Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery Page 8

  “What happened? Did the catwalk crack?”

  “Weren’t no fault of the catwalk. Fault of the cat.”

  “So did you rescue him?”

  “Fuck no, Dwight. I’m busy sellin’ lobsters. I can’t be rescuin’ every damn fool falls off the catwalk. What do you hear about the killin’, Dwight?”

  “Killing?” said Dickie, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, rocking the float. “You mean killings. Like a string of them. Like mass murder in Micmac.”

  They ignored him.

  “We better go up and around,” said Dwight.

  So we did. For some reason stairs delight Jellyroll. He bounds up them and looks back at me with a big smile on his face. But I didn’t feel quite so confident of the stairs. They moved far too much. Dwight climbed casually, but I stayed a few steps behind so as not to strain the stairs.

  The rock was not uniform here. At the mouth, it had looked uniformly brown, but back here veins of starkly different colors ran through it. Some were pure white and crystalline, others smooth and black, with complex branches reaching out horizontally, sometimes intertwining with veins of a different color, a petrified bloodstream.

  As we went, Dwight said, “This all gets cleared out come November.”

  “All what?”

  “All you see. Stairs, floats, boats, everything. The whole harbor. All the boats get out by autumn. We take everything apart and store it up in the woods over the winter.” He paused on a crooked landing near the top and pointed toward the opening. “See, out there—that’s dead northeast. In a nor’easter the Crack is hell on earth. Water comes through that opening like a fire hose. We’d get swept away standin’ here in a weak nor’easter. In a strong one, waves’d be breakin’ up there in the woods.” Dwight’s face was largely immobile, but just then a look of respect, even awe, flicked across his weathered features at the image of the sea in the narrow confines of the Crack; then he said, “Of course, you don’t get nor’easters in the summer.”

  I lagged for a moment trying to picture the scene. That kind of power was hard for a landsman urbanite and his dog to imagine. I followed Dwight up out of the Crack onto flat land.

  Dickie tagged along, walking stiff-legged as if his scrotum itched.

  There were two small barns or sheds with no windows near the apex. They were built on foundations of stacked logs. I realized that they, too, must get moved back from the reach of the sea. Within a block-long radius of the Crack there were no trees. Dwight told me that flying seawater had killed them generations ago.

  “When I was a kid, we’d dare each other to stand close in a nor’easter. Like the city kids I read about that ride on top of elevators.”

  “I’ve been goddamned near carried away when I was standing way over there,” Dickie pointed. “I remember one year—”

  “Aw, bullshit, Dickie, you ain’t even been here in November.”

  “Well, I stayed that one bad year. I gotta run anyway. Gotta get my dog. Hey, thanks for the lift. Boy, that sure looks like the R-r-ruff Dog,” he said, but made no move to leave.

  Twenty yards away at the far end of the clearing, there was an abandoned red building that looked like a rural train station circa 1940. I looked at it through my binoculars. It was a train depot, in ruins now. Weeds and shrubs grew out of the windows and up through chinks in the walls. I could see the tracks in front.

  “Kempshall built himself a railroad to take his guests and his gear over to the Castle. That’s what he called his mansion.”

  We started down the adjacent set of stairs, even shakier than its neighbor. Jellyroll didn’t care, bounding ahead, having a grand time. I could tell by the way the stairs bounced that Dickie was still with us.

  Descending, Dwight told me that the Hampton boat now belonged to a man named Roy. Roy and Dwight had gone to school together, played on the same line of scrimmage. “Roy had his esophagus removed back about two years ago, talks through one of them electric vibration devices. As a result he don’t like to talk to strangers. Thinks his voice sounds weird. Does.” So Dwight had already made a deal for me, but I didn’t have to take it, he assured me. Roy wanted eighty-five dollars a week. How they arrived at that, I had no idea, but it sounded great to me—

  “Say, Alistair.”

  “Say, Dwight.”

  Dwight introduced me to Alistair across the water. He said he was proud to meet me. I said I was, too.

  “Now would that be the R-r-ruff Dog?”

  “Yes.” I had removed the disguise, not that it ever worked.

  “Goddamn. The R-r-ruff Dog. Dwight, did you ever imagine the R-r-ruff Dog’d make it to Teal Island? That’s my favorite dog in all Hollywood.”

  “Of course that’s the R-r-ruff Dog,” said Dickie confidently.

  Dwight went aboard my new boat. Jellyroll leapt aboard, and I followed.

  Dwight started the tour at the bow. “She sits low, so she’s gonna take water in any kind of chop. You can fold this canvas cover back a little ways to protect your valuables.” He moved to the control console built of plywood and showed me neutral-forward-reverse on the transmission lever beside the steering wheel. The chrome-plated lever with its red plastic knob was the only modern thing on my new boat.

  “Okay, this is the most important thing—” Dwight kicked the engine box located near the stern. “This’s a gasoline engine. It ain’t a diesel engine. A gas engine can blow you to bits. You don’t ever want to start this engine without giving it the sniff test—”

  A sudden whirring interrupted him. We looked toward its source—the top of the cliff above the submarine—but there was nothing to see. The whirring grew louder. The thing, the whirrer, was approaching the cliff edge. Then a white mechanical arm with a cable and hook hanging from it appeared. The arm extended out over the water, telescoped back into itself, extended again. It withdrew again, and when it next extended, a nearly naked man with an ascetic, wrinkled body stood in the hook hugging the cable with one arm and gesturing to the crane operator with the other—

  “Take it down, Edith. Down goddamnit!”

  He was a circumcised man in a tiny Speedo with stars and stripes. His only other clothes were work boots with woolen socks. He was old to be riding crane hooks in skimpy Speedos on cool days. The guy was easily seventy-five. His body was hard, tanned, and wrinkled like your father’s ancient old catcher’s mitt in the back of the closet. He twisted in midair on the hook. “Take it down! What language am I speaking, goddamnit, Edith? Down!”

  The crane whirred, and he spiraled down.

  “That’s Commander Hickle,” said Dwight.

  “Stop!” shouted Commander Hickle.

  The hook and Hickle stopped a foot from the roof of his submarine. Hickle stepped off onto the sub. But then the hook started again. It clanked on the sub.

  “Stop, goddamnit, Edith! Stop!”

  “Goddamnit, Edith,” Alistair mocked, sitting on his transom. “Sparky’s been doin’ that all day. It’s cuttin’ into my lobster trade, Commander Sparky goin’ up and down. Gets the customers edgy.”

  “The commander’s a genius,” said Dickie. “I worked with him on that sub.” Dickie stuck out his chin. “We consulted on certain hydrodynamical matters.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Alistair, “then he ran you off for stealin’ his tools.”

  “Slander.”

  “Hey, Dickie, did Sheriff Kelso find you?” asked Alistair.

  “What—?” said Dickie, deflating.

  “Yeah, he looked pissed, if you ask me.” Alistair didn’t bat an eye, and I could see Dickie strain to figure out if he was being kidded or not, poor bastard.

  Bored with the routine, Dwight continued with my orientation—“A cupful of gasoline in an enclosed space overnight can make enough fumes to blow your ass to bits when you go to start it next mornin’. I’ve seen it happen. There’s a blower—” He flipped a switch mounted in the steering console, and I heard a fan go on. “But don’t trust it alone. Lift
up the engine box and sniff. If you smell gas, leave the box up for a while before you start the engine.”

  Alistair said, “Yeah, you remember Russell Cass? Got blowed to kingdom come out in Cabot Strait. It rained Russell for two days.”

  “Yeah,” said Dwight. “Used to upset my daughter to see gulls gulpin’ little floatin’ bits of Russell.”

  “Around here lotta folks with gas engines don’t bother with the sniff test. They use Dickie to start their engines for them. How much you get per engine, Dickie?”

  Dickie looked hurt, but he didn’t leave. He put his hands in his pockets and bobbed his head slightly as if trying to pump up a retort.

  “There was one other thing, what was it?” Dwight asked himself, rubbing his chin. “Oh. The dinghy. Right there.” He pointed to a battered little fiberglass boat tied to the same float. “That’s yours. See, you can’t use that flat rock as a dock. Tide’ll come up and set your boat down on it. You got to leave your boat on the moorin’ and dinghy in.”

  Alistair waved at somebody coming down the steps. He greeted Edith by name. Like the Commander, Edith was over seventy, but she was coming fast. I could see she had zeroed in on Jellyroll. You can always tell. He can tell, too. Edith wore a print shift and high-tech sneakers with ankle socks, the kind with little pom-poms at the heels. She held up the hem of her skirt so as not to impede her pumping knees.

  “Hello, Edith,” said Dwight.

  “Hello, Dwight.”

  “Hi, Edith,” said Dickie.

  “Edith,” said Dwight, “I’d like you to meet Artie Deemer. He’ll be staying at the boathouse for a while. Artie, this is Edith Hickle.”

  She shook my hand warmly, even though she wanted to meet Jellyroll, not me. Many people aren’t nearly so gracious. I used to get trampled by cute-crazed fans until I learned to lean forward and put a shoulder into them. They don’t even notice when you put a shoulder into them. It’s a powerful urge they feel.

  “And this is the R-r-ruff Dog,” said Dwight with a little ta-da move.

  Edith’s knees crackled as she went down to his level. Jellyroll wagged his entire back end and licked Edith’s face in long laps. She moaned with delight and petted his back. Dwight was smiling with the happiness of it all.

  “Edith, goddamnit, take it up!” bellowed the Commander from atop his sub.

  “Just a moment”—she winked up at Dwight and added— “Sparky.”

  Sparky must have thought Edith was still up in the crane. When he looked down and saw her on the float, he did a big take and bellowed, “Goddamnit, Edith, what are you doing!”

  “This is the R-r-ruff Dog, dear.”

  “The R-r-ruff Dog? Celebrity dogs? Do you know what celebrity dogs represent, Edith? A culture in decline! Decline, Edith!”

  “Good luck with the launching, Commander,” called Dickie.

  “You, goddamnit! Are you still alive?”

  Dickie wilted.

  Edith stood up, with a boost from Dwight. “How’s Phyllis?” she asked him.

  “Fine. She told me to bring you her best.”

  “Well,” said Edith, “we’ve been kind of busy what with the launching and…all.”

  “She knows that, Edith. You’ll be back in touch soon’s it’s done.”

  Edith squeezed Dwight’s forearm before she started up the steps with much less energy than on her descent. Jellyroll looked kind of sad to see her go.

  Dwight started the engine after giving it another sniff for my edification. “Well, there you are. Ready to go.” He may have sensed my hesitation—the boat was pointing up the Crack; I didn’t see how there was room to turn around without hitting the rock or Alistair’s boat—because he said, “Hop in. You can save me a trip back up the steps. Plus you want to get your chart off my boat—” He took us backward around Alistair’s boat and out where there was room to turn. He brought us up against his boat with the gentlest of taps, my bow pointing out the Crack toward open water. He climbed into his own boat and passed me my chart. “Now you feel okay about the trip back?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. Did I?

  I cleared the mouth of the Crack feeling good. I felt good all the way back to the cove. I was stoned on crystalline air.

  I turned us into the cove. Remember the sunkers, I told myself. I saw them on the chart as well. It took me a couple of tries to pick up the mooring line. I overran it the first time, jerked it out of my hands. But I got it on. I didn’t know what kind of knot to tie, so I tied a lot of them.

  I didn’t notice I was tired until I sat down at the picnic table on the porch at dusk. That long sweep of falling light, lengthening shadows, would have been a time of peace and introspection at the old summerhouse with the loved ones.

  I’d brought a cellular phone. I used it to call Clayton to tell him I love it, thanks a lot, but he wasn’t home, and then I remembered he had told me he was going to California. I left the message on his machine. Then I called Shelly, but he wasn’t home either. And Crystal was en route to Memphis. Jellyroll, who seemed to have strong inner resources, had found his place. Dogs always need a place. His was against the wall near the bedroom door on a small hook rug with concentric rings of earthen colors. I unpacked our gear, finished putting away the food, and explored the boathouse more closely.

  Its internal frames made a lot of horizontal surfaces. They were used as bookshelves and for displaying knickknacks. There were guides to reptiles, birds, mammals, mosses and lichens, mushrooms, butterflies, tide pools, marine invertebrates, wild-flowers; the knickknacks were mostly things from the sea or from the woods collected over the years. Sea urchin skeletons, glass net floats, horseshoe crabs, round rocks, flotsam and jetsam. I didn’t see much that clearly belonged to Clayton. Guests like me could have collected these things and left them as thank-yous.

  Jellyroll had already gone to sleep. Maybe that was the key to life, full days, early to bed, early to rise. Maybe one didn’t need extraordinary inner resources to live in the remote regions, after all. I had a meatloaf sandwich and went to bed with the wild-flower guide. I didn’t get much further than the names, but they were wonderful. The names could hypnotize: hoary alyssum, pip-sissewa, blind gentian, early saxifrage, pink lady’s slipper, painted touch-me-not, false Solomon’s seal, common fleabane, sandwort, spotted Joe-Pye weed, and pearly everlasting.…

  Jellyroll started barking before dawn. I awoke with that odd feeling of not knowing where I was. I had to force myself to remember. Jellyroll pawed at the front door, barked, looked over his shoulder at me, and pawed some more. The rest of the house was pitch dark, and I had no idea where I’d left the matches. One had to remember matches if one lived in a gas house.

  I groped into the kitchen for the flashlight I’d seen earlier. I was struck by the night fears, the little-boy fears. I managed to get the flashlight and shine my way to the front door. There was nothing on the porch, nothing lurking against the walls. I went out on the porch.

  The dog pack. They stood in a semicircle below, near the foot of the stairs, but none made a move to come up.

  “Stay,” I told Jellyroll.

  We watched each other. I shone the light on them. A couple wagged their tails. Others milled and paced excitedly. Their tongues lolled. Their eyes glowed, startling yellow or green discs.

  ELEVEN

  I stayed up for the sake of the sunrise. I sat at the picnic table dressed in everything I owned drinking coffee and watching the sky lighten until I could see the water in Dog Cove, the birds, the geology, and I felt at peace here, in tune with the sad, persistent rhythm at the center of things. Some man-made music, if carefully chosen, might merge with the music of the spheres. I set up my boom box on the railing and played the female vocalists tape I’d made before leaving NYC. I had been neglecting vocalists of late. Billie Holiday sang: “Stormy weather, since my man and I ain’t been together—keeps raining all the time.”

  Suddenly, from nowhere, listening to that haunted voice, I slid back into that stat
e of abject eroticism. I ached for contact. I have sexy thoughts all the time, say riding the IRT or walking Jellyroll in the park or listening to music at home. I assume everyone does. They pass. I move on to other matters, but this was different. This was reminiscent of the mad adolescent lust of last-period civics class in seventh grade. Mrs. Fosdick was telling us about the Russians. The Russians always lie, she was saying. You can trust them to lie. In fact, they’ll stop at nothing to stomp out America and Jesus, too.

  If Mrs. Fosdick had been a Russian and offered me a look at her soft, pendulous, warm, naked flesh, even a fleeting peek from afar, through binoculars, I would have signed myself into slavery.

  I went inside and phoned Crystal at the tournament site. I just wanted to hear her voice. Maybe I could catch her before her morning match. When she said hello, I could tell that she wasn’t getting the good rolls.

  “I’m out,” she said. “Eliminated before lunch yesterday. They had me for breakfast.”

  “Were you missing balls?” I asked.

  “No, I was blowing position. Even the easy position. I’d get out of line, and you know what happens then.”

  “It must have been tough to concentrate.”

  “You should have seen Gracie Cobb’s eyes when she saw I couldn’t run balls. Like the eyes on those African scavenger birds. What do you call them? You were watching a nature show on them.”

  “Vultures?”

  “No, the other ones.”

  “Griffins?”

  “Yeah, that’s how she looked at me. Like a griffin looking at a dying antelope.”

  “If you’ll come here, I’ll pay for the trip, and coddle and cosset you when you arrive.”

  “Yeah? What’s it like there?”

  “Warm and moist,” I said, and I told her about the island, about Dwight, the Commander and Edith, the Crack, and about my new boat.

  “You? A boat?”

  “Hey, I come from a long line of seafarers. My ancestors sailed with Dennis Connor. Maybe you were unaware of that.”