Black Duck

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  Or is there?

  You remind me of Jeddy somehow, Mr. Hart says suddenly, his blue eyes taking on a more friendly gleam. It’s easy to talk to you. Jeddy and I could be together all day and never be tired of it. Like this.

  Thank you, David says. He’s begun to feel warmth for the old man in return. His manner is brusque, but he is honest and direct, and has an offbeat sense of humor that David really enjoys. Ruben Hart would have made a great friend if only he’d been born seventy years later.

  You know, we don’t always intend to do what we do, Mr. Hart announces suddenly.

  Such as?

  I didn’t mean to get into what I did, and I know Jeddy didn’t, either. He had a good heart. It was the times.

  David nods, but he’s lost. Whatever Mr. Hart is talking about—some betrayal is what it sounds like—must come up later in the story.

  The old man sighs, leans back in his chair and by mistake knocks into a cardboard milk container on the counter behind him. David leaps and rescues it before it goes over.

  Whoa! That was close. Shouldn’t this be in the fridge?

  The counter is crowded with other things, too. Greasy plates, unwashed glasses, a stack of sticky pots and pans. It looks like the wife is still away. Mr. Hart has been cooking for himself and not bothering to wash up.

  When’s your wife coming back?

  When she can.

  You must be missing her.

  I’m doing all right.

  Where’d she go?

  North Carolina.

  You didn’t want to?

  Mr. Hart shakes his head. Wasn’t invited. I never am when she visits down there.

  Well, go on. So the Black Duck came in at Tyler’s. What happened next?

  What happened was that Jeddy and I couldn’t leave well enough alone. We were curious, you know, where that body might’ve gone.

  Of course, David says. Who wouldn’t be?

  ABSENT FROM SCHOOL

  I WASN’T THE ONLY ONE TO TAKE HEAT FROM my dad after we found the body on Coulter’s Point.

  The next day, Chief McKenzie lowered the boom on Jeddy so hard that it looked as if he’d never have another afternoon off in his life, not for lobster-pot hunting or anything else.

  “I’ve got to get a job,” he told me when we met on Monday for our walk into town to the school. “My dad said I’ve got too much free time on my hands and it’s leading to trouble.”

  “What trouble? That we found that stiff?”

  “No. I don’t know if it’s even about that. He said I’m too old to be hanging around on beaches. If I want to make money, I should get a real job.”

  “How about working at the store with me?” I said. “I could ask my father if Mr. Riley would hire you. You wouldn’t make that much, but we could do it together.”

  Jeddy shook his head. “Dad already signed me up to start next week at Fancher’s chicken farm. I’ll be mucking and plucking and watering the flocks.”

  “You won’t make anything there!”

  “I know.”

  “Isn’t that where your dad worked one time?”

  Jeddy said it was. “That’s how he got me the job.”

  We walked along in gloomy silence. Chicken-farm work was dirty and smelly. There seemed to be nothing more to say in the face of such a blow. Jeddy’s fate looked sealed even worse than mine. I felt so bad for him that I almost let loose and told him about the Black Duck, if only to cheer him up. But we were passing the police station across from Weedie’s just then and a knot came in my throat and I kept quiet.

  We were almost to school when I thought of something else I could bring up.

  “So, about that body, what do you guess happened to it?”

  “I don’t guess, I know. It got took,” Jeddy said. He was still sore about the whole thing, I could see.

  “Well, I know that, but the question is, why?”

  “My dad told me not to talk about it.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “My dad told me that, too. But we’ve got to talk about it. That’s the most interesting part, that they told us not to talk about it.”

  “My dad said we could get in hot water by sticking our noses in,” Jeddy said. “I think it’s big-time mobsters fighting with each other.”

  I nodded. “Could be. The thing I keep wondering about is how the body got took. No way you could get a boat in at low tide. And there was no mark on the beach. It’s like it somehow got lifted.”

  “Lifted?” Jeddy said. “You mean like lifted up?”

  “Yes.”

  Jeddy frowned. “I don’t see how.”

  “You don’t?” I already knew where this was leading.

  “Well . . .” He gazed at me. I could almost see the flash go off in his brain. He was remembering the far-off drone of a motor across the bay, the glimmer of silver wings in the sky.

  “That plane we saw!”

  “Right. If it had pontoons, it could’ve landed out in the water. Those seaplanes draw less water than most boats.”

  “But it was windy that day. They’re no good in the wind.”

  “The wind went down, remember? It was almost calm by the time we got back there. A plane could’ve coasted in pretty close. Somebody could’ve got off and grabbed the body and gone right back up. Wouldn’t have taken more’n a few minutes.”

  “Might’ve been the Coast Guard,” Jeddy said. “They’ve got seaplanes.”

  “The Coast Guard doesn’t go around stealing bodies. If they pick up a body, you hear about it.”

  “I guess it was somebody else, then. The only thing is, how would they have known where the body was? We were the only ones that knew about it. That plane would’ve needed somebody to tip ’em off where to land.”

  “I guess somebody did tip ’em off.”

  Jeddy paused and looked over at me. “Charlie’s got a radio in the station,” he said.

  I nodded. “Remember how he took an ice age to get to your house?”

  “And he didn’t want us going back on the beach.”

  “Your dad wasn’t too happy we were there, either,” I reminded him.

  That brought us to a standstill. Neither one of us wanted to make a guess as to what it might mean. I waited to see which way Jeddy was going to jump, whether he’d do what his dad wanted and shut up, or stick with me.

  “Well, I think it’s unfair,” he said, at last. “We found that body and we should be able to know what happened to it. They can’t treat us that way, keeping us out of everything.”

  “You’re right!” I said. I pounded him on the back.

  “If a plane came in there, it was in broad daylight. Somebody must’ve seen it or heard it,” Jeddy went on. “Who lives down around that beach?”

  “Nobody. It’s too far out. Except there’s old one-eye, Tom Morrison. He’s got a shack on the salt marsh behind the dunes.”

  “That crackpot. I heard he eats raccoons.”

  “I heard he’s got a raft and poles around all night hunting blue crabs,” I said. “How about if we go down and pay him a visit?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Soon,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m for it.”

  “Before he forgets. He’s that old.”

  “All right with me.”

  At this point, we entered the school. And we were proceeding with the most dutiful intentions across the front foyer toward our classroom when the earsplitting clang of the day’s opening bell burst over our heads. This was a brand-new electrical device, hooked up that fall to replace the principal’s old hand bell, and we nearly jumped out of our skins. But then, as we were recovering, we looked around and noticed something.

  Absolutely no one was in sight.

  The front hall was empty. So were the corridors. All the students and the teachers were inside their rooms, and the principal had gone back into her office.

  “We’re late!” Jeddy whispered ecstatically.

  “Too late!” I crowed with delight.
<
br />   A crafty look came into Jeddy’s eye. “I’m beginning to wonder if we were ever here,” he whispered.

  I shook my head solemnly. “I didn’t see us.”

  Without another word, we turned and ran back out the school door, and I remember how the early spring sun beamed down our backs as we hightailed it in glory across the fields toward the shore.

  TOM MORRISON

  WHAT JEDDY AND I KNEW ABOUT ONE-EYED Tom was what everyone in town knew: that as a young man he’d been a good fisherman. He’d had a boat and a crew and the kind of rugged strength it takes to pull a living from the sea.

  But the sea has a way of breaking down even the best. One gusty afternoon, a wave swept Tom’s first mate overboard, and he sank and disappeared before Tom could reach him. A few years later, a storm came up and smashed Tom’s boat into the rocks, and he had no money to replace her. Then he went to work as crew for others, but a boat hook caught in his eye one day and tore his face so badly that he had to quit working.

  After that, according to the story, his moods turned foul. The word went around that he brought bad luck on board a boat, and even when his face healed, no one wanted to hire him. Then his wife left him for another man, and he was forced to sell his house. And so he had retreated, alone, far out on the Point, to a shack that had once housed hens by the side of a salt pond.

  From then on, he’d kept away from humanity and rarely come into town. Jeddy and I had caught sight of his gaunt figure in the distance during our treks around Coulter’s Point. Neither one of us had spoken to him, though, or dared to follow the sandy footpath that led back to his shack, as we were doing now.

  Tom was nowhere in sight when we arrived. We skulked around a bit. The whole place was in a shambles, overgrown with weeds and pond brush, scattered with old tins, rusty tools, broken bottles and the like. The house was actually a pair of coops nailed together, and badly so, for one side had taken to leaning far over on the other, which was itself listing at a dangerous angle. It looked to us as if a hurricane had been through, and perhaps if you thought of what life had served up to poor Tom, you could say he’d weathered more than one.

  If he was still around.

  A half hour later, we were about to give up and head back toward the beach when the crunch of footsteps came from the bushes. An elderly dog staggered into the yard, followed by an old man carrying a long-handled net bristling with crabs. He halted and looked us over with one rheumy eye. The other was a whitened disk in its socket.

  “Hello, Tom!” I managed to call out.

  This brought a second suspicious glare. Jeddy weighed in with, “We’re here to ask you something, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  Under its gray bush of beard, Tom Morrison’s chin made a chewing motion, as if he were mulling this over. Then he walked toward the house, urging his moth-eaten mutt along. He propped his net against the stoop, where the crabs rattled their claws and scrabbled together, still very much alive.

  “It’s no trouble of me!” he called at us. “It’s trouble of you t’come all the way here.”

  He sat down against the chicken coop door and pried off his boots. Gruff as he was, we could see he was curious about why we were there. He was throwing us half-glances and muttering to himself. After a bit, he motioned us across the yard to sit down near him on a mound of clam shells.

  “This here’s Viola,” he said, in a somewhat more friendly tone. The dog thumped her tail.

  She was about the most beaten-down dog I’d ever seen, and so stiff-jointed, she had to circle around four or five times before her old legs would agree to let her down on the ground. But she had a gentle face and a sweet way about her. When she’d settled, Tom reached out and stroked her with a wide, rough hand.

  “Hello, Viola,” Jeddy said, leaning forward to give her a pat. She thumped her tail again. Then we got down to business.

  “What we want to know,” I began, “is if a seaplane came in here a few days back. Not here, I mean, but off the beach out there. It would’ve had pontoons and made a good amount of noise, and we wondered if you saw it.”

  Tom stared at me out of his good eye. I was trying my best not to look at his bad eye, which had no pupil and bulged from his head like a peeled egg. Most people would’ve put a patch over something like that out of plain good manners. Tom was way past worrying about such things, I could see.

  “Why we’re asking is, we found a dead body there a couple of days ago,” Jeddy continued, probably thinking it might help to give the whole story. “And when we left to report it, somebody stole it. And there were no signs of where it went, and no one’s talking about it. We think that’s fishy.”

  Tom stared at him. He still didn’t trust us and was holding back on an answer. Something else had already answered for him, though. A fancy gold watch was around his wrist. Jeddy and I both saw it. When Tom saw us looking, he raised his arm to make a proud show of the thing.

  “We sure would appreciate anything you could tell us,” I said. “It was midafternoon when we were there. A bunch of seagulls was making a racket over the body.”

  “Doing more than making a racket,” Tom replied, gazing fondly at the watch. “Having quite a banquet for themselves. Quite a banquet!” He glanced up, amused by his own words.

  “But then, somebody must’ve come. Flown in is what we guess,” I pressed him. “We came back later, about suppertime, and nothing was there. No gulls and no body.”

  “And no empty liquor crate,” Jeddy put in. “It’d been there, washed up with the body.”

  Tom stared at us. “Well, I got that,” he said. “After you left. There it is. Might be of use one day.”

  We looked where he was pointing. The crate was lying cocked up against an overturned skiff across the yard.

  “So you saw us,” Jeddy said.

  Tom grinned. “How d’ya like my new watch?” he asked, holding up his arm again.

  “We like it,” I said. “It was on the dead man, right?”

  “He don’t care,” Tom said. “He got no use for it now. Anyways, I left him his wedding ring.”

  “We won’t tell,” Jeddy said. “We just want to know about the seaplane. Did you recognize the guys in it?”

  “Naw. I don’t know ’em. Somebody’d been keeping a watch on these beaches, though. Been a big speedboat nosing up and down the coast all week, like it was looking for something. Then in comes the plane.”

  “Was it the Coast Guard?” I asked.

  “Nope. Nobody I ever saw. Tough guys.” He paused and sucked in his breath before uttering his next remark. You could see it was distasteful to him, something he didn’t want to dwell on.

  “They got machine guns,” he said. “When they come off the plane there’s two of ’em, and they wade ashore holding the guns over their heads. One takes and shoots the dead man. Rat-a-tat-tat. Shoots him dead again. Then they laugh. They drag him out through the waves back to the airplane, and take off.”

  “Where’d they go?” Jed said.

  Tom shrugged. “I stayed hid. I was glad I took time to cover my tracks.”

  “They never saw you watching?”

  Tom shook his head grimly. “They’re shooting dead men, so I see they’re not particular to what gets shot. Me and Viola, we stayed hid.”

  School being in session until 2:00 P.M., it seemed best to keep a low profile until that hour. After our talk with Tom, Jeddy and I stuck around in the yard and played with Viola, who still could fetch a stick, though it took her a while to get it back to you. Meanwhile, the old man disappeared inside his shack to heat up a pot of water to cook the blue crabs he’d caught. That was how he ate, never mind what time it was. Schedules the rest of us followed, like breakfast, lunch and dinner, night and day, had lost their pull on him. He was living free of all rules, even the most basic.

  I was watching him like a hawk, I’ve got to say. I’d been under a heavy regime of right and wrong, good ways and bad ways, ever since I could remember, and to see one-eye
d Tom out from under, cracking blue crabs at ten o’clock in the morning and falling asleep without even getting up from the table, was a sort of revelation to me.

  About noon, with Tom snoring in his chair, Jeddy and I went back to the beach and lay around out of the wind in the dunes. Unless you’re a seagull, there’s nothing comfortable about an open beach on the Rhode Island coast in May. Keeping our heads down, we ate our school lunches. Afterward, for sport, we crawled around looking for terns’ eggs in the dune grass. It was too early in the season for turtles to be laying.

  “Well, that’s the end of it, I guess,” Jeddy said as we rested after these activities. We were back on the subject of the dead man. “The guy was in deep with some bad characters and got shot. My dad is right, it was rumrunners and we probably don’t want to know any more about it.”

  “Makes you wonder, though,” I said. “Why were they looking for a guy that was already dead? Then they shoot him again, like they can’t stand his guts.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t them who shot him in the first place,” Jeddy said. “Maybe it was somebody else and they needed to prove to themselves that the guy was dead. He was probably double-crossing everybody.”

  “He was a high roller, that’s for sure. He must’ve been hauling in the dough to afford a watch like that. That pipe and tobacco pouch, they’re both quality, too.”

  There was a pause in the conversation while we looked over the dunes at a fishing rig that was chugging along offshore. It passed the beach and went on up the coast.

  “Well, you know what Marina thinks,” Jeddy said.

  “What?”

  “She thinks Charlie Pope’s gone in with a big bootleg gang. He’s been acting like he’s some kind of hotshot.”

  “She doesn’t like Charlie. She put him in his place, too. Marina knows how to do that.”

  “She doesn’t like Charlie for a good reason,” Jeddy said. “Don’t tell anybody, but he tried some funny stuff on her.”