Goofy Foot (20 page)
Authors: David Daniel
I offered to drive, but he insisted. I wasn't sure about his mental clarity, or my own, for that matter, but at least it was my own, more than I could say about the swim trunks that fit me like a pup tent. I'd kept my shirt on for some dignity. We rode in silence for a time, before he drew into a rocky area amid some low dunes. Ahead was a fence with a locked gate and a sign like one I'd seen last night when I'd been with John Carvalho.
KEEP OUT
per order
SELECTMEN TOWN OF STANDISH
per order
SELECTMEN TOWN OF STANDISH
Time and weather, however, had effaced a couple of letters, so the bottom line now read ELECTMEN OWN STANDISH. Van Owen kicked sand at the sign. “A bit of truth in that.”
I followed him up a low dune to where we could see land and water beyond. “Out there's Shawmut Pointâthe place I told you about, where TJ and I drank Scotch one winter night and contemplated our futures. It used to be a summer colony, old wood-frame places.”
A thought came to me. “Could that be were Michelle Nickerson called from?”
“Unlikelyâthere isn't much out there anymore. The old houses were grandfathered in, but restrictions on waterfront building made it near to impossible to upgrade them. After a while, it was too much hassle to own a house here. The big motivator though was the nuke plant across the waterâyou can just make out the top of it there. One by one, a bank acting for a conservation trust bought up the houses and bulldozed them. There were a few holdouts, old-money families that hadn't used the places in decades but who went on paying taxesâyou get old Yankees' backs up, they dig in like surf clams and can't be moved.”
“So what happened?” I asked, getting a sudden inkling of meaning that stretched beyond what I knew.
“If memory servesâwhich, by all rights, it should notâone place was trashed by unknown parties, another caught fire. Owners got the idea and eventually sold, and before you could say âproperty rights,' it was illegal to be out here. Delcastro will likely check it out, but it takes a four-wheel drive and deflated tires to get anywhere.”
I thought of Iva Rand's remarking that her husband owned Standish. “Was either the bank or the trust named Ted Rand?”
He looked at me. “In some form or other. Now he's gotten around DEQE regs and is building an exclusive compound of homes, along with a seven-hundred-acre golf course. I'm told that's sizable. I know golf like you know surfing.”
“And golf, too.”
Van Owen was gazing at the dark landmass and the water cupping it, aglitter in the light of a rising moon. “Egrets used to nest out there. Horseshoe crabs would mate in the tidal cove.”
“Thanks for the history lesson,” I said. “What's your point?”
“Hang on; class isn't out yet. Come on.” Back at the truck he pulled a surfboard out of the bed, leaned it against the truck and hauled out a second board. “Never been on one of these, right?”
“And I hope you're not suggesting I start now.”
He tossed me a wet-suit top. “Use that. When we get out there you'll be glad for the extra warmth.”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“There's no other way to get where we're going.”
When I had the wet-suit top on, we carried the surfboards down and set them in the water. “We're sheltered by the jetty,” he said, “there won't be any waves. Just do what I do.”
We paddled out. “Tell me the part again about all the sharks being on shore,” I said.
“Most of them, anyway.”
Too late, I realized I hadn't removed my wristwatchâthough for the money I'd paid for it, it ought to be more waterproof than a duck. After several minutes of effort, Van Owen paused ahead and sat up on his board, which sank a little under him, nose up. I tried to do the same, but the board was so wobbly I almost fell off. I stuck to lying on my stomach. “I hope this isn't our destination.”
“Not yet. Look.” He pointed to a noticeable dark line in the water, some distance out from where we were. “That's where the brackish water running out of the tidal rivers meets the cold salt water. There's a lot of stirred-up plant life in it, and that attracts the baitfish, which draws mackerel and blues, and then the big hungry stripers come, all teeth and testosteroneâor whatever the fish equivalent is.”
I drew my hands up onto the deck of the board.
“Nickerson first clued me to what's really going on out here, underneath. He knew the food chains.”
Some of them, I thought but didn't say. Lying there in the dark on the board, maybe I could imagine that narrow and separate darkness where we each finally lay, but there wasn't time for metaphysics, and I hoped Van Owen wasn't in the mood for stoned-soul maundering. I was eager to be back on dry land, back to finding Michelle. He pointed again. “That blinking light out there on the end of the jetty? That's where we're going.”
My arms were as rubbery as the wetsuit by the time we drew the boards in close to the sloped side of the jetty. Van Owen dismounted and waded through the rockweed to the nearest boulder. He guided me in, and I scrambled up. The tide was outgoing, so we left the boards propped against the rocks and climbed to the top.
The jetty was built of enormous cut-granite slabs. In the moonlight
I could see that the top was broad and flat, the spaces filled with smaller stones and gravel. Once upon a time it had been paved, but the asphalt was corroded and littered with broken crab shells. Weeds sprouted from the cracks. There was the blinker at the far end, but the moon was our chief source of light. We started to walk in the opposite direction, toward the town center, where the Storm Warning restaurant stood in the distance.
I could see that the top was broad and flat, the spaces filled with smaller stones and gravel. Once upon a time it had been paved, but the asphalt was corroded and littered with broken crab shells. Weeds sprouted from the cracks. There was the blinker at the far end, but the moon was our chief source of light. We started to walk in the opposite direction, toward the town center, where the Storm Warning restaurant stood in the distance.
Barefoot, we moved over the rocks carefully, and finally Van Owen stopped. Looking down, I saw the charcoal remains of burned wood. Queen Anne's lace and goldenrod sprouted among what appeared to be hard pools of something that shone, as if volcanic activity had sent magma to the surface and it had frozen with time. I stooped and ran a hand over one of them.
“Melted fiberglass,” he said.
Something caught my eye, and I pushed aside pieces of charred wood and broken glass to reveal a section of concrete. It was the slab upon which the structure had stood. Painted on it was a design like the one I'd seen on the surfboards at the big shop and on the plank of charred board that hung there. Ride a Legend. I looked at Van Owen.
He squatted, too. “It was my logo. An old fish shack sat here before I took it over for the surf shop. There was a bait shop down that way.” He pointed farther out.
I'd gotten a version of it from Fran Albright at the restaurant: the same day, I suddenly realized, that I'd seen a man standing out here on the jettyâRed Dog.
“The two shops were zoned okay because they'd been there a long time, but they were pretty raggedâârustic,' I guess, if you get into that sort of thing. But the town didn't want an eyesore. Rand offered to buy them. The couple that ran the bait shop were glad to take the money and get out of the business. I wanted to stick.”
“Not the most commercial spot,” I said.
“It was a place where I could have some peace, not bug anyone, and if they wanted to come out, they made the hike.”
It was an attitude that Charley Moscowitz liked for his used-firearms business, but you didn't make the Forbes 500 with it. “What happened?”
“I said no, thanks, to the buyout offer, and that should've ended it. Then the town decides that without both structures out here, the rules changed, no more zoning protection. They threatened to take it by eminent domain, which would've given me less than Rand was paying. Except, one night, before
anything
could happen, the place caught fire. You know what fiberglass burns like?” He stood and scaled a chip of burned wood into the water.
anything
could happen, the place caught fire. You know what fiberglass burns like?” He stood and scaled a chip of burned wood into the water.
“Wasn't there any insurance? Or protest?”
“No. âBad wiring' was the official verdict.” He shrugged. “It could've been, for all I know. I should've taken Rand's offer.”
“It seems like he'd be a man it's hard to say no to.”
“He does good work for the town; he's on this board of trustees and that advisory committee. Can't argue with that. He's a player. He's good for progress.”
“With more strings than Percy Faith. Does he own Vin Delcastro?”
“Nah. Delcastro's a proud guy, his own manâbut there's no question someone like Rand gets special considerations. One of the âelect.' Anyway, I can't kick. When the sports supermarket opened up, he told me I could run the surfing department if I wanted. He lets me shape some custom boards, too.”
My mind was churning with the possibilities in all this, but I wanted to keep it clear for Michelle Nickerson's sake. I shut up, and we turned and wandered farther out the reach, toward the blinking red and green lights at the end. Van Owen seemed drawn, and I tagged along. The water was calm under its bright polish of moonlight. In the near distance, a sleek motorboat rumbled by, a low pale shape that foamed the dark sea, picking up momentum and noise as it went, until it was just a high-speed growling bound for open water.
“Sorry for before,” Red Dog said. “On the boat. What you said ⦠I guess maybe it got a little too close to reality. Living here has its different sides.”
“Like anywhere.”
“I reckon. But one constant for me is the sea. It makes me feelâI don't know ⦠young. And at the same time reminds me of how much of my life I've used up, wasted.”
“There are other beaches, other towns.”
“I grew up here. But Standish can get to you sometimes.”
“Not according to Mitzi Dineen and the local booster club.”
“They're part of the problem.”
The speedboat's wake slapped the rocks at our feet, splashing us, sending a flock of nesting birds squawking into the air just ahead of us. “Nautical couch potatoes. Power required, brains optional,” Van Owen complained. “A few years back, there was this shark panicâpeople went out with deer rifles, shooting everything that swam. They got dolphins, a sunfish, a rare leatherback turtleâhell, they finally even got a shark. The heroes came in towing it like that old guy in Hemingway and hoisted it onto the town pier to pose with the monster. It was a basking shark. A totally harmless vegetarian.” He shook his head. “What makes people do it?”
“What makes two grown men roll around punching each other?”
“We solved that one already. This ⦠I don't know. Do they hate wildness in any form because deep down they fear it? They get a chain saw, and first thing they do is take down every tree in sight. They rationalizeâthe leaves clog my gutters, a limb might fall on the houseâbut they don't know most of those trees would outlast the houses they shade. They worry about coyotes, which are natural there, coming in and snatching their cute pets, which aren't. They want nature they can push around. They hang out a bird feeder to get the little chickadees but don't mind that their cat eats its weight in songbirds in a month's time. Ah, hell, I'm whistling in the wind.”
“Somebody's got to,” I said, “the wind gets lonely.”
His brow wrinkled. “You're an odd character, Rasmussen. I'm still trying to figure you out.”
“That's where I'm at, too. Like how come, if TJ was your best friend, you've never gone to see him?”
As we'd been talking, I heard the powerboat returning, its snarl growing. It was moving faster than it had been going out. Van Owen was a step or two ahead of me, moving back to where we'd left the surfboards. I turned and saw the white water as the boat cut a sharp turn, not thirty yards from the end of the jetty, and then I saw the
outline of a man in the open cockpit, and for a second I thought he was reaching to brace on the windshield.
outline of a man in the open cockpit, and for a second I thought he was reaching to brace on the windshield.
“Get down!” I shouted.
Van Owen swiveled in surprise. I actually reached to shove him, but he was nimble and jumped down the inner slope of the jetty. I was slower going down, too conscious of the rocks. A gunshot cracked, and something passed over my head at high velocity. I shoved my face into seaweed.
The boat didn't come back for a second pass. I thrust up my head and watched it turn in an outward arc, flashing its underside, then roar seaward. Van Owen scrambled back to the top of the jetty. “Assholes!” he yelled. But the boat was already fading. He turned to me. “You okay?”
My heart throbbed with adrenaline, and barnacles had shredded my palms, but I didn't appear to have any extra holes. I picked seaweed off my face. “Who was it?”
“The kind of idiots I'm talking about.”
In the distance, the roar of the engine still sounded, but dwindling, slipping slowly under the cover of the night. “Yeah?”
“You got another theory?” he challenged.
“A warning?”
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