Death on a Vineyard Beach (17 page)

“I didn't know we still had shamans,” I said.

“I've seen some,” said Begay. “Down in some of those countries south of Mexico. Or at least people said they were shamans. You find them when you get far enough away from the cities. The farther you go, the more there are. You could probably find them in the cities, too, if you knew where to look.” He smiled down at his wife. “But I didn't know they had them on Martha's Vineyard.”

“Well,” she said, “we have one, at least.”

“I thought you were supposed to be a true-blue Christian,” said Begay, good-naturedly. “I doubt if Father What's-his-name who married us would approve of you believing in medicine men who can influence the spirits. The good father is a twentieth-century priest, not a medieval one. I doubt if he even believes in spirits.”

“When I was a little girl,” said Toni Begay, “my sister and I used to go visit Uncle Bill. We'd go to his house and it would seem like nobody was there. Then, all of a sudden, there would be Uncle Bill. We used to say that he could make himself invisible. He made us laugh, anyway. I don't know if he can influence the spirits, and I don't even know if he's really a shaman. But some people say he is, and I know that he's my favorite uncle.”

Uncle Bill lived down off Lighthouse Road, toward Lobsterville, at the end of a sandy driveway to the right that led through trees and scrub. The house was an old but well-maintained farmhouse. It had weathered gray cedar shingles and was trimmed with gray deck paint. Behind it was a small barn that now served as a garage. There was an elderly car parked in the yard, and beyond it was a good-sized vegetable garden, which was well hoed and weeded. At the moment, it was being watered by a sprinkler.

I parked in front of the house, and we got out and went up to the door. Toni knocked, then knocked again. There was no answer. We walked around to the back of the house. There was no one in the garden, either.

“Hello, Uncle Bill!” Toni called. Her voice seemed to disappear into a void.

We looked around. No one was in sight.

“Well, his car's here, so he can't be too far away,” said Toni. She called again.

A voice behind us said, “Hello, Toni, my dear. How good to see you.”

I barely kept myself from jumping, and was interested to note Joe Begay's right hand flash toward his left side, under his arm, then pause and fall back. I felt a shiver go up my spine.

We turned and I saw a man standing where, I could have sworn, no man had been only seconds before. He was a man of indeterminate age, somewhere over fifty, I guessed. Or was he younger? I suddenly wasn't sure. He had a head of thick, black hair that was touched with gray, and he wore jeans and a short-sleeved shirt bearing the logo of the New England Patriots. He was smiling at his niece.

“Hi,” said Toni. “I knew you had to be here somewhere.”

Uncle Bill nodded and gestured vaguely toward the trees behind him. “I was out there when I heard you drive in. Come inside and get something cool. Ah, I see you've brought lunch and your own beer. Fine, we should have plenty for all.” He put out his hand to Begay. “Hello, Joe. Good to see you again.” Then he looked at me, and again put out his hand. “Hello. I'm Bill Vanderbeck.”

“J. W. Jackson.”

His hand was brown and rough. “I remember seeing you up at the Marcus place,” said Uncle Bill, with a smile. “You were looking at Joe and Toni here, while they were supposedly birding down by Squibnocket.”

I suddenly remembered the flight of birds that had flown from the bush halfway down the hill.

“I didn't see you,” I said. “But I saw the birds.”

His smile grew wider. “Some people used to say that I could walk through walls, but it was never true. Come on in.”

We followed the shaman into his house.

  
14
  

The inside of Vanderbeck's house was as commonplace as the outside. I had somehow expected something unusual, something more shamanlike, whatever that might be. Maybe a mandala on the wall, or an African mask, or even one of those sand paintings that the tourists buy out West. Maybe a copy of some cabalistic tome lying open on a table. Instead, the inside of the house was just slightly shabby, ordinary New England. There was a fireplace, there were comfortable pieces of furniture that weren't particularly old or particularly new, there were worn throw rugs of traditional design and size—none of them Navajo. The kitchen was the usual sort, housing a stove, sink, refrigerator, counters, and shelves. Maybe the shaman stuff was in some other room.

“Look around while Toni and I get the food on the table,” said Vanderbeck, seeming to read my mind.

Begay grunted, and he and I wandered through the house, our hands in our pockets. Besides the kitchen and living room, there was a small dining room, a bathroom with a claw-footed tub, and what might once have been a nursery but was now a small sunroom with a large window
overlooking the vegetable garden. A stairway led down to a basement and another led up to what I supposed were bedrooms (and maybe the room with the shaman stuff in it; the pentangle on the floor, or whatever). We decided not to go down or up, but instead strolled back into the living room and found Toni and her uncle already plunked down in easy chairs and sucking on bottles of Molson.

“Nice place,” I said, sitting down.

“Been in the family for a hundred and fifty years or so,” said Vanderbeck. “When I go, Toni here gets it. Good place for kids. Mine are all grown up and gone away, but maybe these two will hatch some.”

Toni smiled at this idea, and Begay smiled, too.

“I see you had a nursery,” I said.

“Ah,” said Vanderbeck. “You noticed that, did you? Yeah, that's what that sunroom was. The kids' room, when they were little. We'd put them in there with their toys and blankets, and they'd play or sleep till they got tired of it. How'd you know it was the nursery?”

“I don't know,” I said, my mind racing. How
had
I known?

“Maybe he's just intuitive,” said Toni to her uncle.

I didn't think of myself as intuitive. I preferred to think of myself as being very rational and cool-headed, and only believing things when I had enough evidence. But maybe Toni was right, maybe I was intuitive sometimes. Probably everybody is. For sure, I couldn't figure out why I'd thought the nursery was a nursery.

“He just got married,” said Begay. “Maybe he has babies on his mind.”

“There are worse things than that to have on your mind,” said Vanderbeck. He finished his beer. “Let's eat.”

We followed him into the kitchen, got more beer, and sat down to sandwiches and chips. Vanderbeck looked at Begay.

“Toni tells me you've decided to stay here on the island,” he said. “Long way from the res.”

“Yes, sir,” said Begay. “In more ways than one.”

“Call me Bill,” said Vanderbeck. “I'm not a sir.”

“Yes, sir,” said Begay. Everybody laughed.

“The fishing business is tough,” said Bill.

Begay chewed for a while, then swallowed. “How'd you know I was going into the fishing business?”

Bill waved a vague hand. “No secret. People talk. Lotta guys going out of business, others coming in. You know anything about pot fishing?”

“Buddy Malone's going to show me the ropes,” said Begay. “I have some savings to keep us going if we need it. If I have to, I can always go back to my old job, and I can do it living here as well as I can living anywhere else, as long as I'm willing to travel.”

“He was a rep,” explained Toni. “He represented different people and products, and got the ones who wanted things together with the people who could produce them, and vice versa.”

“Ah,” said Vanderbeck. “A middleman.”

“That's it,” said Begay. “You need gidgets, I'd put you in touch with a gidget maker. For a fee, of course.”

“Any particular kind of gidgets?” asked Vanderbeck. “Did you specialize?”

Begay drank some beer. I had the impression that he did that to give himself a moment to get his story together in more detail. “No specialization,” he said. “The process is the same no matter what the gidget. Firm I worked for handles all sorts of stuff, here and abroad. Anytime a ship goes from one port to another, there's a chance that some of their gidgets are on it.”

“Big outfit, then?”

Begay had some chips. “Medium size,” he said. “Big enough to keep busy. They have a lot of connections, and they do a good job, so they get as much business as they can handle. It's not very romantic work, but there's money to be made.”

“I'd think that you'd probably end up dealing with some kinds of things more than others,” said Toni's uncle Bill.

“Well, I guess we probably move more of some kinds of stuff than others. We handle a lot of kitchen appliances and farm machinery, for instance. And industrial piping. Valves and joints and that sort of thing. I didn't know much
about a lot of the stuff. I just got the interested parties together.”

“Toni says you were good at your work.”

“Well, I guess so. I haven't missed any meals yet anyway.”

“I'm sure she's right. Otherwise you wouldn't be going fishing.”

Begay smiled. “How do you figure that?”

“Theory of Occupational Compensation,” said Vanderbeck.

I looked at Vanderbeck's eyes and wasn't sure whether I saw laughter or solemnity.

“I'm afraid I never heard of that one,” said Begay.

“Not surprising,” said Uncle Bill Vanderbeck. “It's my private, unpublished theory. Vanderbeck's Theory of Occupational Compensation. Some day I'll write it down and send it to somebody to publish, so I can die knowing that I made a real contribution to social science.

“What this theory does is explain why people enter professions, and why some people stay in them and others leave. The first part of the theory says that each person enters a profession that forces him to compensate for his primary sense of inadequacy. For instance, when you first go to college it doesn't take you any time at all to figure that psychology majors are all a little wackier than other students, or at least are afraid that they are. They're more nervous and spooky and obnoxious. You remember?” He looked now at Begay.

“I remember,” said Begay, and so did I.

“That's right. Those people all wanted to be the future shrinks of America to compensate for their fear that they themselves were crazy. You also noticed that the college jocks were flexing their muscles to compensate for their fears that they weren't manly enough, and the ROTC guys were going through all that military stuff to compensate for their fears that they were afraid of combat. You get the picture.”

I got it. “You mean the same thing's true right across the board, in college: the English majors are all worried about not being literate enough, the Business majors are all
scared stiff about being economic failures, the Social Work people are afraid they're not humane enough, and all like that?”

“That's it. And after I noticed all that in college, I took a look at the professions people enter, and by God the same rules apply.

“But there's more: just because a person feels inadequate doesn't mean that he actually is inadequate. When you enter a profession you discover one of two things: that, in fact, you are inadequate, in which case you stay in the profession, continuing to compensate; or that, in fact, you're not inadequate at all, and don't have to compensate, in which case you leave the profession.” He laughed.

Begay nodded. “Which explains why all professions are filled up with inadequate people.”

“Highway engineers are a good example,” said Toni.

“Okay,” I said, “but what happens when you leave your profession?” I had left a few myself, after all.

Uncle Bill handed me another beer. “Well, what you do then is enter another profession that forces you to compensate for your secondary sense of inadequacy. We all have more than one sense of inadequacy.”