The Red Dove

‘I helped. But it was Sharon mostly. She’s an El Al stewardess and, you know, they’re into karate, judo, all that stuff.’

‘Where’s Sharon now?’ He touched his split nose and winced; he didn’t move because he liked the feel of her breasts; he tried to smile but that hurt too.

‘Gone to get someone to patch you up. Jeannie went off with the animal. You know, she was kidding him along just to get rid of him.’

‘I don’t need anyone to patch me up,’ Massey told her. This time he did move a little and pain stabbed him in the groin.

‘You just stay right where you are,’ her voice maternal. And then: ‘A lot of us are worried about you, Mr Massey.’

‘How did you know my name?’

‘I knew it when I was a kid. You were one of my heroes. I even had your picture pinned up in my room.’

‘You mean you still recognise me?’

‘Well no,’ she admitted. ‘But I recognised your name when you came to live here and I did a little checking. I – we, that is – are grateful for the way you help to look after the island. The trouble is, you don’t look after yourself.’

A wind was ruffling the sea and combing the long grass in the dunes, and gulls were crying in the sky.

‘I manage,’ Massey told her.

Hesitantly, she said: ‘They say you drink a little too much.’

‘You sound like Rosa.’

‘Is that the woman you live with?’

He nodded and that hurt too. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Jane,’ she told him. ‘Plain Jane.’

‘Not plain,’ he said, ‘beautiful,’ and began to struggle to his feet because she might think he was making a pass and it must be embarrassing enough for her as it was cradling the head of a crock who, in addition to the stubble and the whisky, sported a rapidly-closing eye and a busted nose.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘where are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘But –’

‘And thank you,’ he said. ‘And Sharon and Jeannie.’

‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’

He wasn’t but he said: ‘Quite sure.’

‘Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to come with you?’

He shook his head and it still hurt but not so much because his attention was diverted by the pain in his groin. It was on fire.

As he turned away she called: ‘You had him beat, Mr Massey, until I called out to you.’

One of his feet struck an object in the sand. He bent down, picked up the Tab can and handed it to her. ‘There is something you can do for me,’ he said. ‘Get rid of this.’

He smiled at her and limped off down the beach.

Robert Massey chose Padre Island because it reminded him of space. The skies were wide and deep, the beaches went on forever, the quiet enfolded you.

Padre Island is, in fact, two main islands, South and North, that form a scimitar 140 miles long off the Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico. It consists mostly of grass and sand although the smaller South Island, only twenty-five miles long, has been developed and boasts a Hilton in Port Isabel. What is said to be the world’s largest shrimping fleet anchors here and a little further down the mainland at Brownsville.

Hearing the machine-gun fire of the constructors’ drills, Massey headed for the North Island which has its own port, Aransas, (actually on a fragment of island known as Mustang linked to the North Island by Route 53), and long, lonely stretches of land inhabited by gophers and ground squirrels below skies where herons and falcons join the gulls.

At the turn of the seventies Padre Island’s tourist industry received two publicity boosts: an army of 200 unemployed armed with shovels managed to clear the residue of a massive oil-spill from the beaches and a local girl, Gig Gangel, was featured as a Playboy centrefold. But still the lovely wastes of North Padre, where treasure hunters seeking Spanish gold are prohibited, remain untarnished, protected by Padre Island National Seashore Trust at Corpus Christi and conservationists such as Robert Massey.

Massey, with a gratuity and pension supplied by ‘a grateful Government’, patrolled the North Island protecting wild life from tourists, moving on the gold hunters with their metal detectors, clearing jetsam from the beaches, scanning the sea by helicopter for oil slicks, caring for birds and turtles crippled by the oil, taking the latter to Ila Loetscher, an old lady who cared for them on South Island.

When he was sober he was regarded by the conservation authorities as a Godsend; when drunk, which was frequently, as a pain.

As he limped towards his old green Chev to drive back to Port Aransas the wind strengthened. The grass in the dunes bent with it and the ocean was plucked with white feathers of foam; ahead of him scuttled a flock of sanderlings. The sky was still blue but it had a metallic sheen to it. Massey spotted a marsh hawk flying high. He cupped a hand to his swollen eye and stared at the hawk with his good one; but he peered far beyond the hawk, to a platform in space where, among the stars, he looked on an island far bigger than Padre. The island was the world.

He climbed into the Chev and drove along the highway to the shack on the fringe of the little port, where Rosa would be waiting for him. Once loving, still comforting, sad for him and herself, the Mexican girl, now on the plump side, from across the border in Matamoros who only reminded him that she had sacrificed her youth for him when he was very drunk.

When she heard the car she ran across their patch with its top-heavy sunflowers and bolting lettuces, the only part of Padre Island that he didn’t seem to care about. When she saw his face she put a hand to her mouth as though in pain herself, then opened her arms to him.

As they walked across the patch she said to him: ‘We have a visitor.’

‘Yeah? Who?’

‘A man called Reynolds,’ she said.

The green dossier lay on the cracked glass surface of the cane table standing between them. Reynolds tapped it with one finger and said: ‘I want to level with you; that’s why I want you to read it.’

The dossier was marked TOP SECRET and bore the coding SI 202, Massey’s name and, in the bottom right hand corner, a round coffee stain. Massey picked it up and flipped the pages, 183 of them.

‘Didn’t you always level with me?’ he asked.

‘I don’t want to discuss anything now. I want you to read that, then we’ll talk tomorrow.’

‘Why the hell would you suddenly want to level with me after all this time?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Reynolds said.

Massey poured himself whisky from a half-full bottle of J & B. Reynolds sipped an orange juice. After bathing Massey’s face Rosa had gone into town to buy groceries; the only other occupant of the shack was an old green turtle crippled with oil-tar that two boys had brought to be cleaned up. Outside the wind pushed at the fragile walls of the shack and played music in the bamboo roof.

‘Now,’ Massey said. He sat down opposite Reynolds.

Reynolds shrugged. ‘I’ve got a favour to ask,’ he said.

‘So, you’ve got a favour to ask. The man ruins my life and then comes round to ask a favour!’