A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard (2 page)

For years, members of both the environmentalist and ORV groups thought wild thoughts and made wild statements, and for years violence was feared or threatened by members of both factions. Some plover lovers believed that the plover nests would be systematically destroyed by ardent ORV drivers, and pointed to anti-plover T-shirts that had emerged on the Vineyard's summer scene, and to the popularity of the lyric, “I'm running over a piping plover"; some drivers spoke of getting all of the ORVs on the island together at Katama and then driving, en masse, from one end of Norton's Beach to the other, ridding the beach of every last plover nest, and arguing that if there were no more plovers, there would be no plover problem. Zack Delwood, who was a fine fisherman but also a bully and a hater who shared no more love for me than I for him, was even more specific. His favorite proclamation was “No goddamned plover lovers, no more plover problem!”

But none of the wild threats or imaginings actually took place. The drivers had fumed and the environmentalists had ignored them and their arguments.

“Don't frown,” said Zee, reading my mind as she often does. “Forget Ingalls. The beach is finally open. Enjoy the day.”

Good advice, and I took it.

It was only later that murder was done.

We passed about a dozen parked ORVs on our way to Wasque. Most were owned by morning sunbathers, but a couple of picnics had already gotten started on the Katama Pond side, and I could see some clammers and quahoggers at work in the shallows of the pond.

But we were not shellfishing today, we were after the wily August bluefish, who had decided to summer on the Vine-yard, and there was no better place to hunt them than at Wasque Point during the last two hours of the falling tide.

There was a line of Jeeps at the point when we got there, and there were bluefish under every one of them. Rods were bent and everyone was happy, even though the fishermen were shoulder to shoulder. The fish were in, and clearly had been for some time.

“Wow!” cried Zee. “Look at that!”

I found a parking spot farther to the left than I usually like to be and pulled in beside the almost new truck that belonged to Moonbeam Berube. Moonbeam and his ethereally beautiful son, Jason junior, were hauling in the fish, just like everyone else, which was a good thing because it meant that there'd be food on the Berube table that night, which was not always the situation.

Moonbeam was reputed to be the product of a long line of incestuous ancestors, and was, at any rate, one of the Vineyard's sad cases. He and his wife and many children lived in a hovel up in Chilmark. All of his children were nearly beautiful, with fine bones and delicate skin. But their eyes were dim and their prospects dimmer. Moon
beam was sly, but was bad at everything but fishing, and his family was a constant concern to social workers, teachers, cops, and other toilers in the public realm. Where he'd gotten the money for his truck was a mystery to many, but no one cared enough to ask him to solve it.

There was nothing I could do for Moonbeam except be friendly, so I waved at him and turned to Zee. “Grab your rod and get down there,” I said. “You can't catch 'em from up here!”

But she hesitated. “You go. I'll take care of Joshua first.”

“No. I was nailing them here the morning after Joshua showed up and the two of you were still in the hospital. I'll take care of him now. Get going!”

Still she hesitated.

“They won't wait,” I said. 'Jeez, look at that one. Must be twelve pounds!”

Zee looked at the fish flopping on the sand, then at me, then at Joshua, then back at me.

“Go!” I said.

“Okay!”

She got out, snagged her rod off the roof rack, and trotted down to the surf, looking like a dark Venus. She made her cast and the lure arched far out over the surf. As the lure hit the water, there was an immediate explosion of white as a fish hit the lure, and her rod bent as she set the hook.

“Now, pay attention,” I said to Joshua, as Zee began the fight to bring the fish in. “You want to know how to fish, you watch your mom.”

We watched as she hauled back, reeled down, and hauled back again, leaning against the strength of the fish, controlling it, never giving it that instant when it could snap the line or throw the hook.

There is a beauty in anything being done well, be it a good carpenter swinging a hammer, a good musician at work, or a good short-order cook producing food for a diner full of customers. You see it when an athlete is
running well, when a dancer is one with the dance, or when someone makes a good hunting shot or handles a boat well. And it's not only in humans that you see this, but in animals and birds as well. In the deer bounding into the forest, an osprey soaring above the beach, or in the stalking cat intent upon its prey. It has to do with economy of motion and the perfect coordination between action and intent. And when a beautiful creature like Zee is performing beautifully, the experience can be extraordinary.

So it was that dull Moonbeam and duller Jason, and the other fishermen nearest to Zee, held their casts and watched her bring in her bluefish. Gradually, more fishermen on either side of her stopped and watched as she worked the big fish in, as if they'd never seen a fish landed before, as if they were seeing a sea nymph, a Nereid, perhaps Amphitrite, herself.

She was unaware of her audience, concentrating totally on the fish, and when she brought it, thrashing and heaving, up through the last surge of water onto the sand, a sort of sigh of wonder seemed to pass among her observers.

Then she grinned at them and punched a fist of triumph through the air and the moment of magic was gone. She was no longer a goddess but just another one of them, one of the fisherpeople who had landed a big one during a blitz, so one by one they took their eyes away and went back to their own happy work.

“Now, that,” I said to Joshua, “is the right way to bring one in.”

Joshua said he'd remember.

I was out of the Land Cruiser when Zee brought the fish up. She was happy and breathless. “This guy gave me a real tussle!”

She got the hook out of the fish's mouth and smiled at Joshua. He stared back with his big eyes.

“Get another one,” I said to Zee, as I set up Joshua's custom-made beach and lounge chair, which I'd made by adding legs, a table space, and an attached umbrella to a
plastic car seat. When Joshua was in it, he was about high-chair height above the ground and could play with a couple of toys too big to get into his mouth, watch what was going on, or take a nap. The sun couldn't get to him, but Zee and I could keep an eye on him at the same time that we were fishing. It was one of my better furniture designs. My only one, in fact.

I put Joshua into his chair.

“Well, what do you think? Can you see everything?”

Joshua said he was fine, so I got my rod off the roof rack and went down to the surf, where Zee was already on again.

“Cast!” she said, flashing her white grin. “They're queued up out there, waiting to get on your line!”

I made my cast and had taken only a half-dozen turns on the reel when I saw the swirl and felt the fish hit my redheaded Roberts. I set the hook and joined the line of people with bent rods. Dynamite!

It was a genuine blitz, with fish thicker than a state biologist's head. And they were hitting anything you threw, so after a couple of casts, both Zee and I exchanged our good Roberts for junk lures we wouldn't mind losing so much if we got cut off. For people were losing lures, as is often the case when the razor-toothed blues are in a feeding frenzy. The ocean bottom at Wasque Point must be covered with lures cut off over the years, and no small number of them are mine and Zee's, so we played it safe today and caught fish anyway.

Joshua approved of our decision, and took a real interest in the fish we brought in, but between my sixth and seventh blue he suddenly smelled of serious low tide, so I parked my rod and changed his diaper in the back of the Land Cruiser. Zee came up before I was through and bent over him and smiled. He gurgled and pissed straight up into her face.

“Wretched child!” She wiped her face and laughed.

“It's penis envy,” I explained to him. “Girls can't do that. It's a manly talent.” I pinned his diaper.

“I'm getting outnumbered by you guys,” said Zee. “I need another girl in the family to even things out.” She ran a hand down across my chest; I felt that thrill that was always there when she touched me, and was surer than ever that motherhood had made her not only more beautiful than before, but more sensual.

She raised her dark eyes to mine, and I saw something smoldering deep down inside them. She let her hand fall farther.

“I do believe you've got something alive in your pants,” she said.

Behind me George Martin's voice said, “Hey, is that the latest Jackson? Let's have a look.”

Zee removed her hand and smiled up at me. I picked Joshua up and we turned to greet George as he came to us, rod in hand, followed by a sun-bronzed man I'd never seen before. He looked like some kind of Greek god.

George was in his sixties and spent as much time as he could manage on the beach. He had retired rich, but on the democratic surf-casting sands of Martha's Vineyard, no one cared how much money he or anyone else had or didn't have. George and Moonbeam were judged by the same standards. All the regulars cared about was how you handled yourself: whether you could cast without crossing everybody else's lines. It was even better if you were kidding when you bragged, instead of one of those jerks who really meant it; whether you liked a joke, even if it was on you; and whether you took your losses without self-pity. George passed the tests. He was a good guy, and we had known him for years.

He took a long look at Joshua, who stared back, as he tended to do when people stared at him.

“Boy doesn't look a bit like you, J.W., which is a good thing, all in all.”

“You got that right.” I gave him my Robinson-Churchill interpretation of the lad's face.

“He does not look like Edward G. Robinson or Winston
Churchill, either,” said Zee, only half-feigning maternal annoyance. “I think he looks like a little angel. You do, don't you, Joshua?”

Zee dropped her eyes to look at her son as I raised mine to find George's companion's eyes wide and staring as he looked at Zee. I'd observed the expression before in the faces of other men who saw her. I'd no doubt had it on my own face, and probably still did from time to time. It was a look of astonishment and wonder, mixed with wild imaginings.

He stared, then became aware of my eyes on his face, and, with effort, looked at me instead of her. His tan may or may not have reddened. He put a grin on his face and held out his hand. There was a golden watch on his wrist and a golden chain around his neck. His perfect teeth flashed in the sun. I knew, suddenly, that he was from California.

“Drew Mondry,” he said in a rich baritone voice. “Great-looking boy. They're never too young to start learning to fish.”

His grip was firm and so was mine. “J. W. Jackson,” I said.

“I'm forgetting my manners,” said George. “Zee, this is Drew Mondry. Drew, this is Zee Jackson.”

Zee looked at Drew and Drew looked at Zee. They shook hands.

“How do you do?” he said, his hand holding hers a heartbeat longer than need be.

She didn't seem to notice the heartbeat. “How do you do?” She smiled.

His hand released hers. “Your son is a beauty,” he said, flicking his bright blue eyes down to Joshua and then back up.

She smiled some more. “Yes. We got it right the first time.”

“You have no other children?”

“Not yet.”

Love me, love my child, I thought sourly.

“Drew's here looking over locations,” said George. “I
thought he should see what the island's really like, so I brought him out here.”

“It's terrific.” Mondry grinned. “I never saw anything like it. All these people catching fish like this. It's amazing!”

“He even got himself one,” said George. “Not bad, for his first time surf casting.”

“Fish about wore me out,” said Mondry, who didn't look at all worn out. “I've trolled out of San Diego, but I never tried this kind of fishing before. I can see how it could become addictive.”

“Locations,” said Zee. “You must be tied in with that movie business we've been reading about.”

He grinned a grin as white as her own. “That's right. I'm one of the guys who scouts areas for the other people who actually make the movie. The more they know about possible shooting areas, the more time and money they save. And with the cost of films these days, they want to save all they can. There are going to be a lot of outdoor shots for this movie, so I'll be here for quite a while, taking a look at things.”

“I'd keep the cameras away from Wasque in September,” I said, putting in an unrequested two cents.

He kept the grin on his face and looked at me. “Why's that?”

“Derby time. There'll be this many guys and more down here fishing. They wouldn't want anything interrupting them.”

“Well,” he said, “we wouldn't want that.”

“No,” I said. “You wouldn't.”

Lawrence Ingalls, state biologist, appeared in my mind. Loathsome Lawrence, who had interrupted more Vineyard fishing than anyone in history.

But Drew Mondry already had a new thought. “On the other hand, you've given me an idea. This is just the sort of shot we need to establish island ambiance.” He put his hands on his hips and swept the fisherman-filled beach with his eyes. “Yeah! Great idea! They'll love this scene.”

Terrific.

“I think it'd be wonderful,” said Zee. “You could hire some of the regulars as extras and pay them to fish, which was what they'll be doing anyway. You can start with George. Now, he's what I'd call local color.”