Vineyard Fear (28 page)

“More likely, he'll make Gerry and me go fishing with him, and leave the house with nobody in it! That'd be just like him, bless his soul!”

“I'll come by now and then,” I said.

“You'll be welcome.”

As things turned out, the first time I showed up was nearly the last.

At dawn the next morning, on Dogfish Bar, where I was casting for bluefish, something very large took my Ballistic Missile. Almost certainly a large female bass. There is a thrill to catching a bass which is different than the one you get catching anything else, and I felt it then. The strength of the fish, the rising light, the loneliness of the beach, all combined to create a wonderful half hour.

The water is shallow at Dogfish Bar, and there are rocks on the bottom to snag your line if you're not lucky. My fish did not want to come in. It chugged away with my line, then reluctantly let me haul it back toward the beach. It swam up toward Gay Head and took me with it, over the rocky beach. I slowed it and led it in closer to shore. It turned and swam back toward Menemsha. I followed over the rocks and hauled it in even closer. I could almost see it. It was a major-league fish.

Then it was gone, and I was reeling in a parted line. I had no regrets except for the loss of the leader and lure since, after all, I was after bluefish and would have let the bass go if I had landed it. Now Nature would have to remove the hook and in time would do so, rusting it in two and allowing the lure to fall from the lip of the great fish so that no harm would, in the end, be done.

I re-rigged and fished some more. A dozen casts later I had my bluefish, a little guy who, as fish will, had mistaken my popper for something more tasty. He looked exactly the right size to fit into my frying pan, so I gave up fishing for the nonce, walked back to the Toyota, and
drove out of Indian Country back down island for breakfast.

Juice, fried fresh baby bluefish, eggs over light, toast made from homemade bread, black coffee. The gods never had it so good.

It was a prince of a day. A new sun in a clear sky. Just enough wind to move sailboats over the water. A day for beaching and kite flying. Already the cars were lining up along the road across the pond, and young parents were hauling children, blankets, cribs, umbrellas, beach balls, and kites down close to the warm and gentle water.

I then mowed the lawn with my almost-as-good-as-new lawn mower, salvaged long ago from the Edgartown dump during the golden age of dump picking, before the environmental fundamentalists seized control of that once best of island secondhand stores and changed it into a neat, antiseptic place which soon, no doubt, will demand passports from its users. I am not one to mow my lawn any more often than it absolutely needs it, but it was getting hairy enough for me to begin to lose things in it, so a clipping was in order. I clipped it wearing sandals and nothing else, as is my occasional wont.

By the time I was through, I was sweating all over and in need of some beer and a swim. I got into my dinky bikini, put a couple of Sam Adams in a cooler, and drove to South Beach. A few hundred people were there ahead of me, but I got into four-wheel drive and turned east and got away from most of them. A half mile down the beach, I laid out my old bedspread on the sand, nailed it down with the cooler and my big beach towel, and plunged into the briny.

Perfect. I swam out and back in, floating on my back amid the mild breakers, wondered if there really were sharks just off shore, as some fishermen had told me there were, and finally came in over the thin strand of pebbles that hung on the sand just where the waves broke. I toweled
off my head and hands and lay down on the bedspread with a beer. I felt good. If Zee had been there, I would have felt perfect.

In mid-August, the sun is in the same place in the sky as it is in mid-April, so tans are hard to maintain. I gave mine two hours, then packed up. There were many kites still in the air, indicating that those who were vacationing on the island were not about to abandon the golden sands so soon in the day. I didn't blame them. If I had been paying as much to be here as they were, I wouldn't have left either.

At home, I showered off the salt in the outdoor shower, slid into more modest clothes, and went to Iowa's house to see how things were and to do some bragging about my bluefish. As I drove up, I saw a car with Iowa plates parked in front. Between the car and the house were Iowa, Jean, Geraldine Miles, and Lloyd Cramer.

Lloyd Cramer's arms were moving up and down in gestures of appeal and he was leaning forward. Geraldine Miles had Iowa's shotgun in her hands and was pointing it at Cramer. I stopped the Toyota, flicked my CB to channel nine, and sent out an SOS to anyone whose ears were up to get the police to Iowa's house. I repeated the message, but didn't wait for an answer. I got out and walked toward Lloyd Cramer through air thick with the sound of his voice. That voice was a droning plea, a series of promises. I thought the shotgun muzzle swung a bit toward me.

“Hold it, J.W.,” said Iowa in a strained voice that spoke through Cramer's babble. “Gerry's not used to guns.”

“It's me, Geraldine,” I said. “Nobody's going to get hurt.”

The gun muzzle wavered away. I walked slowly up to Cramer, my ears filled with the mad sound of his voice. He was begging to be taken back, swearing love eternal,
promising to reform, admitting guilt, pleading for one more chance.

I looked at Geraldine. The shotgun was none too steady. “Point the gun at the ground,” I said over the sound of Cramer's voice. I put what I hoped was a friendly smile on my face. “I don't think you want to hit me, but that's what might happen if you shoot. Please, Gerry, point the gun at the ground.”

I was beside Cramer now, but he didn't notice me. He saw only Geraldine. He was pouring out his convoluted soul in a steady stream of words, asking her to forgive him and take him back. I saw the shotgun barrel drop and Iowa move carefully toward his niece.

“I think he's got a gun,” said Iowa's flat voice.

“Mr. Cramer,” I said, and touched his shoulder. He swung an arm as though to brush away a fly and his voice continued to fill the yard with pleas. “It's time to leave, Mr. Cramer,” I said. “Geraldine doesn't want to talk to you now. Come along.” I stepped around in front of him, beneath him and Geraldine.

He was a big man. His eyes were wild and full of tears and focused behind me on Geraldine. There was indeed something thrust inside his shirt that didn't belong there. I said, “Mr. Cramer,” and the eyes found mine. “I know you love her,” I said, “but she needs more time. Let's get you back to your car. You need some rest. I know you don't want to hurt anybody, so it's best that we leave.”

He was crying. “I don't want to hurt anybody! I never did! I love Gerry!”

“I know you do,” I said. “Come on. Let's go to the car. I'll go with you. We can talk. I'm sick of trouble and I know you are, too.”

I put a hand on his arm and he blinked at me and we stepped back toward his car. For a moment I allowed myself to think that the situation was going to work out. Then he suddenly said, “I know you!” He pushed me
away with a big hand and with his other groped inside his shirt. “You were there in her room! You're the one! You want to take her away from me! I won't let you! I'll kill you both!”

The hand came out of his shirt with a pistol in it. He swung it toward the people behind me. I got hold of his wrist with both hands and twisted it to one side as he squeezed off the first shot. Then his other hand was a fist as big and hard as a brick, beating at me, pounding me down. Another shot went off between our bodies. I got a knee into him, but that great thundering fist was making the world fade. Then I lost the wrist and he jerked away and swung the pistol toward me. I went for him again as the pistol swung into line and a shot boomed.

Cramer's face disappeared in a flower of blood and bone, and he went backward onto the ground. I turned to see Geraldine Miles with the shotgun in her hands. Her face was white as whey, but she was struggling to pump another round into the firing chamber and coming forward, her eyes fixed on Cramer. I turned back. The pistol had fallen from Cramer's hand. He wasn't going to use it anymore. In the distance I heard sirens coming. I put out a hand toward Geraldine as she stepped toward Cramer's body and raised the shotgun again.

“It's okay, Geraldine,” I said. “It's all over. He's as dead as he's ever going to get.”

Geraldine said a word which at one time would have been called unprintable, and shot Cramer again. I took the shotgun away before she could give him another round and thumbed on the safety. Behind us, Jean and Iowa stared at us, then came forward. Jean took Geraldine in her arms.

“It's all right, dear,” said Iowa gently. “All of us are all right now.”

Geraldine looked at her uncle. Her battered face was red and contorted. Her voice was like a knife. “He's dead! He's dead! The turd is dead!”

I had rarely seen such hatred on so young a face. I wondered if it would ever go completely away.

“I thank you,” I said to her. “If it wasn't for you, I'd be lying there instead of him.”

Geraldine stared at me and said nothing.

“And if it wasn't for you, J.W.,” said Iowa in a shaky voice, “we might be lying there. What a world we live in.”

The first police car came into the yard. The driver took one look at things and called for a lot of backup. Then he went to Cramer's body, felt for a pulse, stood up, and looked around in a confused way. We all waited in the yard for the rest of the police to come. It was a soft August afternoon. Overhead, the pale blue sky held a few gentle-looking clouds. At South Beach, the kites were no doubt still flying. On the green grass of Iowa's front yard, Cramer's blood soaked slowly into the ground.

“You're always where the trouble is,” said Corporal Dominic Agganis.

“I'm just not lucky, I guess.”

“You'd better get out of the trouble business,” said Agganis. “You've already used up eight of your lives.”

“You've talked me into it. From now on, you can have all the trouble. “If you're done with me, I'm going home.”

“Oh, I'm done with you, but other people aren't.” He nodded across the yard toward the house where Iowa, Jean, and Geraldine were talking with the Edgartown police, the sheriff of The County of Dukes County, another state cop, and some other cops I didn't recognize. The yard was full of them, too. “The girl will be charged. We got a hotshot DA with political ambitions, and you can
be sure he'll bring her to trial if he can. There'll be a grand jury, at least, and you, my friend, will be on the witness list.”

“Good. Self-defense. She saved my life and her own.”

“So you say.” He yawned. “We'll see what the grand jury says. I got to go talk to the lady in question. See you in court.” He walked toward the house.

I drove home and poured myself a double vodka on the rocks and went up to the balcony. The view was as lovely as ever, but it meant nothing to me. I had felt this way before, and knew that in time I would feel better, that I would stop feeling empty and angry just because justice was rare and love elusive.

I drank my vodka and tried to let the beauty of the world flow into me. I had read that when the Navaho poets walk across the great, dry, brutal desert which is their home, they are not aliens to it. “Beauty before me,” they say. “Beauty behind me. Beauty all around me.” Martha's Vineyard, green and golden, surrounded by the eternal sea, was no desert, but rather a small Eden. Still I felt remote from it. I tried to let its gentle splendor enter my eyes and the sounds of its gulls and songbirds enter my ears and find my soul.

When it was dark, I went downstairs, still moody, knowing that I would have a bad night. Of all the earth's life-forms, only man wishes things were different. It is his bane, his absurdity.

But bad nights end, and the sea is a great restorer. It is indifferent to our fears and joys, merciless, beautiful, terrible, and nurturing. In the morning I went down to the harbor and rowed out to the
Mattie,
John Skye's lovely old catboat. She was beginning to collect some hair around her waterline, but was otherwise fine. Because he had chosen to spend so much time in Colorado, John had barely used her this summer. As I checked her bilge and bowline, I thought of Dr. Jonathan Scarlotti and his little
band of graduate students, who had not had time to go sailing in the
Mattie.
I wondered if Dr. Scarlotti would ever know that he had perhaps indirectly been the cause of the deaths of Bernie Orwell and her brother, and what effect it would have upon him if he knew. I wondered if I should drive up to Weststock and make sure he at least knew his role in those deaths. The prospect appealed to part of me. I thought Dr. Scarlotti was exactly the sort of exploiter of women that Orwell had hated.

I rowed to the
Shirley
J., put a bag of clothes and a cooler of food and drink aboard, and put to sea. I needed to sort things out.

I sailed on a broad reach all the way to Woods Hole, caught a fair tide through the narrows, and beat into Hadley's. I wound up the centerboard, found a shallow spot far from the other boats anchored there, and dropped the hook. I didn't want company. I took a swim, then sat in the wide cockpit and watched the yachts come in for the night. I was still there when the stars came out.

The next day I had a fair wind all the way to Newport, and the day after that to Block Island, where I anchored for two days while I walked that lovely little island from end to end, and ate my lunches on a long veranda overlooking the old harbor. On the third day, the rains came, so I stayed in the cuddy cabin and read again Childers' wonderful
Riddle of the Sands,
a required item in any ship's library. In the middle of the afternoon, it began to rain even harder. I put on my daring bathing suit, so no water-soaked sailors who might be looking would be shocked, got some soap, and went out into the cockpit and had a shower. The rain was hard and cold and felt good. It kept raining, so that night I cooked inside.