He sat down on the soft kid leather couch, facing the cathedral windows, cleverly fitted into the A-frame design. They were from an island church forced to close when its congregation dwindled to twenty-four people. The ocean and the shore were framed by the big windows, a work of art no human hand could imitate.
But like all new homeowners, Parker had begun to see flaws. At the peak of the A-frame, where the joints should meet, they didn’t quite. It nagged at him, but he tried not to think about it. There was a more immediate concern.
The kitchen—dismally small. Hopelessly inadequate.
What would Guillaume think?
His self-satisfaction melted. Guillaume will hate it.
Parker stood up and stared out. Directly in front was the water, steel grey under a gloomy sky. To the east, the sea rock sat solidly just offshore, a hunk of the cape separated from the rest by the action of the waves and the weather. The rock grew smaller every year.
He looked at the strip of reddish sand and the dunes, thick with marram grass. Behind the dunes lay a pond, like The Shores in the shape of a tadpole, fat at the top, where tall grasses and bulrushes embraced it. A muskrat lived under the bridge that crossed “the run,” the tadpole’s tail. It threaded down to the shore and carved a comma across the beach, spilling fresh water into the salty Gulf.
Tucked in beside the pond was a pine cottage. On the other side was an old, grey cedar shingle building slumped into a high dune.
It came to him in an instant.
He threw on a jacket, and went down to the shore, lifting his collar against the raw April wind. The building was old, the roof and shingles worn. It had settled comfortably into its foundation but looked structurally sound.
He walked around it. An old cookhouse.
The idea delighted him: it would be old outside, ultra modern inside.
Perfect symmetry.
He wondered who owned it.
A high screech pierced the night like the cry of a giant blue jay. It woke Hy from a sound sleep—the first she’d had in days. It was only the wind tugging on the clothesline, a bad musician joining the chorus of the storm.
She turned over, clenched her eyes closed, and tried, furiously, to go back to sleep. The old house creaked in new places. Something—what?—was going tac, tac, tac against the roof. Gusts of wind hit the house and made the walls tremble. It pissed her off. She threw back the covers, got up and stumbled downstairs.
The phone rang. It was well after midnight. Who the..?
“Hi Dorothy.”
Ian. She could see his lights on Shipwreck Hill.
“The wind getting to you?”
She gritted her teeth as another blast shook the house.
“I hate it.”
“Well, Dorothy, you’re not going to blow away.”
She hated it when he called her Dorothy too. He’d phoned to tease her. He’d been doing more of that since last summer, when she was seeing that wildlife biologist, Stephen Wildman. They had an enjoyable August fling. Ian had sometimes gone silent when Stephen’s name came up. Once, she’d caught him staring at Stephen with a cold, unhappy look on his face. He’d been his most friendly—grinning, laughing, shaking hands—when Stephen left at the end of the summer.
Sometimes she thought that Ian had been jealous. Though she wasn’t sure if it was her relationship with Stephen that bothered him or just the man himself. Stephen was a research scientist with a full head of hair, Ian a balding former high school teacher with a passion for scientific toys. Maybe he just didn’t like having someone smarter than him around. Maybe he didn’t like someone taking up so much of her time. Maybe she’d imagined it all. When Ian had teased her about Stephen—there had been lots of references to “wild life,” “wild man” and biology of various kinds—it had seemed good-natured, part of an easy friendship they’d had for years.
“I’ve been up on the walk.” The widow’s walk was an ornate Victorian structure on the peak of Ian’s house. It gave him a panoramic view of the village, the Gulf waters and the long stretch of coast—west to the mouth of Big Bay and east beyond Vanishing Point.
The walk’s boards were worn by the pacing of worried wives, mothers, fathers and children. If a boat was late or lost at sea, it had been to this house that the villagers had traditionally come to peer out and pray, as if prayers would bring their loved ones back. Sometimes they did. The footprints and the fears had marked the house with a sombre history of lives lived, communal heritage, and a spiritual essence that Ian, an agnostic and a scientist, nonetheless could appreciate. It’s why he bought the place. Hy thought it was his saving grace.
“It was glorious,” he said. “The lightning was so bright I swear I saw as far as Charlottetown—and the thunder was straight from Thor’s hammer.”
Fine for him. He wasn’t in the path of the wind as she was, with nothing between her and the ocean, where it found its fury. The house shuddered—and she along with it.
“Listen.” She held the phone up to the ceiling. It sounded as if the roof were being pried off.
“That house has stood there for a hundred years. It’s not going anywhere tonight.” That’s what he always said.
“Don’t mock the gods.” That’s what she always said.
“What gods?”
“You brought them up. Thor’s hammer?”
Ian laughed. “The gods don’t have a damn thing to do with it.”
“I don’t believe in the gods any more than you do.” The Furies, she thought, maybe the Furies. “I do believe anything could happen.”
“Well, it’s not going to. The wind is a simple force of nature. This wind doesn’t have the force to do anything but scare you.”
“It scares me that it doesn’t take sides. It could blow Mother Teresa away and not think twice.”
“The wind doesn’t think. You’re not Mother Theresa. Neither is she anymore,” he said. “So I wouldn’t worry.”
He was so smug, so sure. What she really wanted was for him to come over and keep her company. At least offer.
She rang off and went back to bed. Her sleep was punctuated by the compost cart banging against the oil tank. The tarpaulin covering the woodpile had worked free and was slapping the back window. The wind pulled at the clothesline as it tore around the northeast corner of the house, sending the giant blue jay into a frenzy of shrill screaming.
Chapter Four
Parker had soon found out who owned the building he wanted. He’d left his card in Jared MacPherson’s mailbox. It had no door, and yawned up at the sky from a crooked stub of tree trunk. When Jared retrieved the card it was soaking wet. It read:
Hawthorne Parker
Aesthete
Jared read “aesthete” as “athlete.” He flipped the card over. On the back, in elegant handwriting, with a real fountain pen, streaked and smudged, it read: Come any morning after ten. The A-frame on the cape. Hawthorne Parker. The signature was a nest of scribbles.
The rich guy who bought The A. Jared had always wanted to see the inside of that house, but he didn’t go that day—he was out of beer and went to town.
He didn’t go the next day. He was too hung-over after a get-together with some buddies from Winterside, the main town on this end of The Island, so-called because it was where summer people went to spend their winters. It was where people like Jared went to find booze, drugs and women.
On the third day, Parker watched from the loft as Jared’s twenty-year-old black Ford truck rattled its way along the Shore Lane, down Wild Rose Lane and into the private driveway, where it leaked oil. Parker met Jared on the deck.
“Welcome,” he said. His eyes blinked shut and stayed shut just a beat too long.
Jared grunted.
Parker motioned him to take a seat. The day had come as a gift in April, deceiving people into thinking that perhaps spring
had arrived. The sun kissed the skin and warmed the bones, the sky burned brilliant blue around fat white marshmallow clouds and, down at the shore, lazy waves lapped up against the sand. From where he sat, Parker had a clear view of the old cookhouse, his next acquisition. Jared was staring at the v-shape around the house, carved out of the cape. It hadn’t been like that when he was here last. That was in November. He had come up to see if he could find some liquor, but the house was locked up tight and he found no way in.
“The building on the shore—” Parker gestured towards it. “That’s yours?”
Jared grunted. It seemed to be his entire vocabulary. He was chewing on a dirty thumbnail.
Parker averted his eyes. “You’re not using it?”
“Nope,” said Jared, tossing his long greasy hair. He reached into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He pulled out a smoke.
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
Jeez, thought Jared, we’re outside, for God’s sake. He pulled a lighter from his jeans pocket, stuck the cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He took a long haul, blew the smoke not quite into Parker’s face, and said:
“Oi’d rather oi did,”
Parker winced at the distorted sound.
“Do you have plans to use it, or would it be available for rental?”
“Moight be.”
Again the ugly vowel. “Might be?”
“At the roight proice.”
This boy’s speech was painful. “The right price—” Parker took care to enunciate particularly clearly, as if Jared might catch on. “Say, a thousand dollars?”
“Wha’, just a thousand? Like, on a regular basis?”
“On a regular basis, of course.”
“A thousand a month?”
“A week.”
“A week?”
“A week. I believe that’s not an uncommon amount to pay for a shorefront property.”
But not for this property.
“Yeah, roight. Not uncommon.” Except those places were usually furnished and all decked out with the stuff the tourists expected: propane BBQ’s on fancy decks, satellite TV, internet hook-up and sometimes pools. Maybe he could put that rent money toward sprucing the place up when this guy was through renting it. Finish the insides, put in a Jacuzzi. The idea died as quickly as it was born. Just thinking about it tired him. Let this guy rent it for a thousand if he wanted. It was a lot to pay for what it was, but what did he care?
Parker knew it was pricey but he wanted to be sure to secure the property, now that he’d set his mind on it.
“I will want a few modifications.”
“Now wait a minute. I ain’t gonna spring for that.”
“Of course, I’ll pay for everything.”
“And the rent—cash money?”
“Of course. A gentleman’s agreement.” Parker gave a critical look at what sat opposite him—dirty black T-shirt and jeans; long, greasy unkempt hair that he kept flipping back; filthy fingernails; nicotine stains on his fingers; socks and sneakers stained with red clay. Parker was glad he had not let Jared in the house. He was thinking about his cork floors.
“I’ll pay you a month in advance.”
Parker pulled a brown envelope out of his inside jacket pocket—Armani.
Jared had never seen a thousand dollar bill before. They didn’t even make them anymore. Parker counted out four of them. Jared stuffed the money in his shirt pocket before Parker could change his mind. He was going to go home, clean up and head into Winterside to look at that Hummer he’d seen at Eustace’s New to You car lot. Eustace was a cousin who would accept promises with the down payment and could be persuaded to register it in Jared’s dead father’s name until he got his license back. Then he’d grab that little blonde bitch at The Lazy Eh for a night of fun. After two weeks in jail, he could use a good hump.
Parker put the envelope back in his jacket.
“You will allow me to renovate as I wish?”
Jared grunted.
Chapter Five
Gus Mack had counted five trips by three different kitchen appliance trucks this morning alone—names she didn’t know. They’d been coming and going all week. The week before that it had been plumbers and carpenters and painters, none of them from here. No way to find out what was going on at the shore.
The southeast wind was howling and rain spitting on the picture window that looked out on the village crossroads. Gus was in her purple chair right next to it. For sixty years, she’d seen everything that went by that window. The most dramatic had been when her husband, Abel, came flying out of the General Store, propelled by the explosion of a propane tank. A pop machine had cleared the shop window out of the way for him. He landed, if not exactly on his feet, unharmed, smack in front of the building, or what was left of it. Abel never rebuilt. Gone was the place where the men would sit around the woodstove, smoking and engaging in manly talk—usually about the weather. It was always too dry, too wet, too hot or too cold for whatever needed doing in the fields or on the shore on any given day.
Like the Macks’, all the village houses had big windows aimed at the road. People liked to see what was going on. Summer residents preferred to look at the sea. The communities lived side-by-side but back-to-back, close geographically but far apart socially—except when it came to gossip.
“What’s his name?” Gus called out to Abel, when she heard him shuffle through the laundry room. No answer.
“That fella who came the first of Aprile.” Gus said “April,” with a long “i” sound, straight out of Chaucer. Undaunted by the lack of response, she continued: “Is it Harper? Carter?” The sound of an electric drill didn’t stop her. He must be fixing the back door. Now, what was the name?
“Parker,” she called out, suddenly remembering. The drilling stopped. The back door slammed shut. Fixed.
Parker, but not the Big Bay Parkers. No. This one is definitely from away. You can tell from all those trucks heading down the Shore Lane as if gas were water, thought Gus. The new fella at The A must be made of money. The A was what the locals called Parker’s house on the point. All the village houses had names; they often stuck well past their due dates. Hy’s house was still called Harper’s twenty years after he had lived there. It would only become McAllister’s after she was gone.
Gus shifted in the rocker-recliner. It had too much stuffing in it. That made it look comfortable, but it wasn’t. “But I’m keepin’ it,” she announced frequently. “I’ll sit in this chair ’til it kills me. They’ll have to carry me out in it.”
Gus picked up her quilt block—a pink lobster on a blue background. She wasn’t very interested in it. She was much more interested in what she saw next out her window. Jared MacPherson in a brand new truck. Where’d he get that—and him just out of jail?
Hy had hardly been out of the house all month. She had walked or cycled almost everywhere since the storm surge to conserve gas. She was terrified of the ferry, so it had become a challenge to see how long she could go on the tank of gas she’d bought a month ago. It was still nearly full. Her freezer and preserve shelves were well-stocked. She grew her own vegetables and the milk truck still delivered locally. She’d been getting Ian to pick up essentials on his frequent trips to town. It had become a running joke in the community that she’d still have the same tank of gas at Christmas. She thought she just might make it to Fall.
It felt like Fall already—like a cold and dismal day in November, with the worst kind of wind—a nor’easter. Every living thing was bent at a nearly forty-five-degree angle, except the strongest trees. Even they grew permanently in the direction the wind blew them, leaning inland and lopsided—showing foliage to the fields and roads, but their backsides to the ocean burned by the wind and bare of branches.
Hy’s love of The Shores had survived twenty years of harsh coastal weather. Her romantic notions about li
ving by the ocean had been blown away with the barbecue covers, the clothing, the roof shingles and gutters that had been ripped from the house and flung across the fields. Still, it felt like the only home she’d ever had. Her grandmother had been kind, but resented bringing up a child alone at her age. She’d provided a home, but it had never felt like one to Hy. She didn’t have a home. Even here, after twenty years, the villagers still considered Hy from away. Only Gus and Annabelle embraced her wholeheartedly.
“It’s blowin’ a gale,” said Gus now. The sky was grim, nightfall had come early, and Gus had phoned to see if Hy had power. The lights had been flickering off and on for two hours. They were back on now and Hy was watching the wind work away at a birdhouse nailed less than securely to a post.
Gus had also phoned to report her sighting of Jared. “I seen him in a fancy rig. Bran’ new truck,” she said. “Headin’ down to the shore.”
“His house has been lit up every night,” Hy volunteered, knowing what Gus would say next:
“My land, what’s he scared of an’ him a murderer an’ all?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly murder…”
A roof shingle blew past the front window.
“What do you call it then?” demanded Gus. “He’d been drinkin’ and smokin’ drugs before he got in his truck and hit that ol’ lady just crossin’ the road to get her mail.”
The old woman had died. In spite of his state of intoxication, and the fact that he was driving fast and his brakes weren’t good, Jared had gotten off easy. The woman had been wearing dark clothing at night. A reconstruction expert examined the site and concluded that with the curve in the road and the ice on the asphalt, even a sober driver with good brakes would have hit her. It was never proved that Jared had been drinking, because the cops didn’t get to The Shores until the next day. So Jared was charged with reckless driving, but not drinking and driving and not manslaughter. He should never have argued in court that the victim was on her last legs anyway. That did not go down well with the sixty-three-year-old female judge. She had doubled his sentence—from eight to sixteen days. Jared had whined that he never got any breaks.
Revenge of the Lobster Page 2
