The Jetty

by Jay Brandon

  “You can’t possibly be finding anything of interest in our local paper, can you? We are famous here for our lack of events.”

  Vivian was at his shoulder. Her blonde hair emerged from beneath a perky little white hat like a sailor’s cap, trailed down her long neck. She was in white: white blouse, open rather wide at the top, filtering down to pale blue Capri shorts that hugged her legs. They were theoretically more demure than short shorts, except these were so tight she might as well have been naked. She touched his back and a chill emanated from the spot.

  “Oh, hi!” Michael said, drawing a warning glance from the librarian. He dropped the newspaper back on the stand and luckily Vivian showed no interest in it. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “What are you saying, Michael?” She gave his name a vaguely European sound. “That I couldn’t have any use for a library?” She laughed at his expression. “But I saw you come in. Unexpected appearances, they keep a relationship fresh, don’t you think?”

  “You’re always unexpected,” he answered. Not every woman would consider that a compliment, but Vivian chuckled, giving him a sidelong glance. “Would you like to come for a ride in the famous car?” she asked.

  “Shhh,” came the insisistent, well-practiced hiss of the librarian.

  “I can’t,” Michael whispered. “Got a lot of work to do for my company.”

  Vivian studied him searchingly, clearly not buying his excuse. Michael tried to look guileless; that is, to let his face fall into its natural expression, though he was beginning to forget what that was like.

  Vivian trailed her fingernails along his stomach, and he wouldn’t have been surprised to look down and find his shirt shredded. Then she raised those fingers and wiggled them in his direction, a farewell. She walked away, slowly and deliberately, confident of his following gaze. At the front door, she stopped and he was sure she was going to turn around, suddenly transformed. But after her pause, she went out, turned a corner, and abruptly disappeared.

  Michael hurried to the door, stopped, then cautiously stepped out. The Mercedes was there, across the street. Whether it was occupied he couldn’t tell. He still felt Vivian’s presence surrounding him. He looked in every direction he could think of, but didn’t see her.

  Only then did he remember that he didn’t have a car; Kathy had kept it. But no place was far on Port Aransas. In fact, from the library’s parking lot he could see the ferry landing. Such a short distance to the ferry, to the mainland, to escape. His feet wanted to run in that direction.

  “Island Time” had once been a magical phrase for Michael. Once the ferry landed and you rolled off onto the island you were at peace. You were in a new world. Time relaxed. There was no way the mainland with its worries could get at you. Now “Island Time” sounded threatening. He was isolated from help and from everyone around him, including Kathy, because he couldn’t talk to anyone about what was happening. For all he knew, the island had come unmoored from the ocean floor and was drifting farther and farther from mainland stability.

  He began walking the few short blocks to the church on Alister. Cars passed him only occasionally, even on the main street. The island was by no means unpopulated but after the jammed Labor Day weekend it seemed to be. Port Aransas was a town of two thousand people that swelled to a population of 150,000 on big holiday weekends. After Labor Day all

  those empty rooms haunted the place, making it seem abandoned. The ferries ran half-full. It was easy for Michael to imagine he was in a once- fashionable resort where no one vacationed any more, where the resort didn’t even exist any more.

  Michael had come to the island on so many summer excursions he’d thought he knew the place well, but now, with the passing of a single weekend, he felt like an utter stranger. He looked at everything differently. The gas station with its two pumps standing nakedly in the driveway, the station as quiet as one on an old highway superseded by a new interstate. The tourist court with its permanent “Vacancy” sign, the bare hooks showing where the owner had taken down the “No” sign and put it away for the winter. The tiny real estate office that sported the sign Michael hadn’t noticed the day before, “Welcome Winter Texans.”

  The door of the church opened just as Michael reached for it, startling him. A man emerged wearing a Polo shirt and warm-up pants and carrying a tennis racquet. He seemed equally startled to find Michael on the church doorstep.

  “Oh, sorry . . . um, can I help you?” He acted for a moment as if

  Michael had caught him sneaking out.

  “I was looking for Reverend Holroyd.” stammered Michael. “You found him.”

  Michael felt he had to rush through his explanation. He fully expected

  to be turned away.

  “And who told you to come to me?” Reverend Holroyd asked after

  Michael had explained his curiosity.

  “I don’t know her name, sir. Just a lady who said she’d once heard you speak on the subject.”

  “I hope I’m not getting a reputation. Come in. It’s all right, come on in.” The minister was a young man, no older than Michael, but in spite of

  his distraction he had an air of authority that was perhaps subjective with

  Michael, derived from his childhood Baptist upbringing. He felt guilty at

  taking up the minister’s time.

  Reverend Holroyd had a receding hairline that emphasized his nose, and a small mouth that almost disappeared when he pursed it but kept breaking into small, nervous smiles. He walked quickly, unconsciously swinging the tennis racquet.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have let people know about this little hobby of mine. Ghosts, I mean. I’m sure it seems contradictory for a minister. Don’t you think so? Well, I know some people do. I first got interested in the stories just as myths, stories not so different from the angel visitation stories recounted by the Bible and others. But instead I found . . . well, I abandoned that sermon.”

  He led Michael through the high-ceilinged sanctuary, where two sections of pews were divided by a central aisle that pointed like an arrow toward the pulpit on the raised platform at the end of the room. The light in the chapel was dim and distorted by the tall stained-glass windows on both side walls. There was an air of expectancy among the empty pews. Reverend Holroyd passed through the room with casual familiarity, not slowing to turn on any lights, and led Michael through a door off to the side at the front of the room behind the altar. They were in a narrow hallway the minister obviously knew well because he didn’t slow down in the dimness.

  “I’ve come to believe there may be different stations on the spiritual plane,” Holroyd was saying. “Maybe there really are ghosts. Not to be confused with the Holy Ghost, of course,” which Michael recognized as a dry pastoral sally and so chuckled solemnly.

  “In fact if there are ghosts I think they have little to do with the life of the spirit. They’re just poor trapped souls that haven’t found – here we go.” They had passed the open door of what was obviously the minister’s

  study. The next door, the one he opened for Michael, was to a small room with a table, a copying machine, three old metal filing cabinets leaning

  together, and two small bookcases. One of the cases, against the far wall, contained mostly Bibles and hymnals. The other, on the right-hand wall as they entered, perhaps consciously separated from the spiritual material in the other case, held Reverend Holroyd’s ghost collection.

  “It’s not much. I hope you weren’t expecting the Library of Congress. But I imagine it’s the most comprehensive collection of supernatural material on the island.”

  “Thank you,” Michael muttered, already bending to pull a book from the top shelf. Hauntings Confirmed, was its title, by Camille Plantaget. Turning to the copyright page, Michael saw that the book had been published in 1928. It was a slim volume with a plain red library binding, but its age lent it authority, though Michael was afraid from the author’s name it would read like a schoolgirl memoir. But the f
irst lines caught him with their brisk tone: “In this modern age, none of us lends much credence to ghost stories, though they may give us pause to listen more closely to the wind seeping through the window if we hear such a tale on a winter’s night. No one pays serious heed to such stories, however, because they have never been subjected to scientific analysis. Never, that is, until now.”

  Reverend Holroyd coughed slightly to remind his visitor of his presence. “That one’s fun to read, and a pretty good catalogue of supernatural occurrences, too. Is there some aspect you’re particularly interested in? Poltergeists? Retrocognition? I’d love to meet someone who’s experienced that.”

  “Retro – ?”

  “ – cognition,” the minister finished for Michael. He leaned closer, lifting a hand. His eyes shone with enthusiasm. “The rarest of the supernatural phenomena, and I think the most interesting. The knowledge of past events gained through supernatural means.”

  “A vision?”

  “More like time travel. A living witness turns a corner and suddenly finds himself in the past, even the distant past. The most famous incident

  was when a modern-day visitor to the palace of Louis XIV spent an entire afternoon in the seventeenth century. It took him the longest time to realize it wasn’t a historical re-creation. But when he returned he was able to point curators to the location of some jewelry that had been lost for years, behind a stone no one had known was loose.

  “That’s usually what retrocognition seems to involve, the solution of a mystery. Someone sees a dead relative go off to his final assignation, that sort of thing. I don’t suppose you’ve – ”

  “No, sir, nothing like that,” Michael said, sorry to quash the minister’s

  eagerness. “My problem is my sister, back in Amarillo.” Michael had had time to formulate a cover story during the walk to the church. “She and I just inherited the family ranch, and Cindy’s trying to convince me we can’t sell the place because she says Grandma’s still there. Grandma . . .”

  “Passed on some time ago?” Reverend Holroyd asked understandingly. “Well, sir, that’s what I’d like to know. Maybe she didn’t pass on far enough, if you see what I mean. Of course, I’d like to have the money from the sale, but if Grandma really is still roaming the old place, I wouldn’t

  want to leave her among strangers.”

  Michael was pleased with his cover story. It was a good story. It made him sound sympathetic, un-fanatic, and substantial: an heir. He even found himself affecting a drawl as he told the tale. He could see its effect on Reverend Holroyd, who grew more relaxed. The minister leaned toward the bookcase himself, scanning its three shelves.

  “So you’d be interested in learning how to raise or lay a spirit? Of

  course I don’t have any formulae, but maybe – ”

  “No, sir, confirmation is more what I had in mind. I’ve never believed in ghosts myself, but if there’s some evidence – well, I like to think my mind’s not closed.”

  “Oh, there’s evidence, if you could call it that. Glance at this one by Corbell, for example. He pursued claims of ghostly sightings about as rigorously as one could hope. Cameras, aura detectors, electromagnetic fields. He never saw anything himself, which should have convinced him it was all nonsense, because he’d gone into the project as a skeptic. But exactly the reverse happened. Some of the people he interviewed were so sincere and so forthright about what they’d seen, without any hope of profit or notoriety, and there was such consistency to their stories, that Corbell came away convinced that if there aren’t ghosts there must be some collective human subconscious from which all his subjects drew their knowledge.”

  Michael glanced through the proffered book. Reverend Holroyd went back to his perusal of the bookcase and drew out another couple of volumes, laying them on the table. Michael picked up one and began skimming a chapter titled “Mrs. Malloy’s Late Husband,” when a sentence seemed to reach out for him: “So-called experts agree that ghosts can only haunt two places: their former homes or the places where they died. From my research I can’t dispute this claim, because every incidence I investigated involved . . . ”

  Michael read on. When he heard Reverend Holroyd’s dry cough again he found himself sitting at the small table, one hand resting on the short stack of books the minister had set out for him, as if he were taking an oath. He looked up to see the minister standing nervously in the doorway of the room, still holding his tennis racquet. His face clearly expressed his regret.

  “I’m sorry, but you see I’m late for an, um, engagement.” He caught himself swinging his racquet and shrugged, realizing the non-ministerial nature of his engagement was no secret to his guest. “I’m really very sorry, but . . . ” The pastor was obviously torn by a proselytizing urge that had nothing to do with his spiritual duties. He would have liked to stay and guide Michael through the supernatural plane.

  “Oh. Yes, I understand.” Michael stood up hastily, but he hated to put down the book, hated to leave the others behind. “Is there another time that would be better, or could I – ?”

  “No, no. You’re welcome to stay. I can see your interest. I wouldn’t turn you away. Take as long as you like. There’s a janitor around the place somewhere, and one of the deacons always drops by on his way home from work, so someone will lock up after you leave.” And after all, was the unspoken addendum to Reverend Holroyd’s offer, a ranching heir from the panhandle, concerned with his late grandmother’s welfare, could be trusted not to steal anything.

  “That’s very nice of you.” Michael made no effort to refuse the offer. Books were his friends; he felt their allure. Somewhere in this tiny library he thought he could find an explanation of the events of the last few days.

  “Before I leave, though, I want to show you something,” Holroyd

  said.

  Michael followed Holroyd out the side door of the building to a field

  of grass. A narrow walkway led to a boathouse on one of the canals that crisscrossed the island.

  The boathouse was built of pine and cedar, of recent construction, and unpainted. A wobbly pair of double doors opened on a room more workshop than shelter. A row of wooden shelves and old school lockers lined the far wall. At the center of the shed, dominating the room, an old boat lay on a scaffold. It was perhaps 30 feet long, and 10 feet across, made of wood. It was sleek – even Michael could tell it had been built for speed. “It’s a Morris Cahern,” Holroyd said, and waited for the appropriate reaction.

  “I’m sorry,” Michael confessed. “I don’t know much about boats other than ski boats. On a lake.”

  “Well, Cahern was a brilliant boat designer from Massachusetts. He was quite famous in boat circles. This one features a square hull design, Cahern’s trademark. The hull gives the boat stability, particularly at high speeds. I bought it from a boat yard several years ago and have been refurbishing it ever since.”

  Michael climbed a stepladder perched alongside the stern, and

  examined the boat in detail.

  “The teak of the deck, all original,” Holroyd said proudly, “and

  the brass.”

  “When was she built?” Michael asked.

  “1916-1918 is my best guess,” Holroyd replied. “Cahern designed less than fifty boats, so for me to find one is very exciting!”

  “What are these?” Michael said, indicating several places on the hull. “Yes, well,” Holroyd answered, “those are the reason the boat was on

  the junk heap, I’m afraid. Those are bullet holes – .30 caliber machine gun bullet holes. I’m still researching the story but the boat was in a gun battle of some kind. The bullets apparently passed through the hull and crippled the steering mechanism, forcing the boat aground. Two rumrunners were killed.” The minister ran his hand lovingly along the boat’s hull. The name was rendered in blue paint across the stern, Bacchus.

  “I’ve heard of that boat.” Michael said. “Recently. Here on the island.”

  “We
ll, many people know of the boat and the story of the smugglers. Some years ago a couple appeared on the island claiming to be the smugglers reincarnate. A young woman was a victim of the charade and ended up taking her own life. Tragic. Now these friends of yours who spoke of the Bacchus?”

  “The Lefflers,” Michael replied. “Maybe you know them.”

  “Hm,” Holroyd said, turning back to Michael, “no, I can’t say I do. Well, anyway, I thought the story might be of interest. You see, the owners of the boat died in that gun battle.” Holroyd paused for a moment, and Michael wondered if it was out of respect for the dead. “So,” Holroyd continued, “I’m putting it in the water in a few days. Care to join me on its return to the sea?”

  Michael hesitated. He and Kathy had talked about going on a boat trip.

  “Sure. Thanks.” he said. “Splendid,” said the reverend.

  Michael and Holroyd walked back through the field of grass toward the church.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Holroyd said. “Ghosts can’t cross over water, can’t sleep, and can’t procreate.”

  Michael laughed. “Of course they can’t procreate. How could they? I mean ghosts can’t have sex.”

  “Can’t have sex?” Holroyd retorted. “Who told you that?”

  Michael looked at him blankly. The reverend’s face reddened a bit. “Well, I’ll let you get back to your researches.”

  “Thank you, Reverend. Oh, may I ask you one more question? How

  – I mean, do any of the books say how you know if you’ve seen one? How