Sing It to Her Bones

by Marcia Talley

  I glared at Connie and didn’t care if anyone noticed. “I don’t really feel much like sailing, Dennis.”

  “What else is there to do? Sit around the house? Watch TV? Or”—he smiled at Connie—“I understand you’ve been helping Connie with her books.” Dennis was being exasperatingly reasonable.

  I looked down at my open-toed shoes. Before Memorial Day. Mother would have had a fit. “I’m not exactly dressed for sailing, either.”

  Connie looked at Dennis. “We’ll have to go home and change first.”

  I was half listening, still wondering what was eating Bill and David and their close-mouthed Wildcat pals. “I think those guys know more about Chip and Katie than they’re saying, don’t you, Dennis?”

  Dennis ignored this remark and turned his persuasive moss-green eyes on me. “Meet you at the marina around two?”

  I couldn’t think of a single good reason to refuse so, with the hope of coaxing more information out of him, I caved in. “Okay, around two.”

  Connie and I eventually found the Dunbars receiving condolences in the kitchen. I suspect Mrs. Dunbar had wandered in there to escape the crowd, only to become trapped in a corner next to the stove by a chain of sympathizers. When we finally worked our way to the front of the line, Mrs. Dunbar still wore the haunted look I had seen on her face at the Nichols farm, as if nobody were home behind the eyes.

  “We thank you so much for coming.” Mrs. Dunbar had said exactly the same thing to the last twelve people. Mr. Dunbar simply shook our hands and said nothing. I was relieved that they didn’t recognize my name.

  We had nearly escaped out the front door when Liz, appearing suddenly from the dining room, chirped, “Don’t forget to sign the book!” She scooped up a guest book from where it lay on the table in the hallway and thrust it and a ballpoint pen into Connie’s hands. Connie signed for both of us while I stood there tongue-tied, smiling stiffly at Katie’s older sister. Liz was acting more like a funeral consultant than a grieving sister, I thought.

  As we walked back to Connie’s car, I noticed the 1990 championship Wildcats heading off together in the opposite direction, sauntering up High Street toward the high school. Maybe they were planning to shoot a few baskets. As I watched, a car sped by close to the shoulder, and to avoid it, one of the men was forced to step sideways out of the friendly huddle. Suddenly I could see they were not alone. Angie was in front, between Chip and David, almost running in her struggle to keep up with her long-legged companions. I saw Angie grab Chip by the arm, as if to attract his full attention. He shook loose from her grip and kept walking. She followed, clearly angry. I could see her mouth working overtime. Not basketball then. Something very different must be on their agenda, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Angie and find out what.

  chapter

  8

  It was twenty minutes past two and Dennis’s Taurus was already parked in the shade next to the icehouse when Connie and I finally made it to the marina. It was my fault we were late. I spent ages looking for my jeans, the ones I had come close to ruining the day I discovered Katie’s body, until I remembered they were still in the dryer. Connie had dressed in a bathing suit and had thrown on over it the white shorts and striped top that made her look disgustingly like a twenty-year-old model for a mail-order catalog. Me? I pulled a Dive BVI T-shirt over my jeans. I wasn’t ready for swimsuits yet, even if the Chesapeake Bay had been warm enough for swimming in May, which since I was not a polar bear, in my opinion it wasn’t. I had nightmares of diving overboard and resurfacing only to discover that the little latex foam pad I used for a breast had come bobbing up to the surface like a discarded shoulder pad.

  Sea Song lay in slip number thirty-two at the end of a long wooden pier hinged every five feet or so and floating comfortably on sturdy pontoons. It undulated slightly as we walked, and with or without the wine I’d consumed, I reeled down it like a drunk. We found Dennis waiting in the cockpit, feet propped up on a small ice chest. He was dressed in a navy blue T-shirt tucked into khaki shorts and wore Dock-Siders with no socks. He removed his sunglasses and smiled at us, and I saw once more what Connie might have found so attractive about the man. One could easily be mesmerized by those Mel Gibson eyes! Dennis unlatched a section of the lifeline and helped me aboard while Connie fussed with something on the dock.

  Hal’s head popped out of the main hatch. “Hello, ladies.” He pointed to the cooler. “The drinks are on ice, and I picked up a half dozen submarine sandwiches at Ellie’s.”

  “Sounds good, Hal.” I was starving. Despite the elegant catering, I had got hardly anything to eat at the Dunbars’. Hal moved aside in the companion way, so I could step below and stow my jacket. While I wolfed down half a chicken sandwich, I noticed someone had opened up the hatches so that a fresh breeze flowed through the boat, chasing out the musty, mildewed odor of its having been shut up for weeks.

  I felt Sea Song tip slightly as Connie hopped aboard. “I see you’ve opened her up. Thanks, Hal.”

  “No problem.” He pointed to his head, where a maroon cap with the Calvert Marina logo embroidered on it in white was mashed down over his wiry hair. “That’s what you pay me for.”

  Connie laughed. “Enough of your BS, Hal! Just hand me the clipboard, will you?”

  Although Connie’s bookkeeping is a mess, her seafaring life is governed by checklists. This is the part I hate: when she grabs that damned clipboard of hers with the laminated checklist and a black grease pencil tied to it with a string, looks around at the crew, makes some sort of quick assessment, and assigns everyone a job. I’d much rather be pulling on lines and cranking things, but Connie must have decided it’d be too strenuous in my convalescent condition, so she asked me to turn on the water cocks. “And don’t forget that one there, Hannah. It’s for the water supply that cools the engine.”

  I lifted the floorboards near the companionway ladder. “Really, Connie!” I complained, my knuckles scraping on the fiberglass as I reached into the bilge and twisted the various levers until they were parallel with their respective hoses. “I don’t know why you bother. Craig never did. It’s not like the boat is going to sink or anything if you don’t turn them off each time you bring Sea Song in.”

  “Hoses can develop leaks, floors can be ruined, so humor me,” she said, then handed me the handle for the bilge pump.

  While I sat in the cockpit and worked my arm up and down as I listened to what little water there was in the bilge gurgle out a hole in the back of the boat, Hal and Dennis removed the lines that secured the stern to the dock and the spring lines at each side that kept the boat from crashing into the pilings when the tide in the Chesapeake rose and fell. The lines attached to the bow were still firmly tied. At a signal from Connie, Dennis untied the two remaining lines and flung them to Hal on the dock, who, in a matter of seconds, draped them neatly over the pilings before leaping nimbly back aboard. Connie flipped a few switches, turned the key, and started the engine, shifting smoothly into reverse. She backed Sea Song neatly out of the slip, then pointed her toward the mouth of the Truxton River.

  Hal took the opportunity to reach inside the cooler, root around in the frigid water, select and discard several brands of beer until he retrieved a Samuel Adams golden pilsner. He shook the water from his hand, then reached into his pocket for a bottle opener. He popped the cap, flipped it overboard, and took a long drink. “I sure appreciate this chance to get out on the water. My boat’s out of commission. Hull delaminations.”

  Dennis’s head swiveled in Hal’s direction, and a look I couldn’t read passed over his face. Whatever message he meant to convey was lost on Hal as he settled back against the seat cushions, picked absentmindedly at the label on the beer bottle with his thumbnail, and turned his full attention on me. “First noticed it after I got back from Puerto Rico.”

  Connie spun the steering wheel expertly to the left, straightened it, then eased the lever that controlled the accelerator slightly forward. Sea Song’s speedo
meter inched upward to three knots. “Hal practically lives on that boat, Hannah. You wouldn’t believe the places he’s sailed on her.”

  “Paul keeps promising to take me to the Virgin Islands.” Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as I thought about how easily lifelong dreams could be shattered. I turned my head away and looked out over the water.

  We were motoring past the point of land where the business end of Calvert Marina lay: Hal’s office, the ship’s store, a gas dock, a couple of sheds. Connie pointed to a huge, tentlike structure with something like streetcar rails leading into it from the water. “Pegasus is in there. He’s cut a hole in her to remove a large section of wet fiberglass. They’re shining heat lamps on her and letting her dry out for a few days before beginning the real work.”

  “When do you think she’ll be back in the water, Hal?” I asked.

  “About a month. Certainly in time for the Memorial Day regatta. Maybe you’d like to crew for me?”

  “Not if you’ve got your heart set on winning.”

  A smile exaggerated the creases in his suntanned cheeks, shaving years off his age. Something that I hoped was hunger fluttered in my stomach.

  At the No. 2 flashing green buoy that marks the entrance into the bay from the Truxton River, Connie nosed Sea Song toward Holly Point. “Hoist the main!” she shouted.

  Hal grabbed my hand and pulled me to the cabin top after him. We released the sail ties and raised the mainsail. He cranked the winch handle while I held the tail end of the line where it wound off the winch as the big sail rose slowly to the top of the mast. When the mainsail was fully raised, Hal took the line from me, wrapped it in a figure eight around a cleat, made a reverse loop, and pulled it tight. Connie adjusted the main sheet and pointed Sea Song into the bay. Meanwhile, Dennis cranked in the line that unfurled the jib sail.

  The wind caught both sails with an audible snap that caused Sea Song to surge forward. Connie turned the wheel and squinted up toward the billowing mainsail, adjusting her course until the bits of colored string that were attached to the sail, called telltales, began streaming straight back. Sea Song cut through the water, a craft perfectly balanced between the natural forces of wind and sea. Smiling in satisfaction, Connie shut off the engine.

  As I stepped back into the cockpit, I thought, This is the part about sailing I like the best. When the only sound you hear is the wind, the snapping of the sails, and the clean sloosh of water as it curls up, foaming and hissing, along the sides of the hull.

  Several hundred yards off Holly Point, Connie tacked toward the Eastern Shore, trimmed the sails in tight, and Sea Song heeled to starboard. The cooler slid sideways in the cockpit, reminding me I was thirsty. I reached inside for a Coke. “Connie, Dennis, what’s your pleasure?”

  While I dug around in the icy water, Dennis drained the remaining drops of beer from a bottle he had opened not five minutes before. I produced a can of Heineken and waved it in his direction; he eagerly made the trade. I watched him pop the top and made a quick calculation. Three glasses of wine at the reception, two beers already: It should turn out to be a relaxing day on the water for our friendly neighborhood policeman. Earlier he had stonewalled when I asked him, casually, about how it went in his interviews with the Wildcats. I decided to forget the direct approach and keep the beer coming in hopes it would loosen his tongue.

  Before long Dennis went below, to use the bathroom, I thought, until I heard him call, “Hey, Con! Where’d you put Craig’s old tackle box?”

  “It’s in the V berth, on the port side. The poles are on the shelf opposite.”

  In a few minutes two long fishing poles emerged from the main hatch, followed by Dennis’s arm, then the rest of his lanky body. The trailing arm held a gray plastic toolbox, which he placed on the floor of the cockpit before returning to his seat next to me. Hal had already relieved Dennis of the fishing poles and had set them into rod holders attached to the chrome-plated stanchions on the stern.

  Dennis lifted the tackle box to his lap and opened it, revealing a fascinating assortment of lures. I leaned over and selected an iridescent fish made out of a gooey plastic material that reminded me of the jelly shoes Emily made me buy for her when she was twelve, but it felt so creepy I put it right back. Plastic squids shared a compartment with wiggle jigs like big-eyed minnows in hula skirts, and in the next compartment lay something blue with flecks of gold still clipped to a cardboard card labeled “crippled crab.” “Yuck,” I said. In spite of all the decorative foliage, the one thing they all had in common was a nasty-looking hook hidden underneath somewhere.

  “Craig used to enjoy making these.” Dennis lifted out the top tray to reveal rolls of monofilament line, plastic boxes containing metal swivels, packages of wire leaders, feathers and bucktail “teasers,” paint, brushes and nylon thread, and miscellaneous hooks and lead sinkers. He held up a particularly large fishhook. “They call this a number nineteen Tony. There’s some smaller sixteen, seventeen, and eighteens in here, too.”

  I watched while Dennis selected a bright red “eel” fashioned of surgical rubber tubing and a large silver “spoon.” Looking not at all like an eating utensil, the spoon consisted of a six-inch fish-shaped piece of bright chrome with yellow tail feathers covering a wicked-looking hook. “Maybe we’ll catch some bluefish today. They say they’re running.” He attached a lure to the lines at the end of each pole, then swung the lures in turn out over the stern. I figured we could eat for weeks on any bluefish big enough to clamp its mouth around that spoon.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Hal asked.

  Dennis regarded him coolly. “Thanks. I think it’s under control.” Slowly he played out the fishing lines until the lures were trailing well behind the boat, held by lead sinkers at a depth of three or four feet under the surface of the water. At the leisurely speed we were sailing, they’d bob and weave, looking like tempting snacks to any hungry blues that might venture into the neighborhood.

  “What do you do now?” I asked.

  “We troll. We wait. And have another beer. How about it, Hannah?”

  I handed him a fresh Heineken. This was going to be easy.

  Dennis stretched his legs across the cockpit, leaned back against the seat cushions, and sipped his beer in contentment. Every once in a while in a quiet voice Connie would ask Hal, who was seated in the cockpit to her right, to make some adjustment to the sails. I had nearly mustered up enough nerve to ask Dennis a question about Chip when Connie inquired about Dennis’s father-in-law’s health. I listened to their conversation for a while, hoping to get a word in edgewise, but after a few minutes the topic shifted to his daughter Maggie’s current state of mind. I was annoyed at Connie for making me feel like an intruder, but I didn’t feel like horning in on their private tête-à-tête, so I excused myself and took a fresh Coke to the bow of the boat, where I lay down on the warm deck with my head resting against the bump of the forward hatch. I was nearly asleep, the sun full on my face, when everything went dark under my eyelids. I opened my eyes to find Hal sitting next to me. I was lying in his shadow.

  “I thought you might like a sandwich.” He passed me a sub, still wrapped in white paper with “veggie” penciled on the side in black grease pencil.

  I elbowed my way into a sitting position. “Thanks, Hal. Looks good.” We unwrapped our subs and ate in silence. I donated some limp lettuce and a surfeit of onions to the fish.

  “I was wondering, Hal. How do you know those guys on the basketball team so well? Not that you look all that old”—I smiled at him—“but they must be at least fifteen years younger than you.”

  “Sorry, Hannah. I thought Connie might have told you. Before Dad became too frail to run the day-to-day business of the marina, I was the high school basketball coach.”

  “Really? For how long?”

  “From the time I got out of the army until 1990. About ten years, I guess.” Hal took a sip of his beer and looked over my shoulder toward the Eastern Shore, still a b
lueish smudge on the horizon. “That last year was the best. We won the state championship.” He raised his bottle. “Here’s to the 1990 Wildcats!”

  “You must have hated to give it all up.”

  “Yes, but it was time to go. Move on. Quit while you’re ahead, my papa always said.”

  That didn’t make sense. A coach with a string of losing seasons might see the handwriting on the wall and hang up his Nikes, but with a championship season under his belt, Hal should have been able to name his price. Maybe there was a woman involved?

  “Have you ever married?” I asked.

  “Came close to it once. After Vietnam.” He looked at me and beamed. “Other than that, never met anyone I particularly wanted to marry.”

  He stared at me so long with that charismatic grin on his face that I began to feel uncomfortable. His hand reached out, touched, and lingered briefly over mine before closing over my empty Coke can. “Want another drink?”

  “No, thanks, Hal. Not just yet. But I’ll bet Dennis does.” Hal disappeared aft but returned almost immediately with another beer, before I, heart racing, had had time to fully recover from whatever it was that had just happened.

  As Hal stretched out on the deck close beside me, I searched through my database for some discouraging words. “Paul and I were married just out of college, in ’73.”

  “Lucky guy.”

  Maybe it was something in the way he said it or maybe it was the casual way he lay next to me, oozing testosterone and hops from every pore, that made me flash back to high school. I suddenly felt like the girl who prayed to God every night for a week that the sore spot on her nose wouldn’t erupt into a full-blown zit before Ron Belanger had the chance to ask her to the prom.