New Jerusalem News

by John Enright

  “Delightfully so, thank you. It has been a long time since my last pipe of hashish. Thank you also for your words. I heard them. I am humbled. Do you have another ale?” Dominick’s bottle was mysteriously empty. The strip of bright horizon chrome vanished like that. Starks was no longer sitting beside him but was off in the kitchen. Time messing around again, skipping ahead like a poorly spliced film. Starks returned with two more ales and some bread and cheese. They sat and talked at the table—Dominick didn’t remember about what—until the light was almost gone. Then Starks excused himself. He had an evening engagement back in town and had to change. He would drop Dominick at the ferry in plenty of time to catch the last boat.

  It was biting cold on the deck of the ferry, so Dominick had it all to himself. The manila envelope with his negatives, contact sheets, and prints was tucked safely inside his denim jacket buttoned up to his neck. He found a seat in the stern as out of the wind as he could and lit up a cigar. He had been craving one since he’d put down the hash pipe. He watched the lights of New Jerusalem shrink into a spangled line between the blackness of the bay and the lighter darkness of the sky. The cigar was good. It warmed him. The night was good. It was his alone. Being stoned was good. How personal it made the world, almost small enough to care for.

  Chapter 11

  The hammering awakened Dominick. Then it stopped, and he went back to sleep, vaguely wondering what Atticus was up to. When he came down to the kitchen later in the morning he found out, only it hadn’t been Atticus hammering. It had to have been Lydia. Nailed to the kitchen wall were four pieces of burned toast. The hammer and more nails were still on the table. As Dominick fixed his short pot of coffee and then sat and drank it he studied the crucified toast as if it were a piece of installation art or the start of some coded message. They seemed randomly spaced on the white wall between the stove and the doorway to the hall, at about the height that Lydia would nail them but not aligned in any way—an angry sort of graph in black-and-white.

  Dominick heard someone coming up the steps to the back door. It was Atticus. He walked through the kitchen headed for the doorway to the hall with his head down, ignoring Dominick, who couldn’t resist—“New art work?”

  Atticus stopped at the hall doorway and looked at the wall. “Lydia got angry at breakfast.”

  It was none of Dominick’s business, but again he couldn’t resist. “Angry about what?”

  “Why, angry at herself, angry about burning the toast. She nailed it up there to remind herself not to burn the toast.”

  “That might work. Or you could buy her a new toaster that doesn’t burn the toast.”

  “She’d find a way to burn it. I think she likes the smell of burnt toast, one of those smells that brings back the past. That sense of smell, you know it goes straight to our brain stem.”

  “Our earliest brain, our snake brain,” Dominick said, agreeing. “Burnt toast.”

  Atticus went on out into the hallway, then he returned. “Dominick, I don’t suppose you could miss noticing that Lydia has been, well, a little stressed out since the raid and all. She’s better now, but . . . anyway, I don’t mean to impose or anything, and there certainly is no obligation, but, well, would you mind sort of keeping an eye and an ear out for her when I’m not around? You can say no if you want to. I’d understand. It’s really not your problem, and she is fine by herself. It’s just that I’ll feel less guilty about leaving the house if I can think I’m not leaving her totally alone. Know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I can understand that, Atticus. Rest assured that when I am here, I am here for Lydia. Though she seems fine in her own little world. Doesn’t she have other friends in the neighborhood that she could visit with or who could stop by, lady friends?”

  “They’re all either gone for the season or dead, and she won’t have the girls here.”

  “No problem. Where are you going to be?”

  “I volunteered to do some patrol shifts. If there are enough of us, it won’t be that often, but I will be on call.”

  “Oh. What exactly will you be patrolling?”

  “Darby Point. We’ve taken on that duty, a twenty-four-seven sea patrol.”

  “We being?”

  “Bay Savers.”

  “And why would Bay Savers be patrolling Darby Point?”

  “To stop the bombers, discourage them, maybe even help in catching them. We’ll just be out there incognito as it were, pretending to be fishermen or civilian boaters going about our business, but keeping an eye on the place and any unfamiliar boats in the area.”

  “Ah, Atticus, you don’t have a boat anymore.”

  “I know that. I’ll be on one of the fishing boats out of Larsen’s Marina.”

  “Isn’t that the place that got busted up in the last explosion?”

  “That’s right, right there in Old Grofton.”

  “But I thought . . . wasn’t Bay Savers sort of implicated in that explosion? Anarchist bedfellows and all?”

  “Oh, that’s just the feds and the News talking. The locals know we had nothing to do with it. All the water people up there are against the terminal. Hell, Bill Larsen, whose dad owns the marina, is the Bay Savers vice president. Nobody who works the bay is going to blow up a bunch of fish. That’s an act of war to those folks.” For all his wrinkles and thinning white hair and geriatric shrinkage, there was still a lot of Boy Scout—make that Sea Scout—inside Atticus.

  “These bombings have been bad for us. No politician can oppose something that is under terrorist attack. Our fund-raising has bottomed out. As far as cable news and the radio talk shows are concerned, we might as well all be Muslims. We’ve got to stop the attacks, try to prove it wasn’t us or anybody else who has any real interest in saving the bay.”

  “So now our modern day Minutemen are defending the Hercules Corp’s LNG site at Darby Point? Not exactly any enemy of my enemy . . .”

  “Don’t be dense, Dominick. This isn’t war; it’s politics.”

  “Politics with a private armada. If patrolling the waters off Darby Point is so important, why aren’t the authorities doing it?”

  “Good question. The Coast Guard hasn’t increased its patrols. The State Police Marine Patrol doesn’t do surveillance. The FBI guys all went back to their office in Boston. And the Old Grofton police don’t even have a boat much less a marine patrol unit. The place is wide open for another attack. The first one probably came from the bay side as well. So we have to do it.”

  “Well, it would seem you have it all figured out then,” Dominick said, getting up and taking his coffee cup to the sink. “But what about the cops? Won’t your people look suspicious just floating around outside ground zero all day and night?”

  “Like I said, the feds aren’t there. It’s not the Coast Guard’s job. The only cops that might get suspicious are the Old Grofton police, but they’re our partners in this.”

  “Partners? Protesters and police? How refreshing.”

  “Nobody in Old Grofton except the mayor wants that terminal there. In the long run it will only mean a handful of local jobs. The cops are dead against it. They know we weren’t responsible for the explosions. They think it was, and I quote, ‘a rag-head attack,’ and they would like to get credit for catching them. But they have no marine patrol capabilities.”

  “So.”

  “So we cut a deal with them. We coordinate our efforts. They cover the landside; we cover the waterside. We stay in constant cell phone contact. Any collar is obviously theirs.”

  “What if the bombers don’t strike again?”

  “Then at least we’ve stopped them. But we think they will. That magic number three. They have to prove that they mean business.”

  “What if they do strike again and they’re successful, and Hercules just decides to go somewhere else after all, somewhere they are more welcome?”

  “That’s too many future ifs for me, none of which I have any control over,” Atticus said.

  “Well, at l
east you’ll be back on the water.”

  “So, you’ll keep an eye out for Lydia then when I’m not here?”

  “I will be sure Lydia knows that if she wants or needs anything, all she has to do is ask. Don’t you think we should put the hammer and nails away someplace?”

  The first few times Atticus was out on patrol, Lydia didn’t even seem to notice that he was gone. She had taken to ignoring Dominick almost entirely, and he stayed out of her way. He was working his way through the local history books in Atticus’s library and had come across one that was giving him some pleasure—a 500-plus-page, 1955 edition of A Cruising Guide to the New England Coast. He was slowly reading his way north from Long Island Sound to the Bay of Fundy, through shoals and crosscurrents and dungeon fogs, into difficult or piece-of-cake anchorages, with numerous narrative trips ashore to visit old fishing villages and historic sites. His style of sailing—excellent writing. There was even an appendix on “Birding Under Sail” that whetted his interest in photographing seabirds. The book was inscribed in brown ink on the title page, “To Atticus, With every wish for many happy hours together on our dream boat far from the madding crowds, Lydia, Christmas 1956.”

  Then one afternoon when Atticus was gone—not on patrol but at some meeting—there was the sound of an ambulance under siren leaving a house up their road. Dominick was reading in bed, fully dressed under the covers, making the run into Newagen, Maine: “Approaching from the westward, make the lighted bell in the middle of Sheepscot River and head for the houses in Cape Harbor. As you close in, pick up num 2 and leave it well to starboard. Head for a white cottage on the northern side of the entrance until within 100 yards of the northern shore. Then follow the northern shore eastward into the harbor, leaving the red beacon to starboard.” Dominick wondered if the white cottage was still there fifty-five years later, if it was still white.

  “Atticus! Atticus! Where are you?” It was Lydia downstairs, sounding panicked.

  By the time Dominick was headed downstairs Lydia was standing in the open front door, looking out at the road. She was wearing her layers of studio clothes and her paint-smeared gray gloves with the fingers cut off. When she heard Dominick on the stairs she turned on him. There were dabs of paint on her face—French blue and ochre.

  “Atticus. Where is Atticus? What have you done with him? I heard the ambulance. They took him away, didn’t they? He died, and you wouldn’t come to tell me. Why? Why wouldn’t you tell me? I have a right to know. I’m his wife. I’m his widow. I have rights.”

  “Lydia, Atticus isn’t dead. He’s fine. He’s just away at a meeting right now, that’s all.” Dominick stopped on the stairs.

  “You, you whatever your name is, lurking around here like some angel of death. Why not take me now, too? Go ahead, call another of your ambulances to take me away. Then you can have this place all to yourself.”

  “Lydia, stop being a fool. Atticus is not dead. Atticus was not in that ambulance, which did not come from here. Besides, they don’t turn on their siren if the person inside is already dead.”

  Lydia looked back out the front door. “That’s right, they don’t, do they? The ambulance didn’t stop here? Atticus wasn’t in it? He’s not dead?”

  “Right on all counts, Lydia. Just a little unnecessary panic on your part. Why not go lie down for a bit? Panics can be pretty draining. Atticus will be home soon, I’m sure. Just a meeting.”

  “You would tell me, wouldn’t you? The wait is awful, waiting for him to die. Nobody tells me anything.” Lydia headed up the stairs toward Dominick. He pressed himself against the wall so that she could brush by. “Yes, I am going to go lie down. It’s so cold in this house, isn’t it, Dominick? Why does Atticus keep it so cold? The old skinflint.”

  It was probably inevitable that one day Atticus would come to Dominick with an urgent request for him to crew on one of his patrols. Dominick had not told him about Lydia’s ambulance panic attack. She had remained near invisible since, a silent housemate. At the very last minute, just as he was leaving the house, Atticus had gotten a call informing him that the crew mate for his patrol shift would not be there. It took a minimum of two to man the fishing boat on duty. No one else was available. Without a crew mate Atticus could not take the boat out.

  “There would be nobody else out there all afternoon. Our ranks are getting a little thin,” Atticus said. “It won’t be like last time. The Lucy Anne II is a regular little fishing boat, with a heated cabin and all. I’d only really need your help casting off and tying up at the marina dock. We won’t be going far, just back and forth in the bay outside the point.”

  Dominick looked outside. It was a clear, crisp December day, no wind to speak of. “How long?” he asked.

  “Just a four-hour watch, till dark. There are more volunteers after working hours, just not many of us retirees to cover the daytime shifts. What do you say? You can bring what you want to eat and drink. Everyone else does.”

  Except for a few brief trips to the village, Dominick had not been out of the house since his last trip to New Jerusalem. The light was good. What would it be like on the water? With the big lens and the extender, he could try his hand at shooting seabirds. “What about Lydia?” he said.

  “She seems alright, don’t you think? Nothing too bizarre in days.”

  Dominick didn’t know. “Hold on,” he told Atticus. “Let me check.” He found Lydia in her studio, where the space heater was turned on and she was seated in an old stuffed armchair, staring at a blank canvas up on her easel. In her lap was a gray cat Dominick had never seen before. Her ear buds were not in. “Lydia.”

  She looked up from petting the cat. “Oh, hello, Dominick.”

  “Lydia, Atticus and I are going to go out, some business to attend to. Will you be alright or could we drop you somewhere?”

  “Drop me somewhere?”

  “You know, if you wanted to visit someone. We will be taking the ferry to New Jerusalem, if you wanted to go see Ms. Arnold or anyone.”

  “I’m hardly dressed for visiting, Dominick, and around here we don’t just stop in on people. We make dates well in advance. But thank you for asking. No, you and Atticus go ahead. I’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll be back by supper time, I think.”

  “Then bring back a pizza. I feel like pizza. What do you think of this painting?” she said with a nod toward the blank canvas.

  “I think there’s nothing there.”

  “I mean do you think I should just leave it at that?”

  “No. I think you have to fill in the hole.”

  “Dominick.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know all those times I ignore you as if you’re not there?”

  He said nothing.

  “It’s because I can’t remember who you are or why you are here. It’s embarrassing. I know I should know who you are.”

  “What’s the cat’s name?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t have one, doesn’t need one. Cats never answer to names anyway, so why name them?”

  “We’ll bring back a pizza then. What do you want on it?”

  “Oh, mushrooms and peppers and little girls’ fingers, extra cheese.”

  “Be good, Lydia. Fill in the blank spaces.”

  They went in Atticus’s car. Dominick packed a quick lunch and a six-pack of ale in a cooler and brought his camera bag. He also took time to change into the warmest clothes he had. Atticus was eager to leave, but he had no choice but to wait until Dominick was ready to go. Old Grofton was a ways up the bay, a good half-hour drive from New Jerusalem. Larsen’s Marina was a place it would be hard to find if you hadn’t been there before, on the other side of the tracks and through a ghost-town neighborhood of deserted old brick warehouses with every window broken. The Old Grofton waterfront was not exactly a happening place. Dominick stayed in the car while Atticus checked in with someone in the marina office.

  The Lucy Anne II was a small, old trawler with a rust-stained hull. She was s
till set up for fishing and smelled of fish and diesel fuel. There was a single small wheelhouse cabin forward that was still warm from the previous shift and reeked of smoked cigarettes, a smell Dominick always found particularly unpleasant. Atticus started up the engine and took the wheel, while Dominick struggled with the bow and stern lines. The boat was like an old quarter horse who knew its routines even better than its rider and it pulled slowly away from the dock and through the other moored boats toward open water. Dominick joined Atticus in the cabin only to be sent back out again to pull in the bumpers.

  “Do we have to pretend to be fishing or anything?” Dominick asked.

  “No. Nobody to playact for. We just get a ways off shore and watch. We have every right to be here. We’re not breaking any laws. If the Coast Guard cruiser does appear, I just pick up some speed as if we’re going somewhere, just to avoid answering any questions. Nice day, isn’t it?”

  It was a nice day out on the water, the bay as calm as a pond and sparkling in the cold sunlight. When they were out maybe a quarter of a mile in the cove south of Darby Point, Atticus clicked the throttle back to idle and went out on deck with a pair of large binoculars to scan the bay and the point. It was an activity that perfectly suited him. On the ride to Old Grofton they had somehow gotten into talking about sports, and Atticus had let it out that he had played baseball in college—Dartmouth, class of ’57. Like probably every college ballplayer, he had toyed with the idea of going pro when he graduated, continuing his youth indefinitely, but he went on for his MBA instead, married his cousin Lydia, whom he had known as long as he could remember. He had played shortstop, back in the days when shortstops were still short. But Dominick couldn’t picture Atticus at bat or in a baseball uniform. He belonged like this—legs apart, balanced, on the deck of a bobbing boat, binoculars up and steady, admiral of all he surveyed.