Reprisal (14 page)

The boy kept his head down, probably worried about a scene--a furious woman shouting, yelling. Voice carrying right out the windows.

"And that," Joanna said, "is my report. Now, my suggestion ... my suggestion is, that the chief constable get off his ass and check into my husband's death again--and my father's death--and my break-in last night, just in case they weren't three fucking accidents in two weeks after all!" ... Language and temper. Control that temper.

The boy's head was still down, concentrating on the legal pad. Probably hoped the worst was over, all the bad language.

It seemed to Joanna that the light ... the white sunshine light in the office was unpleasant. Nothing could be hidden in it. "--The worst is over," she said, as though the deputy had complained aloud. "I apologize for my behavior, for getting so angry. I didn't mean to embarrass you. I just ... I suppose I'm just desperate. And I also know I could be making a complete fool of myself and I'm very sorry." She felt so restless, tired of standing still to talk--as if she might say it all more clearly if she were moving. "--But, Officer, doesn't it seem strange to you? These things happening? And I'm very worried about my daughter, even though there isn't any reason for anyone to do any of this! I'm worried because there isn't any goddamn reason." She ran out of breath, stopped talking. Her heart was beating as if she'd been running in place.

"Well, sure looks like somebody did something last night." The young policeman finished writing, put down his pencil. It rolled toward the desk edge, and he stopped it. "Uneven legs," he said, "--couple of glides are missing." He aligned the pencil at the side of his legal pad. "Chief'll get this, and somebody'll go up today, take a look at the damage, check around. You're in that blue house top of Slope, is that right? Light-blue house?"

"Yes, I am."

"College professor. ..."

"Yes."

"Chief says you write poetry."

"Yes, I do."

The boy sat thoughtful in his perfect uniform, digesting that oddity. "And the window was broken out?"

"Yes, and part of the frame."

"Tell you what, Mrs. Reed: I'll call Mrs. Peterson tonight; her kid Jerry does glazing and stuff. Jerry's okay, and he'll come over tomorrow, cut some glass, and put that frame back together for you. Probably cost maybe thirty, thirty-five bucks."

"Thank you."

"You have Jackson Fix-Up do it, they'll charge you fifty. Summer people get billed pretty good out here."

"Thank you very much. And I apologize."

"No need. Everybody's real sorry about your husband.--Didn't know about your dad, and now this guy last night. I'll tell you what, we'll have a deputy go by this evening, and tomorrow evening, keep an eye on the house."

"Thank you, I'd appreciate that. ... But as far as what I said, I meant every word."

"I understand.--And I'll give it to the chief just exactly like you said it."

"I don't want to get you into trouble."

"Can't get me in too much trouble. Married to his granddaughter. ..."

Joanna walked down Strand Street, her body feeling happy as she did not--bone, muscle, and skin pleased with striding in sunlight and warmth, her dress hem breezing, curling around her legs. Her body, like a foolish and amiable dog, pleased with only going for a walk ... looking around, breathing the scents of summer.

Tourists were drifting along, pausing just ahead of her to look into Scrimshaw's window at small models of sailing ships and fishing boats, wooden whales and dolphins, rope knots, and little boxes carved from wood, soapstone, old ivory, or--more authentic, much more expensive-carved and polished dried salt beef as hard and rich in color as cherry wood.

Frank had bought her one of those salt beef boxes, the first few days on the island. "Get hungry enough, we can soak it for a sandwich. ..." He'd stood in the cottage kitchen, smiling, pleased by her pleasure in the odd little thing.

She'd put her earrings in it. ...

Walking along, Joanna could, by listening carefully in imagination, hear her father's footsteps coming up the sunny sidewalk behind her --his long, heavy, deliberate stride of years ago. His had been a sort of military way of walking, she supposed. ... The poor man, a small-town lawyer with knees damaged by youthful hockey. What caissons must have rolled through his dreams, what flashes of nighttime gunfire. What long thunder behind the hills where his army lay. ...

Frank had moved quite differently, ambling along in an athlete's easy collected gait. --Who knew, what woman could know that just to see her men move, to see them walking, was a privilege to be withdrawn, and never enjoyed again.

Her father's footsteps sounding behind her, with Frank's footsteps now--but only as long as she didn't turn to see. Then they would be gone, and she bleaching to the pillar of salt that women became, looking back in regret for a past irrecoverable. ... What woman did not taste that sea salt on her tongue?

--But if she didn't turn, and if she closed her eyes, Frank and her father both might come to walk beside her, stroll along, dance around her in dear awkward passages. ... How sensible for the mad to speak in the street to those they saw, though unseen by others. Why not speak to friends invisible?

And if she had the faith to begin dancing herself, to whirl and whirl, dancing with her lost men along this ordinary sidewalk in ordinary sunshine-stepping, spinning, weaving through startled tourists--would motion that eccentric settle them to stay? Why should she pay attention only to the living? What good were they? What comfort?

How easy it would be to go quietly mad, if that would bring her husband to her

... bring her father back. Madness seemed a small price to pay for loving company.

Joanna walked, and disliked the strangers walking past, most blind to what catastrophe awaited them--perhaps at the next corner, perhaps further on.

Until that event, what did she and they hold in common? She was torn, and they were not. It was she who'd been reminded of the fragility of happiness. ...

At Barkley's, she went in and was oddly soothed by stands of vegetables, shelves of canned goods, and in the back, the meat case's wide chill white.

... Prices were really outrageous, way too high to be explained by transport from the mainland. Summer prices, was what they were.--You could forget asparagus. Forget any citrus except seedy little oranges and bruised lemons.

Had mangoes though, which she hadn't seen in the store before. Where Barkley had found fairly ripe mangoes for a dollar each was a mystery. Probably fell off a hijacked truck down in Providence. ... Blueberries; Frank had loved them. Five dollars a box--and no need to buy them, now. ... The meat was pretty good, not too out of line, not quite highway robbery. And almost always good pork chops--very good pork chops today. Fish, of course, really excellent out here. ...

Joanna bought too much for one person, not quite enough for two. She gave Hanna Barkley a check for the groceries--waited while the check was examined--then hugged the heavy paper bag like a baby, and lugged it down Strand Street to the car. ... Her imagined men, bored with shopping, had left her.

... At the cottage, she parked in the street, not wanting to see the broken back window again, and went up the front steps and through the door, grocery sack in her left arm. She put her purse on the telephone table, closed the door, and was walking down the hall when she heard two sounds. Tock ... tock.

Wooden sounds from the kitchen, as if someone had put something--two somethings--down.

She stood in the hall, listening. ... It couldn't be Mrs. Peterson's boy, Jerry. He wouldn't have been called yet.

Nothing more from the kitchen for almost a minute. ... Then a sliding sound in there, a long soft hushing. Whoever it was, hadn't heard her come in.

--But if she turned and ran back up the hall, whoever it was would hear that.

They'd hear it and come fast from the kitchen and into the hall after her ...

come rushing, rushing while she stumbled in high heels, spilling groceries, trying to reach the front door.

To have someone ... to have sudden trouble in daytime, in this bright and sunny light, seemed much worse than trouble at night. What happened would be so clear, too clearly seen ... whatever was done to her.

She could call out, say, "I was just down at the police station! They're sending someone right now!" She could do that. She could do that. ...

Joanna took a careful backward step. It seemed a loud step. She listened, and heard nothing.

So stupid. A woman in a summer dress, standing alone with her groceries in the hall. A woman--a widow; the word was her word now--a widow with ice cream melting in her grocery sack. Two pints of Haagen-Dazs, expensive. ...

Joanna imagined herself running, screaming for help, to the front door. She imagined that and couldn't bring herself to do it. She felt too tired to do it.

She said, "Hello?"--and heard a man in her kitchen. A man unmistakable, that low discontented grumble. And something was put down with a thump.

"Pain in the ass," he said, and Joanna knew that tone, the familiar complaint of a man annoyed by a task. It was only a man working ... doing something in her kitchen.

"Hello ...?" She walked down the hall, and saw a man with red-rimmed eyes squatting on her kitchen floor.

"Name's Moffit. ..." The man stared up at her, eyes bloodshot, his face darkly veiled and streaked with dirt. "--Just fixin' your window, here. Bought this glass out of my own pocket, since I was the one busted it to begin with."

Said in the down-east accent of the island, an accent dulled by alcohol, or its damage. He heaved up, got to his feet to face her.

Joanna stepped back. "You get out of here!"

"Said it was my fault. ..."

"You just get out of here!"

"I come up to fix it, that's all." The man's eyes were a blurred avoiding brown. An odor of spoiled sweat drifted off him.

"... You broke my window, scared the hell out of me--and now you come mumbling up here to fix it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You can pick up that glass and stuff and just get out of here. You understand? Ou.--You can tell the police all about it, Mr. ..."

"Moffit."

"Mr. Moffit."

"Well, ma'am, that's what I'm askin', for you not to call those people."

Moffit swayed slightly back and forth, like a circus bear.

Joanna saw he was drunk, at least a little. She was meeting with captains and drunks. ...

"--I'm askin' you not to do that, because I'm goin' to fix this little window up just fine, an' I'm real sorry if I scared you. I bought this window glass out of my own pocket. Nine dollars an' thirty cents."

"I don't care if you're sorry, Mr. Moffit."

"Wouldn' have done it if I wasn' drinkin'. Liquor was doin' it, not me. ...

Saw you down at Mannin's."

""Mannin's"--I don't know what you're talking about." Joanna's left arm was aching. She put the grocery bag down on the kitchen counter.

"Mannin's fish processin'."

"Manning's?"

"That's right, saw you down there the other day."

Joanna thought she remembered him now, outside the machine room--a grimy specter with a mop and rolling bucket. "Just, please ... Mr. Moffit, just get this stuff together and get out of here."

"--Heard you down there, askin' about your husban' an' that Bo-Peep boat.

Worked on that boat myself; worked on her more'n once. Good wood in that boat.

..."

"Would you please leave? Right now." Moffit's odor was making her feel a little ill. And there was a faint smell of urine.

"Don't blame you a bit, Mrs. Reed. Wouldn' want me in my house neither. That's what you earn--drinkin' earns contempt. I been told that many times, and it's right." Moffit suddenly sat down on the kitchen floor again, began fiddling with two short, thin, unpainted sticks, and small squares of glass. His hands were black with dirt.

"A police officer is coming up here."

"I guess I don't mind," Moffit said, bent over his material as if it were a jigsaw puzzle. "--I get in trouble, it'll be because I deserve it. Long ago gave up blamin' anybody but me for my own misfortune. Mark of bein' an adult."

He raised his head, looked around the kitchen. "You have any glue--wood glue?

Needs to be good glue."

"No, I don't have any glue, and I want you to get up and go!"

Mr. Moffit picked up one of his paper bags, opened it and looked inside. "Here we are. I got the glue ... got all this stuff together. Never mind about the glue."

"All right. Okay. ... A police officer is coming up here. If you want to go to jail, you can damn well go to jail."

Mr. Moffit nodded, sat bent over, piecing broken sticks of framing together on the floor.

Joanna started out of the kitchen, then turned and came back in. "Why did you come up here?"

"Fix this window I broke, drinkin'."

"I mean, why did you come up here last night?"

"... Had business. I'll tell you, I hate to ask, Mrs. Reed. I'm--I'll tell the truth; I'm a poison alcoholic but I haven't had a drink since this mornin'.

I'm short of cash is what the truth is."

"You want me to give you money?"

"I sure do." He picked up a square of window glass and looked at her through it, apparently confirming its transparency. "I cashed my month's check to buy the glass an' glue an' compound. Charlie Marks kept just about every bit of that check. I rent over his garage. But I spent almost fifteen dollars of that money on glass an' glue an' stuff. So, if you could give me that back ..." He made a child's grimace of distaste. "--Sure hate to ask."

He had the wooden pieces of broken window almost reassembled on the linoleum.

"... Need it for breakfast. I eat a regular breakfast every day. Scrambled eggs an' toast. No matter what, I have that." He took a plastic bottle of glue out of his shopping bag, pried at its tiny cap with mottled trembling fingers.

"Why in the world should I give you money, Mr. Moffit?"

"Bobby's okay."

"... Bobby, I don't know you, and I don't want you in my house--I'd like you to get out of my house right now. I already have someone coming to repair the window."