Vineyard Fear

by Philip Craig

  Lucky John. I wondered if he knew in what favor he had been held. I flipped ahead. If John hadn’t known earlier, he surely knew later. Bernie wrote of lingering in his classroom, of seeing him in his office, of thinking of him at night. Bernie waxed up and down in her moods. No surprise, considering her film containers. Powder up, pills down was my guess. I found myself uncomfortable reading Bernie’s secret words, but not so uncomfortable that I stopped reading. Instead, I flipped far ahead in her journal.

  Last fall. Graduate school. Hot and heavy thoughts of Jonathan, who had not only become Jonathan instead of Dr. Skye or plain old John, but who, according to Bernie, was “so beautiful and brilliant” that she “trembled at the very thought of his touch.” Good grief! So people really did write stuff like that. I wondered how anyone could think of John Skye as beautiful. Feeling suddenly like a voyeur, I closed the journal and returned everything to the backpack.

  I went inside and phoned Weststock and asked for Bernie Orwell’s address. They said they didn’t give such information out. I got Jack Scarlotti’s number and called that, but no one answered. I phoned John Skye. He obviously would know. But John said he’d get the address from the registrar and call me back. I found a beer in the fridge and drank it while I waited and wondered why John had told me he didn’t have the address at hand. When John called back, he gave me an address in New Jersey, but said the registrar had been unclear about her Weststock address.

  I scribbled a note to Bernadette Orwell and told her where I’d found her backpack and the earring in John’s house, and that he’d given me her address. I put the note in the pack with the earring (which, after all, might actually have been hers and certainly was of no use to anyone else), and packaged everything up. I took the package to the post office on my way home, and sent it parcel post, thus robbing Uncle Sam of the first-class postage he would have required of me had I told him of the note inside. It’s hard to hold your own against the government, but I try.

  That evening as I was eating crackers and bluefish paté, the phone rang. It was Bernadette Orwell calling in a panic from Weststock.

  “I’m terribly, terribly sorry to interrupt you, but . . .”

  “Relax. I found your backpack.”

  “What? You did! Oh, thank you . . . !”

  “It had fallen off the front porch. I got your address from John Skye and sent everything to New Jersey. I didn’t know your Weststock address.”

  “Oh! I just changed apartments . . . Well . . . Thank you! Thank you! My journal was inside . . . I’ve always kept a journal. Oh, I hope . . . You didn’t . . . Oh, dear . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I don’t read other people’s journals. Only a real crumb would do a thing like that.”

  “Oh! Well, thank you again. You have no idea how worried I’ve been . . .”

  “Think nothing of it,” I said. Bernadette was in Weststock and her cocaine and pills would soon be in New Jersey. Everybody has problems. One of mine was being a real crumb sometimes.

  — 3 —

  I was wrapping smoked bluefish for my illegal markets when the phone rang. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the town of Edgartown insist that people who sell processed fish to restaurants and other purveyors of food should have very expensive and sanitary facilities to prepare that fish, but I prepare my smoked bluefish in my kitchen and smoke it in a smoker made out of an old refrigerator and electric stove parts salvaged from the dump long ago, before the environmentalists seized control of the world. I maintain that if I’ve never poisoned myself or the guests at my table, my food won’t poison anybody else either. Happily for me, some fine establishments on Martha’s Vineyard agree with me and are glad to buy as much of my illegal smoked bluefish as they can get. Why not? It’s the island’s finest, after all.

  It was mid-June and John Skye’s voice was on the line.

  “Just got down. Place looks fine. How are the fish running?”

  “They’ve been up around Cape Pogue for the last couple of days. Not too big, but lots of them.”

  “The little ones are best. Have supper with me. I’ll feed you my catch.”

  “Sure.”

  “Zee working nights? No? I’ll give her a call. Maybe she can join us. All my own women are out west. Bachelorhood is no kind of life, my boy; you’ve got to have women around if you want to be happy. I’m going fishing. You want to come along?”

  “Sorry. Delivery day.”

  “Ah. See you about six.”

  “Yes.”

  On the way to John’s farm, I saw Geraldine Miles walking on the bike path. Her pace was longer and she was moving more easily than when last I’d seen her. She was young and her body was healing itself. Her face looked better, too. There was some color in it. I liked the way she looked.

  At six, I parked my ancient, rusty Land Cruiser beside John’s brand-new blue Jeep Wagoneer. John came out of the house, shook hands, and helped me take three cases of liquor from his Jeep and put them in the Land Cruiser. On Martha’s Vineyard, booze, like all other commodities, is vastly overpriced, so when our friends come down from America they bring our orders for life’s essentials with them. John handed me his receipt for the liquor and I paid him in cash. A deal. I found a bottle of Moselle in one of my boxes and followed John back into the kitchen, where I put the bottle in the freezer for a fast chill.

  He took two glasses and a half gallon of Stoli from the same freezer, sloshed dry vermouth around in each glass and tossed it out, then filled the chilled glasses with icy vodka and dropped two olives in each glass. He handed one glass to me. The perfect martini.

  “Cheers.”

  “Shalom.”

  The vodka was smooth and cold as a mortician.

  “Damn fine.”

  “Sit.”

  We sat and looked at one another. I tried but failed to see him as beautiful. He was fiftyish, a bit over six feet tall and short on hair. He was developing a slight belly that embarrassed him not at all; he held that it was emergency rations in case of atomic attack. When not on the island, he lived in Weststock where he was a professor at the college, specializing in literature written in European languages not spoken for at least a thousand years. He had once told me that one of the things he liked about his work was that it was completely useless. Just the thing for a man as basically impractical as himself, he said. I found his claims of being incapable of handling practical matters to be greatly exaggerated since he seemed handy enough when he needed to be.

  “You found the fish,” I said.

  “I did, indeed. I have a little fellow in the fridge who will feed the three of us nicely. Stuffed with my wife’s prize stuffing recipe and ready to be popped into the oven. You will drool when you eat it, but the secret of the stuffing will not be revealed to you in spite of your pleas. Not even the beautiful Zeolinda Madieras, for all her manifest charms, will extract it from me.”

  “Is that the recipe I gave Mattie last year?”

  “I was afraid you’d remember that. Oh, well. Yes it is, so you know what to expect. Julienned beets and carrots on the side and white rice.”

  “Is that my julienned beet and carrot recipe?”

  “Now that you mention it. But I got the rice recipe off of the box.”

  “Sounds like an excellent meal.”

  “It will be. Well, here’s to summer and the end of another academic year.”

  We sipped our icy martinis.

  “I take it that Jack Scarlotti and his gang got back to Weststock in one piece,” I said.

  “Indeed. I got a bottle of very good Scotch as thanks. Young Dr. Scarlotti and his crew apparently did some good work while they were down here and Jack was settled down to devote his summer to organizing it and getting the results published. I am to get a copy of the book for my collection. I can probably get one for you too, if you want it.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “I never asked, but I dare say it will be of great interest to some people.”<
br />
  “I doubt if I’m one of them, but if you get an extra copy of the book I’ll take it.”

  “Smart thinking, J.W.” John glanced out of a window. “I do believe that Zee has arrived.”

  She had, indeed, arrived, and naturally she looked terrific. As John waved her through the kitchen door, I met her with a chilled martini for which I got a nice-tasting kiss.

  “I may have succeeded in training you, after all,” she said.

  “You mean the bit about the hardworking woman coming home and being met by a clean house, her man, and a martini?”

  “That’s it.” She sat down and crossed lovely long legs. I ogled them shamelessly. She smiled and pulled her skirt up another inch. Then, surprising me, she allowed a little frown to ripple across her face and pushed the skirt down again.

  What was that all about? And what was it that made a glimpse of forbidden flesh more exciting than a beach full of bikini-clad nymphets?

  “Very nice, Zee,” said John, “but I’ll thank you to keep your clothes on. My wife is two thousand miles away, remember, and if you keep adjusting that skirt I might have a spasm.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” I said. “Adjust, adjust!”

  “It’s splendid to have this power,” said Zee without expression in her voice. “No wonder women rule the world.” Then she pushed away any frown that might have been on her face and lifted her glass. “Good to see you, John.”

  “And you.”

  “I saw that beautiful young professor and his doting students the other day. His students seemed to adore him.”

  “The good ones mostly do,” said Skye. “He drives them hard, but they like it. The youngest associate professor at Weststock. Were he and his gang any kind of problem, J.W.?”

  “I never saw them while they were here. The normal dirty linens, dishes, and rubbish were here when they left. I found an earring, three stray socks that I added to the rubbish, and that backpack I mailed to its owner. I’d call them a pretty good crew.”

  We ate in the kitchen.

  “Say,” said Zee, “this is good fish, John. I think I recognize the stuffing. Jefferson’s recipe, isn’t it? And these julienned beets and carrots!”

  “Simple, but delicious,” said John, modestly.

  “Let me guess. Cook a pound and a half of carrots and a pound and a half of beets, then peel and julienne them and mix them up and heat the mixture through with some butter in a frying pan. Right?”

  “Hmmmph,” grunted John.

  “They look good and they taste great and they’re easy to fix! Terrific for a bit of color on the table at Christmas or Thanksgiving. Jeff showed me how to make this dish. Where did you learn it, John?”

  “Have some rice,” said John. “You’ll love it. J.W. showed me how to read the recipe on the box. And have some more wine. J.W. had me bring it over from the mainland.”

  “What’s for dessert?” asked Zee, with a laugh.

  “Cognac. My own, by God!”

  Over cognac and coffee John learned of Zee’s August plans. He looked at me. “Seems that you’ll be the only one left on the island, J.W. I’m headed for Colorado in August.”

  “There are worse places than this to be abandoned by your friends,” I said.

  “How long since you’ve been off the island?”

  I thought about that for a while.

  “Last fall,” said Zee. “We went to a Red Sox game at Fenway. Remember?”

  “That was it.” I get off once a year or so. It’s usually enough.

  “They even won,” said Zee. “That was an unexpected bonus. We had a good time. Beer under the stands, popcorn and peanuts, all the stuff you’re supposed to do. We even met an old cop buddy of Jeff’s. He was there with his wife and kids.”

  “Brad Tracey.”

  “Nicknamed Dick, naturally. He and Jeff got to talk cop talk for a while. His wife was nice. Two nice kids, too.” Zee’s voice changed tone when she mentioned Brad’s wife and children. Zee was getting close to thirty and I wondered if she was hearing the famous biological clock ticking inside her and if that might be one of the reasons she was going off to conferences in New Hampshire. It didn’t seem the time to ask her.

  “If you can hold the island down until September,” said John, “I’ll be back to do some fishing before the fall term starts. The girls will have to be home early in the month so they can start school, but I’ll have a couple of loose days.”

  “I thought you scholarly types never really had a day off. I thought you were always thinking and thinking.”

  “Hey,” said John, “I have to think all winter. When summer comes, give me a break.”

  After supper, we went for a walk in the evening light. There was a lane leading south from John’s barn. It ran along between trees on one side and a meadow of high grass on the other. A hundred yards along, John snapped his fingers.

  “Oops. Gotta go back. Got to call Mattie. Don’t get lost.”

  We watched him move back toward the house.

  “I don’t think he really had to call Mattie,” said Zee. “I think he got a look at your face and decided we should talk.”

  “Could be. Should we?”

  “Half of me says yes, the other half says to hell with it.”

  I had to smile. “Me, too.”

  “Well?”

  “Well. Well, well. Well, so far I’ve asked you to marry me several dozen times and you always say not yet. Now you’re going away for a month to find out what you want to do with your life. If you decide to go to medical school, you’ll be gone for years and I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t come back at all. If you decide not to go to medical school, you still might not come back. I want you to do what you want to do, but I don’t like the idea of being out of your life. That’s it, I think. I don’t want to be out of your life, but I think that’s the way you’re leaning. But if this is what you want, then I think you should do it. Life is too short to spend doing things you don’t want to do.”

  “You sound bitter.”

  “I’m not bitter. I don’t like bitter people and I won’t be one. But I’ll miss you and I’m afraid you’ll leave the island forever. That doesn’t make me bitter, it makes me unhappy. But I’ve been unhappy before and gotten over it, so my unhappiness shouldn’t concern you . . .”

  We walked through the dimming light down the sandy lane. “Look,” she said. “I’m almost thirty years old. I’m not a kid. I want things I don’t have. I want a normal family. I want a job that I can live with all my life. I love being a nurse, but why shouldn’t I be a doctor? I love being with you, but I want children . . .”

  “Marry me and you can have all the children you can handle. Or if you don’t want the marriage, you can still have the children . . .”

  She took my arm. “You don’t even have a job, Jefferson.”

  “I have a lot of jobs. I fish, I look after some houses . . .”

  “And you’re the envy of every man who works nine to five, but . . .”

  “But what? Are you telling me I should start chasing bucks? Why? I’m doing just fine. I’ve never missed a meal.”

  “But I’m not sure you’re really husband material. A husband has responsibilities. A husband has to make sure his kids grow up right . . .”

  “A role model?” I didn’t want to be a role model. One of the reasons I’d come to the Vineyard and lived like I did was because I was tired of being responsible for other people.

  “Look at you. You live in an old hunting camp on Martha’s Vineyard, you go fishing and shellfishing whenever you want, you grow a garden, you cook like a dream . . .”

  “I chase after you . . .”

  She squeezed my arm. “And you catch me, too. Anyway, you live this wonderful life of yours and it’s right for you. But I don’t know if it’s right for me or for a family . . .”

  “You come by every now and then.”

  She didn’t miss a step. “You’re a terrific guy and a great lover and the
best friend I have, but I’m not sure you’d be as good a husband and a father.”

  I tried to imagine being the father of her children. It didn’t seem to be a bad job. I wondered if I needed to change in order to be a father. I thought of my own father and wondered what he would think.

  “And there’s something else,” said Zee. “It has nothing to do with you, but it’s important. I’m tired of being somebody’s somebody. I want to be myself. When I was little, I was my parents’ daughter, then I was Paul’s girlfriend, then Paul’s fiancée, then Paul’s wife, then Paul’s ex-wife, then my Aunt Amelia’s niece, and now I’m your girlfriend. It’s not just that other people think of me as somebody’s somebody, I even catch myself thinking of myself like that, and I don’t like it. And here’s something that maybe does have to do with you. I’m tired of defining myself in terms of my relationships with men. I think we women do that all the time and I don’t think that you men do it at all, or at least not very much. Do you think of yourself as my boyfriend?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “You think of me as your girlfriend, don’t you.”

  “When I’m feeling lucky.”

  “There. You see? I’m tired of that. I’m going away to think about that. All of those things. The one conference is about work and the other one is about everything else.”

  “I don’t have any chain around your neck,” I said. “I don’t make you do anything you don’t want to do . . .”

  “You are bitter.”

  “I want you to be free,” I said. “I want you to be free and to choose to come back so I can have you in my life. I want you to choose that out of all the other choices you may have. But I don’t want you to come back and feel that you’ve missed your life and I don’t want you to come back because you feel sorry for me. I don’t like people who feel sorry for me or for themselves and if you ever start feeling that way, I probably won’t hang around. If you choose not to come back, I want you to make that choice with joy, because it’s what you want.”