Off Season (18 page)

“No problem. I'll just jack up the ceiling. Have you bought my Christmas present yet?”

“None of your business. Besides, I don't buy you presents. Santa brings them.”

When the tree was done, Zee put the electric candles in the windows and I put the carved Santas on the fireplace mantel. Then I turned off the overhead light and turned on the candles and the tree lights. The room danced in the light of the flickering fire, while the lights of the tree and the yellow window lights glimmered gently at us.

We sat on the couch with new drinks and admired our work. Zee snuggled against me, and we were happy. After a while, I went out into the kitchen and whipped up some spaghetti to go with the meat sauce I'd had heating. We ate and snuggled some more. I had a sudden thought. All the scene needed to be perfect was a couple of children. Nice, clean children, of course, but children nevertheless. I was shocked, but also fascinated. I watched the nice, clean children in my imagination. They looked happy as they played in the gentle light. Did Zee see them, too?

Then for some reason I found myself wondering if Joey Percell was sitting at home with his wife, watching his children play near his Christmas tree. I didn't know what to make of this sudden vision, but I remembered that Dostoyevsky was not the only one to suggest that even violent criminals were like the rest of us in most ways, and that even Hitler was fond of dogs, children and opera.

In my mind, then, I watched the Führer lift a wassail cup and smile as a colorful party of formally dressed civilians and men in uniforms with swastikas joined in a Christmas toast. Behind him, a giant, decorated tree glowed with lights as an orchestra began to play
“Stille Nacht.”
The Führer and his guests raised their voices in song. They sang with feeling, and faith and sentiment, and their voices were strong and sweet.

“What's the matter?” asked Zee, lifting her face up toward mine, and bringing me back to this room in this time.

I tightened my arm around her. “Nothing,” I said. “I love you.” I put a smile on my face and kissed her forehead. “Snug back down there,” I said.

She did and I stared into the fire.

The snow stopped sometime during the night, and lay glittering on the ground the next morning. The sky was winter blue and cloudless, and the air was chill and clean. There had still been no wind, so the trees and oak brush were fairyland white. When Zee left for work, the wheels of her little Jeep cut blue eight-inch furrows in the snow that lay in my long driveway.

“No problem,” she'd grinned, putting the Jeep into four-wheel drive before she kissed me and drove away.

I washed up the breakfast dishes, got my snow shovel and dug out a path from the driveway to the front door, then got into my red vest and green hat and drove down to the animal shelter. The highway was plowed and already the thin spots of snow left behind by the plow were beginning to melt.

My kittens' tests had come back. They did not have feline leukemia. I drove to Ignacio Cortez's house and gave him the news.

“Good,” he said, and opened the door between his spare bedroom and the living room. The white kitten
and the tiger kitten stared at each other. Then, with a bound, the white kitten attacked the tiger and both went tumbling across the floor. A second later, the tiger tore out of sight down the hall, with the white kitten right after him.

Nash smiled. “Would you look at that! The little one is all over the big one!” He laughed.

The kittens came back in a mad gallop and disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later they reappeared, end over end.

“My gosh,” laughed Nash, as we got our big feet out of the way. “If that tiger doesn't figure out pretty soon that he's bigger than she is, she's going to beat him clear to death! Look at that!”

There was no doubt that the little cat was putting it to the bigger one, who seemed a bit confused about what was happening to him and refused to fight back other than to wave an ineffective paw at his attacker as she got to him with tooth and claw. His principal contribution to the fray was to run away whenever he could manage it, and this he now did with her in hot pursuit.

“Damned good,” said Nash. “Only had Horatio Hornblower before. Never had two cats at the same time. Should have, though. Those two will entertain each other all day. Entertain me, too. Gets lonesome around here, sometimes.” He laughed as the kittens tore back through the living room into the kitchen. “Mimi'd get a real kick out of you guys,” he said almost to himself as they went by.

Mimi? Had I heard right? Mimi Bettencourt? Could it be that Nash . . .?

I watched the kittens go tumbling by. Well, why not? The Cortezes and the Bettencourts had been friends back when both couples were intact, after all . . . Nash and Mimi were of an age, after all . . .

I took the bull by the horns. “Nash, what do you mean Mimi'd get a kick out of these cats?”

Nash looked startled. “What?”

“You heard me. You said Mimi'd get a kick out of these cats. Why'd you say that?”

“You must have heard wrong.”

“No, I didn't hear wrong.” I narrowed my eyes. “Come clean, Nash. What's going on? I thought Mimi was your number-one enemy, what with all the grief you give her.”

“None of your business, J. W. Jackson.” But his voice had no ring to it.

“Tell me the truth, Nash. What's with you and Mimi Bettencourt?”

“Well, damn it all, J.W., a man doesn't like to talk about his feelings with just anybody!” He thrust his hands into his pockets and stalked across the room, giving me a glance over his bony shoulder.

“You can't fool me any longer,” I said, “so you may as well tell me everything.”

The kittens were suddenly rolling and tumbling at his feet. He reached swiftly down and extracted the tiger from the melee. The white kitten pranced away and the tiger immediately began to purr. Nash stroked the kitten with a big, rough hand. “Friendly, aren't you? I'm gonna miss you little fellers when you're gone.” He looked at me. “That woman drives me crazy. She doesn't even know I exist unless I get in her face about that nutty animal rights stuff she's always going on about. You understand what I'm saying? Hell, we were friends, her and Gus and Joan and me. And even after Joanie died. But after Gus died, she didn't even know I was alive, seemed like.” He stroked the buzzing kitten.

“You mean you've been giving her all this grief just to get her to look at you?”

He frowned. “Well, no. Hell no! Those animal rights people are all crazy as loons! You let them take over and pretty soon a man won't be able to swat flies! Somebody's got to face ‘em down!”

“Mimi swats flies, Nash. She just doesn't eat meat and doesn't think you should either.”

“There! You see what I mean? Damned woman thinks we should all eat goat food! it's not natural. A man's got to have some red meat now and then, some fish, some chicken, and like that. Hell, she probably doesn't like lions and tigers eating deer, either. It's not natural, what she thinks, you have to admit that.”

Omnivorous me had no problem with admitting that. “But it isn't just that, is it, Nash?”

He sat down, and the tiger kept purring. Nash sighed, and looked at me. “No, it's not just that. Joan and I were married for over thirty years. Our kids turned out okay, and we were happy. All that time, we were close to Gus and Mimi. Now there's only me and Mimi, and I think about her all the time, but she never once thinks about me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she never told me so.”

“Did you ever tell her?”

He looked indignant. “Well, of course I didn't. I mean, Gus is barely in the ground. You know?”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I counted back the years. “Nash,” I said, “Gus Bettencourt has been dead for four years. Mimi stopped mourning at least two years ago. You don't have to be afraid to talk to her.”

He rubbed the kitten absently. “Oh, I know that, I guess. But what if she just sticks her nose up in the air like she does? Or what if she laughs?” He gritted his
teeth. “God, I don't know what I'd do.” He looked suddenly pitiful. “Hell, J.W., I'm not a kid, I'm damned near sixty years old. I haven't wooed a woman for nearly forty years. I don't know how to do it anymore. I'm not sure I ever did.”

“Well, you may not know how to woo her, but you sure know how to piss her off. You haven't forgotten how to do that.”

“it's like being a clown,” he said. “You act like a fool and she may hate you, but at least she knows you're there.”

I remembered what Zee had said about braid pulling. Nash was like your average junior high school male experiencing his first crush and trying to explain why he acts like an idiot whenever the girl shows up. But he had my sympathy. I wasn't sure how to woo a woman either, and was just glad that I had managed it with Zee.

My skills as matchmaker were strictly limited, but as I watched the white kitten spot the tiger in Nash's lap, flatten on the floor with only her tail waving and then begin her stalk, a little light bulb went on in my head. Before I could tell Nash about it, the white kitten attacked, leaping into Nash's lap and landing on the tiger with all four feet. Nash looked astonished and then roared with laughter. He got a kitten in each big hand and pulled them apart.

He looked at them, then put them together on the floor. The tiger fled, with the white right behind him. “I just got an idea,” he said.

I knew it was the same one I had. “You're right. It's perfect. Two kittens for Mimi. Nobody worth a damn can resist two kittens. You can get them at the animal rescue shelter, then give them to Mimi on Christmas Eve.”

His eyes were bright. “I'll do it!” Then he frowned. “But where can I keep ‘em till Christmas Eve? I've got your kittens here, and I haven't got room to keep two others away by themselves till their leukemia tests are done.”

“No problem,” I said, thinking fast. “We'll keep them at my place. Zee'll love them. And at Christmas you can deliver hers to my house and pick yours up.”

“And deliver them to Mimi. And if she takes ‘em . . .” said Nash thoughtfully.

“That's right. You'll have a chance to show her you're not just a mad animal killer.”

Nash and I looked at each other with satisfaction.

“How about a cup of coffee?” asked Nash. “We'll drink to two kittens for Mimi.”

“The animal shelter is going to love us,” I said, following him into the kitchen. “We're taking cats off their hands faster than they can bring them in.”

The kittens roared into the kitchen and roared out again. I thought they seemed to be slowing down a little, though. Even kittens have to get tired sometime.

“What do you think about this Chug Lovell business?” I asked.

Nash looked at me over his cup. “Don't know. Never knew Chug well. Saw him at those meetings, but that's about it. We didn't end up at the same places very often. Rotten way to die, that's for sure. And I don't like the idea of some murderer running around right here on the island. What do you think about it?”

“Not much more than you. You ever out at his place?”

“Not once. Drove past it often enough, though. I remember when that place looked pretty good. Been falling down ever since Chug bought it. More like a dump every day. Shame.”

Nash's house was well maintained and neat as a girl on her first date. “You ever hear anything about him jacking deer or shellfishing without a license?”

He shook his head. “Can't say that I did. But then I've got no objection to a man taking a deer out of season if he needs it to eat. Same with shellfishing. Man needs the food, I don't hold it against him if he goes and gets some. Hell, the ponds and the shellfish were here before the licenses were, just like the woods and the deer were.”

It was an attitude shared by me and a lot of people I knew, including a couple of shellfish and game wardens. Most of us got our licenses, but we didn't care if a poor man with a family didn't have his.

Of course Chug didn't have a family. I wondered if he was a poor man. He had enough to live without a job, at any rate. Or at least not a job I knew about.

“What did Chug do for work?”

Nash got us more coffee. “Hell, I never saw Chug work at anything. I thought he was supposed to be a tobacco heir or some such thing. Money from down south. Something like that.”

“My idea of being a tobacco heir doesn't include living in a shack that's rotting out from under me.”

“Mine neither, but then I never was an heir of any kind. Maybe that's how they all live.”

“You ever see anybody hanging around with Chug? A girlfriend, maybe? Or maybe some guy? Maybe you saw somebody with him sometime when you were driving up past Mimi's house?”

“You're mighty curious about Chug Lovell.”

“Dave Mello and I gave up scalloping for the holidays. I'm filling up my time by nosing around in Chug's business. He might not have been a tobacco heir, but he got some money somewhere or other. I
wonder where. I hear he went off island now and then. You know anything about that?”

“Not a thing. Why are you asking me all these questions? Like I told you, I don't know a damned thing about Chug Lovell.”

“I guess you just happen to be the guy sitting in front of me.” I changed gears. “You ever figure out why Joey Percell slugged you?”

Nash's face grew cold. “Just that nonsense about laying off the animal rights ladies. I'll tell you one thing. Mr. Percell had better not come around this way again. I'll fill his ass full of bird shot!”

“Who'd he say sent him here, anyway?”

“didn't say. Just said his boss didn't want any more out of me. Just about then is when he must have belted me. I don't remember a thing about it. They say he was wearing gloves with lead in them. Sort of like getting hit with a sap, I guess. Glad you were here, I'll say that.”