Vineyard Chill

by Philip R. Craig

“We’ve had some winters that got cold and snowy early and stayed that way until spring, but usually our snows melt before too long.”

  “The gulf stream?”

  “So they say. It usually keeps us warmer than the mainland in the winter and cooler in the summer.”

  “Paradise enow.”

  The purity of the snow made it easy to think so, covering, as it did, all signs of sin and woe.

  There weren’t many cars on the highway, but the road was clean thanks to the Highway Department guys who’d made good overtime money with their plows.

  We turned down Eleanor’s driveway and stopped in front of her garage. She came out of her house, pulling on her coat, and crossed to us. I introduced Clay and the two of them shook hands.

  She looked up at him, then down, then up again. “So you’re a friend of J.W.’s.”

  He smiled that smile. “For many a year.”

  “What brings you to our fair island?”

  “I came for a visit and I’m staying to work.”

  “My brother says he’s going to give you a job on that schooner of his. You a boatbuilder?”

  “I’ve built two or three. I like to work with wood.”

  She nodded. “Well, he’ll want things done right. He’s been building that boat for years, and he’s very picky.”

  “So am I.”

  “Are you, now? Good. Come on. I’ll show you the apartment. I turned on the heat and water last night. After that, you can take a look at my old Bronco, if you want.”

  She led us to a stairway to the second floor of the garage. “I even shoveled the snow off the stairs just to create a good impression.”

  “Works for me,” said Clay, following her up to the landing, where we kicked the snow off our boots before going inside. I’d never been there before. It was a comfortable place with all the amenities plus a porch on the back that looked out to the east. Between two barren trees, I could just see a slice of the dark waters of Nantucket Sound.

  “What the Realtors call an ocean view.” Eleanor grinned. “In the dead of winter, when all the leaves are gone, you can see a teeny bit of water. Jacks up the price.”

  “Location, location.” Clay nodded, looking around as he walked through the small rooms. “Well, this is just fine. The price you mentioned is right, too. You want me to sign a lease?”

  She waved a hand. “No. You’re a friend of J.W.’s and that’s good enough for me. Besides, if you do me wrong I’ll sue his ass for bringing you here.”

  He beamed. “An excellent idea. And if you do me wrong, I’ll sue his ass for the same reason. Consider yourself a landlady. Let’s take a look at that Bronco.”

  We went down and she threw open one of the garage doors. Inside was the elderly blue Ford four-door, showing wear around the edges but nothing serious.

  She waved at it and handed him the keys. “Take it for a spin. I’ll be in the house. When you get back, come inside and tell me what you’ve decided. The apartment’s yours whether or not you want the truck.”

  She walked away.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said to Clay.

  He checked the oil, then warmed up the truck while he familiarized himself with the dashboard. Then we backed out and drove up the driveway to the highway. We took a right and drove past the high school and turned left toward the airport. At the site of the Frisbee golf course, we turned and drove off the pavement, the four-wheel-drive traction moving us easily through the six inches of hardening snow on the parking area. Back on the highway, we drove to the Edgartown–West Tisbury road, took another left to Edgartown, where we wound through the narrow, snow-piled streets, then went back along Vineyard Haven Road to Eleanor’s house. The old Bronco chugged along smoothly.

  “I’ve driven worse cars than this clear across the country,” said Clay.

  We put the Bronco back in the garage and went to the house, where Eleanor waved us inside and our noses led us to the kitchen, floating on the scent of fresh-baked gingerbread. There we sat and had coffee and gingerbread while Clay’s eyes took in the kitchen, and Eleanor’s, more subtly, surveyed him.

  “Well, what do you think of Old Blue?” she asked after we’d done some chewing and swallowing.

  He nodded his head. “Seems just fine. Anything I should know that I don’t know?”

  “Uses a little oil. Nothing serious, but you should keep an eye on it.”

  He raised his coffee cup. “In that case, name your price.”

  She did and he nodded and the deal was made. He pulled out a checkbook and scribbled a check. “You’ll want to be sure this clears,” he said. “It’s for the truck and the first month’s rent. Should take a couple or three days. I’ll be back then.”

  “Move in any time you want,” she said. “This bounces, I’ll take it out of J.W.’s hide.”

  “The risks I have to run for my friends,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Eleanor, ignoring me. “I don’t have to be at work until noon, so why don’t you and I take the Bronco up to the registry right now and do the paperwork that transfers ownership. That way you’ll have wheels and I’ll have the truck off my back.”

  Clay nodded. “Good. Let’s do it.”

  “And you get a bonus,” said Eleanor. “A free garage for your Bronco. My ex took our other car when he left, so that garage stall is empty.”

  “Is this a wonderful country or what?” said Clay.

  We finished our coffee and gingerbread and left the house. I got into the Land Cruiser and headed for home. As I pulled out onto the highway, I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the blue Bronco coming out behind me. I envied its excellent heater and was happy for Clay, and then for some reason I thought of Nadine Gibson, the girl with the strawberry hair, and hoped that she was in some place warmer than this.

  7

  The January thaw arrived a week after Clay moved to his new quarters. The winter sun seemed warmer, the snow sank into itself, and little streams flowed down the shallow ditches beside our driveway. Within three days the only snow left was a bit here and there under the boughs of evergreen trees, and some of us were in our shirtsleeves.

  That week and afterward, Clay came by most evenings after supper, so we could tell yarns and exchange tales of the lives we’d led since he and I had last spent time together. The house seemed warmed by his presence, so when his visits began to slow, we felt his absence before we lapsed back into our traditional, comfortable, all–Jackson family evenings. We wondered for a while what was keeping him away, but at the hospital, one of the island’s major gossip centers, the explanation was soon being bruited: Clay and Eleanor Araujo had been seen together in public places.

  Zee brought home the news. She, like many women I know when word of a romance reaches their ears, was fascinated and enthusiastic about the prospects for a serious relationship. I was more cautious.

  “She’s on the rebound and he’s been married at least three times,” I said. “I don’t think you should get your hopes up.”

  “Piff!” she said. “You and I were both married before and look how great things have worked out for us!”

  I looked at my fingernails. “Yeah, but most women aren’t as lucky as you were.”

  She reached up and grabbed my ears and gave them a small yank while she stood on her tiptoes and stuck her nose up toward mine. “You’re the lucky one, meat!”

  I quieted her with a kiss. “The point is,” I said, “that she’s just divorced and he’s never been able to resist a woman.”

  “She’s good-looking and she’s smart, and so is he. Her ex, Mike, is such a bore that I never understood what she saw in him. Clay must seem like a ray of sunshine. Someone who can actually hold an adult conversation. No wonder they like being together.”

  “Having talks in restaurants isn’t the same as being married.”

  “They’re not just having talks, they’re dancing and going to the movies.”

  “You and I go to the movies. You and I dance
, as long as I don’t have to move my feet.”

  “You’re making my point,” said Zee. “They’re going places together and they’re happy. And Ted Overhill approves. He thinks Clay is terrific.”

  True enough. Ted had kept an eagle eye on Clay’s work on the schooner and had soon realized that Clay was a master craftsman. He had been flawless using Ted’s tools, but seemed to get even better after his own had arrived from the West Coast. When Ted heard that his sister and Clay had started socializing, he’d been very pleased.

  “She needs a good man in her life for a change,” Ted said to me a couple of weeks after the hospital gossip had reached my ears. “Mike is a nice enough guy, but a little too short of gray cells to keep her interested. I understand that the girl he’s going with now is so dumb she thinks he’s smart, so they’re both happy. More power to them, but Clay can give Eleanor a better life than Mike could even imagine.”

  Who was I to roil the waters of romance? “Sounds good,” I said.

  We’d had a streak of harder-than-average winters, so I was pleased when this one seemed to be a fairly normal one. We got some small snows in February, but they melted fast so that we had a mostly open winter, which was nice for the grown-ups but not so nice for the kids, who didn’t get to do much sledding or skating.

  I kept to my usual winter jobs, tending to houses I’d been hired to open in the spring and close in the fall, doing some scalloping while there were still some around and the price made it worthwhile, and occasionally driving Ted Overhill’s second snowplow.

  March arrived, bringing the promise of spring but not the reality. It was Zee’s least favorite month because of the false hopes it raised, and she often said that if we ever got enough money to travel somewhere, we weren’t going to do it in February because then we’d come back in March; instead, we’d do it in March so we could come back in April, when winter was actually gone even though it might still pretend to reassert itself.

  On a bitterly cold day, after checking several houses, I stopped to warm up in the Dock Street Coffee Shop in Edgartown and was surprised to find Eleanor sipping coffee with her brother. I sat down beside them at the counter, accepted a cup of coffee from the waitress, and said, “What are you two doing here? I thought you were both gainfully employed, making America great by earning honest dollars so you can pay your taxes.”

  “Even normal people get some time off,” said Eleanor.

  “What’s new with the Steamship Authority?”

  “Well, we brought over a yellow Mercedes convertible from California,” she said. “That’s pretty unusual for this time of year.”

  “Top up or down?”

  “Definitely up.”

  “Some movie star looking to escape his or her fans?”

  “No. Two guys wearing summer clothes.”

  “California clothes?”

  “Not New England clothes, for sure. If they plan to stick around, they’ll have to get themselves some heavier duds or they’re going to freeze their bippies.”

  “There are worse things than frozen Californians.” I looked at Ted. “How’s the wing and how’s the boatbuilding?”

  He waved his bad arm at me. “Cast is off. Almost as good as new. I can do some of the work myself now, so between me and Clay, things’ll go even faster. Boat’ll be ready to launch in June.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we’ll do some shakedown cruises, and in the fall we’ll head for the Caribbean.”

  “Who are we?”

  “Why, me and Clay and Eleanor. We’ve been talking about it. I want to get some blue water under me while I’m still young enough to enjoy it, and Clay and Eleanor here are ready to go with me. We’ll winter down south and then decide what to do next.”

  Many a friendship has broken up after the friends spend time on a sailboat, but I didn’t say that. What I said was, “You’ll have the tall ship. All you’ll need is a star to steer her by.”

  “I don’t need a star. I’ll have global positioning.”

  “A GPS isn’t as romantic as a sextant.”

  “We won’t need a sextant for romance,” said Ted. He glanced at Eleanor, who actually blushed.

  “Well, it sounds like a plan,” I said. My own blue-water sailing days were long since over, but I still remembered the voyages with Clay down the coast and out to the Bahamas. Nowadays, though, I was quite satisfied to sail our eighteen-foot Herreshoff America catboat in local waters.

  Someone left the café, and before the door closed behind him, a wave of chilly air wafted past us. “Not a good time to be driving a convertible,” I said.

  “Spring is coming,” said Eleanor optimistically. “You’ll wish you had a convertible when it gets here.” Maybe love was affecting her brain.

  “Could be,” I said. “Be nice for the ospreys if they had some good weather when they come back.”

  March was usually when we saw the first of the ospreys nesting after their long flights north from their winter quarters in Central America and points farther south. They had once almost been extinct on the island but with the help of conservationists, who erected many tall poles with crossbeams to entice the few remaining birds to nest and reproduce, they were now abundant once more and generally loved, except by the rare old-timer who blamed them for catching all the fish he often no longer could catch but remembered as being abundant in earlier, osprey-less days.

  “Danged birds! They should shoot them all!”

  It was a minority sentiment. Personally, I loved ospreys and blamed whatever party was in power in Washington for my failures to land fish.

  Only days after I’d chatted with Ted and Eleanor, the weather took a New England twist and suddenly summer seemed to arrive. The wind sank to nearly nothing, the sun was bright, temperatures soared; people appeared in T-shirts and even shorts; gardeners cleaned vegetable and flower beds and planted their peas; fishermen, still in waders but no longer wearing jackets, contentedly threw their lines into the empty waters even though they knew the blues wouldn’t be arriving for two more months.

  It was a most unusual experience for us all, and when I stopped by the Fireside for an early afternoon beer, I found Bonzo with mikes and recorder in his backpack, preparing to go forth to capture birdsong along the edges of a meadow deep within a favorite forest.

  “Say, J.W.,” he said, his face aglow in anticipation, his innocent eyes wide, “you want to come with me? I know a good place where there’s lots of birds. They won’t be nesting till May or June, but there’s some out there right now.”

  I was tempted, but had promises to keep. “Another time, Bonzo. I’ve got to go home and get the garden ready. If you get some good sounds, though, I’d like to hear them. You can tell me which birds are making which sounds. I’m not very good at that.”

  “Okay, J.W. I been working all morning, but now I got a whole afternoon off and I got to get going so I don’t waste my chance. We don’t get much weather like this in March, you know.”

  “I know.”

  He went out, all elbows and knees and happiness, and I wondered, not for the first time, if he was really worse off for having taken the bad acid that changed him from a promising young man into an eternal child. His life was simple, his emotions fresh and innocent, and his innate goodness was never altered by the random evils of life. He remembered the good things and, for the most part, forgot the bad. He was like the blinded angel who, when asked why he’d saved the man who’d put out his eyes, replied, “Angels have no memories.”

  Good old Bonzo.

  The next morning, just after the kids had left for school, I got a call from his mother, a schoolteacher who had only minutes before she had to go to work. Bonzo was her heart’s all.

  “My son found something. I want you to see it and tell us what to do with it. I have to leave for work, but can you come by the house? He’ll be here waiting, and he’ll show you what he found.”

  There was a strained quality in her voice, the sort produced
by worry.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll come right up. Are you both all right?”

  “Yes, yes. We’re both fine. But do come and look at this nest. It disturbs me and it’s made Bonzo unhappy. Let me know what you think we should do.”

  Nest?

  “I’ll be right there,” I said.

  Zee paused on her way out the door. “Who was that?”

  I told her what I’d heard.

  “Nest?” asked Zee. “Are you sure you heard right?”

  “I’ll soon know,” I said, finishing my coffee.

  I got into a light jacket and followed her in the Land Cruiser as she drove up our long driveway and headed for the hospital. At the intersection of County Road and Wing Road we parted ways, as she drove on toward the hospital and I turned to the right and drove to Bonzo’s small, neatly kept house.

  Bonzo met me at the door. “Gee, J.W., I’m glad to see you. My mom and me aren’t sure what to do, but you’re my friend and you’ll know.”

  The house was as neat within as without. The furniture was old and comfortable and there were doilies on the end tables. Knickknacks—souvenirs of travels and memorable events—were the principal decorations. On the small piano in the corner of the sitting room was a photo of proud parents and their little boy: Bonzo’s family in the happiness of youth, before the smiling wife became first a widow and then the mother of an eternal child.

  “What is it that you found, Bonzo?”

  “A robin’s nest. You know how I was going out yesterday to see if I could get some songs? Well, I went up there in the woods where I like to go. There’s a meadow there and an old foundation. I think it must have been a farm once. You know the place I mean?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  He seemed a bit uneasy. “I don’t remember if I ever took you there, but I go there sometimes because the birds sing there and I can get their music on my tape.” He looked at me with his huge, half-empty eyes. “Yesterday there wasn’t any singing, but I found this nest on the ground. I think it must have been blowed down by the wind. I got it in my room. Come on.”