Nantucket Sawbuck

by Steven Axelrod

  “I’ll have retired by then.”

  Carmichael grinned. “Don’t count on it.”

  I stood to go.

  “Christmas plans, Chief?”

  “Not this year. The kids are away. I didn’t even get a tree. I think I’ll just lay low. I may go to Hyannis on the 26th. Stay at Heritage House, see some movies, eat breakfast at Pain D’Avignon. Maybe pick up a book at Tim’s.”

  “Sounds pretty good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “One more thing. The Donovan woman’s going to be held at Barnstable Corrections until the trial. We’re taking her over on the Island Airlines ten thirty flight tomorrow. We’re keeping her isolated. Her lawyer doesn’t want her talking to anyone until the immunity deal is finalized. But at the airport…you know, people run into each other. I just thought you should know. In case—”

  “Thanks, Ken. I appreciate it.”

  ***

  I drove out to the airport the next day. It was a clear blue morning. The sun glittered on the dry crust of snow that lined the roads. All the X5s and Escalades and Navigators were wearing wreaths on their grills. The town was dressed for Christmas in garlands and lights that looked like strings of dime-store jewelry in the glare of the morning sun. Like many other commercial enterprises (prostitution and casino gambling came to mind), Christmas looked much more attractive at night.

  Couples were everywhere in their bright coats and hats. It felt odd to be alone. I had declined a dinner invitation from Haden Krakauer the night before and stayed home with a turkey pot pie from Bartlett’s and a couple of bottles of Sankaty Light. There had been a late showing of Casablanca on TCM.

  My father had made me watch Casablanca for the first time when I was in high school. I had no interest in old movies then and hated anything shot in black and white. But Dad had intrigued me by saying, “This movie will teach you everything you need to know about being a man. Study Rick Blaine and you’ll never go wrong.” So I had watched the movie, mainly to see what my amusingly cryptic and evasive father actually thought about manhood and all its mysterious ramifications.

  I had seen it many times since then, and it always helped. I had done the right thing today, acted as Rick would have acted, behaved the way a man should behave. No airport farewell was necessary. It would have been more Maltese Falcon than Casablanca anyway: “You’re taking the fall,” not “We’ll always have Paris.”

  I had nothing with Fiona. Every moment between us was tainted now. But the fact remained—the problems of two little people didn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. I was nowhere as good at being noble as Rick was, and nowhere near as modest. But at least I got the point.

  Despite everything, I was still in love with Fiona. But that changed nothing. Love wasn’t blind, as people liked to say; just stupid. And over-confident, like a drunk teenager racing his father’s BMW, like the kid driving in front of me now on the airport road, passing on the left, barely avoiding a head-on collision, then running the stop sign on Lover’s Lane.

  I was reaching out to hit the flashers when I remembered I was in my jeep this morning, wearing street clothes on a private errand, just another citizen thinking There’s never a cop around when you need one. I memorized the license number and noted the time. I’d take care of this later. A word to the kid’s parents might be enough.

  I got to the airport and parked at the curb across from the terminal. The security guy, Jerry, recognized me and waved. I lifted my arm in return. Jerry had a cup of takeout coffee in his hand and I realized I wanted one, too. I sat back and shut my eyes for a second. This wouldn’t take long. I wasn’t going inside, I didn’t want to see Fiona. I just wanted to know she was gone. Watching the plane take off would make it official.

  The flight was late. Finally I heard the steepening whine of the engines and watched the little Cessna lift up above the airport buildings. I got out of the Jeep to watch it bank over the ocean and straighten out north for Nantucket Sound and the mainland. Eventually it was just a speck, glinting in the hard sunlight. Then it was gone. I climbed back into the Jeep. The clock on the dash said 10:45. Most of the morning was used up already. There was a pile of paperwork waiting for me on my desk. I went home, changed into my uniform, took the Crown Vic to the station. But first I got that coffee, and sat in the warm Jeep and drank it.

  I lifted the cup to the windshield and made a silent toast: to the future.

  Then I let the day begin.

  Epilogue

  Balancing the Egg

  As usual, summer took Nantucket by surprise. Winter had lingered through May, chilly and damp. The Daffodil Day parade had been marred by freezing rain and thirty-mile-per-hour winds. The crocuses that had poked their heads up tentatively at the end of April were killed by the late frost. Still, the island’s hardy native plants had managed to greet the change of seasons in the proper order.

  Cindy Henderson had paid close attention in the final days of her pregnancy, waiting impatiently for her water to break: first, the peace pipes and snow drops hidden in the woods, then the gaudy exploding yellow of the forsythia bushes and the white shad, like a memory of snow. The ornamental cherry trees downtown were next, with their storms of pink blossoms, then the swamp iris and the daisies in every yard and pasture. The roses appeared last, perfumed royalty at the end of the long parade, covering the cottages in ’Sconset, garlanding Rose Sunday at the Congregational church.

  That took her as far as the birth of her baby girl Katherine Jane (six pounds, nine ounces) on the day before the vernal equinox. But she fell asleep that night with the baby on her chest and Mike lying beside her, thinking about the hydrangeas that were on their way, and the day lilies and the rose-of-sharon as fall approached. Finally the weedy chicory plants would appear at the side of the road, and the joe pye weed in the meadows, and the summer would be over. It had saddened her in the past, but this year she found the cycle comforting. She was part of it now.

  By the next morning they were ready for visitors. Billy Delavane brought a slow-cooker of soup. Mike’s whole crew stopped by, and she heard their news. Derek Briley was going into business for himself. Bob Haffner was grazing the fields of pretty girls who seemed to bloom with the hydrangeas in the high season. He was living in the one house he did caretaking for (the people showed up two weeks a year, in August), driving the owners’ Lexus SUV and wearing the husband’s wardrobe (a perfect fit). Cindy had to smile. At least some things never changed.

  The newest member of the crew stayed the longest. They had known each other since high school.

  David Trezize leaned down over the bed to hug her. The baby was in the crook of her arm.

  “Congratulations, Honey. You look great.”

  “I feel like I just had a baby.”

  “It becomes you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Any word from Mark Toland?”

  “God, no.”

  “I hear he finished his movie.”

  “I don’t have to see it, do I?”

  “Not if you behave.”

  She took his hand. “How was the big high school reunion?”

  “I never went. I didn’t feel like lying and I certainly wasn’t going to tell those jerks the truth.”

  “Good for you. I hate reunions anyway. All the people you really want to see wouldn’t be caught dead there.”

  “All the people you really want to see, you never lost touch with in the first place. Like us.”

  “It’s true.”

  He stroked the baby’s hair, kissed her and Cindy on their foreheads and left. He could tell they were both about to fall asleep.

  “Anything I can do, let me know,” he said to Mike on the way out.

  Mike patted him on the back. “Work some extra hours. That would help. I want to get the north side finished by the end of the week.”

  David
still hadn’t adjusted to his new life, though he had done some painting in high school and he had a knack for glazing windows. The Shoals remained in a state of suspended animation, with the staff scattered and lease paid through September. He hadn’t been able to raise the funds to start the little newspaper up again, but he hadn’t quite been able to give it up either. He could have sold the computers and printers and the office furniture for a much-needed cash transfusion, and he thought about doing it every day. It was hard to make ends meet on Nantucket, earning twenty-five dollars an hour.

  The next day, at lunch, David was sitting on a stone bench in the customer’s garden trying to balance a hardboiled egg upright, when Kathleen Lomax, strolling up Main Street, ducked through the gate and walked up to him. She had gained a little much-needed weight and lost the harrowed look of the previous winter. Her hair was cut short; it fell just to her shoulders now. Her flower-patterned summer dress fluttered against her bare legs in the breeze from the harbor.

  “Hello, David,” she called out.

  “Hey.”

  Kathleen had gotten into the Public Affairs doctoral program at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. That would keep her busy—and off-island. But it looked like she was back for the summer.

  She stood above him, looking down. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s the vernal equinox. You can balance an egg upright today, while all the planets are lined up perfectly. I’ve never managed to do it, though.”

  “That’s a myth, you know.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve seen people do it.”

  “No, I mean about the equinox. You can do it any time. The trick is not giving up.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “I wish you hadn’t given up your newspaper. I loved The Shoals. I loved being part of it. I’ll miss your editorials. They were so passionate.”

  David looked up at her. How was the human race supposed to propagate itself when it was this hard to talk to beautiful women?

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “The island needs a voice like that.”

  “Tell it to Marine Home Center and Bailey Real Estate. A little of their ad revenue might get the paper up and running again.”

  She stepped back, assessing him. “What you really need is a patron.”

  He laughed. “Everybody needs a patron.”

  “No, but if The Shoals had some real money behind it, you wouldn’t have to worry about getting in trouble for telling the truth. People like…like my dad—they couldn’t hurt you. Or shut you up.”

  “I’m not easy to shut up.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He nodded. The egg fell over again.

  “I’m very rich,” she said quietly. “It has nothing to do with my father. My grandmother’s family have always been rich. My great great-grandfather helped finance Eli Whitney. His brothers were cotton brokers and they made a lot of money…before the Civil War. I think there was some slave trade going on there, too. So we have a lot to make up for. Lots of bad Karma. My grandfather sold short just before the big crash in 1929. Then he bought back all the stock at pennies on the dollar. He wasn’t a very nice man, either. Dad must have felt like a natural choice for my mother. Anyway, I have all this money and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it.”

  David sat up. “Kathleen …”

  “I don’t mean like Wendy Schmidt, with her matching funds and boutique bakeries and that awful new Dreamland Theater. I mean putting real money where it can really help.”

  “Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about?”

  She sat down on the bench and twisted a little to face him. The dress rose up on her thighs. Her legs were tanned and firm; but the challenge in her voice was far more provocative than her body. “Let’s get back into the newspaper business.”

  He looked up into her eyes. “I could go after the Land Bank. And those assholes who run the dump.”

  She smiled. “You be Ben Bradlee. I’ll be Katharine Graham. Except they were never linked romantically.”

  “Are we…linked romantically?”

  “Anything’s possible. This is a terrible town for gossip. Why don’t you come over to the house tonight? Talk about everything, get organized, make our plans. 52 Baxter Road. Seven o’clock?”

  “Uh—great.”

  “I’ll cook. Do you have any dietary restrictions, any vegetables you hate? Beets or Brussels sprouts?”

  “No, I eat everything.”

  She reached out and squeezed his knee. “I’m so happy to hear that.” She stood. “Try it again. The egg.”

  Feeling her eyes on him, David rolled it vertical, gingerly pulled his fingertips away. The egg trembled for a second. But it stayed upright.

  “Look at that,” Kathleen said.

  “It gives you hope.”

  She plucked the egg off the bench. “I’m keeping it. As a souvenir.”

  “Not for too long, I hope.”

  “Just until tonight, how about that? Bring champagne, we’ll celebrate.”

  “Okay.”

  “See you then.”

  She walked back across the lawn, and out the gate. Bob Haffner emerged from behind a hedge, grinning. He had obviously been listening.

  “You are a god,” he said, grinning. “I bow down to you.”

  ***

  On the other side of town, Rick Folger was hanging the “Open” sign on his antique store. It was his first day of business, his screw-up brother Douggie was helping out, and the way it had all happened made all his careful planning seem absurd.

  At one time or another, he had planned on taking over his father’s business, going back to college. More recently, he had penciled in a five-year jail term. But his father had disowned him, and his college transfer forms were still lying neglected in a drawer in his bedroom in his family’s house, where he couldn’t get at them even if he wanted to. Dad had changed the locks.

  As for jail, Chief Kennis had saved him from that nightmare. He was on strict probation now after testifying against Ed Delavane, and that was fine with him. He had become almost comically law-abiding lately. No bounced checks or parking tickets. He didn’t even litter anymore. His little brother was just out of rehab for Oxycodone and he was keeping Doug straight, too, cracking the whip. It was a lot of work, but he was too grateful to begrudge the effort.

  The store had come about through a series of serendipitous flukes, most of them engineered by his primary guardian angel, Billy Delavane. Billy was glad to see his brother Ed sent away and he was grateful to Rick for testifying. They still surfed together and during one of their winter sessions, Billy had suggested a job at the dump. He knew people at the DPW and he made a few phone calls on Rick’s behalf. The only other available jobs were in retail and construction.

  Rick hated the new over-organized landfill, with its officious off-island managers and the air of apocalypse it exhaled in the smoke from its trash fires and its piles of rusting junk.

  Ironically it was one of his father’s big dump trucks that changed Rick’s life. He was working at woodpile #2 on Valentine’s Day, when Ethan Daniels pulled in and started off-loading the trash from a house that Folger Construction was gutting in Shawkemo. Ethan heaved a Chippendale end table out the back of the truck. It hit the snow-crusted ground and one of the legs snapped off. The crack of breaking wood couldn’t have been more shocking if it had been a living bone.

  Rick sprinted toward the tailgate. “Hey Ethan!” he shouted. “Let me give you a hand with that stuff!”

  In half an hour he had rescued three Windsor chairs with their layered impasto of milk paint, a Queen Anne tea table and a nineteenth century tabletop with an inlaid chessboard barely visible under decades of dust. He set the stuff aside and took it home with him that night. You had to laugh—his penny-pinch
ing father was throwing away thousands of dollars of antique furniture out of ignorant greed. Rick had spent months with Ed Delavane stealing bad reproduction junk from fancy new houses when the really valuable pieces were right here for the taking, on the trash heap. Most of all, the dead end job he had dreaded opened up his future.

  Over the next weeks he found more treasures. There was a Handel lamp in the take-it-or-leave-it pile whose painted shade had gotten separated from the base. He had found the finial after two hours of rummaging through boxes of old silverware and chipped china. There were Creamware jugs and Slipware china plates with the distinctive red glaze and curling yellow line, stuffed carelessly in with the broken orange pots from someone’s gardening shed.

  Soon he had enough to open a shop and when he told the story to Billy Delavane, Billy offered him one of his family’s rundown properties off Orange Street at the edge of town. He didn’t want to charge rent. All he wanted was ten percent of the profits. He and Billy had fixed the place up, rushing to be ready for summer like everyone else on the island. They had hoped to be done by Memorial Day, but nothing was ever done on time and at least they had the satisfaction of blaming the traditional culprits, the plasterer and the plumber.

  It was only three weeks late, anyway. Rick had quit the dump with his probation officer’s blessing. But he still had friends working the trash piles, keeping an eye out for him. Any item they managed to rescue was pure profit.

  He stood outside in the bright June sunlight now, waiting for his first customers. Some of the nicer pieces—including that Chippendale table; Billy had helped him repair it—were set up outside near the front door. He was officially in business. Maybe he’d be asked to join the chamber of commerce by this time next year. Why not? It might have been the silky touch of the summer air on his face—giddy optimism felt like common sense.

  His first customers arrived a few minutes later: a fat white-haired man and his impeccably thin wife. The man had an ivory-handled cane; the woman carried a lightship basket. They were saying things like “Charming piece,” and “It would be perfect in the guest bedroom.”