Cape Cod Noir (Akashic Noir)

by David L. Ulin

  The world is full of people like us. Floating out here like these half-sunk islands covered in shit. We’re drifting through your city, your town, cutting across your backyard, walking up your fire escape, sliding a slim jim between your car window and door, slipping into your leather bucket seats that smell like money—your money. We’re wiring your ignition, busting your satellite radio, rifling through your shit, tossing out manuals and hand sanitizer, tissues, registration, and pens, until we find that emergency envelope full of freshly printed twenties. We coast along your streets, caught up in the current of something swirling inside us, riding swells of blacktop anger with the wind at our backs. We don’t really want your car, your daughter, your jewelry, your things. Just like with you, that shit helps us forget why it can hurt to be alive, but only for a little while.

  We snuck away, DeShawn and me, leaving Tiny to be lectured by Cunningham about “crossing the treacherous waters,” “a new day dawning,” and “making the journey called Second Chance.” Somewhere behind us on that dark path, we could hear Tiny say he wanted to be different, but he just didn’t know how. He just didn’t know how, he repeated again and again, the sound of his voice echoing in the wind.

  Later that night, we could hear Tiny crying himself to sleep, rocking back and forth. It was like we were all at sea, rolling through the waves of regret crashing around inside him.

  “Feckin’ A,” Freddie said. “Feckin’ knock it off, you pansy.” Freddie had calmed down since earlier. At dinner that night he was so cool it was spooky, like Stubby and Da Cunha had worked him up something good.

  “Shut up,” DeShawn said. “I’m sick of you and your freakass shit.”

  “Yo, homes,” Freddie said. “I didn’t mean nuthin’ by it. You and me, we’re cool, a’ight?”

  “No,” DeShawn answered. “We ain’t never been cool.”

  We had all been pretending to be asleep, just waiting for Tiny to knock it off, which he did, eventually. Then the house slowly quieted down as the other guys stopped tossing and turning and dozed off for real. But after all of Tiny’s tears, that silence kept me awake.

  I stared out the window and watched the moon rise higher like a giant eyeball staring out over the hill where the leper cemetery was. In the silence, I could tell someone else was awake and knew I was up too. And he—or it—was just waiting for that moment when I would fall asleep. I lay as still as possible and listened to the waves against our island rock. It was like we were part of some cycle of nature, meant to crash up against things forever.

  Eventually, I fell asleep.

  In the morning, I could hear Cunningham racing down the stairs. Tiny screaming. Voices coming in from outside. DeShawn and me flew out of bed at the same time, put on our jeans and boots, and ran downstairs. Ryan, Kevin, and Bobby came stumbling out of bed behind us.

  Opening the door, I heard it. Like so many little creatures, Pukwudgies maybe, sobbing or laughing—I couldn’t tell which—in the wind. I looked around for them, but I didn’t see anything. DeShawn pointed to the chicken coop.

  Cunningham, Da Cunha, and Stubby just stood and stared. Tiny was on his knees, inside the coop. No one was saying a word.

  The chickens, which were usually running all over the place by the morning, crowing and cock-a-doodle-dooing, were trying to stand on their little chicken legs, but as soon as they got halfway up, they fell over. Someone or something had come in the middle of the night and broken all their legs, just snapped them like twigs. The chickens kept trying to stand, flopping over, and crying out. Lying there, dying, but wanting to live.

  At least twenty pairs of beady little eyes looked up at us for help, looked at us for nothing cause there was nothing we could do but put them out of their misery.

  Tiny was running his fingers through the dirt, tears streaming down his face. Even Bobby looked like someone had just punched him in the gut.

  Freddie was the last person to come out of the house. He strolled up to the chicken yard and didn’t even try not to laugh.

  Tiny picked up one of the littlest birds. I couldn’t tell if it was the same chicken Bobby had hypnotized. They had all grown some in the past couple of weeks and most of them had looked the same to me anyway. But Tiny held that chicken close to him and rocked it like it was a baby he was going to do everything in his power to try and save.

  Sometimes I wish I could have cried like Tiny did. After Chad and me hit that car, I didn’t even realize there were tears streaming down my cheeks. There were sirens and lights. Cops and paramedics sawing through car doors with their Jaws of Life.

  The last thing I remember was Chad sitting there, patting the dashboard of the Mustang and saying, “Guess we’re gonna have to take this one out and shoot it.”

  The next day we all watched the fog swallow Second Chance whole. Freddie was onboard, being shipped out to “Plymouth Rock”—Plymouth County Correctional Facility, as it reads on the books, where all the child murderers go.

  Tiny was different after that. I guess DeShawn and me changed too. We helped Tiny dig a grave and bury all the chickens. Cunningham showed us some books in the school library where we read up on Indian funerary mounds. We gathered up some rocks and soil and covered the birds’ grave the Wampanoag way.

  Tiny, DeShawn, and me never talked about the chickens or how we became friends, if that’s what we really were. We didn’t talk about much. But we did our chores or whatever, and never said anything, which was like saying a lot because it wasn’t like being with someone you can talk to but don’t. It was pretty much all right.

  ARDENT

  BY DANA CAMERON

  Eastham

  Having reached a despairing state, Anna Hoyt, as a last resort, found herself in church.

  Her legs betrayed her, and she sat down heavily, the roll of winter seas having taught her a different way of walking in the weeks during the passage from London. At least the salt air in the meetinghouse was mingled with fresh, without the closeness of shipboard life. The hard plank seat of the pew was welcome because it did not move, the silence of the church a blessing after the unceasing roar of wind and waves.

  She was no more than hours away by sail from Boston across Massachusetts Bay, in the town of Eastham. She longed to see her tavern, the Queen’s Arms, and had sacrificed much to preserve her livelihood there. Her trip to London had opened her eyes to the restrictions of rank and sex, the power of learning, and the astonishing ease with which men could be manipulated, even to murder. And while she knew in her heart she belonged in Boston, she also knew that her former life pouring beer for sailors and fishermen was impossible. She had money now, and a glimpse of the wider world that fed a kind of ambition, but for what, she did not know. The question had plagued her over the weeks of travel: if she could not be what she had been, and was not allowed to be what she might want, what would she do?

  Once, she’d actually climbed the stairs from her quarters on Mr. Oliver Browne’s ship Indomitable and gone to the railing, looking at the waves: angry, white-capped slate. She hesitated, then would not jump, for anger at those who’d placed her in this position: the men who conspired for her property, the men who would use her quick wit for themselves, the laws that constrained her as a woman.

  The welcome rage sustained her.

  Just before dawn on the last day, within sight of land, she observed an unholy light. Beautiful tongues of orange and pink and green stretched out into the sky, and Anna realized she was watching a building burn.

  “Someone’s lost money tonight,” said her traveling companion, Mr. Adam Seaver. Then: “We must stop here, to attend an errand. They’ll put us ashore.”

  No doubt it was on behalf of their mutual benefactor and employer, Mr. Browne. Still answerless, Anna was neither relieved nor angered by the delay; she merely nodded.

  But the Sunday morning bustle at their inn reminded her of her own establishment. She glanced at the exquisitely dressed manikin on her table, but Dolly had no answers for her. And when sh
e turned to her well-worn Bible for comfort and instruction, her eyes blurred so she could not read. Denied this, she pulled on her blue velvet cloak and left.

  The village was set against sandy dunes on a sheltered harbor, a spit of land that curled protectively against the bay. Outside the inn, she saw a crowd standing around the burnt ruin of the building she’d seen from the ship. No more fiery beauty here: heavy timbers burned to charcoal jutted out from the collapsed wreckage against the clear sky, like so many black marks on a blotter. Turning away from the gathered townspeople, Anna saw a man in a towering fury shaking a boy half his size. The child’s thin arms and legs practically rattled with the movement, and tears streamed down his filthy face.

  “You little shit of a liar!” Flecks of spittle flew from the man’s lips. “First you say you saw a man, then a girl. Which is it?”

  “Both!”

  The man dropped the boy, and kicked him until his anger was dissipated and the boy stopped moving.

  Anna shook her head. She walked until she found the meetinghouse by the creek.

  She did not pray. She didn’t have it in her to ask for favor. The church was only another container for her emptiness. She went through the rituals absently, without solace.

  But there was information to be had. The vehemence of the sermon, drawn from Leviticus, about the land turning to whoredom, alerted Anna. The red and sweating face of the preacher, and his steadfast refusal to look anywhere near the lovely lady in the third row, confirmed it. The preacher would have chosen a milder topic if he hadn’t been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

  Two women in front of Anna barely concealed their amusement. “Come Monday,” one whispered to the other, “she’ll be right back at it. Where else would our betters get their release?”

  They ceased only when the warden raised his eyebrows. Anna added this observation to her present perplexity. The lady who seemed to be the object of the sermon hadn’t asked permission to ply her trade. She was in church, nodding with the best of them, free to ignore the implications. She was certainly doing well for herself, in one of the better pews, modestly but well dressed.

  She makes her way well enough, asking no leave of anyone, Anna thought. If it is my will I serve, what do I want?

  As the preacher delved into the exact nature of the hellfire that awaited sinners, Anna stood, ready to leave. There was nothing for her here, only more men with more words to shape the world for themselves. She had to leave or go mad.

  Something stopped her, and she almost rebelled against it, but pausing showed her the reason. Out the window, she saw him peering in furtively. Blond hair, more ash-gray now, but the same face. The same cant to the shoulders, an old injury never healed, but so recognizable, so dear.

  Anna sat, smoothing out her gown, as if it was all she’d meant to do. She put her head down on clasped hands.

  Her eyes closed, she had but one thought, as urgent as prayer, over and over: Look at me.

  She tilted her head, still on her hands, and opened her eyes.

  He saw her. The intake of breath, the widening eyes revealed his recognition, and confirmed her suspicion.

  Not dead. Not lost.

  Restored to her.

  Emotions in a flood of memories, good and sweet and sad. Suddenly, Anna had a reason to keep searching for her answers.

  After the final hymn, she got up and walked away from the congregation, moving in the direction he’d indicated. She saw him vanish into a slender stand of trees by the churchyard, beyond sight of the parishioners. Slowing by the gravestones to see whether she was observed, she followed him through the late winter snow.

  He was hunkered down against a tree, waiting for her. His face, like his strong hands, was older, and browned with the sun. Once they had been thought a match for each other: her blond hair fine and light, his thick and unruly. Good features on both faces, hers more precisely delicate, his kept from fae beauty by the scars of his work and weathering, but well formed, nonetheless.

  Anna stepped forward. He rose and clasped her shoulders, peering into her face.

  “It is you.”

  She nodded. “It is.”

  “I thought it was some dream, seeing you.”

  “I thought you were a thousand miles away, Bram Munroe, making your fortune. How do you come to be so close to home?”

  “Ill fortune at every turn, Anna, kept me tethered here, and betrayals kept me from returning to Boston. I would not let my bad luck follow me to you.”

  They embraced. It started to rain, with heavy, cold drops, and she shivered. They both laughed.

  “I’m a respectable widow now. There’s no shame in being seen together near a warm fire.” This much freedom she had, at least. The gift of a kingdom.

  He nodded, but didn’t move. “I’d not tarnish our meeting—a public disagreement with my former employer. A trifle, but seeing him would sour the moment.”

  “But … you are well?”

  “The better for seeing you, Anna.”

  A shadow moving beyond the trees. Seaver, walking to the inn.

  Anna collected herself; he could not have seen them. “I cannot stay. Tell me where to meet you, and I’ll find you later.”

  “There is a shack on the dunes of the strand. Meet me there, late tonight.” He pressed her hand to his lips. “Oh, Anna.”

  “Tonight.”

  For the first time in many weeks, Anna smiled.

  Here, then, was what she’d been waiting for, the reason she’d continued when all seemed lost. A fresh start with an old love, plenty of money, and new ideas. No burden of her husband Thomas Hoyt, as dead a weight alive as he was deceased. The Queen was no longer a coffin confining her; Bram and her fortune made space enough.

  These happy thoughts fled as she entered the inn. Adam Seaver was sprawled out before the large fire, boots off, a pewter mug, large enough to stave in a man’s head, on the table by his side. It was a cold day and there was room enough around the fire for the other patrons, but they found places away from Seaver. Perhaps they knew him, perhaps not, Anna thought. Knowing Adam Seaver was not necessary, if one had eyes to see and a brain to reason.

  He seemed to sense her arrival, for he opened his eyes to slits, then sat up. “Mistress Hoyt.”

  There was no avoiding him now. On the ship, she’d kept to herself, pleading illness, and he had been satisfied with that.

  “Mr. Seaver.”

  “You look very well.” He stretched, and looked more closely. “Sermons agree with you.”

  He couldn’t have seen us, she thought. She looked straight at him. “I’m glad to be off the ship.”

  “You’ll dine with me tomorrow. We have business.”

  “We have no business. Mr. Browne asked for you to stop.”

  Seaver said nothing at this bald rebellion. Before, when he had spoken to Anna, it had been as if Mr. Browne himself had done so. He shrugged. “I would consider it a kindness, then, if you would.”

  There were no manners from Adam Seaver that did not conceal worse things. Anna understood she’d gone too far, too quickly. “Of course.”

  “I stop to collect on a debt, but the gentleman we dine with has many problems that keep him—repeatedly—from paying Mr. Browne. I admire your ability to understand people. And I know Mr. Browne does.”

  “I am happy to help,” she said.

  “Tomorrow evening, then. Across the harbor, the old tavern on Great Island.” Seaver flashed a brief, broken smile, no more warm than it was lovely, and settled back to doze.

  I’ll help, this one last time, she thought. Then we’re done. I’ll be my own woman, with the man I’ve always loved, and I’ll have no more of you.

  She arrived at the shack after dark, her heart aloft. She carried a large jug filled with rum, and it swung heavily against her skirts. She tapped lightly on the door, and let herself in.

  Bram was on her in an instant, sweeping up high, so her gown brushed the narrow walls and her hair grazed the ce
iling. He stumbled, his boot causing a clank of glass bottles rolling on the tamped earth floor, and overturned the candle that lit the small room.

  “Anna, Anna, ’tis the very fates bring us together now.” He set her down and restored the candle carefully, with a kind of reverence, then kissed her wrists.

  She found herself eager for him. With her husband, intercourse had been the price for protection. There had been no one since him, really, and she’d long ago forgotten the act might be for other than bargaining.

  Later, he sighed. “You’re the only one who’s ever understood. No other man or woman could see me for what I am.”

  “Surely there’ve been others who’ve recognized your qualities.”

  “Never. Every time, every place, I found nothing but louts, ignorance, a desire for the mediocre. No appreciation for artistry.”

  “Such brilliance, to be ignored!” She put her hand on his shoulder, suppressing a smile. “They little knew they abused a lord among smiths!”

  He pinched her hand playfully. “You mock me, I fear.”

  “I don’t! I know the excellence of your hinges and bolts.”

  “I am Vulcan! My hammer and tongs forge miracles! The coals and heat are quick to obey me!” He laughed with her. “Drink to me now, my love!”

  Tilting the jug to Anna’s mouth, he sloshed the liquor over her lips. The dark spirits ran over her chin, sharp, sweet, and sticky. With his tongue, Bram traced its path across her jaw, and down her throat, burying his face in the lace at the top of her gown.

  Anna shifted under him, trying to find a comfortable spot on the lumpy pallet. She sighed with happiness, intoxicated with love.

  They woke in each other’s arms. Bram rolled over, cradled his head, moaning, but made a brave show of it when Anna looked at him.

  “It’s nothing. A pounding head is a small price to pay for such a reunion.”