The Off Season

by The Off Season (epub)

  On the right, behind a small hook of land augmented with boulders and fill, lies the boat basin. Beyond the hook lies the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The waters tumble furiously out there, but the basin is calm. Except for a few moorage spots for Seattle tourists, the moorage is composed of fishing vessels; trawlers, draggers, purse seiners, and long-liners. Crumbling concrete sidewalks run before the boat basin, and a variety of ghostly forms walk there. Like most fishermen, they are taciturn, and no one pays them much attention.

  Traditionally, the only real excitement around the boat basin happens each Chinese New Year that celebrates the Year of the Tiger. People avoid the boat basin, because on that night drowned Chinese rise from the Strait and come ashore. Chinese can be pretty rowdy.

  This brings us to a sore point. Frank does not like this, and the rest are not happy, but this is a true history and not an official one.

  Point Vestal was founded and built by criminals. We suppose all towns are, but in Point Vestal you really know it.

  This town rose in the 1860s and 1870s to handle the lumber trade. For a couple of decades, Point Vestal boomed. Our harbor held scores of masts, as ships waited to load.

  In those days other profitable trade included opium, whiskey, guns, prostitution (for although the town was Victorian, the sailors on ships were not); and there was trade in Chinese bond slaves. Bond slaves were smuggled through the San Juan Islands, where the Strait nuzzles into Puget Sound.

  And the San Juan Islands are a traditionally bloody place. They have always sheltered smugglers, even today. While our town has no drug problem, drug traffic comes through those islands, then through Point Vestal.

  “Prove it,” Jerome says.

  “You are the newspaperman,” Collette tells him. “You should have done an expose on the drug traffic ten years ago.”

  “And get my head blown off?” Jerome is methodical, but has a fair sense of melodrama. He knows if he did an exposé on the drug business, he would not be shot. The time-honored method is drowning.

  When Frank gets mad, his beard twitters. Each little curling hair begins to snap and sparkle at the tip.

  “The book is getting seedy,” Frank says. “First it got pornographic because you insisted on telling things about Joel­-Andrew. Now you rattle skeletons.”

  “If we are not truthful,” Bev tells him, “I want none of this. I will not be a party to deception.” Then she adds, “Oh dear, that sounded high-toned and phony.”

  “It accords with the facts,” Samuel says. “Dearest lady,” he says—sort of as an afterthought.

  The darkest part of our history concerns murder and shanghaiing. Chinese bond slaves were illegal, and as immigration laws grew firm, and as other Chinese paid their ways in as illegal immigrants, dark practices arose. Smugglers came from the Orient, or from Canada. They transferred Chinese to small boats of local smugglers. When the police or Revenue Service got too close—and sometimes even when they did not—our local people tied weights on the Chinamen and dropped them overboard.

  “We did none of that,” Frank protests. “We fish, we timber. We chop wood and carry water. We raise daughters who are pure. We raise sons for the Army. Our bank is the oldest in the state.”

  “Uh-huh,” says Collette, “Sure. And ducks don’t whistle, ‘cause ducks have got flap-yaps.”

  The point, as Bev explains it, is that people who are still alive remember those days. Everybody in town accepts past crimes without remorse. We live in the founders’ houses. We brag about our past.

  Let us try to see the town with Joel-Andrew’s fresh view. He was bound to notice things we take for granted. He arrived in Point Vestal around 1:00 PM on an October Wednesday. He spent a couple of pleasant hours at The Parsonage with Bev and Samuel. It must have been around 3:00 PM when he left The Parsonage and headed into town.

  Joel-Andrew passed the swamp and the boat basin. On his left, the bluff rose on a steep angle. The road ran so close to the bluff that he could not see great Victorian houses up there, facing the Strait like enormous galleons in dry dock. Before him the main and only downtown street stood flanked by four-story brick buildings. The buildings’ ground floors were occupied by businesses, but upper stories stood empty. Along the sides and tops of the buildings, Victorian ornamentation curled, postured, frilled. The ornamentation might be snakes and cherubs—Oroboros—impressionist cat fights—phallic fire pokers. It might be calla lilies, roses, nightshade, parakeets. The brick and concrete showed rounded edges after a hundred years of mist and wind.

  Obed owned a propensity for alleys, so was not impressed by a town with only one long street. Nor was he impressed when Joel-Andrew’s voice sounded strange.

  “Shapes of people move before those upstairs windows,” Joel-Andrew observed. “They flicker a lot.”

  Obed expressed a typical cat opinion. In general, Obed felt, people flickered a lot.

  “I think I understand,” Joel-Andrew explained. “The people who flicker are ghosts, and the people who don’t flicker are alive.” Joel-Andrew did not know it at the time, but he had stumbled on the first principle which allows one to exist comfortably in Point Vestal.

  “There are red lights up there,” Joel-Andrew said, “and some of those flickers wear mighty revealing clothes. There is indelicate laughter.” Joel-Andrew did not know that in Point Vestal everyone learns never to look higher than the first story of any downtown building.

  October light faded toward night. Dusk rolled in, waving feathers of mist. On Joel-Andrew’s right stood The Fisherman’s Café, and on his left Janie’s Tavern. When he looked over the swinging doors toward the bar, he saw a rotund gentleman with dark hair. The gentleman wore suit pants, a vest, a tie, a starchy white shirt. The gentleman was Frank. Two drunken Indians, seven drunken loggers, and three drunken fishermen sat along the bar. Conspicuous behind the bar lay a sawed-off pool cue, the cue beautifully carved with Victorian ornamentation. Frank runs a tight ship.

  One of the Indians flickered. That was Maggie. She is real important in this history, and we’ll tell a lot more about her later on.

  Joel-Andrew was impressed. He turned away and continued his exploration. To his right stood the J. C. Penney store, the newspaper office, and the antique store. An absolutely fascinating dark-haired woman stood near the window of the antique store. She read a George Meredith novel. Joel-Andrew thought her little and cute, like a gypsy. Then he saw Collette’s blue eyes and thought her Irish.

  The bank stood on his right. It had stained glass windows shaded by enormous London plane trees. Old-fashioned lighting looked like intricately shaped kerosene lamps. Tellers moved with the grace of shadows, and gentlemen bankers wore suits. Lady bankers wore long dresses in pastel colors, the dresses buttoned beneath their chins. Joel-Andrew, in spite of his celibacy, momentarily stood in thrall. He had never seen anything so provocative in his life.

  “Modesty,” Joel-Andrew said. “Chastity. Dollars lubricated with classy morals.”

  Obed sneered.

  Beyond the bank, bookstore windows displayed leather­ bound collections of Charles Dickens, and a sign read “Closed for the day.” Joel-Andrew did not know it at the time, but the bookstore is the one Bev runs; and Bev was philandering with Samuel in The Parsonage.

  Across the street a freak—at least a man Joel-Andrew thought was a freak—trudged. The freak’s long blond hair flowed to his waist, and he walked with the methodical pace of pneumonia. He wore a lumberman’s shirt, bleached cotton pants, sturdy walking shoes. He wore a wool sock hat, an open rain slicker and a ghastly smile. Joel-Andrew told himself that the worst of all drugs were memories of everything you ever did wrong in your life. That ghastly smile was in combat with memories.

  “It is bad to be excommunicated,” Joel-Andrew told Obed, who did not listen. “It is ugliness of the first order when you excommunicate yourself.”

  The blond-haired man kept pace with Joel-Andrew, but did not cross the street.

  Along the sidewalks a few
people passed, loggers and fishermen, ladies and gentlemen. They moved unhurried through the decaying afternoon. They stepped through doorways of a grocery store, a dry-goods store, a barbershop. They passed a few empty storefronts, a drugstore. The fishermen and loggers put a workmanlike smell into the mist, and the gentlemen and ladies wore perfume. They seemed preoccupied: because; when something terrible began to happen, the gentlemen and ladies paid no attention. None seemed to hear dying screams that began rising from the basement of City Hall.

  Joel-Andrew reacted automatically. He thought, “bad trip,” and began to run. Then he thought, “Hell’s Angels,” and ran faster. Then he thought “National Guard,” and his sandals pounded the sidewalk as smartly as rifle shots into a crowd.

  The screams were faint, but were surely loud at the source because City Hall sat a block away. Screams lived in the mist, were blood-choked, then clear with horror, then blood-choked.

  Someone—and that someone deep voiced—was dying, the death mean and cruel.

  Joel-Andrew ran, praying for the man, praying for all men, praying no human would ever have a death so ugly. He stumbled as he ran, the pavement slicker than mist. Screams were no longer like layers in the mist, no longer the red of blood. They choked, the frothy pink of broken lungs. Chains rattled as though the dying man lay shackled and spasmodic. Obed’s tail dropped and described a flat white line as he bounced all thirteen pounds in an attempt to keep up.

  A sign on the locked doors of City Hall said, “Open Tuesdays.” Joel-Andrew pounded on the doors, rattled the doors.

  The screams ceased.

  “Four PM.” A gentleman stood before City Hall and spoke to a lady. The gentleman wore a full-breasted suit, an elegant raincoat, and carried a walking stick. He adjusted his elaborate gold pocket watch. Joel-Andrew rattled the door and called on the Lord.

  “You can stop such conduct,” the gentleman said to Joel-Andrew, his voice severe. “Are you drunk?” He turned to the lady. “I dread the day a bus line comes to this town. These Seattle people are impossible.”

  “That is not a local cat,” the lady said. She was dressed modestly in a style of the late 1940s. Full skirts swirled across chubby calves. She wore an incongruous-looking sun hat freckled with mist. She had a Danish face with the serenity of a Baha’i. “I fancy I know Point Vestal cats, and that cat is an outlander.”

  “A man just died,” Joel-Andrew said with desperation. “Or else he passed out and is dying.”

  “At 4:00 PM precisely, every Wednesday,” the gentlemen said. “Been doing it since 1888. He is known as The Sailor. He was an English bo’sun, jailed for saying Queen Victoria had bowed legs.” The gentleman blushed.

  “I’m new here,” Joel-Andrew admitted.

  “That seems clear enough.” The lady eyed Joel-Andrew’s clerical collar. “Come, George,” she said to her companion. “I fear this fellow is an Italian.”

  Joel-Andrew sat on the steps of City Hall and wept. He could not even be angry with the man and woman who were so indifferent. He thought he knew why he wept, but a part of his tears may have come from confusion, from isolation, rejection. Other ministers had sometimes accused Joel-Andrew of being too slow to anger. Such a thing flawed a prophet, yet he enjoyed no success at changing.

  So he sat weeping for the man who died so horribly once a week. He thought of the number of years, then multiplied the number of weeks. In a hundred years, The Sailor had died five thousand and two hundred times.

  In addition, there were theological problems. Joel-Andrew was a prophet. Prophets were notoriously putrid when it comes to theology. Second, he doubted if the library held the work of Thomas Aquinas. Joel-Andrew felt a deep need for that ancient theologian. He figured Aquinas worked this ghost business out for all eternity because, Joel-Andrew told himself, Aquinas worked everything else out.

  His thoughts were interrupted. The blond man who had kept pace with him now sat beside him on the steps of City Hall. “Total nonsense,” the man said, “and I am not a freak. Ghosts are pagan. No theologian would give ’em house space.” The voice sounded subdued as sleeping sickness, withdrawn, but kind. “My name is Kune,” he said, “and this town is no more crazy than Seattle, but it’s alarming at first.”

  “You read minds,” Joel-Andrew said. “You knew I thought of theology.”

  “I am a diagnostician,” Kune told him. “I don’t read minds. I read situations, symptoms, gross behavior, subtleties. I read signals of distress while using talent, intuition, scientific knowledge.”

  “I can call on the Lord,” Joel-Andrew said. “The Lord could raise that man from the dead.”

  “It’s a very fine idea,” Kune said, “but let’s go easy with it. By now The Sailor is used to dying horribly. You might not do him a favor.”

  Joel-Andrew recognized the red herring. Joel-Andrew remembered plenty of smackheads who shot up yogurt, dropped granola, and spoke of feeling fit. He looked at Kune. Kune’s eyes were so light brown they were washed-out yellow. Kune’s face held lines and traces of grief. People who feared change always came up with weak rationalizations.

  “Besides,” Kune said, “where do you stop with such things? The old jail is in the basement. It’s more like a dungeon. The kinkos who ran that place killed off quite-a-many through the years.”

  “You stop at the end of it,” Joel-Andrew said. “You stop when all the bad trips and all the trip-masters are whipped.”

  “You’re setting yourself up quite a project,” Kune told him. “In this town you’ll have enough trouble just nailing all the Republicans.”

  Fog moved quietly into the streets, and as drapes of darkness descended over Point Vestal, a few streetlights became pale echoes of illumination. The red neon sign in front of Janie’s Tavern flicked in the distance like the little demon on a can of deviled ham. On the Strait, a ship’s whistle grunted, a bell buoy clinked, and a boat whistle shrilled like a child’s scream.

  “The key to Point Vestal,” Kune said, “is that all the time is happening some of the time. At least that’s the theory.”

  Obed once more purred in Portuguese. Obed was not confused.

  “Portuguese,” Kune said. “That lady and gentlemen who spoke to you about The Sailor live in a nice house on the hill. They are old now, but in the 1940s they were middle-aged. You just happened to meet them in 1947.” Kune’s yellow eyes looked momentarily cratered, as if with old scars of smallpox. “It’s just a little jump in time,” he said, “and it happens rarely.”

  “When time jumps occur,” Joel-Andrew asked politely, “are the people alive or ghosts?”

  “They are always alive,” Kune said, “and I’ve never got this one quite puzzled out. We can get a time jump with live people—the kind that you just saw—and the only thing mixed up is the year. For instance, you can get a time jump and see a childhood friend running down the street. Or, you can get a time jump where a ghost pops in for a few moments, but the ghost doesn’t flicker during a time jump. It is almost as if the ghost returns to life momentarily.”

  Lights in shop windows faded as storekeepers stepped to the sidewalk, locked doors, rattled knobs.

  Joel-Andrew told himself he was no theologian, but he wasn’t exactly an idiot. “That would mean,” Joel-Andrew said, “you might walk around and someday meet yourself when you were younger. You could even tell yourself not to do something wrong, if you met yourself when you were younger. You could keep rewriting history.”

  “If only that were true,” Kune said, “but it doesn’t work that way. But, oh, if only that were true.” He stood, turned, offered a hand to Joel-Andrew. “I’m headed up the hill to check a rumor. Some nut claims to have seen the ghost of August Starling in the drawing room of the Starling House.”

  Joel-Andrew thought it made elegant sense if he did not explain about August Starling. Still, if he did not tell, that would be a form of lying. “The rumor is true,” he said. “I’m afraid I had a hand in it. I rode into town in a horse and buggy. The driv
er said he was August Starling.”

  “Then history around here is going to ring off the hook.” Kune’s washed-out yellow eyes stared into the golden eyes of Obed. “Can your cat speak Chinese? We’re going to need someone who is fluent in Chinese.”

  Chapter 7

  The two men and the cat passed quietly through darkness punctuated with the swizzle of small surf. They passed the little luminescence of a candle in the window of the Storefront Church, and the sweet and heavy smell of opium. The opium and swizzles flickered.

  “It closed in 1901,” Kune said about the opium den. “Now it’s a haunted basement.” Night mist clustered. The last time Joel-Andrew could remember such quickly gathering darkness came early in his San Francisco ministry. He stepped into an alley, saw a young girl . . . Joel-Andrew shook his head, rejecting the memory.

  A 307-step concrete stairway climbed the hill.

  “Put in by the New Deal,” Kune said. “It drove the Public Works Administration into a feeding frenzy.”

  “The steps are teeny-tiny, like steps made for children.”

  “Made for ladies with long skirts and bustles,” Kune told him. “Ladies would not have to show their ankles. Ankles were in during 1937, but not in Point Vestal. Be careful, at this time of evening there’s always a body on the 188th step. Killed himself for love.”

  “In 1873,” Joel-Andrew guessed.

  “No, 1869,” Kune told him. “Very early in the game. Poor chap never lived to see the twentieth century, but he’s clung to the 188th step since 1937.”

  On the 200th step, mist thinned. Joel-Andrew could see the malarial look in Kune’s eyes. By the 250th step, mist wrapped like gauze around Kune’s face. By the 300th step, Joel-Andrew watched Kune move carefully, as if bound by arthritis. The sky cleared.

  “It’s most always this way,” Kune explained. “Mist makes layers all through downtown, but up here it’s mostly clear. I see we have a moon.”