First Light

by Philip R. Craig

  “You can hardly blame her,” said Patrick.

  “At least I’ve given her a grandchild,” said Eliza. “All Nate does is fish and fight and sponge off his mother. Mother has been talking with several extremely unctuous men representing something called the Marshall Lea Foundation. They want her to deed the property over to them for some silly nature preserve for practically nothing. Mother is rather, um, vulnerable just now, and I’m quite fearful that she’ll do something foolish.”

  “‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’” murmured Patrick.

  Eliza snapped her head around and glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If she wants to give away her property,” Patrick said, “that’s her right.”

  Eliza smiled wickedly at him. “Yes, of course it is. And that would be the end of what’s left of the Fairchild family fortune, and then you and your uncle would have to get actual jobs. I don’t suppose you’ve considered that.”

  Patrick shrugged. “And thank God for alimony, eh, Mother?”

  She shook her head, then turned to me. “You have my mother’s power of attorney?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I do hope you intend to talk her out of this ridiculous nature preserve idea.”

  “I’ll advise her about her options,” I said, “and then she’ll do what she wants.” I drained my drink, put the glass on the coffee table, and started to push myself to my feet. “I’d like to see her.”

  “Of course you would,” she said. “But you’d like another drink, first, wouldn’t you?”

  “No, Eliza. One was plenty.” I stood up. “Where’s Sarah?”

  “We’ve set up a bed on the sunporch for her,” she said. “She doesn’t get around very well anymore. I suppose with autumn coming we’ll have to move her inside.” She got up and took my hand. “Come on, then. Patrick, darling, why don’t you take Brady’s stuff up to his room like a good boy.”

  “Certainly, Mother,” he said. He looked at me and rolled his eyes, then left the room.

  Eliza led me through the living room and pulled open the double doors that led onto the glassed-in sunporch.

  Sarah was slouched in a wheelchair. A blanket was spread over her legs, her hands were folded in her lap, and her chin rested on her chest. Against the wall, a muted television was showing an old black-and-white movie.

  Sarah Fairchild was in her middle eighties. For the twelve years I’d been her lawyer, she’d always looked the same—tall, angular, sharp-eyed, and altogether regal. She had a quick wit and a sharp nose for cant and deceit. As a young woman, Sarah had been a skeet-shooting champion and a mountain climber, and in the years since I’d known her, she’d managed what was left of the family fortune, donating generous amounts of it to homeless shelters and battered women’s shelters and other causes that I investigated and vetted for her. She lived in a modest condominium in Marblehead during the cold months and spent her summers on the Vineyard, as Fairchilds had been doing since the Industrial Revolution.

  Now, suddenly, Sarah had gotten old. Her white hair looked thin and dull, and her skin was papery, and I had to look hard to detect the faint rise and fall of her chest as she slept in her wheelchair.

  Eliza went over to her, touched her arm, and shook her gently. “Mother?” she said. “Mother, wake up now. Brady Coyne’s here to see you.”

  Sarah shuddered, then slowly lifted her head. She looked at me for a moment, blinked, and then smiled. “Brady?” she whispered. “How nice.”

  “Brady will be staying with us,” said Eliza. “Remember?”

  Sarah turned her head slowly and looked up at her daughter. “Of course I remember. I’m not dead yet.” She shook Eliza’s hand off her arm. “Leave us now. Brady and I need to talk.”

  “Mother,” said Eliza, “it’s nearly ten o’clock. Don’t you think—”

  “Shoo.” Sarah flapped the back of her hand at Eliza, then looked at me. “I do nothing but sleep these days.”

  Eliza bent and kissed Sarah’s cheek, then straightened up. “Have a nightcap with me when you’re done,” she said to me, and then she turned and left the room.

  “Shut those doors,” Sarah said to me. “I want to talk with you.”

  I went over, pushed the double doors shut, then pulled a wooden chair next to Sarah’s wheelchair. I took one of her hands in both of mine. “You haven’t been doing a very good job of keeping your lawyer informed,” I said.

  She smiled, and I saw the old twinkle flash briefly in her eyes. “It’s hardly relevant,” she said. “I’ll die soon, they say. A fairly predictable occurrence for somebody my age. Rather interesting, actually. It does tend to give one focus, make one more alert. I have enjoyed being down here on our blessed isle, watching the seasons change. The angle of the morning sun is quite lovely when it hits the tops of the dunes this time of year. Back in Marblehead, I never paid much attention to the sun.” She gave my hand a little squeeze. “I’ve got to decide what to do, and I’ve got to do it quickly.”

  “It’s pretty late,” I said. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

  “I don’t feel like anything should wait for tomorrow anymore,” she said. She was staring down at her lap, where her bony fingers lay laced quietly together. “I’d intended to do this my way, in my own time. Have you help me explore our options, make my decision, and then just do it. Alas, the word has somehow leaked out that the Fairchild estate is up for grabs, and there’s been a parade of men in suits dropping in and calling on the telephone and writing letters and sending prospectuses and generally trying to ingratiate themselves, as if I’d make a business decision on the basis of their manners.”

  “Which men in suits?” I said.

  She smiled. “Eliza is friendly with some golf people. Pleasant fellows, actually. They have taken the liberty of drawing up designs and plans for my approval. I suspect she’s sleeping with at least two of them.”

  “And what about the nature preserve idea?”

  “It’s rather appealing,” Sarah said. “The Marshall Lea Foundation would buy the property and deed it over to the town of West Tisbury with stipulations that they and I will agree to.”

  “The golf folks will pay you more, of course,” I said.

  “Oh, indeed, yes.”

  “You have other options, you know.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I can do nothing and let Nathan and Elizabeth fight about it until they kill each other while this house crumbles around them, and then poor ineffectual Patrick will be stuck with it, and soon thereafter, the town will take it all for taxes.” She looked up at me and smiled. “It’s a rather tempting scenario, actually. My children have squandered their lives, unless you count prizewinning bluefish and golf trophies productive living.”

  “We can also just put the place on the market,” I said. “There are plenty of people who’d buy it and care for it and live on it the way the Fairchilds have always done.”

  “Adam, I’m afraid, would turn over in his grave if I did that.” Adam Fairchild, Sarah’s husband, had died shortly before she retained me. He’d devoted his life to stupid investments and disastrous business schemes—many, but not all, of which Sarah had rescued him from. “No,” she said softly, “I owe it to the Fairchilds to keep our legacy alive. The Fairchilds deserve to be properly remembered and honored.”

  “The Fairchild Country Club?” I said.

  She smiled and shrugged her bony shoulders. “If it comes to that. Or the Fairchild Wildlife Sanctuary.”

  “How are you leaning?” I said.

  “Leaning?” She gave me a sad smile. “I am leaning over my grave, dear Brady, and I’m about to topple in. I would like to make it simple for all of us, you included. I want to liquidate everything—this”—she waved her hand around—“and Marblehead and whatever is left of my investments. When I die, I want you to deliver a check to Elizabeth and a check to Nathan and a check to Patrick and be done with it, neat and clean and tidy.”

  “The g
olf course or the nature preserve, then,” I said.

  “So it seems. Unless you have a brainstorm. I want it settled before you leave.”

  I nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Now don’t try to fool an old lady, Brady Coyne. I know you. You’re here to catch fish.”

  “That, too,” I said.

  I could hear the distant roll of the surf and the soughing of the breeze through the scrubby pines from my second-floor bedroom in the back of the Fairchild house. Salty sea air billowed the curtains, and yellow moonlight filtered in through the open screened windows. I expected to fall asleep instantly and stay that way. Sea air generally does that to me.

  Maybe it was the nightcap that Eliza had talked me into after she got Sarah tucked into her bed on the sunporch for the night, or maybe it was my visions of hooking a giant striper and winning the Derby, but for some reason I slept fitfully. When my eyes popped open in the darkness for the second or third time, I checked my watch. It was around three-thirty in the morning, the darkest hour.

  I figured I was awake for a while, so I got dressed, slipped downstairs, and went outside for a smoke.

  The Derby had been open since midnight—for three and a half hours. J.W., along with several hundred other competitors, was out there somewhere winging his Roberts plug impossibly long distances into the dark ocean. I wished I was with him.

  I went around to the back of the house, where the Fairchild land sloped away over a broad meadow down to their beach. I thought about the big bass and bluefish that were probably herding baitfish against the rocks there. They’d be swirling and flashing their tails and dorsal fins in the moonlight. I was half tempted to go back upstairs, collect my gear, and spend the rest of the night on the beach.

  But I didn’t. I had a week’s worth of nights to fish with J.W. and Zee, and I had an important bet with my son that I intended to win. What I needed to do this night was get some sleep.

  I’d just ground out my cigarette under my heel and turned to head back into the house when I heard an engine start and saw headlights in the turnaround out front. As I watched, a car pulled slowly out of the driveway and turned east on the dirt road. A late-night visitor slipping away after a quick visit to Eliza’s bed? Nate, heading off to the beach with his surf-casting rod to be there before the sun?

  None of my business. Both of Sarah’s children were grown-ups, regardless of how they acted.

  Eliza rapped on my door around nine the next morning. “Are you decent?” she called.

  “I’m always decent,” I answered primly.

  “Too bad,” she said. She opened the door and came in, bearing a mug of coffee. “There are altogether too many decent men in this world.” Eliza was wearing white shorts that set off her tanned legs nicely and a pale blue tank top that matched her eyes. Pink lipstick, just a hint of green eye shadow, dangly silver earrings.

  She looked quite fetching first thing in the morning, and I told her so.

  “I’m glad someone thinks so,” she said. She wished she could linger in my bedroom for more compliments, she said, but she was off to Farm Neck for a round of golf. She’d be back by midafternoon, in time for gin and tonics and flattery. She’d be hurt if I didn’t join her.

  I said I didn’t know what my plans were, but if I was here, a gin and tonic would suit me, and flattering her was not difficult.

  Patrick, she said, was still asleep, and she assumed Nate was in his room at the end of the wing near the barn, sleeping off his night of fishing. Sarah was on the sunporch. Patrick would be up soon to attend to her.

  I should make myself at home, Eliza said. Then she left.

  I drank my coffee sitting up in bed, took a shower, then went downstairs. When I peeked in on Sarah, she had an open book lying facedown on her lap, and her chin was slumped onto her chest the way I’d found her the previous night.

  So I gathered up my briefcase, a portable telephone, and another mug of coffee, and I took them out to the patio. I had to absorb all the information on the Marshall Lea Foundation and the Isle of Dreams Development Corporation that my secretary, Julie, had collected for me, and then I’d make a few phone calls and set up some meetings. I intended to be finished by midafternoon. I itched to do some fishing.

  It was a crystal-clear September morning on the Vineyard. A stiff breeze was kicking up whitecaps out in the sound, and gulls were wheeling around over the water like white scraps of windblown paper.

  The Fairchild property was an awfully pretty part of the island. There were rolling meadows, groves of scrub oak and pine, a couple of small freshwater ponds, and a long, curving stretch of beach. I could visualize the golf course they could build here. St. Andrews came to mind.

  I turned my attention to my briefcaseful of papers. Julie had dug up business histories and financial statements and résumés of key personnel and photocopies of newspaper and magazine articles, and from what I was able to gather, both the nature-preserve people and the golf-course people were legitimate, which would make my job a lot easier.

  After a couple of hours, Patrick summoned me for lunch, so I stuffed all the papers back into my briefcase and called it a day’s work.

  Patrick had made egg salad sandwiches and a jug of lemonade, and he and I ate with Sarah on the sun-porch. After we took our dishes inside, I filled Sarah in and told her that I expected to have some recommendations for her within a few days.

  She stared outside while I talked and didn’t say much. Once I caught her squeezing her fists in her lap. “Pain?” I said.

  She looked up at me and smiled weakly. “Nothing unbearable, honestly. A twinge now and then, that’s all.”

  “Do you have medication?”

  “Oh yes. A lovely nurse comes by every day to bathe me and check my vitals. She gives me shots and makes sure I have my pills handy. And don’t worry. I don’t have any foolish courage. I take the pills when I need them. For now, the shots and the pills do the job.”

  I couldn’t think of anything comforting to say, so I pushed myself to my feet. “Well,” I said, “with your permission, I think I’ll take my fly rod down to the beach and do some casting, get limbered up. J. W. Jackson’s picking me up a little later. I’m fishing in the Derby tonight, you know.”

  She smiled. “Good for you. I hope you beat Nate. Do give J.W. a kiss for me, will you?”

  “I will certainly not kiss J.W. But I’ll tell him you’d like to deliver one in person.”

  Half an hour later I was standing on the beach with my feet bare and my pants legs rolled up and the water lapping around my ankles, casting a Lefty’s Deceiver out beyond the place where the gentle waves lifted and spilled over. In the cove, there wasn’t much surf, and I could see where the bottom dropped away, within easy reach of a fly rod. I didn’t expect to catch anything under the bright afternoon sun, although it wouldn’t have surprised me if a few stripers were cruising along the edge of that drop-off. After the sun went down, it would be a prime spot.

  Even more prime was the rocky point that jutted out into the ocean at the left-hand end of the cove. Now, at low tide, the rocks had risen up out of the water, and all but those on the very tip of the point were surrounded by wet sand. When the tide rolled in, it would cover the rocks, and the waves would crash around them. Then the big stripers and bluefish would come in to gobble sand eels and baitfish and crabs and any other unfortunate prey they might find being dashed around in the swirling currents.

  So I cast rhythmically, working my way along the beach. Once or twice I thought I saw the shadow of a swimming fish, and it focused my attention. I was casting to one of those shadows—real or imagined, I wasn’t sure—when suddenly my line started moving sideways.

  My first reaction was to pull back on my line and lift my rod as I would do if I’d had a strike. I realized this was no fish at about the same instant I heard the man’s voice growl, “Who in hell are you?”

  I looked over my right shoulder. Nate Fairchild was standing about twenty ya
rds down the beach from me. He was cranking on his twelve-foot surf-casting outfit, and his lure had snagged my line.

  “Nate, dammit,” I said. “It’s me. Brady Coyne.”

  “Oh, yeah. Mama’s lawyer. Well, get your ass off my beach.” His lure had run down my line and snagged my fly. He reeled it up, then reached down with a knife and cut my fly off.

  Nate wore one of those fore-and-aft fishing caps with one bill over the back of his neck and another over his eyes, along with cutoff jeans and a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Pale curly hair grew thick on his legs and arms and poked out from under his cap, and in the shadow of his visor I could see that he wore dark sunglasses and had a bushy sun-bleached beard.

  “Gimme my fly,” I said.

  “Screw you, lawyer. Just get the hell offa my beach.”

  I reeled up my line, then went over to where he was standing. He stood there glowering at me. He was holding his long surf rod in both hands like a lance. I wondered if he intended to run me through. My slender fly rod was no match for his heavy weapon.

  “For Christ’s sake, Nate, grow up,” I said. “This beach belongs to your mother, not you. I have her permission to fish here, and I intend to do that.”

  He stepped close to me. “Yeah? Well, she’s up there dying in her wheelchair and I’m standing right here. So what’re you gonna do about that?”

  “I’m going to keep fishing. There’s plenty of room for both of us on this beach.”

  He pushed his face close to mine. “I don’t share my beach with nobody, never mind some goddam lawyer who wants to sell it off. So if you don’t—”

  At that moment I heard a shout. When I turned, I saw J.W. coming down the sandy path toward us.

  I was glad to see him.

  Chapter Three

  J.W.

  The Derby started at midnight, and I made my first cast about ten seconds later, laying my Robert’s Ranger out through the darkness toward the horizon I could not see. I was shoulder to shoulder with other angling hopefuls, each of us quite willing to catch a champion fish on the first day of the Derby. But, like everyone else on the beach, I caught only some smallish blues, the biggest of which I dutifully took to the morning weigh-in.