28
Key West
1843
Tom’s Louisiana business contacts meant a positive change in the Farrells’ ?nancial situation. In the spring, Dorothy decided to enjoy their new a?uence with a major renovation of their home. Most of the tradesmen and decorators were brought in from Cuba, and they slept anywhere they could in the house. It was to become a hive of activity, with people coming and going and workmen toting ladders and spreading drop cloths everywhere. It would fall to her servants to do all the cleaning up.
“We don’t want to live in the mess,” she said. I’ve timed the work to coincide with a trip: I’ll be going with Tom to New Orleans again. Could you possibly keep the children at your house?”
“Of course. We’d love to have them.”
“Funny,” she said with her silvery laugh, “I hadn’t been back there for all those years. But now that Tom is going so often, I ?nd I want to go with him. Especially since the children are getting older.”
Pedro was delighted to host their children. Sand Key was only nine miles out on the reef, and following a tradition for Key Westers to go there on weekends for picnics, Pedro would pack them and my children into a hired boat and go sailing and ?shing. I was still not a good sailor, so I would remain at home to read or visit with Gran. They would all return tan and happy, and talking about the kindly Captain Peartree, who made them welcome at the lighthouse.
This time, Dorothy had more bad news when she returned.
After we had all settled into the carriages at the docks, she took my hand and said softly, “Grandpère is dead, Emily, He’d had a massive stroke a couple of weeks ago and died while I was there. He looked terrible when I saw him. I’m not sure if he knew who I was; he might even have thought I was you. But he seemed pleased to see me. We buried him in the family plot at the old cemetery. A lot of people, old friends like the Beaubiens and the de Saumurs, came to the funeral, and even some former slaves. I wish you’d been there, sugar.”
“Oh, Dorothy … I’m sorry now that I didn’t go with you.”
Dorothy nodded sadly. “Yes. Everyone was asking for you.”
“I wonder if he ever forgave me for marrying Martin and moving to Key West?”
“Oh, I’m sure he did, sugar. He was angry at me when I got married, too. Remember? I was just supposed to be in Key West for a short visit, and then I met Tom. But he got over that.”
“We must have been a big disappointment to him.”
“No, I wouldn’t worry about any of that, sugar. He knew he had raised a couple of headstrong girls. But he did want us to be happy. Eurydice said that he was very proud of us and was always mentioning us to his friends.”
“I just wish he’d gotten to see his grandchildren.”
“Yes. I do, too. Apparently, before he became ill he was talking about coming to see us all here in Key West so he could meet them. He certainly could have afforded to come. I don’t know why he didn’t.”
At this, Tom, who had been listening, chimed in: “Yes, he most certainly could have afforded to. We settled his ?nances before we left. One of my former classmates at law school who lives in New Orleans helped us to accelerate the process while we were there.”
I was hardly listening, as I was still contemplating what my grandfather’s last days would have been like.
Tom smiled at me. “Aren’t you curious about his wealth?”
“I suppose,” I replied dully. As I was no longer desperate for money, numbers now meant little.
“There will be some medical bills to pay, and some charities … and taxes. He manumitted all his slaves, and left a house and a pension for Eurydice and Marie-Francine. But even after all that, once the properties are sold, there should be about ?ve hundred thousand dollars. You will each get about two hundred and ?fty thousand dollars.”
Stunned, I turned to him. “So much?”
“At least that much,” he said. “Perhaps more.”
“He always told us he was poor!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. And he gave us such small dowries,” Dorothy added, laughing. “But he had a great deal of property in New Orleans, and over the years it seems that its value has grown considerably.”
We were all silent for a moment. The fact that I was gradually becoming quite a wealthy woman was beginning to take hold in my consciousness. All this money could shift the power in my marriage. And the thought of being so free made me light-headed. When Tom suggested I stop at the house for a glass of champagne to celebrate their safe arrival and our newfound ?nancial security, I readily agreed.
We stopped to pick up Gran on the way, and we all marveled at Dorothy’s new renovation as we walked into the Farrell home, although Gran found fault with some of the color choices, since she had not been consulted. When we told her about Grandpère, she just said tartly, “So that ornery old Frenchman ?nally kicked the bucket!”
When she learned of our inheritance, Gran turned to me. “So what are you going to do with all that money? You’re not going to stay with the Spaniard, are you?”
Gran’s question lingered in my mind.
A couple of weeks after Dorothy’s return, Pedro and I ?nally completed his cousin’s manual. It had taken three months. I thought we were done with such foolishness. But he closed the book and asked, “Shall we start over from page one?” I rolled my eyes.
After weekends, Pedro was usually well rested, but one Monday he came home from the factory in the evening looking exhausted and haggard. Over dinner, he leaned toward me and whispered, “Let’s go to bed early tonight, querida. I’m feeling very tired.”
“But it’s only seven-thirty,” I protested. We normally did not retire until around ten o’clock—late for Key West, where ?shermen and wreckers rose early—but it had been Pedro’s custom from his early childhood in Spain.
Upstairs in our room, he even dispensed with the tiresome manual. “We’ll just do it the old way,” he said.
I sighed. We prepared for bed, I extinguished the bedside oil lamp, and he assumed his regular position. But suddenly, I heard a strange sound in his throat. Clutching his chest, he abruptly rolled off me, and with his face turned away, he was sick over the side of the bed. I quickly relit the lamp, and when I looked at him, he was turning blue. I had seen that look before; it was a more severe form of the heart seizure Josiah Peartree had had in the lighthouse tower years ago.
“Pedro, are you all right?” I cried.
“Padre …” he said faintly.
I was not thinking clearly. “Padre? Your father?”
“A … priest.”
I raced downstairs, shouting for Juanita. Because it was so early, she was in her sitting room, sewing.
“Juanita, hurry! Go fetch a priest and Dr. Fogarty. Don Pedro has had a heart attack. Get the doctor over here ?rst. Then the priest. Hurry!”
Dr. Fogarty arrived in about ten minutes, just as Pedro’s life was ebbing away. Close behind him was the local Catholic priest. Father Lopez had just enough time to give Pedro the last rites. A few minutes later, Dr. Fogarty closed Pedro’s eyes and pronounced him dead. It had all happened so fast, I was numb with disbelief.
Juanita remained standing outside the door, weeping. The other servants stood at the bottom of the stairs, muttering among themselves and reciting the rosary.
Martha and Timothy, who had been doing their homework by lamplight in their rooms before all this started, had wandered out to the hall. I saw their stoic faces peering into our room, and I allowed them to come in to say good-bye, hugging both of them close to me.
Later, Dr. Fogarty took me aside. “I’m sorry, Miss Emily. There was nothing to be done.”
I just stood there, dry-eyed. I did not know what to say.
“I tried to tell him he was overdoing it,” he continued.
“He had consulted you?”
“Yes, he’s been having pains in his chest off and on over the past two years, and he had all the classic signs of a bad heart: shortness of breath, dizzy spells, palpitations … I advised him to bring his will up-to-date and to sort out his business affairs. He knew he was not going to live very long.”
“He knew? This was before we married?”
“That’s right. I also told him to slow down. He worked too hard. And taking a young wife was risky for a man in his condition.”
I nodded sadly. At least, I reassured myself, I had brought some measure of happiness to his last days.
And with that, another door in my life had closed: the end of my days as a wife. I vowed that unless it could be Andrew, no man would ever share my bed again.
Pedro’s funeral was a large one for Key West. We placed his co?n in an elaborate vault only steps from where Martin was interred. I had now buried two husbands. Two gravesites would mark the years of my life.
To my amazement, Gran insisted we have a reception at her house for “dear Se?or Pedro.” Many of the town’s citizens and workers from Pedro’s factory came to comfort my family, all of them offering kind words in my husband’s memory. My children went to Dorothy’s afterward, and I went home to a largely empty house, except for the servants. Juanita emerged from the kitchen to greet me. She had been helpful throughout the funeral and surprised me by gently taking my hand when I arrived.
“Are you hungry, se?ora? I can make you something light. An omelette, perhaps? A little salad … or some soup?”
I found my eyes welling up. I realized that she had been crying, too. Both of us were mourning the kinder side of Pedro that we had known.
“Don’t trouble yourself, Juanita. I’m just tired. I’d like to lie down for a while.”
“Of course, se?ora.”
“Juanita,” I said. She turned back. “I want you to stay on working here. And for now at least, all the other servants, as well.”
She smiled. “They will be glad to know that, se?ora.”
I suddenly felt a surge of affection for this woman who had fought my presence in the house for so long. I added, “Juanita, from now on, please call me Miss Emily.”
“Yes, se?ora … Miss Emily.”
I lay down and noticed that Pedro had left the dreaded manual on his nightstand. I blushed, wondering if the priest had seen it the night Pedro died. There was a bookmark stuck in page sixteen, our next tryst. Glancing through the pages, I noticed that he had made annotations on his favorite pages about what was good and what wasn’t, what hurt his back the next day, which positions I seemed to respond to best and which ones repulsed me. I shook my head. He had been a strange man. But in spite of everything, we’d had an interesting, if brief, life together.
I dozed off, and when I awoke, it was already dark. Juanita fussed over me and insisted that I eat. She handed me an envelope. “Se?ora Ximenez brought this while you were asleep,” she said.
It was a note from Al?e Dillon, offering me his condolences and inviting me—if I was able—to visit him at the hospital the next morning.
I was shocked when I saw Al?e. A nurse wheeled him out to the back garden for some fresh air, cautioning me not to stay long. He looked very ill and bloated: his legs and feet were swollen, and bruises covered his body. I barely recognized him, and I knew immediately that I was looking at a dying man. On his lap was a cigar box.
“Al?e, how are you feeling?” I asked brightly.
He just smiled. “I bin wantin’ to talk to you for a while, Mrs. Lowry,” he said, using my former name. “I heard you tried to come see me.”
“Yes, but you were not well enough to have visitors. I’m glad to see that you’re doing better.”
“I ain’t,” he replied wanly. “I’m afraid I’m on my way out, ma’am. The beatin’ ruined my left kidney, and th’ other one don’t seem to be workin’ too well, neither.”
My heart sank as I collapsed in the nurse’s chair beside him. I took his hand in mine and whispered, “Oh, Al?e, I’m sorry. So very sorry.”
“But I wanted to see you, ’cause there’s something I have to give you, and there ain’t much time.”
“What is that, Al?e?”
“First, I want to tell you. You mustn’t blame Martin. It was for you and the children he done it.”
“What are you talking about, Al?e?”
“The beatin’ I got, Mrs. Lowry—that was the Lord’s way of punishing me on this earth for what I done. I deserved what I got. Y’see, ma’am … the captain, he tried to make a deal with Martin—Mr. Lowry.”
“Yes?”
“Your husband was concerned about money and he done told the captain that. He was worried about you, and about educatin’ the children and all. The captain said that if he could turn off the light once in a while, when you wasn’t aware of it, we could get a few wrecks goin’ out there.”
My jaw dropped. Martin had let the lights go out sometimes; in fact, we’d had three wrecks on his watch. But at the time, I thought he’d simply dozed off and it had happened by accident.
“And Martin,” I prodded softly, “he … went along with it?”
Al?e nodded. “He did, yes, for a share of the cargo proceeds, ma’am. But don’t hold that against ’im. The captain was mighty persuasive.”
I felt dizzy. “Al?e, do you know what happened to my husband?”
He nodded. “I wrote it all down here,” he said, opening the cigar box. He handed me a letter he had written to the sheriff.
As I read, a heavy gauze was lifted from my eyes. Suddenly, it was all clear. The reason Martin hadn’t taken Timothy with him the day he disappeared was because he was going out to meet with Captain Lee and Al?e on the Outlander. He had gone out to tell them he could no longer allow himself to cause more wrecks. No wonder he seemed so happy that day, I thought. He was probably enormously relieved.
“Mr. Lowry told the captain he wasn’t goin’ to turn the light off no more. The captain, he got really fussed about that,” explained Al?e. “They argued. Then they came to blows. Captain Lee picked up an iron ga?n’ pole and hit Mr. Lowry so hard across the thigh that I heard a crack. He howled with pain and rolled around in the boat. I knew his leg was busted. He tried to crawl back to his own skiff, yellin’ out to Lee that he was goin’ to tell Pendleton the truth, and damn the consequences. Then Lee, he … he …”
I was leaning forward. “Yes? Al?e, tell me, please.”
“He shot ’im in the head. I couldn’t stop it, God help me, Mrs. Lowry. I’m sorry. He was like a madman.”
I sat in shocked silence.
“We knowed we was in big trouble if yer husband’s body washed up on the island, so I helped the captain dump a crate of coffee into the sea, one you’d ordered and we’d picked up in Cuba. Then he crammed Mr. Lowry into it. He attached one of our ballast rocks to a rope, and we sailed our boat out a little past the reef and dropped the crate into the deep. Only a hurricane could’ve found it.”
“Yes,” I managed to say. “That’s what happened.”
“I reckon now we should’ve gone out farther, because it sounds like it might’ve caught somehow on the coral. It’s all written down here, Mrs. Lowry. I wrote it up so’s you wouldn’t wonder who killed your husband no more.”
I breathed in deeply. “What else should I know?”
“Well, you was doin’ such a good job, the captain, he got worried we wouldn’t get no more wrecks, so he tried to get you out o’there. He kind of hoped all them presents he brung you would make you like him and y’d want to marry him and go back to Key West, but you didn’t show no interest.
“We did some arguin’ over your supplies one time. He thought if he skipped a delivery of food, you’d git worried ’bout yer family. But I wouldn’t go along with that. I’d not see your children go hungry. He gave in after a week and we brought you the food.”
I remembered that well. They’d been late with supplies one month because the captain was ill—or so he’d said. How I had blessed Martin for the bin of food he reserved in the storage shed. A new surge of rage welled up inside of me.
But Al?e was not yet through. “Then he tried to sabotage your oil. Mrs. Mabrity had sent back a batch of bad fuel that was delivered to the Key West lighthouse, and he brung that out to you instead o’the clean oil you was supposed to git. He was ?gurin’ it would take a long time t’git that straightened out, but Rebecca Flaherty, she seen to it right away, and Pendleton made sure we brung you out some good oil a couple days later.”
“You’re saying that the contaminated oil was brought out to me deliberately?”
“Yes, ma’am. And when that didn’t work, the captain, he got really fussed, so tha’s when he sent in those fake Indians.”
I felt my breath coming faster. “Al?e, are you saying … those braves who savaged the tower … they weren’t Indians at all?”
“The lads was just some young ?shermen he met in a grog shop in Key West. Talked them into puttin’ on war paint and feathers and goin’ out there howlin’ and yelpin’ in a dugout canoe to set a ?re at the lighthouse. They thought it was a lark. He was goin’ to give ’em each ten dollars to do it.”
Abruptly, like lightning shattering a dark sky, another question hit me. “Those men. Were they the eight ?shermen who went missing from Key West?”
“Aye. They was supposed to bust into the tower and burn the wooden staircase to cripple the light. But they got it wrong … Anyhow, they wasn’t plannin’ to kill nobody, jes’ wanted to wreck the light. And the captain never expected you to start shootin’ at ’em. But you managed to pick ’em all off. Lordy, wasn’t he some angry at you over that!” And he managed a weak smile as he slowly shook his head.
“What happened to their remains?” The memory of the lone ?gure waving a white ?ag in the moonlight as he collected the braves’ bodies ?ashed into my mind. He’d been dressed as an Indian, but of course it had to have been George Lee.
“He didn’t want nobody to know ’bout the mischief he done. He picked up the lads and he buried ’em all far out to sea so’s nobody’d ?nd out that you wasn’t attacked by real Indians. And he told me … well, he said later … you wasn’t that good a shot because”—here he lowered his voice—“well, a few of ’em was still alive.” At this, I gasped. To what lengths would he have gone to cover up his crimes?
“We never brung you newspapers around that time ’cuz he was afraid you’d make the connection between the missin’ Key Westers and the fake Indians at Wreckers’.”
“I might have. But I never would have thought the captain was responsible. I trusted him … trusted both of you.”
He hung his head. “I know you did, ma’am. That’s why I’m feelin’ so guilty. And when we heard yer little girl … Hannah …” he stopped—he was sobbing like a baby. “I thought about her all the time. Couldn’t eat or sleep for awhile after that. But the captain, he said she was retarded, so it didn’t much matter.”
I had to take a deep breath. My anger was so overwhelming now, it was attacking my chest like a knife.
“That’s why I think this beatin’ was needed,” he continued, oblivious to my rage. “Y’know, he even tried to cause a wreck that night we was bein’ so helpful after he killed yer husband. D’you remember how we stayed overnight in our boat and the captain kept letting the light go out?”
I nodded. So what I had taken for incompetence was actually an act of sabotage. “Is there anything more?” I managed to whisper. My head was reeling.
“Well, then he tried t’git you interested in Captain Peartree. Talked Peartree into wooing you out there, but that didn’t work, neither. You turned him down.”
“That was the captain’s doing?”
He nodded. “Well, Peartree was fond of you, but he would never have pursued you without the captain pushing him. So … yes. Then we had that hurricane, and you come back to Key West. Storm was a blessin’ because it busted the light. But when he heard that Pendleton was plannin’ to send you out there again after it got ?xed, he got really fussed. Tha’s when he tried to git you to marry ’im.” Here he lowered his voice, even though there was no one around to hear. “Well, he told me later what happened, and I’m real sorry he was so disrespectful to a ?ne lady like y’self. I reckon you was just too good a lighthouse keeper, Mrs. Lowry. With you out there, we didn’t have much chance of no good wrecks. He knew you’d never go along with lettin’ the light go out.”
I slumped back into my seat. So, it had all been about the light. It had never been about me, or my charm, or even—I smiled bitterly—my cleavage. And poor Al?e was merely his dim-witted pawn.
Seeing that Al?e was tired and, by now, a little confused, I made ready to leave. “I should let you get some rest,” I said, patting his shoulder. I took the letter addressed to the sheriff and prepared to leave.
“I should’ve spoke up before, God knows. But I was scared of the captain. He said he’d kill me if I ever told anybody about any of this.”
“Well, he certainly can’t do that now,” I assured him. I felt drained and raw and was not sure I could listen to any more. But I knew in my heart that Al?e would not be around much longer, so I pressed on.
“Is that everything?”
“Yes, ma’am. ’Cept for the money.”
“What money?”
“Martin’s share. It was about seventy-?ve thousand dollars. He never really trusted the captain, so he gave it to me for safekeepin’. I was supposed to open an account for you at the bank, but I never got around to it. I would’ve given it to you after the captain killed ’im, but I didn’t know how to splain it all to you … so when nobody was lookin’, I … I put it into a sugar sack and stuck it into the grave we dug.”
I stared at him. So that was the money the captain was after! Buried in the ground. Only a simple man like Al?e would have hidden it there—and in a sack that would deteriorate. In my mind’s eye, I saw the money rising from its grave in a hurricane and, like a swarm of bees, swirling away into the air on the wings of blustering gusts, bound for destinations of its own resolve.
“I sure ain’t proud o’what I done.” He leaned forward and looked at me beseechingly. “Please tell me you forgive me, Mrs. Lowry,” he whispered.
“Yes, of course I forgive you.” Much as I felt like lashing out at him, I wanted to let him die in peace. “Good-bye, Al?e, and thank you,” I said, reaching out and taking his bloated hand in mine. A half smile spread across his face, but his features were almost unrecognizable. “Godspeed,” I whispered.
I left Alfie in the care of a nurse and hurriedly made my way through the dreary halls of the hospital, heading toward the exit, where my carriage awaited. I wanted nothing more than to breathe some fresh air outside. But when I happened upon a door with the name George Lee on it, I stopped. There was a sign below his name that said NO VISITORS. There was nobody around. After a moment’s hesitation, I quietly opened the door and slipped in.
A stench of sweat and stale urine permeated the hot, airless little room. The captain lay dozing by the window on a sagging navy cot, immobile, looking thin and ashen. Gone was the tan color of his years in the sun. His leathery face was sallow, etched with crevices; his oily hair hung limply past his shoulders; his beard, too, had grown long and straggly, and he was glistening with perspiration. A metal brace seemed to be holding his broken jaw together. His breathing was labored, and clearly he, too, was in a bad way, but I could summon no pity for him.
I conjured up a vision of Martin and Hannah. “You monster!” I whispered. “They are preparing a special place in hell for you.”
His eyes ?uttered open and registered shock as they focused on me. Then they became de?ant. He opened his mouth to speak, but, lacking control of his muscles, he could only drool. The words gurgled in his throat.
Disgusted, I turned to go, but then I saw a smug look steal over his features. A mu?ed sound escaped from the bed. I realized he was actually laughing at me. He closed his eyes again, as though savoring a memory.
With renewed fury, I taunted him. “Did you think it was a random beating?”
His eyes ?ew open.
“It wasn’t,” I whispered. “It was my husband, Pedro. Pedro’s men, acting on his orders.”
As he absorbed this, I could see his eyes ?ash with anger. Rage replaced his amusement, and his face reddened.
“Oh, and by the way, Captain. I found out where your money is. Al?e buried it in a sugar sack at the grave site out at Wreckers’. At this moment, it is probably still in ?ight across the seven seas!”
Furious, he tried to talk again, but this only brought on a violent coughing spell. I gave him one ?nal look of loathing. And then I left.