The Cove (8 page)

No wind-blown grit that got into everything — your nose, your eyes, your mouth, even the crack of your ass.

No smell of unwashed men and gasoline … of burning rubber and gun oil.

Just clean, fresh ocean air.

Even with the tide out and the smell of rotting seaweed and clam-flats wafting over him, he felt an inexpressible measure of peace and contentment. The moon, looking like a curved sliver of old bone on the horizon, sparkled faintly on the ocean. Overhead, a dusting of stars sprinkled the sky like sugar on black velvet. The party was still going on in The Local at full-bore.

Damn, it’s good to be alive,
Ben thought, and once again — as they had all night — thoughts of Julia Meadows popped into his head.

“God
damn,
” he whispered.

She
was the reason he was feeling so good. He squared his shoulders and scanned the narrow strip of trail leading down to and then around the harbor. Out of the shadows, the dirt path glowed dull silver in the faint wash of moonlight. If he wasn’t quite so drunk, he thought, when he got home, he should get his car and drive over to Julia’s place to see if she was still awake and if she felt like doing something.

“Doing something …” Ben said, chuckling as he shook his head. There was no doubt what he meant by “
doing
something.”

He walked a little further down the alley, but before he stepped out of its shadows, a sudden urgency in his bladder made him stop. Stepping off the path onto some rough ground, he unzipped his pants and started to piss against one of the barnacle-encrusted wooden pilings that supported the harbor-side end of The Local. His urine steamed in the cool night air as it splattered against the wood and ran in a foamy current onto the ground. By the time he realized he was pissing uphill, it was too late. Urine ran down the slope and onto his sneakers. He tried to sidestep the stream but lost his balance and almost fell.

When he was finished, he shook himself off and zipped his pants up. As he was turning around, he sensed more than saw a blur of motion in the shadows behind him.

“Hey,
wha’zup
— ” he said once he realized a person was coming down the alleyway toward him.

With the glow of streetlights behind him, the figure was indistinct. All Ben was sure of was that it was a man. Before he could react, the figure, instead of walking past him, lunged at him. Strong hands reached out of the darkness and grabbed him by the shoulders. Ben grunted with surprise as he was spun around. Drunk as he was, the motion felt like it kept going even after he had stopped.

“What the fuck —?” Ben said, his voice slurred. A bubble of gas rose from his stomach into his throat, leaving behind a terrible taste.

The person didn’t say a word. He shoved Ben face-first against one of the pilings. His nose banged against the wood hard enough to stagger him, and tiny white stars splashed across his vision. Pain shot through his head like a sudden jolt of electricity.

“Leave her the fuck alone,” the man said, his voice a low, animal-like growl. “You understand?”

Too dazed to react, Ben locked his knees, hoping they wouldn’t buckle underneath him. He had the sense that — whoever this was — he was purposely disguising his voice so he wouldn’t recognize it. All Ben saw was a silhouette, cut out sharply against the night sky.

Ben clenched his hands into fists and was preparing to wheel around and take a swing at his assailant, but before he could do that, something hard — a fist or something even harder, maybe a baseball bat — slammed into the back of his head.

Darkness spread across Ben’s vision like a black wave crashing against the shore and shooting high into the sky. His knees went rubbery, and he would have dropped if he hadn’t grabbed onto one of the pilings in front of him. When he started to slide down, his legs giving out, barnacles sliced into the palms of his hands, making him yowl.

He sucked in a breath and tried to speak, but the only sound he made sounded like he had thrown up into his mouth and was gargling with it.

“Julia Meadows!” the voice said, rolling like a rumble of thunder in the darkness. “You stay the fuck away from her, or next time — I’ll...I’ll fucking kill you!”

Ben was still too dazed to react. A high-pitched ringing sound filled his head. When he started to turn around again, something hard rocketed out of the darkness and caught him on the left cheek, snapping his head back. The vertebrae in his neck crackled and snapped like a string of exploding firecrackers. Swirling flashes of white light filled his vision like a flurry of fireflies. Then the sky and earth were swallowed up by darkness. A loud
whooshing
sound filled his ears. He didn’t recognize his own heartbeat.

“You
got
it?” the voice said from somewhere far, far away.

Ben tried to nod, but his neck was too stiff to move.

“Yeah … yeah,” he said. “I got it.”

His voice was little more than a croak. He sagged forward and spread his hands out to clasp the cool, rough surface of the wood, hugging the piling like a lover. He was grateful for its support. It was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

“You
fuckin
’-A better get it,” the voice snarled, and then something sledge hammer hard slammed into his back above his left kidney.

Ben’s breath gushed out in an explosive gasp that ended with a high wheezing sound as the night collapsed around him. His knees stiffened, and he took a few jolting sideways steps, but finally his legs gave out, and he crumpled to the ground in a slow
pirouette.

He never even noticed the pain when the back of his head hit the sandy patch of gravel and crushed seashells.

The Crowbar

“O
h, my God! You look terrible. What happened?”

“Would you believe me if I said I walked into a tree last night? Never even saw it coming.”

Julia didn’t laugh at his attempted humor. Standing in her doorway, she looked at Ben with the most amazing sympathy in her dark eyes. It pained him to see his pain reflected in her face.

“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t. Are you going to tell me about it?”

Ben winced when he raised a hand and touched the swelling under his left eye.

“I had a little too much to drink last night, is all,” he said.

“It looks to me as though you were in a fight.”

“Maybe.” Ben chuckled. “A little one.” He and Julia exchanged glances, and he added, “But you should see the other guy.”

He hoped that would end the discussion, and it did … at least for now. Besides the bruise on his cheek, the bump on the back of his head and — especially — the pain in his lower back above the kidney hurt like hell. The tiny cuts on his hands from the barnacles stung as if he’d dipped the open wounds in lime juice.

But it was a gorgeous morning, and Ben wasn’t going to let what had happened last night ruin the day. He had been awake long before dawn with another one of the dreams.

The dust swirled in burning, red-brown clouds around him. 30mm bursts from the Apache helicopter overhead fired into the group of insurgents running down the street in front of him. Ben led his platoon in pursuit, making their way through the dust. They passed men with their heads blown to pulp, men with their torsos opened from neck to groin. Suddenly a little Iraqi girl, no more than six years old, walked out of the cloud of dust into a shaft of light. She was crying, and her intestines were spilling onto the ground from her shot-up belly.

Ben bent down to pick her up and take her to a hospital, but her guts coiled tightly around his chest, like an octopus, making it impossible to breathe. She looked at him, staring deeply into his eyes, and then she sank her teeth into his neck. His blood started spurting everywhere, but he had no breath to scream …

Ben had awakened with a roaring shout and leaped out of bed in a cold, sweaty panic. After that, sleep was impossible.

As expected, his father had stumbled home sometime in the early morning hours. Ben wasn’t positive, but he thought he’d heard a woman’s voice, too. He had no idea if his father or Pete had brought a woman home. He hoped Pete had lucked out after all and caught up with Bunny Dawkins, but Ben didn’t bother to check.

In spite of the warning he’d gotten last night, right after he finished with breakfast, he called Julia and asked her out for lunch. To be on the safe side, he decided to pick her up at her house and drive down to Brunswick. There was a little German restaurant on Chamberlain Street — the
Wursthause
— that was one of Ben’s favorites.

“Don’t you think you should go to the hospital and get checked over?” Julia asked as they walked across the lawn to Ben’s old, green Toyota, which was parked in the driveway.

Ben shook his head and said, “Not really,” as he opened the door for her and closed it gently after she sat down. Then he got in. When he started up the car, the radio came on. It was tuned to a rock station from Portland, but he lowered the volume so they could talk.

“Your
father’ll
be all right if you’re gone for a couple of hours?”

“We have a day nurse come in and stay with him. And —” Julia patted her purse. “I have my cell.”

Ben nodded and then backed the car out of the driveway onto the street. Julia and her father lived in a nice house, but it was new and modern with lots of glass for the views, the kind of house most locals — Ben included — always bitched about because so many had been built around town in the last few decades. The old-fashioned term for summer people — especially ones who moved to town permanently — was “rusticators,” but these days they were called “flatlanders” … and worse. Everyone around town grumbled about how the flatlanders were ruining the town.

On the drive down Route One to Brunswick, they mostly made small talk about politics and music and movies. Whenever talk came around to his time in Iraq, Ben changed the subject. He noticed that, when he asked about her life and how she had come to live in Maine, other than saying she had been born and raised in Waterbury, Connecticut, she was as elusive about her previous life as he was about his.

One thing he was happy to find was that his initial impression of her had been right. Besides being beautiful, Julia was bright and engaging and funny. She came back with several one-liners that had him laughing. But he also felt a sensuousness lurking below the surface that, given the chance, he was sure would come out. He hoped he would be able to explore this side of her sooner rather than later. In more ways than one, it had been a long, dry spell in Iraq.

“So,” she said, “Everyone in the Cove has a nickname. You’re Gunner.”

“That’s
Gunna
,
” Ben said with a smile as he exaggerated his Down East accent. “Say it right. Like ‘
lobstah
’ and ‘
chowdah
.’”

Julia stared straight ahead. She appeared to be considering something, but then her face suddenly brightened. Turning to him, she said, “So if you were to give me a nickname, what would it be?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Ben said after a long pause. “I mean — it’s hard to say. I’d have to know you a lot better.” He took a breath. “To be honest, most of the nicknames we use are pretty mean-spirited.”

“How so?”

“They’re meant to … you know, razz people … make fun of them. Like the fat kid in school who’s called ‘Piggy,’ and —”

He stopped himself before he gave Bunny’s
Dawkin’s
nickname, “The Organ Grinder,” as another example.

“They get started as a way to remind the person about some flaw in their personality or something embarrassing that happened to them. After a while, they stick. Some nicknames … most people can’t even remember how people got them.”

“So you’re saying you can’t think of one for me?” Julia asked. Her expression had gone flat, and she stared straight ahead at the road. He noticed the knuckles of her hand clutching her purse were white.

“No … No … I’m just saying … It’s usually not a complimentary thing, is all. I wouldn’t want to insult you.”

“Or you don’t know me well enough … to know what my flaws are.”

“I haven’t seen any yet,” Ben said with a smile. “Then again, we just met yesterday.”

Julia returned his smile, making the lines around her mouth deepen. He was filled with a sudden urge to pull over to the side of the road and kiss her.

“So you’re saying I’ll never get a nickname in town, right?” she said.

Biting his lower lip, Ben shook his head. He didn’t want to tell her, but the truth was, he knew she never would get a nickname — at least not one anyone would use to her face. Already, last night at The Local, he had heard her referred to two or three times as “that flatlander pussy” or the “out of state cunt.”

“You pretty much have to be born and raised here to get one, I guess,” he finally said.

Julia nodded her understanding, but her smile quickly vanished.

“So no matter
how long
I live here … even if I were to marry someone from town …”

Ben shifted uneasily at that.

“… I’d never really be accepted?”

“It’s not that, exactly,” Ben said, but then they made eye contact, and he shrugged and said, “Yeah. You’re probably right.” He took a breath and exhaled to release the tension. “What can I say? It’s the way it is.”

They soon brushed past the topic of nicknames, but Ben sensed that she was genuinely hurt thinking the people would never really accept her as part of the town. For the rest of the drive, they talked about other things, and the mood had lightened by the time they got to Brunswick.

They found a parking space on Chamberlain Street right in front of the restaurant. Julia commented that it might be a bad sign for a restaurant, since it was lunchtime. If the place was any good, shouldn’t it be hard to find parking close to it? Ben insisted he led a charmed life, and they were lucky not to have to hassle with parking. Besides, the Bowdoin students had all gone home for the summer. The restaurant was so popular during the school year, you needed to make reservations well in advance.

The small bell on a spring above the door tinkled when they entered. The sign at the front of the restaurant read:
SEAT YOURSELF
, so they chose a table in the corner, by the front window looking out on the street. Their waitress, a young woman with her blonde hair done up in Princess
Leia
buns, came over to their table. Ben ordered a beer, and Julia asked for some red wine. After their drinks arrived, they ordered some appetizers and were settling back to talk some more when a voice called out, “
Yo
, Benny. Benny Brown. Back from Iraq all in one piece, I see.”

Ben turned around, his eyes widening when he saw Richie “The Crowbar” Sullivan coming toward them. As always, Richie was dressed like a GQ model … if GQ models had faces that looked like a hundred miles of bad road. Today, he was wearing pressed beige Dockers and a brand new pair of white New Balance sneakers. His turquoise golf shirt fit his muscular frame tight enough to show that he didn’t have an ounce of fat on his belly. He was tanned and wore his thinning gray hair swept straight back so it touched the back collar of his shirt. His biceps rippled beneath his tanned skin like lengths of knotted rope, the veins bulging as he held his hand out for Richie to shake.

“How’s it feel to be home?”

Ben smiled and nodded. “Fine … just fine.”

Richie raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that? Looks like someone mopped the floor with your face.”

Ben forced a laugh. “Nothing like good times with old friends.”

“
Fuckin
’ war,” Richie said. Grimacing, he shook his head and looked like he was about to spit onto the floor. “Never
should’a
gone there in the first place. Saddam wasn’t much. We
should’a
cleaned out that numb fuck bin Laden in Afghanistan, first.” As if noticing Julia for the first time, Richie glanced at her and said, “Pardon my French, ma’am.” He lowered his eyes and bowed.

Ben smiled to himself when Julia didn’t offer the French word for
fuck
.

“So how’s your old man doing? How’d the launch go yesterday?”

“Fine … It was a good time. You should’ve come.”

“I was gonna be there, but …” Richie held both hands palms up. “Stuff came up. You know how it is.”

Ben nodded even though he could only guess at what “stuff” Richie was involved with. When it came to The Crowbar, it was best to be polite and not pry too deeply. Richie was a nice guy … generous to a fault, but the less Ben had to do with him, the better.

“It’s a nice boat,” Ben said, simply to make conversation.

“
Ought’a
be,” Richie said. “I paid enough for the fucker.” He glanced again at Julia and said, “
Pardonay
moi
again.”

“No problem,” Julia said smiling at Richie. Ben shook his head. You had to hand it to Richie; he had a way with the ladies. But he was genuinely taken aback by what Richie had said. He had paid for the
Abby-Rose
? No. He financed it, more likely.

Ben was wondering if maybe Richie shouldn’t have let that slip, but he knew Richie well enough to know he never let anything slip without intending to.

Ben knew his father would have had a problem getting a bank loan for his new boat after losing the
Sheila B.
last fall. The first night Ben was home, Wally had gone on and on about his looming financial problems. The sad truth was, most fishermen — no matter how good their credit, prospects, or reputation around town — found it pretty much impossible to get a bank loan for a new boat after they’d lost one at sea. He was considered an “unlucky” captain. With insurance sky-high and the price of fuel going up just about daily, the lobster industry was all but dying.

At the time, Ben hadn’t given it much thought, but now he was sure his father had been forced — if “forced” was the right word — into dealing with Richie.

And Ben knew what
that
meant.

It meant a few more trips, preferably on foggy days or at night out into international waters to pick up bales of weed and maybe a few packages of cocaine and heroin that he would offload in a sheltered cove later that night. His stomach twisted at the thought of his father being obligated in any way to a man like Richie. Not that Richie was a bad guy. He just had certain expectations if you dealt with him, and the consequences of not paying him back had serious repercussions.

“So who’s the young lady?” Richie asked after looking at Julia again and studying her more carefully.

It was a rare day — like today — that Richie didn’t have his wife or another gorgeous woman hanging on his arm. The last thing Ben wanted to do was make it easy for Richie to turn the charm on Julia.