Billingsgate Shoal (4 page)

Our cottage was a bluish gray rectangle on the bluff
top. The American flag hung limp on the mast. I squinted and could
see the three metal cups of my anemometer slowly turning. The dull,
cold gray of the weathered cedar shakes belied the coziness of The
Breakers. The smallish rooms with low, beamed ceilings. The library
corner of the living room, where you could sit for hours, days, under
the brass student lamp with the green glass shade and listen to the
surf crash, or the thunder roll. The kitchen with its skylights,
wineracks, copper pots, and smells of coffee, roasting meat, sizzling
fish, clam chowder. I liked hunting my own food out on the flats.
There was something elemental, even prehistoric, about i the act.
Like sex, it was something that came to me unfiltered by modem
civilization. It was animal. I was a hunter-gatherer. The damp sand
felt good under my bare feet. I climbed up the bone-colored wooden
steps and placed the bucket of clams in the shade on the deck. I
would cook them up in butter in a big iron pot, then add the clam
liquor, potatoes, onions, cracked pepper, celery, milk, and perhaps
some leftover corn and little pieces of cooked bacon. I drooled at
the thought.

I went into the sauna. The temperature was 190
degrees. Perfect. I baked in there three times, coming out only long
enough to shower under cold water each time. Finally I showered for
good. I felt so laid back I couldn't have gotten it up even if I were
naked in the sack with all three of Charlie's Angels.

No, wait. I take that back.

I made the chowder. Soon the big iron pot was
simmering away and I tended to it as I sipped a Gosser beer.

"Isn't that Jack, Charlie?" shouted Mary
from the bathroom. The cream colored Toyota Land Cruiser swept into
the gravel driveway, and number one son climbed out. On his back
bumper is a sticker that reads: STOP THE WHALE KILLERS! BOYCOTT
JAPANESE GOODS!

Now you don't stop to think about this until you
realize that the sticker is affixed to none other than a Toyota, for
Chrissake, and that we've been guilty of laying nine grand on the
"killers." Not to worry though, not to worry: there's
another sticker on the other side, saying: IF I'D KNOEN ABOUT THE
WHALES, I WOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT THIS CAR.

Oh, well, the kid's heart is in the right place.

Number-two son, Tony, was working a summer job as a
grounds keeper at a resort in Franconia Notch, N.H. He called a few
times, to say the job was crummy, it didn't pay well, and was hard
work, but that he was having "a great time, especially at
night," which meant, I suppose, that he was mostly getting laid.
But then, what are summer jobs for? Jack was doing graduate work in
biology at the oceanographic center at Woods Hole, and so was at The
Breakers fairly regularly.

He sauntered, in, snagging a beer from the
refrigerator. He stirred and tasted the chowder, nodding his head and
grunting. I walked with him back out onto the deck, and scanned
Billingsgate with the marine glasses. It stood on the horizon, a dark
streak surrounded by red shiny water. We had a drink and watched the
sun and listened to the gulls. We waited for Allan, then gave up on
him.

"Probably forgot," said Jack, thrusting a
big paw into the nut dish that sat in the middle of the picnic table.
"He's got a new girlfriend down in Chatham."

"Yes, I remember him saying he had a dinner
date," said Mary.

"Have you heard from Tony? How is number-two
son?" I asked.

He looked up quickly and stared at me level for an
instant with his turquoise eyes. He took after the Adams side of the
family—the Nordic side. Tony looked like his mother: with deep
olive skin and coal black eyes—eyes so dark you could never see the
pupils. Jack was blond, and wore a bright yellow beard to match his
hair. He had medium skin and pale blue-gray eyes. Both boy-men are
enormously handsome. But then what would you expect their daddy to
say?

"Huh? Why do you want to know?"

"Because he usually writes us or calls
regularly," said Mary, "and he hasn't been lately. Well?"

He shrugged and munched more nuts, swigged at the
mug. of beer in his left hand. He looked out over the sand flats and
ocean.

"Dunno. . ."

"Jack, I know you pretty well," I said.
"Sure there's nothing you—"

"Nope. Let's eat. I'll call Allan first thing
tomorrow."

We ate on the deck: the chowder accompanied by
asparagus in lemon and butter, fresh sugar-and-butter corn on the cob
and chablis. Of course afterward I realized that the quarter-pound of
butter that had made everything so delicious had probably more than
undone the 'afternoon's running. Oh, to hell with it. I did a little
writing after that, working on a paper to be presented at the next
meeting of the New England Oral Surgeons. Its working title was "The
Use of Epoxy Hardeners and Porcelain—Resin Compounds in the
Cosmetic Capping of Peg—Lateral Incisors." It was as exciting
as cold oatmeal.

I went in and nestled up against Mary's warm, soft
flank, and slept. As I dozed off l heard the sound of the tide easing
back in: slow cadence of crump and hiss, and wind blowing through the
dune grass.
 
 

CHAPTER TWO

TIME: 5:45 A.M. Low ceiling. Wind: north-northeast,
12 knots and freshening. Barometer: 29.8 and falling. Temperature:
68°. Sky: leaden and darkening.

It did not look promising. The scattered rows of
stratocumulus clouds of the previous day that had almost cleared had
regrouped into an ominous thick gray goop. The barometer and wind
gauges also foretold unpleasant weather. The wind was turning
eastward by the minute, and an east wind almost always is "an
ill wind that blows no good."

Over after-breakfast coffee Mary and I decided to
flee the Cape and head back to the main domicile in Concord for the a
day. There were assorted bits of house husbandry that needed taking
care of, and Mary had a batch of pots and ceramic sculpture that
needed glazing and fixing. So we went. I mowed the lawn, collected
mail and magazines, and developed the film I'd shot over·the.past
two weeks. I didn't make prints; just left the celluloid strips
hanging in the dust-free dryer until I had more time. Mary busied
herself in her workshop annex. She does this thing called rock salt
glazing which takes immense heat and long periods in the kiln. We
built specially constructed kilns for the process in the backyard,
beehive-shaped domes that draw their heat from bottled gas. When the
temperature reaches some astronomical figure, and certain clay cones
inside the structures bend and dissolve,

Mary throws in handfuls of coarse kosher rock salt,
which promptly vaporize and affix themselves., in the form of a slick
finish, to the pots on the racks above. It is an ancient glazing
process, she tells me, but produces pots and vases with a finish that
is distinctive, simple, and very handsome.

After lunch we headed back and picked up our three
dogs who had just been dipped to prevent ticks, which are common on
the Cape. They attack Angel and Flack, the two wire-haired
dachshunds, especially, since they are low-slung and furry. Danny,
the yellow Lab, is more immune. Anyway we gathered them in the car,
all smelling like new telephone poles, and headed for the cottage.

Call it intuition, a hunch, or clairvoyance. Whatever
it is, I sensed it as we swung into the driveway at half past three.

Something wasn't right.

Sure enough, Jack was pacing the deck when we showed
up. He didn't wave as usual. Instead he waved his arm backward,
motioning us to hurry. He met us in the front hallway.

'
Allan Hart's dead," he said. "He drowned
in the harbor."

I was hearing him but I wasn't; his voice was coming
to me from far, far away, as if he were speaking into one end of the
Alaskan pipeline up in Barrow and I was sticking my head in the other
end down in the Lower Forty-Eight. I remember looking at the
lampshade and thinking how nicely they'd rendered the nautical chart
on it, and that I had some tobacco ash still left in my pewter
ashtray. I realized everything but what was actually told me. Like a
time-delay fuse, my mind had stopped momentarily to absorb the jolt.
Then Jack handed me a paper.

Then I was looking at the article—at the picture of
Allan. But I wasn't at the cottage when I found myself reading it; I
was half a mile down the beach. My three dogs were staring up at me,
concerned. They whined and wagged their tails slowly, tentatively, as
if in fear of rebuke.

I shooed them away and walked, read, walked again,

I sometimes slapping the paper against my thigh. The
gulls were low, diving and wheeling about. The dogs scampered after
them, barking. It was all a dream. I returned to the wooden stairs,
and suddenly was up them, all thirty-nine of them, without doing it.

Then the two of them were sitting in the living room
staring at me.

Mary's crying brought me back to the real world for
good. I sat next to her on the couch and we read the article
together, overland over again. But no matter how many times we read
it, it stayed the same.
 
 

CHAPTER THREE

EVENING QUIET at Wellfleet Harbor. I sat staring at
the water. It swished and riffled languidly along the breakwater's
edge. It glimmered in the soft, gold-gray light of dusk, of late
mellow sunlight through clouds. The light played on the water in
streaks of brightness. It was like a Monet painting. I heard a car
door slam far behind me, then the quick footsteps of a woman
approaching.

"Thought I'd find you here," said Mary.

I said nothing.

"You ready to come home?"

"Remember what I told Allan just before he went
in? I told him to swim out to the boat."

"So? They found his body way out in the channel
near Lieutenant's Island."

"The tide could have carried him out there. I
think maybe if I hadn't told him to—"

"Stop it, Charlie. Stop it now. There's no way
of know exactly how Allan died. Scuba divers get killed pretty
frequently I think."

"Not in a shallow harbor they don't. Jack says
Allan did lot of deep diving. That's when a diver gets into trouble.
A big strong kid like that just doesn't die hunting fish in Wellfleet
Harbor."

She sat down next to me on the old stone quay. We
watched the boats sway slowly around on their mooring cables. Mary
said she'd been unable to find Sarah Hart at her home even though
she'd driven by several times. We decided she was with her doctor or
a close friend.

"It's almost dark, Charlie."

"I just can't help thinking that if I hadn't
asked him to swim out there—"

"Dammit, Charlie, stop it! You'll drive yourself
crazy. Why don't you find the boat's owner and talk to him? He
probably never laid eyes on Allan."

"That's what I'm thinking; that's what makes me
feel so bad about it. Here's Allan swimming around underneath the
boat and the guy probably started the propeller. Remember how fast
that engine was revving, pumping out all that water? Well if the
screw started suddenly the propwash could've sucked Allan right into
it—"

"Good Christ—"

"And one of the blades could have nicked him on
the head—remember the article did say there was evidence of a head
injury—knocked him cold and his mouthpiece slipped out. There was a
lot of air left in the tank."

She tugged at my elbow and led me back to the cars.

"I don't see Bill Larson in his shack. Tomorrow
morning I'm coming back here and get the name of the boat's owner. I
think if I just get a chance to phone him I'll feel better. Maybe
they saw Allan swim out past the boat, in which case I'll feel a
little better. Not much, but a little."

After dinner we located the funeral director who told
us that Sarah Hart was temporarily in her doctor's care. Her husband
had died eight years previous and Allan had been her only child. Good
God. I tossed and turned far into the night thinking about the boy
swimming out to the big green boat. I knew it would never leave me
alone until I laid to rest at least little of the guilt that gnawed
at me.

On my way to the harbor next day, weary and edgy from
almost no sleep, I stopped by the Eastham police station and talked
to the desk sergeant. The story was exactly as the papers  had
reported it. A lobsterman had seen the body in the shallows off
Lieutenant's Island in early evening. The body wasn't floating
because of the heavy gear and weight belt. There was a deep bruise on
the head that had no doubt resulted in unconsciousness, and eventual
drowning. I asked the sergeant if the diving hood had been torn, and
the nature and extent of the head injuries. He replied that he didn't
know; he wasn't that familiar with the details.

"Can you tell me if there are any theories as to
how the injury occurred?" I asked.

"I'm not sure, but I think the assumption is
that he hit his head while diving, maybe on the breakwater."

"People in scuba gear don't dive into the water
headfirst. They fall backward into it to avoid damaging their
equipment. Besides, I saw Allan enter the water."