First Light

by Philip R. Craig

  The lane turned and we left the cottage behind us and came to the beach. Fairchild Point was to the west. Reaching out from its tip was the underwater sandbar that the drowned fisherman had followed to the fatal rocks that lay thirty yards out in the sound. The beach curved east to other rocks lying at the foot of the embankment that formed that end of the shallow cove. Out across the sound I could see the Elizabeth Islands and Tarpaulin Cove, where I had anchored more than once while cruising in the Shirley J.

  There was a battered pickup truck parked in front of us, and fifty yards to our left a large man was reeling in his line and looking in our direction. His grizzled face wore a scowl. Nate Fairchild, Sarah’s son. He didn’t like me or anybody else that I knew of. I parked and pointed at Fairchild. “You see that man?”

  “Yes, Pa.”

  “Stay away from him. He doesn’t like people to get too close to him when he’s fishing. When you get out, go in the other direction to play.”

  “Is he one of those big people who don’t like children?” asked Diana, who was particularly perceptive today.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “I don’t like him, either, then.”

  Smart Diana. We got out and I looked at Fairchild and lifted a hand. He made no reply, but turned back to his line. Diana and Joshua went down the beach away from Fairchild. I got the first rod from the roof rack.

  The sun was bright, the air was warm, and the tide was just beginning to run west. It wasn’t the best time to wet a line in the cove. That happens at first light just before or after the changing of the tide. But when you fish, any time is better than no time.

  I tried all of our rods and several lures and never saw a sign of life in the sea. Off toward the point, Nate Fairchild wasn’t catching anything, either. I put the last rod back on the roof rack and called to the kids. They were wet and sandy, so I had them go back in the water to rinse off most of the sand, then wrapped them in beach towels and took them home.

  Zee was on the phone, so I put the kids into the outdoor shower, dried them again, and sent them into the house to get dressed. I hung their wet bathing suits on the line, and thought happy thoughts about that shower. An outdoor shower is one of the world’s best things. You never have to worry about steaming up the walls or getting sand on the floor, and there’s a fine feeling of freedom and airiness that you never get in an indoor shower. We used ours almost all year, forsaking it only when winter arrived in force.

  I looked at the watch I’d found in the South Beach surf. You should never pay more than nine dollars for a watch, and mine had cost me only the price of a new band. A bargain. The watch said it was after four o’clock.

  I had poured myself a Sam Adams and was up on the balcony drinking it when Zee, martini in hand, came up and sat beside me. She was sleek as a leopard, and her black hair gleamed. Joshua and Diana were down in the yard, looking up. The cats, Velcro and Oliver Underfoot, were in the garden doing cat things.

  “Can we come up, Pa?”

  “No, Josh. This is big-people time on the balcony.”

  It was the daily answer to his daily question. He tried another familiar one. “Can we build the tree house, Pa?”

  The big beech behind the house was an excellent place for a tree house.

  “Not today. Now go play. Your mother and I are having some private time.”

  Joshua and his sister went to look at the beech tree.

  “That was Brady on the phone,” said Zee. “Plans have changed. He’s getting here at six and having supper with us, but Sarah Fairchild wants him to stay with her. So after we eat, we’ll take him up there. I’m sorry he won’t be staying with us.”

  “Well, Brady’s been her lawyer for years. If she wants him to stay with her, I guess he should. She’s business. We’re just for fun.”

  Zee finished her martini and glanced at her watch. “Time to meet the boat. We’re having spag for supper. I’ve thawed out a batch of your sauce, so you can warm that up and make the garlic bread while I go pick up Brady.” She kissed me and went down the stairs.

  I looked out over the gardens toward Nantucket Sound and thought about Katherine Bannerman. The dark blue waters touched a pale evening sky, and there was a single sail out on the horizon. Maybe Katherine was on that boat. Maybe she was looking at that sky.

  Probably not.

  Beauty is truth and truth beauty, the poet said, but I couldn’t imagine much of either in the Bannerman case. I finished my beer and went down to the kitchen.

  Chapter Two

  Brady

  I walked out of my office in Copley Square in Boston at one in the afternoon on the second Friday in September, and five hours later I had left America behind and was lugging my duffel off the ferry and down the long ramp at the harbor in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, which locals like J. W. Jackson seem truly to believe is not America at all, but its own special world.

  I’d spent the forty-five-minute ride up on the ferry deck, sniffing the salty sea air and watching the low hazy-green mound of the island grow larger as we chugged across Vineyard Sound from Woods Hole. I scanned the water—I never tire of looking at water—hoping to spot a school of blitzing bluefish, or maybe a shark or a whale or a harbor seal. I did spot some gulls and terns squawking and diving a half mile or so off the port side, but the ferry, inconsiderately, did not alter its course so I could see what was going on.

  My mission on the Vineyard was business. Sarah Fairchild, one of my oldest and most beloved clients, had decided to sell off her Vineyard property. The Fairchild estate encompassed about two hundred prime seaside acres in West Tisbury, where Sarah’s old summer place was located. A golf course developer called the Isle of Dreams was vying with a nature preserve group, the Marshall Lea Foundation, for rights to the land, and my job was to check out the two parties, help Sarah decide what to do, and then make it happen.

  I had all the paperwork in my briefcase. I also brought my fly rods and waders and foul-weather gear. Sure, I’d do Sarah’s business. But my mind was on the fishing.

  J. W. Jackson and I had been planning to compete in the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby since the previous winter, me with my fly rod—J.W. calls it a “toy,” hoping to rile me, which he does—and him with his long-distance surf-casting gear.

  I had cast off the jetties at State Beach and into the Wasque rips with J.W. and his wife, Zee, a few times in summers past, and we sometimes caught a few stripers and bluefish. We’d never managed any keeper bass, but J.W. smoked the blues and converted some of them into pâté. As he liked to say: Delish!—especially as an accompaniment to afternoon martinis on the Jacksons’ second-floor balcony overlooking Zee’s vegetable garden and bird feeders, and in the distance, the salt pond where J.W. dug steamers and raked quahogs.

  But the Derby, he once explained to me, was to normal fishing what the Daytona 500 was to driving to Harry’s for your Sunday Globe. “Fishing in the Derby is not relaxing,” he said. “It’s competitive. The point is to win.”

  “I don’t care about winning,” I said.

  “Of course you do.”

  Okay. He was probably right.

  J.W. liked to get up before the sun and be on the beach just around the time when the eastern sky was turning from black to purple. I liked it then, too. There’s rarely any breeze at first light, and if the tide’s right, you can often see the swirls and flashes of feeding fish close enough to reach with a fly rod.

  In the summer, we usually had the whole beach to ourselves at first light.

  During the Derby in the fall, J.W. said, it’s different. These guys fish all night and all day. They don’t sleep. Reputations—not to mention prizes like cars and boats and money—are at stake.

  Nail a big striper, J.W. said, and you should be prepared for swarms of fishermen to materialize out of the dunes and crowd you from both sides.

  So it’s competitive. I could handle it.

  When I told Billy, my older son, that I was planning
to enter the Derby, he laughed. “You’ll wimp out, Pop. I know you. You’ve gotta get up early and stay out late to compete in the Derby. Oh, when you were younger you might’ve done it. But you’ve gotten lazy in your old age.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said to him. “I will fish every night.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Unless it’s raining, or the tide’s wrong, or you’ve had too many old-fashioneds, or you’re tired, or you meet some woman, or—”

  “Whaddya wanna bet, smart guy?”

  “Dinner at Redbones next time I’m home,” he said promptly. “I say you will crap out at least one night.”

  “And I say I won’t,” I said. “I’m looking forward to you buying me dinner for a change.”

  “I am totally confident,” Billy said.

  Two hungry men could gorge themselves on ribs and pulled pork and wash it down with a few beers at Redbones in Davis Square for under forty bucks. That was hardly the point.

  A bet with another man might be a matter of pride in accomplishment. A bet with my number-one son, who never passed up a chance to rag on me, was a matter of honor.

  So I would work all day and fish every night.

  I could do it. It would be fun.

  I wasn’t too old. No way.

  I spotted Zee, J.W.’s wife, before she saw me. She was scooched down beside her little Jeep Wrangler talking to a chocolate-colored Labrador retriever with a faded red bandanna around its neck. Zee’s black hair hung in a long braid down the middle of her back. She was wearing jeans and one of J.W.’s old plaid shirts with the tails flapping.

  When I dropped my duffel bag onto the pavement beside her, her head jerked up. “Oh, gee, Brady. I didn’t see you. You shouldn’t sneak up on a girl like that.” She gave the dog’s muzzle a final scratch, then stood up and gave me a hard hug and a fat smooch on the mouth.

  I stuffed my briefcase and rod cases in beside the duffel bag, then climbed in front, and ten minutes later Zee pulled into the dirt turnaround in front of their house.

  Joshua and Diana, the two Jackson kids, came scooting around the corner to greet their mother, then skidded to a stop when they saw me.

  “You remember Mr. Coyne,” Zee told them. “Say hello.”

  First Joshua, then Diana stepped forward, held out their hands, and said hello. I squatted down and shook hands with each of them.

  Then Zee took my hand and led me up to the balcony, where J.W. was slouched in a chair with his heels up on the railing and a martini glass resting on his belly. We shook hands, and he jerked his head at the pitcher and the glasses and the plate of crackers and pâté on the table beside him.

  I spread some pâté on a cracker and poured myself a drink.

  “Zee filled you in on the fishing, I imagine,” J.W. said.

  “Yep.” I took the chair beside him and propped my own heels up on the railing. I’d decided not to tell J.W. or Zee about my bet with Billy. If I failed, I didn’t want to lose face with anybody else. Billy would make it bad enough for me. “Derby starts tonight, eh?”

  “Midnight,” he said.

  “Who won the toss?”

  “Me. We’ll alternate nights.”

  “Different with kids, isn’t it?” I said.

  He grinned.

  J.W. didn’t ask about my business, and I didn’t ask about his. Such polite conversational gambits are okay for people who don’t know each other very well or have nothing more interesting to talk about.

  So J.W. and I discussed fishing and tree houses and baseball and Hemingway while we sipped our martinis and gazed over the tops of the trees toward the sea until Zee called us down for supper. Spaghetti with J.W.’s secret sauce, a fresh loaf of Portuguese bread, green salad from Zee’s garden, and a nice red wine.

  After he got the kids tucked in for the night, J.W. and I climbed into Zee’s Jeep and drove up-island to Sarah Fairchild’s place, where I’d be staying for the week.

  Even in the dark, the old Fairchild house looked vaguely ramshackle and run-down. It was a meandering place, originally a classic New England farmhouse with several fireplaces and a wraparound porch. It had been built shortly after the Civil War, and over the years, ells and wings and sheds had been added on to it until it connected with the sway-backed barn. Tufts of grass and weeds sprouted from the gravel turnaround in front, and a shutter flapped beside an upstairs window in the evening breeze. A few yellow lights glowed from the downstairs windows. Even so, the place looked dark and uninhabited.

  I unloaded my stuff from the back of the Jeep and thanked J.W. for the dinner and the ride. He said he’d drop by in the afternoon to get me signed up for the Derby so that the monster fish I was sure to catch would qualify me for the new car or the boat or one of the canned hams.

  I lugged my duffel and briefcase and rod cases up to the Fairchild front porch. I took a deep breath before I rang the bell. I hoped anybody but Nate would open the door.

  The man who opened the door was not Sarah’s ne’er-do-well son, Nate. This guy was somewhere in his twenties. He was younger than Nate, and trimmer than Nate, and less tanned and grizzled than Nate, and unlike Nate, who generally scowled, this man had a pleasant, boyish smile.

  But like Nate—and like his mother and his grandmother—he had the aristocratic Fairchild look. He was tall and fair, poised and rather handsome.

  He held the door wide for me. “Come on in,” he said. “You must be Mr. Coyne.”

  “I am indeed,” I said.

  I bent for my duffel bag, but he beat me to it.

  He lugged it into the hallway and left it on the floor. Then he turned and held out his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ve never actually met. I’m Patrick Fairchild.”

  Patrick, I knew, was Sarah Fairchild’s only grandchild, her daughter Eliza’s son from one of her early marriages. The first, I think it was. With Eliza, it was hard to keep track.

  That made Patrick the last of the Fairchilds. He had taken back the family name after his father committed suicide. Now Eliza had passed childbearing age, and Nate, her younger brother and Sarah’s only other child, had shown no inclination to continue the Fairchild line, at least not in any legitimate way. So that left Patrick.

  I shook Patrick’s hand and told him to call me Brady.

  “You must be beat,” he said. “What about a drink?”

  I shrugged. “Well—”

  At that moment, in a jangle of bracelets and a cloud of musky perfume, Eliza appeared from around the corner. “Of course he’ll have a drink.” She was holding a highball glass in one hand and a lighted cigarette in the other. She threw the arm with the glass on the end of it around my neck and aimed a kiss at my mouth. I got my face turned in the nick of time, and she nailed me somewhere near my ear.

  She chuckled. “Dear old Brady. Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  I patted Eliza’s shoulder and managed to slip out of her embrace. “I’m always glad to see you, Eliza,” I said.

  It was true. Eliza was easy to look at. She was tall and willowy and well preserved, a typical Fairchild, and she looked at least ten years younger than her age, which I knew was approaching fifty. Despite her golf and tennis and sailing and other outdoorsy activities, her skin was still baby-soft and, except for little crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiled, wrinkle-free. She wore her golden sun-streaked hair long, and she had it loosely tied back in a red silk scarf that matched her shorts.

  Eliza had long, tanned, athletic legs, a slender body, elegant hands, and a mouthful of even white teeth, and it wasn’t hard to understand why men had always found her attractive. Four marriages, one dead husband, and three divorces, I thought it was, though I might have missed one. She spent most of her time at Hilton Head, where she shared a town house with Patrick and competed in amateur golf and tennis tournaments. She and Patrick always spent the summer months on the Vineyard with Sarah, her mother. But usually they’d departed by Labor Day.

  I hadn’t expected her to be here now.<
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  She took my hand and led me into the living room. “What’ll it be?” she said. She held up her empty glass. “I’m drinking scotch, myself.”

  “Maybe a splash of bourbon, handful of ice cubes,” I said.

  She turned to the sideboard, then smiled at me over her shoulder. “It’s about time I found somebody to drink with me,” she said. “Patrick is such a poop.”

  Patrick had followed us into the living room. He stood there in the doorway, smiling uncertainly. “Grandmother will want to see Brady,” he said.

  “Of course,” said Eliza. “But Brady certainly needs a drink first.”

  I shrugged. “Actually, I would like to say hello to Sarah.”

  She poured our drinks, then handed a glass to me. “When did you see her last?”

  “Back in the winter sometime. I’ve talked to her on the phone several times since she came to the Vineyard for the summer, though.”

  “Try not to be shocked,” she said.

  “Shocked? What do you mean?”

  Eliza flopped on the sofa and lit another cigarette. “Just like her,” she said, “not to say anything.” She sipped her drink, then looked up at me. “I bet she hasn’t even mentioned her health.”

  “I always ask,” I said. “She always changes the subject.” I took the chair across from her. “What’s the matter?”

  Patrick came over and sat beside Eliza. She patted his leg. “Patrick has been such a good boy,” she said, “caring for his dear old granny, reading poetry to her, angling hard for his little piece of the Fairchild pie, refusing to have a filial cocktail with his mother.” She took a sip of scotch. “She’s got cancer, Brady.”

  “Oh, hell,” I said. “How bad?”

  She took a drag on her cigarette, then laid her head back on the sofa and blew a long plume of smoke at the ceiling. “Very bad. Couldn’t be worse.”

  “How long has she known?”

  “Since December. They gave her about a year. That was nine months ago. That’s why she’s so fired up to settle the matter of what’s left of the Fairchild estate. She doesn’t trust Nate and me.”