He interviewed me at the Scoto instead, while a
photographer took pictures of three carefully
selected paintings: Roses Grow from Shells, Sunset
with Sophora, and Duma RoadI was wearing a Casey
Key Fish House tee-shirt, and a photo of me -
baseball cap on backwards and one short sleeve
empty except for a nub of stump - ran nationwide
After that, my telephone rang off the hookAngel
Slobotnik called and talked for twenty minutesAt
one point, he said he always knew I had it in meHis reply was "Bullshit, boss,"
and we laughed like maniacsKathi Green called; I
heard all about her new boyfriend (not so good)
and her new self-help program (wonderful)I told
her about how Kamen had shown up at the lecture
and saved my assBy the end of that call she was
crying and saying she'd never had such a gutty,
come-from-behind patientThen she said when she
saw me she was cartier watches women going to tell me to drop and give
her fifty sit-upsThat sounded like the old Kathi
To top it all off, Todd Jamieson, the doctor who
had probably saved me from a decade or two as a
649
human rutabaga, sent me a bottle of champagne with
a card reading, Cannot wait to see your work
If Wireman had bet me on whether or not I'd get
bored and pick up a brush again before the show,
he would have lostWhen I wasn't getting ready
for my big moment, I was walking, reading, or
sleepingI mentioned this to him on one of the
rare afternoons when we were together at the end
of El Palacio's boardwalk, drinking green tea
under the striped umbrellaThis was less than a
week before the show
"I'm glad," he said simply
"What about you, Wireman? How are you doing?"
"Not great, but I will survive - Gloria Gaynor,
1978It's sadness, mostly"I'm going
to lose herI kidded myself tiffany jewelry canada that maybe she was
coming back, butI'm going to lose herIt's
not like Julia and Esmeralda, thank God, but it
still weighs on me I laid my hand over his"For her and
for you He looked out at the waves"Sometimes I
think she won't die at allI think the Walrus and the Carpenter will
come for her, insteadThat they'll just lead her
away like they did those trusting OystersLead
her away down the beachDo you remember what the
Walrus says?"
I shook my head
"'It seems a shame to play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far, And made them
trot so quick'" He swiped an arm across his face
"Look at me, muchacho, crying just like the Walrus
"I hate to face the idea that this time she's gone
for good, that the best part of her went off down
the beach with the Walrus and the Carpenter and
there's nothing left but a fat old piece of suet
that hasn't quite louis cartier forgotten how to breathe yetHe wiped his eyes again with his
forearm and drew in a long, watery breathThen he
said, "I looked into the story of John Eastlake,
and how his daughters were drowned, and what
happened after - do you remember asking me to do
that?"
651
I did, but it seemed long ago, and unimportant
What I think now is that something wanted it to
seem that way to me
"I went surfing around on the Internet and came up
with a good deal from the local newspapers and a
couple of memoirs that are available for download
One of them - I shit you not, muchacho - is called
Boat Trips and Beeswax, A Girlhood in Nokomis, by
Stephanie Weider Gravel-Miller
"Sounds like quite a trip down memory laneShe talks about 'the happy darkies,
picking oranges and singing simple songs of praise
in their mellifluous voices'"
"I guess that was before Jay-ZEven better, I new cartier watches talked to Chris
Shannington, over on Casey Key - you've almost
certainly seen himColorful old geezer who walks
everyplace with this gnarled briarwood cane,
almost as tall as he is, and a big straw hat on
his headHis father, Ellis Shannington, was John
Eastlake's gardenerAccording to Chris, it was
Ellis who took Maria and Hannah, Elizabeth's two
older sisters, back to the Braden School ten days
652
or so after the drowningHe said, 'Those chirrun
were heartbroken for the babby-uns'"
Wireman's imitation of the old man's southern
accent was eerily good, and I found myself for
some reason thinking of the Walrus and the
Carpenter again, walking up the beach with the
little OystersThe only part of the poem I could
remember clearly was the Carpenter telling them
they'd had a pleasant run, but of course the
Oysters couldn't answer, for they'd been eaten -
every mulberry bayswater bag

Libbit says I will, but do you promise I can have
the china dolly?
Daddy says Any doll is yours - fair salvage
The muse saw it and the girl painted itSo their
future is set
9 - Candy Brown
i
Two nights later I painted the ship for the first
time
I called it Girl and Ship to begin with, then Girl
and Ship No1, although neither was its real name;
its real name was Ilse and Ship NoIt was the
Ship series even more than what happened to Candy
Brown that decided me on whether or not to show my
389
workIf Nannuzzi wanted to do it, I'd go along
Not because I was seeking what Shakespeare called
"the bubble reputation" (I owe Wireman for that
one), but because I came to understand that
Elizabeth was right: it was better not to let work
pile chanel devil wears prada necklace up on Duma Key
The Ship paintings were goodThey
certainly felt that way when I finished themThey
were also bad, powerful medicineI think I knew
that from the first one, executed during the small
hours of Valentine's DayDuring the last night of
Tina Garibaldi's life
ii
The dream wasn't exactly a nightmare, but it was
vivid beyond my power to describe in words,
although I captured some of the feeling on canvas
In that dream and all the ones which followed, it
was always sunsetVast red light filled the west,
reaching high to heaven, where it faded first to
orange, then to a weird greenThe Gulf was nearly
dead calm, with only the smallest and glassiest of
390
rollers crossing its surface like respirationIn
the reflected sunset glare, it necklace chanel looked like a huge
socket filled with blood
Silhouetted against that furnace light was a
three-masted derelictThe ship's rotted sails
hung limp with red fire glaring through the holes
and ripsThere was no one alive on boardYou
only had to look to know thatThere was a feeling
of hollow menace about the thing, as though it had
housed some plague that had burned through the
crew, leaving only this rotting corpse of wood,
hemp, and sailclothI remember feeling that if a
gull or pelican flew over it, the bird would drop
dead on the deck with its feathers smoking
Floating about forty yards away was a small
rowboatSitting in it was a girl, her back to me
Her hair was red, but the hair was false - no live
girl had tangled yarn hair like gucci ladies watch thatWhat gave
away her identity was the dress she woreIt was
covered with tic-tac-toe grids and the printed
words I WIN, YOU WIN, over and overIlse had that
dress when she was four or fiveabout the age
of the twin girls in the family portrait I'd seen
391
on the second floor landing of El Palacio de
Asesinos
I tried to shout, to warn her not to go near the
derelictIn any case
it didn't seem to matterShe only sat there in
her sweet little rowboat on the mild red rollers,
watching and wearing Illy's tic-tac-toe dress
I fell out of my bed, and on my bad sideI cried
out in pain and rolled over on my back, listening
to the waves from outside and the soft grinding of
the shells under the houseThey told me where I
was but did not comfort me
My chanel cambon tote missing arm seemed to burnI had to put a stop
to it or go crazy, and there was only one way to
do thatI went upstairs and painted like a
lunatic for the next three hoursI had no model
on my table, no object in view out my windowIt was all in my headAnd as I
worked, I realized this was what all the pictures
had been struggling towardNot the girl in the
rowboat, necessarily; she was probably just an
added attraction, a toehold in realityIt was the
392
ship I had been after all alongThe ship and the
sunsetWhen I thought back, I realized the irony
of that: Hello, the pencil-sketch I'd made on the
day I came, had been the closest
iii
I tumbled into bed around three-thirty and slept
until nineI woke feeling refreshed, cleaned hermes kelly handbag out,
brand-new

Beyond it, the road swung inland and
the foliage crowded up in a way I found first
interesting, then awesome, then claustrophobic
The masses of greenery towered to a height of
twelve feet at least, the round leaves streaked a
dark vermillion that looked like dried blood
"What is that stuff, Daddy?"
"SeagrapeThe green stuff with the yellow flowers
is called wedeliaThere's
154
also rhododendronThe trees are mostly just slash
pine, I think, although-"
She slowed to a crawl and pointed to the left,
craning to look up through the corner of the
windshield to do so"Those are palms of some kind
The road bent still farther inland, and here the
trunks flanking the road looked like knotted
masses of gray ropeTheir roots chloe black chloe black had buckled the
tarWe'd be able to get over now, I judged, but
cars passing this way a few years hence? No way
"Strangler fig," I said
"Nice name, right out of Alfred HitchcockAnd
they just grow wild?"
"I don't know," I said
She bumped the Chevy carefully over the tunneling
roots and drove onWe were down to no more than
five miles an hourThere was more strangler fig
growing out of the masses of seagrape and
rhododendronThe high growth cast the road into
deep shadowIt was impossible to see any distance
at all on either sideExcept for an occasional
wedge of blue or errant sunray, even the sky was
goneAnd now we began to see sprays of sawgrass
155
and tough, waxy fiddlewood growing right up
through cracks in the vuitton gold bag tar
My arm began to itchThe one that wasn't thereI
reached to scratch it without thinking and only
scratched my still-sore ribs, as I always didAt
the same time the left side of my head started to
itchThat I could scratch, and did
"Daddy?"
"I'm okayWhy are you stopping?"
"BecauseI don't feel so great myself
Nor, I realized, did she look itHer complexion
had gone almost as white as the dab of zinc oxide
on her nose"Ilse? What is it?"
"My stomachI'm starting to have serious
questions about that tuna salad I made for lunch
She gave me a sickly coming-down-with-the-flu
smile"I'm also wondering how I'm going to get us
out of hereAll at once the seagrape
seemed to be pushing in and the interweaving palms
overhead seemed chanel diamond watches thickerI realized I could smell
the growth around us, a ropy aroma that seemed to
come to life halfway down my throatAnd why not?
156
It came from live things, after all; they were
crowded in on both sides
"Dad?"
The itch was worseIt was red, that itch, as red
as the stink in my nose and throat was greenThat
itch you got when you were stuck in the burn,
stuck in the char
"Daddy, I'm sorry but I think I'm going to vomit
Not a burn, not a char, it was a car, she opened
the door of the car and leaned out, holding onto
the wheel with one ham, and then I heard her
sowing up
My right eye came over red and I thought I can do
thisI just have to get my poor
old shit together
I opened my door, reaching cross-body to do wholesale tiffany it,
and got outLurched out, holding the top of the
door to keep from sprawling headfirst into a wall
of seagrape and the interwoven branches of a halfburied
banyanThe bushes and
branches were so close to the side of the car that
they scraped me as I made my way up to the front
Half my vision
(RED)
157
seemed to be bleeding scarlet, I felt the tip of a
pine-bough scrape across the wrist of - I could
have sworn it - my right arm, and I thought I can
do this, I MUST do this as I heard Ilse vomit
againI was aware that it was much hotter in that
narrow lane than it should have been, even with
the greenroof overheadI had enough mind left in
my mind to wonder what we'd been thinking, coming
down this road in the first women rolex watches place

"Here, you want a drink?"
"Yeah Ridges drank thirstilyWhen he had almost emptied the canteen he looked at Goldstein
"We're gonna have to rustle in the jungle for food tomorrow," Ridges said
Ridges smiled weakly



13

WHEN ROTH missed the leap, the platoon was shatteredFor ten minutes they huddled together on the shelf, too stricken, too terrified, to move onAn incommunicable horror affected them allThey stood upright, frozen to the wall, their fingers clenched into the fissures of the rock, their legs powerlessOnce or twice Croft tried to rouse them, but they shied away from the commands, petrified by his voice as though they were dogs terrified by a master's bootWyman was sobbing in nervous exhaustion, quietly, thinly, a small steady wailing, and into it fitted their own voices, a grunt or a small moan or a hysterical curse, random things, disconnected, so that the men who uttered them were hardly aware that they had spoken
Their will recovered enough for them to new chanel bags continue, but they moved at a frantically slow pace, refusing to step forward for seconds at a time before some minor obstacle, clinging to the wall ferociously wherever the ledge became narrow againAfter half an hour Croft finally brought them out, and the ledge widened and crossed the ridgeBeyond was nothing but another deep valley, another precipitous slopeHe led them down to the bottom, and started up the next ascent, but they did not follow himOne by one they sprawled down on the ground, looked at him with blank staring eyes
It was almost dark, and he knew he could not drive them any more; they were too exhausted, too frightened, and another accident might occurHe called a halt, giving approval to what was already a fact, and sat down in their midst
On the next morning there would be the slope, a few gullies to traverse, and then the main ridge of the mountain to be crossedThey could do it in two or three hours ifif he could stir them againAt that moment he doubted himself chanel quilted bags seriously

The platoon slept poorlyIt was very difficult to find level ground, and of course they were overtired, their limbs too tenseMost of them dreamed and muttered in their sleepTo cap it all, Croft gave them each an hour of guard, and some of them awoke too early and waited nervously for many minutes before going on, found it difficult afterward to fall asleepCroft had been aware of this, knew they needed the extra rest and knew it was virtually impossible there would be any Japanese on the mountain, but he had felt it more important not to break routineRoth's death had temporarily shattered his command, and it was vital to start repairing it
Gallagher had the last shiftIt was very cold in the half hour before daylight and he woke up dazed, and sat shuddering in his blanketFor many minutes he was conscious of little, feeling the vast shapes of the mountain range about him as no more than a deeper border to the nightHe only shivered and drowsed, waiting passively for the omega automatic geneve morning and the heat of the sunA complete lethargy had settled over him, and Roth's death was remoteHe drifted through a stupor, his mind almost inert, dreaming sluggishly of far-gone pleasant things as though deep within him he had to keep a small fire going against the cold of the night, the space of the hills, and the cumulative exhaustion, the mounting deaths of the platoon
The dawn came slowly on the mountainAt five o'clock he could see the top of the mountain range clearly as the sky became lighter, but for a long half hour there was little changeActually he could see nothing, but his body contained a tranquil anticipationSoon the sun would struggle over the eastern ramparts of the mountain and come down into their little valleyHe searched the sky and found a few tentative washes of pink streaming over the higher peaks, coloring the tiny oblong clouds of the dawn a purpleThe mountains looked very highGallagher wondered that the sun could get over them
All about him now it was chanel ceramic watches getting lighter but it was a subtle process, for the sun still remained hidden and the light seemed to rise from the ground, a soft rose colorAlready he could discern clearly the bodies of the men sleeping about him, and he felt a touch of superiorityThey looked gaunt and bleak in the early dawn, oblivious to the approach of morningHe knew that in a short while he would be rousing them, and they would groan as they came out of their sleep
In the west he could still see the night, and he recalled a troop train speeding across the great plains of NebraskaIt had been twilight then, and the night chased the train out of the east, overtook it, and passed on across the Rockies, on to the PacificIt had been beautiful and it made him wistful nowHe longed suddenly for America, wished so passionately to see it again that he could smell the odor of wet cobblestones on a summer morning in South Boston
The sun was close to the eastern ridge-line now and the sky seemed vast, yet fresh and christian dior saddle joyf

They drew only a few scattered shots as they darted quickly, one by one, over the summitFor twenty minutes they kept walking and running, going farther and farther to the east, parallel to the base of the mountainThey were more than a mile away, separated by many small hills from the entrance to the pass, before they haltedHearn, following Croft's example, selected a draw near the summit of a knoll, and posted four men at the approachesThe others flung themselves down, panting breathlessly
They had been in the draw for ten minutes before they discovered Wilson was missing



5

WHEN THE PLATOON fell into the ambush, Wilson took cover behind a rock near the tall grassHe had lain there, exhausted, feeling pink vuitton bag nothing, content to let the skirmish pass above himWhen Hearn commanded the retreat, he had stood up obediently, had run back a few steps, and turned to fire at the Japs
The bullet hit him in the stomach with the force of a blow to the solar plexusIt turned him around, sent him reeling a few feet, and then pitched him into the tall grassHe lay there a little startled, his first emotion anger"Who the fug hit me?" he mutteredHe rubbed his belly, planning to get up and rush the man who had punched him, but his hand came away wet with bloodWilson shook his head, hearing the sound of rifle fire again, the shouts of the men in recon from the other side of the rock ledge, only thirty yards away"Everybody here?" he heard seamaster de ville somebody shout
"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," he mumbledHe thought he had spoken loudly, but it was no more than a whisperHe rolled on his belly, suddenly afraidGoddam, them Japs hit meHis glasses had been lost when he fell in the grass, and he squintedHe could see the field only a yard or two from where he lay and its emptiness pleased himGoddam, Ah'm jus' pooped, that's the mother-fuggin truthHe relaxed for a minute or so, his mind swirling languidly toward unconsciousnessDimly, he could hear the platoon leaving, but he hardly thought about itEverything was relaxed and peaceful, except for the dull throbbing in his stomach
Abruptly, he realized the firing had stoppedAh gotta git back in the weeds where the Japs won' vintage omega watches find meHe tried to rise but he felt too weakSlowly, grunting from the effort, he crawled a few yards farther back into the tall grass, and relaxed again, content because he could no longer see the fieldHis dizziness, his well-being sifted through his bodyFeels like Ah'm likkered upHe shook his head in bewildermentHe remembered sitting in a bar once, pleasantly drunk, his hand around the hips of the woman beside him in the boothHe was going home with her in a few minutes, and a tingle of passion flushed through him at the thought"That's right, honey," he heard himself say, looking at the roots of the kunai grass before his nose
Ah'm gonna die, Wilson told himselfA cold charge of fear awakened his body, and he balenciaga twiggy whimpered for a momentHe pictured the bullet tearing through his body, ripping apart the flesh inside, and he felt nauseaA little bile welled out of his mouth"All that poison inside me is gonna be messin' aroun' now, jus' killin' me But he drifted away again, settled into the warm lapping content of his drowsiness and weaknessHe was no longer afraid of dyingThat bullet's gonna clean up mah insidesAll the pus'll be comin' out now, an' Ah'll be okayPappy said his granpappy used to have an ole nigger woman bleed him wheneveh he had the feverTha's jus' what Ah'm doin' nowHe looked mistily at the groundThe blood was sopping against his shirt front, which made him slightly uncomfortableHe held his hand over it, smiling chanel logo necklace faintl