Vineyard Chill (4 page)

“Snow coming,” he said.

I nodded. “I like snow when I'm inside and it's outside. I'm a few years past loving cold weather. At home we can sit in front of the fire and look through the windows at the flakes coming down.”

As we walked back down to the truck, another couple, shoulders hunched against the wind, came up the path. They smiled and said hello and that, yes, it looked like snow, and passed on up the hill. Clay glanced at them over his shoulder as we went on.

Back down-island, we stopped in Oak Bluffs, where we lunched on Sam Adams and burgers at the Fireside.

Bonzo was there, bringing beer up from the basement. When he saw me, he came right over to our table. Long before I'd met him, he'd gotten into some bad acid and had doomed himself to a life of gentle preadolescence.

“Hey, J.W., how you doing?” He smiled his childish smile.

“I'm good, Bonzo.” I introduced him and Clay to each other as old friends, and they shook hands.

“J.W. is my old friend, too,” said Bonzo to Clay, “and if you're his friend, that means that you're my friend, too.”

“I'm glad to have a new friend,” said Clay.

Bonzo beamed. “Hey,” he said to me, “you know what? I got a new recorder and a new mike and as soon as spring comes, I'm gonna go out and get the best bird songs I ever got! You want to come?”

“Sounds like fun, Bonzo. You can go on my land, if you want to. I've got a meadow back in my woods where you might pick up some good songs.”

“That's a good idea, J.W. I never been there. I might hear a bird I never heard before!”

“I guess it could happen. When you're ready, you give me a call and we'll do it.”

Bonzo was suddenly serious. “You know who would like to go, too? Nadine. I wish she'd come back. She liked birds. She went with me to listen to them once.”

“Maybe she'll come back in the spring, Bonzo.”

“You think so? I hope you're right. That would be very good.”

Bonzo went back to work and Clay smiled. “Nice guy.”

“Very.”

“Who's Nadine?”

“Nadine Gibson, a girl who worked here last winter. Long red hair. One night last March, after work, she headed for her house and hasn't been seen since. Bonzo liked her.”

“Skullduggery?”

I shrugged. “Who knows? No body's been found, so that's good. Most people who go missing do it on purpose or don't even know that people think they're missing. They just go off and don't bother telling anybody because it never crosses their minds that they should. When they find out that their friends have been frantic, they're shocked.”

Clay drank some beer. “Well, let's hope that's what happened to Nadine.”

We finished our meal and then walked up the street so Clay could buy some Rémy Martin.

“Pretty steep price for cognac,” he said, climbing back into the truck.

“Freight,” I said. “You ask the liquor store guys why it costs fifteen dollars to buy a bottle you can get for ten on the mainland and they'll tell you: freight. The same goes for everything else on the island. The only thing that's cheap on the Vineyard is taxes. And that's because all these McMansions pay big real estate taxes but don't use a lot of services.”

“Maybe I can go into the freight business,” said Clay. “There seems to be money in it.”

“You need money? I have some stashed away.”

He shook his head. “No. I can always find a way to get money if I need to. It's not hard to make money if money is what you want. Besides, I have a little stash of my own. You need any?”

“No. We don't use much and we have what we need.”

“That's what I call being rich.”

We drove home just as the first fine flakes of snow began to spiral down.

I stirred up the fire in the stove and Clay made coffee. We poured some cognac into the coffee cups and sat down in front of the fire.

The children would be coming home from school in an hour or so, and Zee wouldn't be far behind.

“Who's after you?” I asked.

“Nobody that I know of,” Clay said, giving me a thoughtful look. “Don't worry. I didn't come here to bring you trouble.”

“You haven't,” I said, “but ever since you arrived, you've been looking over your shoulder and studying everybody who gets close.”

“I think that's mostly habit.” He smiled. “You know me. I'm peaceful as a lamb, but from time to time there have been people more interested in talking to me than I was in talking to them, so I've been obliged to keep my eyes open and to move on a few times when I really didn't want to.”

“Like the move to Alaska.”

“Like that. I have nobody to blame but myself, of course. I've had plenty of chances to walk the straight and narrow, but every time I've started down that road, I've managed to wander off into the jungle. About half the time it was some woman sort of beckoning to me, and other times it was some job that looked interesting. I'd meet a lady and we'd hit it off, or I'd be talking to a guy and he'd ask me if I'd be interested in some work that sounded better than what I was doing, so I'd throw away the good life and go off with the girl or off to the job.” He paused. “I'll tell you, though. I'm getting too damned old to be gallivanting around, following my pecker wherever it leads me. That straight-and-narrow path is looking better and better to me.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I have to work, of course. Not right now, because I've got enough for the moment, but eventually. What I'd really like to do is get another plane or boat. I like flying and I'm good at it. Stupidest thing I ever did—well, maybe not the stupidest but stupid enough—was giving Samantha my airplane when we split. I should have kept it. If I'd have done that, I could have made enough money to keep her happy and piled up some retirement cash of my own. I'd be sitting pretty by now. But I was trying to do the right thing in a hurry, so the plane went to her and I've never gotten another one.”

“I didn't know there was that much money in flying.”

“You'd be surprised. I've flown planes in several countries, and I could still be doing it if I wasn't getting so old and conservative.” He grinned. “You've got these castles all over this island. There's a lot of money in this world, and a fair part of it travels by small plane. Remember Fred, all those years ago down in West Palm?”

“Sure. I was just thinking about him yesterday, in fact.”

“Remember the cargo we brought home for him?”

“I do.”

“You know what was in those cartons?”

“I know they weren't TV sets.”

“And that's all you know, and all I know, but we both know those boxes contained something that was pretty valuable. Well, there's a lot of freight being moved around these days, and if you don't look in the boxes, you can do all right for yourself.”

“Sounds like it could be dangerous.”

He made a small dismissive gesture. “Not really. The secret is to play straight with the people you're working for and to keep the authorities from getting interested in you. You do that by always having some legit reason to be flying where you're flying or by having a boss who knows who to buy off.” He sipped his coffee. “You have to be careful, of course. You always have to be careful.”

“Is that the kind of work you want to do now?”

He looked into the fire. “I think I'm too old for some things I used to do,” he said, “but I still have some contacts and I can still fly.”

I said, “Well, we have two working airports during the summer and another one that small planes use from time to time on an informal basis. There's a lot of air traffic to and from the island during the tourist season, but things slow down this time of year, so the Katama airport is closed until Memorial Day.”

He finished his coffee and looked at his watch. “I think I'll stay on the ground for a while, until I work out a long-range plan. When I was a lad, we used to get out of school about this time. When do your kids get home?”

“Any time,” I said, looking out at the falling snow. “The bus drops them off at the head of the driveway. Zee should be coming home not too much later.”

“You the cook?”

“I am. Tonight is leftover night. We're having yesterday's black-bean chili again tonight.”

“It was good last night and it'll be good again, but we used up the corn bread, so I'll whip up some more. You have the makings?”

“I do.”

“Since you and I were young, I've become a world-renowned corn-bread baker, and I'm anxious to show off my skills.” He stood up. “Point me at the ingredients.”

Because chili and corn bread go together like Damon and Pythias, I got right out of my chair. “I never argue with someone who wants to do my work,” I said. “Follow me to the kitchen.”

He did, and when he discovered canned chili peppers in our cupboard, he announced that his corn bread would be the Mexican variety, which was even better than the normal kind. By the time Joshua and Diana came stomping into the living room from the screened porch, their jackets and boots wet with snow, Clay's batter was mixed and he was ready to bake.

I helped the kids out of their storm gear and sent them to their rooms so they could get into their loafing clothes and slippers. I put the wet coats and boots behind the woodstove to drip and dry and got to work making warm cocoa for the youngsters and, in expectation of Zee's arrival, heating cider for the big people to mix with rum, cinnamon, and cloves.

When Zee got home, the snow was falling in earnest and changing the landscape into a black-and-white world as the short winter day darkened toward night. She added her coat and boots to those already behind the stove, gave kisses to me and the kids and a smile to Clay, then sniffed the scents from the kitchen.

“Smells good.”

She disappeared into our bedroom and returned in sweats and slippers, walking like a panther out of her den. We sat in front of the fire and the children told us how things had gone in school that day. Diana's day had been uneventful, but Joshua's had included an altercation with another boy.

At this news a silence fell and stayed until I said, “Tell me what happened.”

“Oh, not much,” said Joshua, seeming surprised that the event merited further discussion. “Jim Duarte pushed me and I pushed him back, and then he pushed me again and I hit him in the nose just like you showed me, Ma, and he cried and I had to go to Patagonia.”

Patagonia, I knew, was a chair in the corner of the classroom where students served their terms as class disrupters. What I didn't know was that Joshua knew how to punch someone in the nose. I looked at Zee, who lifted her chin slightly.

“Are you giving boxing lessons now?” I asked.

“I don't want my children to be bullied,” said Zee coolly. “I just taught them a couple of things so they can protect themselves.”

“Diana, too?”

“Girls need to know self-defense.”

True. I turned to my children. “I just want to be sure that you don't start fights. When you know how to hurt people, you have to be especially careful not to do it.”

“I didn't hurt him,” said Joshua in a serious voice. “We're still friends.”

“That's good.”

“Pa?”

“What?”

“Did you ever hurt anybody?”

“Yes. But I almost always wished it hadn't happened.”

“Did anybody ever hurt you?”

“Yes. But I never wanted that to happen, either.”

“Sometimes,” said Clay, leaning forward from his seat and speaking to the children, “people think they have to hurt other people. It's usually because they're afraid of them. If you're not afraid, you're usually better off.”

“Pa says being afraid sometimes is good,” said Diana, looking at Clay. “Like being afraid of a lion or a Tyrannosaurus rex.”

“Well, of course,” said Clay. “You should always be afraid if you meet a lion or a Tyrannosaurus rex. And you should be afraid of other things, too, like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute or putting your hand in a fire. But if you get afraid of too many things or of other people, you risk becoming somebody who hurts other people and thinks it's the right thing to do.” He paused and gave me a rueful, amused look. “I think I'm drowning here.”

“You're not drowning,” said Diana. “You're just waxing philosophical.”

“Waxing philosophical?” He laughed. “Is that what I'm doing?”

She and Joshua both nodded. “Pa says we're waxing philosophical whenever we talk about something we don't understand. You know, like God or gravity.”

Clay glanced at me, then back at the children. “Do you talk about God and gravity a lot?”

“No,” said Diana, “but we do sometimes and we have books about that stuff.”

“And a computer, too,” added Joshua. “We can look things up if we don't have a book about it.”

“Ah,” said Clay. “An intellectual household.” He sipped his cider.

“Actually,” said Zee, “we talk more about food and fishing than about philosophy.”

“Smart,” said Clay. “I have a degree in philosophy, and food and fishing are a lot more interesting than most philosophizing. Speaking of food, I think my corn bread must be ready to come out of the oven.” He got up and went to the kitchen and I followed to tend to the chili.

After we'd eaten and had washed and stacked the dishes, we went back to the fire. I poured cognac for the big people. Outside it was now too dark to see the falling snow, but I knew it was still coming down because it was so quiet. Silent snow, secret snow.

“So you had to go to Patagonia today, eh?” asked Clay, looking at Joshua.

“Only for five minutes,” said Joshua.

“That wasn't too long,” said Clay. “I'll bet you could serve that sentence standing on your head. I was in the real Patagonia once.”

“The real Patagonia is way down at the tip of South America,” said Diana, perking up. “They have penguins there. Did you see some? How did you get so far away?”

“It's a long story,” said Clay.

“Tell us!”

And he did, for among his other talents, he had that of a teller of tales, who could weave words into a web that captured his listeners and held them until his story ended.

“Well,” he began, “I didn't see any penguins, but it was a good adventure anyway. It started when I met a girl from Argentina who wanted to see America. I was driving from Florida out to Oregon, so I offered her a ride….”

And she had accepted and they'd had a splendid trip, at the end of which she offered to show him Argentina. He'd accepted the offer and had ended up in Buenos Aires, some coastal towns west of there, and finally in a nameless little village in the Andes. The girl, it turned out, was rich, so for his first few weeks in Argentina, he had lived in mansions and on yachts, but then he'd grown tired of luxury and of people who, though charming and well-educated, never worked, and he had thanked them for their hospitality and traveled on toward the Andes until, at last, his money was gone and he had no way of getting home. With his last coin, he'd gone into a bar and bought a beer to sip while he figured out what to do.

“It's what I do whenever I'm at the end of my rope,” he explained to my wide-eyed children, “I take my last dollar and buy a beer while I decide what to do next and hope for a miracle.”

“Does it always work?” asked Joshua.

“So far,” said Clay, and he went on to tell how the Patagonia miracle had happened in the form of a man who sat down beside him and who, they discovered as they talked, needed a pilot to fly a cargo to Peru.

“So you see,” said Clay, “miracles do happen, even in these days.” He grinned that infectious grin.

“Gosh,” said Joshua.

“If you hadn't met the man, you could have gone to church,” said Diana, who had friends who did that. “God lives there.”

“I guess I could have,” said Clay.

“God must live in bars, too,” said her brother.

“No more waxing philosophical,” said Zee. “It's bedtime for you two. Off you go.”

Following the usual
gee
's and
gosh
's and
do we have to
's, they left after getting the promise of another story from Clay the next night.

“Quite a tale,” said Zee when the kids were gone.

“And all true, too,” said Clay, “but that reminds me.” He went to his room and came out with a tiny leather bag. “I left out a few things that I didn't think the kids needed to hear.” He sat back down beside Zee, loosened the drawstrings of the bag, and emptied its contents into his open palm. Jewels and gemstones glittered in the firelight.

“Take your choice,” he said to Zee. “And take one for Diana, too.”