“Believe what?” said Palmer Stoat, clueless. Casually he tossed the balled-up cheeseburger wrapper out of the speeding car.
“Believe what?” he asked again, a split second before his brainpain detonated and the world went black as pitch.
19
In Twilly Spree’s next dream he was down in the Everglades and it was raining hawks. He was running again, running the shoreline of Cape Sable, and the birds were falling everywhere, shot from the sky. In the dream Desie was running barefoot beside him. They were snatching up the bloodied hawks from the sugar white sand, hoping to find one still alive; one they could save. McGuinn was in Twilly’s dream, too, being chased in circles by a scrawny three-legged bobcat—it might have been hilarious, except for all the birds hitting the beach like russet feather bombs. In the dream Twilly saw a speck on the horizon, and as he drew closer the speck became the figure of a man on the crest of a dune; a man with a long gun pointed at the sky. Heedlessly Twilly ran on, shouting for the hawk killer to stop. The man lowered his weapon and spun around to see who was coming. He went rigid and raised the barrel again, this time taking aim at Twilly. In the dream Twilly lowered his shoulders and ran as fast as he could toward the hawk killer. He was astonished when he heard Desie coming up the dune behind him, running even faster. Twilly saw the muzzle flash at the instant Desie’s hand touched his shoulder.
Except it wasn’t Desie’s hand, it was his mother’s. Amy Spree gently shook her son awake, saying, “My Lord, Twilly, were you dreaming? When did this start?”
Twilly sat up, chilled with sweat. “About a week ago.”
“And what do you dream about?”
“Running on beaches.”
“After all these years! How wonderful.”
“And dead birds,” Twilly said.
“Oh my. You want a drink?”
“No thanks, Mom.”
“Your friend is relaxing out on the deck,” said Amy Spree.
“I’m coming.”
“The man with the pillowcase over his head?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“She says it’s her husband.”
“Correct.”
“Oh, Twilly. What next?”
Amy Spree was a stunning woman of fifty-five. She had flawless white skin and shy sea-green eyes and elegant silver-streaked hair. Twilly found it ironic that in divorcehood his mother had chosen Flagler Beach, given both her aversion to tropical sunlight and her previous attachment to a philandering swine who hawked oceanfront property for a living. But Amy Spree said she was soothed by the Atlantic sunrises (which were too brief to inflict facial wrinkles), and harbored no lingering bitterness toward Little Phil (whom she dismissed as “confused and insecure”). Furthermore, Amy Spree said, the shore was a perfect place to practice her dance and clarinet and yoga, all of which required solitude.
Which her son interrupted once a year, on her birthday.
“I never know what to get you,” Twilly said.
“Nonsense,” his mother clucked. “I got the best present in the world when you knocked on the door.”
They were in the kitchen. Amy Spree was preparing a pitcher of unsweetened iced tea for Twilly, his new lady friend and her husband, who was trussed to a white wicker rocking chair once favored by Twilly’s father.
“How about a dog?” Twilly asked his mother. “Wouldn’t you like a dog?”
“That dog?” Amy Spree eyed McGuinn, who had hungrily positioned himself at the refrigerator door. “I don’t think so,” said Amy Spree. “I’m happy with my bonsai trees. But thank you just the same.”
She put on a straw hat as broad as a garbage-can lid. Then she carried a glass of tea outside to Desirata Stoat, on the deck overlooking the ocean. Twilly came out later, dragging Palmer Stoat in the rocking chair. Twilly placed him on the deck, next to Desie. Twilly sat down on a cedar bench with his mother.
Amy Spree said, “I am not by nature a nosy person.”
“It’s all right,” said Desie, “you deserve to know.” She looked questioningly at Twilly, as if to say: Where do we start?
He shrugged. “Mrs. Stoat’s husband is a congenital litterbug, mother. An irredeemable slob and defiler. I can’t seem to teach him any manners.”