by Kurt Palka
She walked to the Trade Building and up the wooden stairway and along the hallway until she saw the brass sign for the Moynihan Charter Company. She knocked on the door and went in. The girl at the desk looked up and said, “Yes, ma’am?” She handed the girl her business card and said she wanted to see Mr. Moynihan on an urgent matter.
The girl looked at the card. “Just a minute, ma’am.” She rose and went into another room. Margaret heard voices and then Mr. Moynihan in a sports jacket and pressed trousers stood in his open door.
“Mrs. Bradley,” he said. He looked at her and back at the card. “A lawyer. Please come in.” He closed the door after her and asked her to sit.
“I’m not here as a lawyer, Mr. Moynihan. I am looking for John Patrick Croft. I know he’s not working for you any more, but would you perhaps know where I can find him?”
“John Patrick.” He rose and walked to the door and opened it. “Doreen, can you look up John Patrick in the Rolodex?”
He stood waiting. His office was carpeted and panelled. One wall was all naval charts on corkboards, another wall had ship’s models mounted with small lights shining down on them. The window overlooked the harbour and the open sea beyond. Dark clouds racing, and spits of rain hard against the glass.
He came back with a piece of paper and handed it to her. “That’s just up the hill from here. Can I ask what it is you want with him? He can be a bit of a wild card at times, but on the whole he’s one of the best skippers I know. That thing in the harbour was unfortunate.”
“What happened?”
“A near collision with a motorboat in the approach. He was under sail and had the right of way but had to veer off sharply to avoid it. Some passengers took a tumble, and one woman hit her head on something.” He shrugged. “It’s possible he was carrying too much sail for the approach. Anyway, the insurance company…what can I say?”
“The insurance company told you to fire him?”
“Not in those words. They paid the woman’s claim and they weren’t happy.”
“How is he getting by? Do you know? Has anyone else hired him?”
He was studying her now with his eyes narrowed. Taking his time. “I wouldn’t know. Maybe he’s freelancing, but I wouldn’t know. You can ask him yourself when you see him.”
She looked at the piece of paper in her hand. Then she stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Moynihan.”
* * *
—
She had to knock three times, but somehow between the knocks she felt he was in. Then the door opened. It was the side entrance to a house, a basement apartment. He stood in jeans and grey wool socks and a denim shirt. A full head taller than she, black wavy hair, dark eyes. Taller and even more solid than Danny or Sullivan.
He blinked in the light, then he recognized her.
“Mrs. Bradley,” he said. “I’m not usually home this time of day, but I was waiting for a call.”
“This won’t take long, John Patrick. You’ll have heard of the two dead young people that were found at Crieff. And of the men who came to Aileen’s house looking for you and Danny. One of them had a gun.”
“Yes, I heard. Danny told me. And a police inspector came and showed me pictures and asked me questions.” “Pictures of the kids and of the suspects?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know the men?”
He leaned back against the door frame now, looking at her. “What’s this about?”
“Just a question. Did you know them?”
“I did. Would you like to come in? Or wait. Let me get my boots on and let’s stand under the overhang.”
His boots were on the landing, and he wiggled his sock feet into them and came outside.
“Just to get this out of the way,” he said, “I had nothing to do with Crieff Island. Nothing.”
“Then how did you know the suspects?”
He opened his mouth to say something, but then he closed it again.
“How, John Patrick? What did you tell the inspector?”
“I told him what happened. That they did approach me a few weeks ago to take them out on a run, but I told them I didn’t have a boat. They’d heard that Danny was helping me out. Since I got fired. It’s a small community and word gets round. I’ve been doing properties for him, in his boat. With the storms coming, he’s behind.”
“And when they approached you, what happened?”
“I said no.”
“How much money were they offering?”
“At first three thousand, and when I said no they went up to four.”
“Four thousand dollars. And you said no. Why?”
He stepped out from under the overhang and looked up into the drizzle. “I should go.”
“Why did you say no, John Patrick? Because it’s illegal?” “Maybe. Or maybe because I didn’t have a boat. As I kept telling them.” He blushed like a boy, big solid man that he was, and she liked him for it.
“You mean if you’d had a boat, you might have done it? What if you got caught?”
“No one ever gets caught. And do you know how much money four thousand dollars is for one of us? For a couple of hours’ work? In and out so fast?”
“Of course I know. I’ve spent half my life here. I was practically born here. So was my father.”
“I know that. But you never had to depend on the local economy for your income. Nor your father, or AJ. But we do. I do. Danny does. And we know the currents and the tides, and we’ve had the charts in our heads since we been kids. To find our way in the dark out there all we need is a watch, a compass, and a pit log. Now with the fishing in such poor shape, that’s our last best marketable skill for some of us, and with the new global positioning technology coming, we’ll soon lose that too.”
“Did you or Danny ever do a run for someone?” “Don’t be asking those questions now, Mrs. Bradley.” “But I’d like to know.”
“Maybe you don’t really, and maybe I don’t want to say.” “Don’t you.”
“No.”
“I ask because there is something else. Do you know old Fergie? Pat Ferguson?”
“Sure.”
“Well, it turns out it was probably Fergie who did the run to Crieff. The truck the police found with the blood of that gunman in it was his, and now they’ve found his boat as well. With big holes in it, in twenty feet of water down in Rag Bay. The police are still searching for Fergie himself, but yesterday when I spoke to the inspector it didn’t sound like he has much hope of finding him alive.”
The drizzle had turned into rain now, and it came down soaking his shoulders and it came down on his head and face but he stood there unmoving, looking at her. Rainwater flattening his hair and running down his face and he not caring or perhaps not even noticing.
“Makes you think, doesn’t it, John Patrick?”
He stirred. He looked up at the rain and back at her. “I should be gett’n inside.”
But she couldn’t let him go just yet. There was something else she wanted from him and now was the time.
“Wait,” she said. “Please.” She reached and pulled at his sleeve. “Step under here for another minute. There’s one more thing. Something different. You knew my son, Andrew, didn’t you?”
“Yes, of course I did. The aviator.”
She had never heard anyone refer to her boy as the aviator and it touched her in a new way. Coming from this man there was so much in it. There was male pride in it, pride in the dangerous life, and respect for rank and accomplishment in the military world. And an echo of Michael’s comments and of Jack’s as well.
“I knew Andrew since we been boys,” said John Patrick. “And the last few years we went out many times in Danny’s boat, the three of us.”
“Did you? I wasn’t aware of that.”
“No? In the summers, probably when you and your husband weren’t out here. And last year, when they’d already signed him up. He wanted to learn about handling boats. I liked him.”
“And was he lear
ning?”
“Yes, he was. He had guts and quick instincts. I taught him about navigation, and he wanted to learn it even though he was joking that as a pilot he’d always have a navigator. I taught him about feeling the wind on his cheek and about seasonal currents and about the drifts raising up and shifting on our bars. I taught him about quartering to keep a course against tides and waves, which he said was a lot like crabbing an airplane. I taught him to find his way in a fog. In the pitch-dark. It’s a different world out there in the dark, very different.”
“I’m sure. And was he learning all that?”
She wanted to hear more, whatever it was. More about her boy from this man whom she felt sure Andrew had respected.
“Yes, he was learning. I was sorry when I heard, and sorry for your loss, Mrs. Bradley. I still am. But the other thing, that’s how it happened, when those two men came around. The way I told you.”
She stood looking at him, the two so close under the overhang in the half-dark of the day and rain coming down hard and loud on the concrete walk.
“Does Mr. Moynihan have your phone number?”
“He should.”
“If you’re not sure then please write it down on a piece of paper and give it to me.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
He stepped inside and was gone for a minute. When he came back he handed her a slip of paper.
She took it and put it in her coat pocket. “Thank you for talking to me, John Patrick,” she said. “And thanks for being honest. And for what you said about Andrew.”
She nodded at him and then held both hands up over her head and walked away into the rain.
* * *
—
Fifteen minutes later she climbed the stairs to Moynihan’s office again. He was standing by the girl’s desk, and when she came in he looked up.
“Mrs. Bradley,” he said. “So soon again. And you’re all wet.” “Yes. Can I see you for a few more minutes?”
He waved her into his office. She took off her coat and hung it over a chair and when the door was closed she said, “I want to propose a contra deal. You rehire John Patrick Croft and pay him what he’s worth, I mean a good wage, and in exchange for that I’ll give you two months of free legal services. Not exclusively, but a great deal of my attention. By telephone, telex, and courier.”
He was clearly surprised at that. They were standing between his desk and the door, in the blended light from the window and the old-fashioned banker’s lamp on his desk. In that light the ship’s models on the wall behind him looked like beautiful and mysterious birds.
“Mrs. Bradley,” he said, “I don’t know what to say. But I’m listening. You should know that the tourist season is over. No more cruises this year. No more charters.”
“So use him on some other ship.”
“On some other ship. As though ships grew on trees.” “Don’t they?”
“Only very small ones,” he said with surprising humour. “I do have two deliveries. I bought a trawler in the States that I need to bring here, and I’m taking a cruiser down to South America. And there may be more.”
“So use him for that. You said he is one of the best skippers you ever had and the mishap in the harbour wasn’t really his fault. Rehiring him would also send an important signal to the rest of the shipping community.” “Yes, it would do that. How about three months of legal services?”
“No. Two months, Mr. Moynihan. Eight weeks. It’s worth many thousands, and you’ll be amazed at the things a good lawyer can set in motion and accomplish in eight weeks. Even part-time and on the phone and by courier.” He smiled at her. “And your firm will agree?”
“I’m sure they will. I’ll sell it to the partners as a pro bono opportunity to move into the maritime business. Some of it will be on my own time.”
“I see. But do you know anything about the legal aspects of operating and buying and selling ships, Mrs. Bradley?” “No. Not yet. But I do know about buying and selling multi-million-dollar businesses and real estate. Liability laws. International third-party property transactions. Tax jurisdictions and tax advantages and tax deferral. How different could ships be? In law it’s all about the intent and the fabric of the law. From there you go to the threads and how they interweave. Everything connects in important ways with everything else. I’m a quick study, Mr. Moynihan.” “Yes, I imagine you are.” He waved a hand at his desk and the chairs. “Shall we sit?”
Thirty
BACK IN SWEETBARRY she went up to Andrew’s room again. She opened the window and took off the sheets the parents had slept on and put them in the washing machine. Then she put a fresh set of sheets on the bed. She carried the lead bucket back into the room and put it down in its corner and finally went to fetch the driftwood chair as well. She sat down on it.
She did not know how the parents were doing it. She could see the result, but the means of it were to her unidentifiable. The how. The one single image of them that had stayed with her the most had been of the two in the back seat of the car, sitting so close together, being so close that no daylight could get between them. Could separate them. It had made her want to step on the brake and pull over and really look at this and take it in. It had made her feel ashamed.
She shifted in the chair and looked around.
The Mother’s Cross. How aptly named. She would not be changing anything in this room just yet. If ever. How could she, and what would be the point?
* * *
—
A black Ford pickup truck pulled up on her rock, and John Patrick climbed out and walked up to her house. She could see him through her kitchen window, taking off his cap and running his hand through his hair and standing for a moment to collect himself before he knocked on her door.
“I came to thank you,” he said the moment she’d opened up. “Mr. Moynihan called me and I’ve just been to see him. Thank you so much.”
They shook hands, and then she beckoned and he bent down and she gave him a hug. Big man that he was, big shoulders on him.
She remained in the open door while he turned away and walked to his truck, climbed up and rolled down the window and grinned at her. He drove off and turned left onto Aileen’s rock and blew his horn.
The door opened and Danny came down the stoop, in his jeans worn through at the knees like Andrew’s had been out here, and running shoes and a lined work shirt with snap buttons. So eager to be men accepted by other men, they were. To be seen as strong and sure in this world, which would sniff out any weakness in an instant and move in.
They stood and talked. John Patrick pointed more than once in the direction of her house, and she watched them for a while through the trees and across the rocks.
It was getting dark and the air was still and heavy. She could feel it deep inside her ears. Clouds were boiling, black and purple towers of great height like an underworld event.
* * *
—
An hour later the storm made landfall. There was a long moment of absolute stillness in the air, a vacuum in which nothing moved, no leaf stirred and no bird flew. For that moment she felt dizzy, and she left the kitchen and crossed to the living room to sit in a solid chair, and halfway there had to embrace the king post for support. There was a shock wave and a sound like an express train passing, and she felt the entire house rise up against the cables and tremble and hang there for moments before it settled back down onto the foundation blocks. The lights went out and the steel cables sang and the house frame and all the woodwork picked up the vibration, and the entire house hummed and moaned. Out the kitchen window she could see that the power line had come down, and for a few seconds the wire was spitting sparks and dancing like a snake. Then it lay still.
There was a strange dark-yellow light out there in which sea spray and leaves sailed far inland, and through the walls she could hear trees crashing in her forest. A large branch smashed through the window in the hallway and hung there while water poured in an
d spread quickly.
She lit a coal-oil lamp from AJ’s time and went to work with mop and bucket. Two hours later, during a brief lull in the storm, she put on the coverall and boots and heavy gloves and went outside and wrestled the branch back out. It looked like the one she’d cut off from the white pine and left on the ground.
She would have liked to call Aileen but the telephone was out as well, and it was still blowing too hard to walk over. And so she used their old signalling device, which was an iron rod and a dangling piece of rail, and when Aileen came out of her house and stood on the stoop they waved to each other in a flagless semaphore that everything was all right.
She crawled under the house to check on the braided flex-hose plumbing connections, and another hour or two later she made it to the boathouse and found the piece of fitted plywood that she should have put over the hallway window but forgot. She dragged it to the house and put it up now, and then back inside mopped up more water and swept up glass.
She took a shower with what she feared might well be the last hot water for a while, and then put on her nightgown and housecoat and slippers. High up at the back of a kitchen cupboard there was an old camp stove and a bottle of emergency coal oil, and she stood on a chair to bring them down. She filled the tank and pumped in air for pressure, opened the valve, and put a match to the burner. It worked. She talked to it. Good little cooker, she said to it. Still working well. Good for you.
She opened a tin of ravioli and scraped that into a saucepan and set it on the stove and stirred. When it was bubbling, she poured it into the blue cereal bowl and set the coal-oil lamp on the table in front of her.
Thank you, she said to the lamp and the little stove and the very house sheltering her, and began to eat.
