He heard the chair scoot closer to the door. Then came a metallic click, like a Zippo lighter or a pocketknife being opened. Then he thought he heard a murmur.
“Doyle?”
Still not a word.
“The reason I came—look, I just wanted to tell you that you never have to leave this place if you don’t want. It’s all been taken care of. Don’t be frightened ever again, because you’re safe here, OK? For as long as you want. I give you my word.”
There was another click behind the door, and then two solid footsteps. Clinton Tyree pressed a cheek to the briny wood and sensed more than heard his brother on the other side, doing the same.
“Doyle, please,” he whispered. “Please.”
He heard a bolt slide, and he stepped back. The door cracked and an arm came out slowly; an old man’s arm, pallid and spidered with violet veins. On the underside, between the wrist and the elbow, were faded striations of an old scar. The hand was large, but bony and raw-looking. Clinton Tyree grabbed it and squeezed with all his heart, and found his brother still strong. The pale wrist twisted back and forth against his grip, and that’s when he noticed the new wound on the meat of the forearm, letters etched into flesh—I love you—blooming in droplets as bright as rose petals.
Then Doyle Tyree snatched his hand away and closed the door in his brother’s face.
As he descended the lighthouse, the former governor of Florida counted all seventy-seven steps again. When he reached the bottom he got on his belly and wedged through a gap in the plywood that had been nailed over the entrance to keep out vandals and curious tourists.
From the darkness of the beaconage, Clinton Tyree emerged, squinting like a newborn, into a stunning spring morning. He stood and turned his tear-streaked face to the cool breeze blowing in off the Atlantic. He could see tarpon crashing a school of mullet beyond the break.
The plywood barricade to the tower was papered with official notices, faded and salt-curled:
NO TRESPASSING
CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
STATE PROPERTY—KEEP OUT
But someone recently had tacked a business card to the plywood. The tack was shiny, not rusted, and the card stood out white and crisp. Clinton Tyree put his good eye to it and smiled. The inaugural smile.
LISA JUNE PETERSON
Executive Assistant
Office of the Governor
He took the card off the board and slipped it under the elastic band of his shower cap. Then he trudged down the beach, over the dunes and through the sea oats, across the street to the Peregrine Bay Visitor Center and Scenic Boardwalk, where the navy blue Roadmaster was parked.
Palmer Stoat was buried with his favorite Ping putter, a Polaroid camera and a box of Cuban Montecristo #2s, a cause for authentic mourning among the cigar buffs at the ceremony. The funeral service was held at a Presbyterian church in Tallahassee, the minister eulogizing Stoat as a civic pillar, champion of the democratic process, dedicated family man, lover of animals, and devoted friend to the powerful and common folk alike. Those attending the service included a prostitute, the night bartender from Swain’s, a taxidermist, three United States congressmen, one retired senator, six sitting circuit judges, three dozen past and present municipal commissioners from throughout Florida, the lieutenant governor and forty-one current members of the state Legislature (most of whom had been elected with campaign funds raised by Stoat, and not because he admired their politics). Those sending lavish sprays of flowers included the Philip Morris Company, Shell Oil, Roothaus and Son Engineering, Magnusson Phosphate Company, the Lake County Citrus Cooperative, U.S. Sugar, MatsibuCom Construction of Tokyo, Port Marco Properties, the Southern Timber Alliance, the National Rifle Association, University of Florida Blue Key, the Republican Executive Committee and the Democratic Executive Committee. Messages of regret arrived from Representative Willie Vasquez-Washington and Governor Richard Artemus, neither of whom could make it to the service.
“Our grief today should be assuaged,” the minister said, in closing, “by the knowledge that Palmer’s last day among us was spent happily at sport, with his close friend Bob Clapley—just the two of them, walking the great outdoors they loved so much.”