the bench, an elbow on his seersucker knee and a casual pose it was, Kelly Kelleher close by as if in the crook of his arm, laughing into the camera's eye as the flash popped, and The Senator was smiling guardedly, a tucked-in sort of smile, an almost-meditative smile, a smile of the kind that retracts even as it expands, something in the eyes deflected too, grave, as if the man were pondering what caption might be inserted beneath this festive Fourth of July pose to be transmitted by wire service through the United States and numerous foreign countries, featured on network television news?

  But no, you can't imagine your future. Even that it is yours.

  One shoe on, one shoe off.Limping. Drenched and shivering and murmuring aloud Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

  ...FIVE MEANS OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT REMAINING in the United States at the present time. Recent Supreme Court rulings, states' rights. Overwhelming support of death penalty in polls. Why?—because it's a deterrent. Because it sends out the message: Life isn't cheap.Five means of which the oldest is hanging. Last used in Kansas, 1965. Condemned man took sixteen minutes to die, sometimes it's longer. Still an option in Montana. The only kind of deterrent these animals understand.Firing squad, Utah. Electric chair, introduced 1890, New York State. "Humane" alternative to hanging, firing squad:

  condemned man (or woman) is strapped into chair, copper electrodes affixed to leg, shaved head. Executioner administers an initial jolt of between 500 and 2,000 volts for thirty seconds. We're talking about hardened criminals here— murderers. The mentally and morally unfit. If death fails to occur with the initial jolt, additional jolts are administered. Two, three, four. Some hearts are stronger than others. Accidents occur. Smoke, sometimes bluish-orange flames rise from the burning body. A smell as of cooking meat. As with hanging, eyeballs sometimes pop out of sockets to hang on cheeks. Vomiting, urination, defecation. Skin turns bright red blistering and swelling to the point of bursting like an overcooked frankfurter. Often, current is not strong enough and death is not "instantaneous" but by degrees. Prisoner is tortured to death. Not decent civilized people like the kind we know but people who are a genuine threat to society, who must be stopped. If not, they will be given light prison sentences, paroled—to strike again!

  Gas chamber, introduced 1924, Nevada.A popular choice as a "humane" alternative. Condemned man (or woman) is strapped in chair, beneath the chair a bowl filled with sulfuric acid and distilled water into which sodium cyanide is dropped releasing hydrogen cyanide gas. Oxygen cut off from brain at once. Prisoner experiences extreme horror—strangulation. The issue of race isn't the issue believe me, that's a smokescreen, maybe it's so that more black men have always been executed in the United States than white men, maybe it's a statistical fact that whites who kill blacks are less likely to receive the death penalty than blacks who kill whites, yes there's a big difference between states, counties, urban areas, rural areas, the prosecutor makes the charges maybe some of them are racists but you can't expect the criminal justice system to rectify the problems of society for God's sake. Violent spasms as in an epileptic fit. Popping eyes. Skin turns purple. Not immediate toxic action on vital organs but asphyxiation is the cause of death. "Arguably the most barbaric and painful way to die." (Physician)

  Death by lethal injection, newest and most enthusia
stically promoted "humane" method of state-inflicted death. Invented 1977, pioneered in Oklahoma. Condemned man (or woman) is strapped to a hospital gurney, given a catheter needle dripping intravenous fluid into a vein. The first drug injected is sodium thiopental, a barbiturate; then 100 milligrams pavulon, muscle relaxant; potassium chloride to speed the process of death. Some of these scientific ways these "merciful" ways are too good for those animals, I'm speaking of filthy beasts not of human beings. Why keep them alive, why feed them, cater to them, why shouldn't they suffer seeing the suffering they cause in others, why not "an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth," tell me why? why not? And lethal injection is low-cost, appeals to budget-conscious legislatures, favorite of capital punishment advocates since death is perceived as painless just falling asleep, society is absolved of charges of barbarism, the wish to torture, seek vengeance.

  Quest for "humane" alternatives in death a quest not for the sake of the condemned but for the sake of American citizens that, in premeditated murder inflicted arbitrarily by the state, they be absolved of guilt...

  He'd flattered her, Elizabeth Anne Kelleher, saying, insisting, yes he was certain he'd read her article in Citizens' Inquiry—or, perhaps, one of his staff had given him a precis.

  Why did you write on such a subject, The Senator asked, curious, and Kelly Kelleher paused not wanting to say that Carl Spader had suggested it to her, saying instead, It's a subject I've been interested in for a long time, the more research you do into it the more disgusted you feel. Which was true, too.

  Her quarrels with her father notwithstanding.

  "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth"—why not? Crude, maybe, primitive maybe, but it sends the message that life isn't cheap—why not?

  Certainly The Senator was on record opposed to the death penalty.

  Certainly he was bravely at odds with many in his home state, where capital punishment, by electrocution, was still on the books; where there were still condemned prisoners on Death Row, exhausting their appeals, waiting to die.

  Certainly he'd made speeches. He'd been eloquent. As politically adamant as his friend Mario Cuomo. Capital punishment is unacceptable in a civilized society because the taking of any life for any purpose is loathsome, reducing society to the primitive level of the murderer himself. And, most frightful of all, considering the wildly arbitrary nature of the American criminal justice system there is always the possibility of innocent men (and women) being sentenced to death... from which punitive fate, unlike any other, there can be no return.

  AM I READY?

  Packing her things in haste as the evening before she'd unpacked them carefully, ceremoniously as if this room on Grayling Island with its strawberry floral wallpaper and chaste white organdy bed were a sacred place she forgot completely from one visit to the other, and now it was a place from which, by her own eager effort, she was being expelled.

  The plan was to slip away from Buffy's at precisely 7 P.M. to catch the 7:30 P.M. ferry to Boothbay Harbor but a new carload of guests had just driven up and The Senator was having another drink intense in conversation so perhaps they would not make that ferry, and when was the next?—no matter, there is always a next.

  Don't expect anything, really. Whatever it is, it is. And that will be enough.

  Practical-minded Kelly Kelleher, sternly admonishing herself.

  Still, her hands were trembling. Her breath was quickened. In that heart-shaped white-wicker-framed mirror over the bureau a girl's face floated rapt, glowing, hopeful.

  In all truthfulness her mind did fly free like a maverick kite drunkenly climbing the air above the sand dunes thinking he is after all separated from his wife, his marriage is after all over—he says; voters are no longer puritanical, punitive.

  To avoid the appearance of impropriety.The appearance of extramarital scandal.

  It's a changed world from the one you knew, Mother. I wish you would accept that.

  I wish you would let me alone!

  Carrying a beer as she'd passed through the kitchen where Ray Annick was on the telephone speaking in a low, angry voice, the words asshole, fuck, fucking punctuating his customarily fastidious speech, Kelly was startled for here was a man so unlike the genial smiling man romantically attentive to Buffy St. John all that day, so unlike the man courteous and sweetly attentive to Kelly Kelleher, and she saw that his eyes (which were puffy, glazed—he'd been drinking all afternoon and the tennis games had humbled him) followed her as she passed a few yards from him, as a cat's eyes follow movement with an instinctive impersonal predatory interest; yet, as soon as she passed beyond his immediate field of vision he ceased to see her, ceased to register her existence.

  "Look, I fucking told you—we'll take this up on Monday. For Christ's sake!"

  Kelly Kelleher teetering on one leg, swiftly changing out of her white spandex swimsuit. Purchased at Lord & Taylor, midsummer sale, the previous Saturday.

  Swiftly changing into a summer knit shift, pale lemony stripes, cut up high on the shoulders revealing her lovely smooth bare shoulders, that shoulder, that tingling area of skin, he'd touched with his tongue.

  Had that really happened, Kelly Kelleher wondered.

  Would it happen again. Again.

  You love your life because it's yours.

  The wind in the tall broom-headed rushes, those rushes that looked so like human figures.Blond, swaying. At the periphery of vision.

  The wind, the cold easterly wind off the

  Atlantic.Shivering rippling water like pale flame striking the beach, pounding the beach. Buffy said that the highest dunes they were looking at were seventy feet high, and how weird they were, the dunes where the pitch pines can't keep them from migrating, roaming loose over the Island like actual waves of the ocean with their own crests and troughs and it's been measured that they move west to east at the rate of between ten and fifteen feet a year, over Derry Road so it has to be cleaned off, right through the snow fences and over the beach grass—"It's beautiful here but, you know," shivering, wincing, "—it has nothing to do with human wishes."

  And now it was short choppy waves she was hearing against the slanted roof of this room—snug and safe beneath the covers, Grandma's crocheted quilt with the pandas around the border.

  You love your life. You're ready.

  She had not wanted to say yes. But she'd wanted to say yes.

  Yes to the ferry, to Boothbay Harbor. The Boothbay Marriott, it was.

  Beyond Boothbay, beyond the fifth of July... ?

  Kelly Kelleher would make the man love her. She knew how.

  Surprising herself with this thought, and its vehemence. You're ready.

  In the car, she'd turned the radio dial, heard the reedy synthesized music all sound-tissue, no skeleton. How touching, The Senator a man of fifty-five felt such nostalgia for a youth so long ago!

  Saying yes though she'd seen how The Senator had been drinking. At first he'd been prudent drinking white wine, Perrier water, low-calorie beer then he'd switched to the stronger stuff, he and Ray Annick: the two older men at the party.

  Older men. Yes and they did think of themselves that way, you could tell.

  It was the Fourth of July. A meaningless holiday now but one Americans all celebrate, or almost all Americans celebrate. Rockets' red glare, bombs bursting in air.

  Which is how you know, isn't it—the flag is still there.

  Turning onto the unpaved road, impatient, exuberant, the Toyota skidding in the sandy ruts but under control, The Senator was a practiced driver, quite enjoying the drive, the very impatience impelling it, the haste of their flight. Perhaps lost was their intention?

  After a quick drink or two Kelly Kelleher had confessed to The Senator that she'd written her senior honors thesis on him at Brown, and instead of being annoyed, or embarrassed, or bored, The Senator had beamed with pleasure.

  "You don't say! Why—I hope it was worth it!"

  "Of course it was worth it, Senator."

  They talked, the
y were talking animatedly, and others listened, Kelly Kelleher and The Senator, taken with each other as the phrase goes. Kelly heard herself tell The Senator what it was most about his ideas that excited her: his proposal to establish neighborhood liaison offices, especially in impoverished urban areas, so that citizens could communicate more directly with their elected officials; his proposals for day-care centers, free medical facilities, remedial education program; his support of the arts, community theater in particular. Passionately Kelly Kelleher spoke, and, with the mesmerized air of one staring, not at an individual, but at a vast audience, passionately The Senator listened. Had his words ever sounded quite so good to him, so reasonable and convincing?—so melodic, lyric, inspired? Kelly was reminded irreverently of a cynicism of Charles de Gaulle's frequently quoted by Carl Spader: Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

  Kelly broke off suddenly, self-consciously. "Senator, I'm sorry—you must have heard this sort of thing thousands of times."

  And The Senator said, courteously, altogether seriously, "Yes, Kelly, perhaps—but never from you."

  In the near distance, at a neighbor's, the rackety noise of firecrackers. High overhead the flapping of the St. John family's shimmering American flag.

  As the black water filled her lungs, and she died.

  No: it was time for the feast: borne by the wind a delicious smell of grilling meat over which Ray Annick in a comical cook's hat and apron presided, swaying-drunk but funnily capable: slabs of marinated tuna, chicken pieces swabbed with Tex-Mex sauce, raw red patties of ground sirloin the size of pancakes. Corn on the cob, buckets of potato salad and coleslaw and bean salad and curried rice, quarts of Haagen-Dazs passed around with spoons. What appetite they had, especially the younger men! The Senator too ate ravenously, yet fastidiously, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin after nearly every bite.