A Matter of Mercy

by Lynne Hugo

  The horseshoe beach, reserved by the town for swimming, didn’t have grants in front of it. Rid briefly wondered if that would actually be a selling point. When he saw CiCi’s house, that’s what he thought first, would she sell it after her mother died, and to whom, for what? How could the tidal flats be private property? That made no sense. There was obviously a mistake in all this, one that would be straightened out in time. His mind wouldn’t hold an unbroken thought, only pieces. Still, when he saw her house, he did think of her. And when he thought of her, he was ashamed.

  He’d felt it before, with other women. They try to be dignified, let a man leave when he needs to leave. Wants to leave. Whatever. Something like desperation starts to leak in right at the end, though, as if a good watertight seal just springs a tiny leak. And any leak can sink a boat. Just give it time to work, work, work. Anyway, he’d heard her, though he pretended not to. The business about the accident-child being deformed. Like that made some difference. The reason he hadn’t turned around was simple and direct. He had to get to his dog and his grant. He couldn’t let himself be finagled into staying, not today, not after a blow had done whatever to his nets and his stock. There was another reason, too, though. He didn’t have any idea what difference it was supposed to make, what she expected or hoped for in reaction, that she’d have sailed that out like a lasso to snag him. He didn’t know what to say or how to help. If he had, maybe he’d have turned around and said, “Why don’t you come on with me today after all?”

  * * * *

  “Apparently, you’re not fishermen. You’re farmers. Sea farmers. Big difference,” the attorney said.

  Of course, it would be Tomas—burly-looking in his overalls, untamed gray mane, weather-beaten face and hands—who spoke for them in his refined, educated voice and vocabulary. Among them, he was the scientist, the one who read, who studied environmental conditions and growing techniques. Just now he was working with the new Australian lines, hanging nursery bags from lines suspended in deeper water to increase their exposure to nutrients. The only one of them who began to know as much as Tomas was Barb, only she wasn’t being sued.

  Tomas cleared his throat. “We’re acquaculturists, actually, but it would properly be considered a form of commercial fishing, sir. My research says that fishing is exempted under the Colonial ordinance of 1641. Isn’t that correct?”

  The three of them had agreed. They would pay for a joint defense. Tomas would speak for them with this Barnstable lawyer who’d agreed to take their case. Now Rid and Mario glanced at each other, tacitly congratulating each other on their wisdom. Tomas had book smarts. What they knew was that they had been raised always to stay below the high water mark when driving to and from their grants as a legal bow to the rights of the private beach owners. Once in the shallows, actually on the tidal flats, they were on their own grants. Neither of them understood—nor particularly wanted to—how something that had functioned so simply and so well for so long was suddenly the focus of litigation. Tomas, on the other hand, would make it his business to understand and fix it.

  The attorney sighed. “Yeah. It’s correct. And there’s a loophole the size of your harbor in it. See, the Colonial ordinance of 1641 was designed to encourage commerce—to get settlers to build wharves and the like. To do this, the lawmakers extended waterfront land ownership all the way out to mean low water—which, as you three well know, is a huge distance—what? five football fields?—rather than just to mean high water like practically every other coastal state in the country. And yes, you’re right, they did provide that commercial fishing and navigation could go on in the water above the land—hell, even swimming, if you can believe that, as long as the swimmer’s feet don’t touch bottom, for God’s sake.”

  “So, there’s our defense,” Tomas said. “And the town’s.”

  “Except…,” said the attorney. He leaned back in his swivel chair. It wasn’t a fancy office, but decent enough. Framed diplomas. Boston University. A wooden desk, not too scratched up. A second floor office, an abandoned reception desk just now. David Lorenz, Esquire himself: balding, wearing an open-necked Oxford shirt, khakis, steel-rimmed glasses. A habit of twirling the end of his mustache. Bitten fingernails.

  “…Except that your pea-brained state Supreme Judicial Court of 1993 affirmed a definition of aquaculture as farming. Not fishing. Therefore the grants are not a protected use. Therefore Pissario’s claim that you are on private property may well be valid. The town may not have the right to issue these grants at all.”

  “What position is the town taking?” Tomas still sounded measured and matter-of-fact, which was the only thing preventing Rid from grabbing the lawyer’s throat and demanding to know what the hell he was going to do about this. He didn’t dare even look at Mario now. The guy had been in the Marines; at least that’s what his tattoo claimed, but Rid figured him to have been tossed out of boot camp for sniffing Agent Orange or for putting his drill sergeant in a headlock. Mario was a good-hearted, hotheaded moron. Rid would rather have been sued with anybody else on the flats.

  “I couldn’t tell you. The town attorney seems rather befuddled. As does the shellfish warden. I realize that there’s … er … expense involved for you, but my best advice is not to rely on the town to resolve this for you.”

  Mario erupted onto his feet, his hand onto the lawyer’s desk. “That’s my grant, my father put my name on it, and I’ll fucking kill the bas—”

  David Lorenz drew back. In the same motion in which the attorney moved, Tomas was on his feet, his bulk equal to Mario’s but easily five or six inches taller. Still, the fluid grace of a fish. He slid himself between Mario and the desk, a hand on Mario’s shoulder, Mario then abruptly back in his chair. Rid sensed, rather than saw the force the hand had applied. That was the thing with Tomas. You never actually saw the force he applied to anything. “Hey, man,” Tomas said very quietly, speaking eye to eye to Mario. “Mr. Lorenz is our friend. Keep that straight, or we can split up and defend ourselves separately. Right?”

  Mario’s eyes were coal fires, but he mumbled, “Right.” He looked out the window where the sky was the pure periwinkle of the Cape in September. It helped. The bay would have helped more.

  The attorney’s shoulders and eyebrows—which could use a trim—dropped back into place.

  “Look,” he said, resuming. “There is some good news. Remember that Pissario is also suing the sea farmers—”

  “That’s aquaculturists,” Tomas corrected quietly. His hands rested on thighs that looked exposed without waders over them. His voice was strong, even though it was always low and calm.

  Lorenz blinked and went on again. “Right, excuse me, aquaculturists, he’s suing the other acquaculturists who drive over his beach to get to their grants. Now if I have this right, there are four whose grants are between the access road and Pissario’s who don’t drive over his beach so they’re not included in the suit.” He ran a hand from his forehead back, as if there were hair falling down but there wasn’t.

  Tomas nodded. “That would be Barb, Clint, Tweed, and Karl.”

  Rid directed the question to Mario and Tomas. “Have they heard anything from the people above them? Any complaints, I mean.”

  Tomas answered. “Barb just says she’s always gotten along with them. You know, she sees them out walking, she gives ’em a couple dozen oysters and chats awhile. Nothing different since Pissario filed, but maybe they don’t know about it yet. I doubt it though. People love Barb, and rightly so.”

  “It’s a subdivision up on the bluffs, of course,” Lorenz said. “Sometimes neighborhoods like that will band together if a leader like Pissario emerges. Don’t be surprised. But that won’t affect you.”

  “Yeah.” It was Mario, bitter. “Our asses have already been sued. What else they gonna do? Shoot us at dawn?”

  Tomas shot Mario a look. It was enough to shut him up, but he twisted the baseball cap in his hand until Rid wanted to grab it away. He was nervous enough with Ma
rio’s fidgeting, restraining himself from speaking to avoid Tomas’s reprimand as well as the embarrassment of sounding like Mario. The truth was that his head was about to detonate; he couldn’t trust himself not to explode in his own death threats.

  “Look, could we stick to the point here? I have other appointments.” Lorenz straightened his calendar after leaning over, ostensibly to consult it. “The point is that while there are four aquaculturists not included in the suit for whatever reason, there are six or seven others also sued because they drive across Pissario’s beach to get to their grant areas, although their actual grants are in front of other upland owners’ properties. The point is that perhaps you could draw some or all of them in to fight this together—pool your resources, as it were.”

  “Six or seven others?” Rid couldn’t contain himself, although he had enough control, unlike Mario, to stay seated, refrain from shouting and not cuss. His mother would have been proud. “How’d he figure that? There are twelve or thirteen grants down past Pissario’s toward Blackfish Creek.”

  “I have no idea how he decided whom to sue. That’s a mystery. Maybe they had too many letters and numbers on their license plates for him to copy down or something. I really have no idea. It seems pretty random.”

  “I know Bogsie and Smitty are in it, I saw ’em yesterday,” Rid inserted. “As far as I know, they haven’t done anything like get a lawyer yet.”

  “We can get that information easily enough. You three are his primary targets though, I’m afraid, since you’re engaged in illegally farming his land.” The attorney put up two fingers of each hand to bracket engaged in illegally farming his land in imaginary quotation marks. “Do you need time to think about this?”

  Rid couldn’t contain himself. “As opposed to just committing suicide here in your office?” He’d worn his newest jeans, the unfaded dress ones, a clean plain white T-shirt and deck shoes. The outfit was his equivalent of a tuxedo. He felt ridiculous and furious that Pissario—or anyone else—should bring him to his knees this way when nothing else had. Before Tomas could humiliate him, he forced himself to look at the lawyer directly and say, “I apologize. That was uncalled for.”

  David Lorenz shook his head. “Look, it’s all right. You’ve got every right to be upset. You’ve just got to realize that I’m on your side here, and what we’ve got to do is research, strategize and present a hell of a case. You men are going to have to put emotions away for us to do that or we’ll waste a lot of time. It’s time you’re paying for. Presuming, I mean, that you decide to fight this. You can walk away, you know. Go do something else.”

  Rid sensed that Mario was about to blow. He put his hand up and out to the side where Mario sat, a warning. “That’s not an option,” Rid said.

  From behind his desk, David Lorenz glanced warily at Mario. “I assume you feel the same way?”

  Tomas slid his own voice into the available space. “Yes, sir, he does. We all do.”

  “Well, then, we’ll proceed. I’ll need a ten thousand dollar retainer to get started. Our first step is to prevent an injunction that would stop you from working your grants while this thing makes its way through the courts. It could take years. I hope you’re prepared for that.”

  Rid had never gone there in his mind, considered maybe they could be shut down, stopped from working at all. Each of them had thousands of dollars lying in the shallows of the harbor. All their nursery stock, all their maturing and ready-to-harvest shellfish. All their trays, their nets, their cages. His stomach roiled. His peripheral vision picked up Mario twisting his cap.

  Tomas wiped one side of his face with his gnarly hand, a narrow gold wedding band part of the flesh. “Yeah. Okay. We’ll need to get that together for you.”

  Rid allowed himself to look at Mario on the way to looking over at Tomas. Mario’s eyes glittered unnaturally and for a moment Rid thought a dangerous rage was about to erupt. It was that hard to imagine tears.

  Chapter 6

  In the weeks that followed, Caroline carried around the hope Rid would call like a sand dollar in a zippered pocket. Not that he’d asked for her number, but it was in the book. It wasn’t like he didn’t know her mother’s name, even if he thought she might be using a married name, which she wasn’t. She’d resumed her own Marcum name before the divorce was final. Not that he’d asked about that, either.

  She watched him surreptitiously through the big windows near Eleanor’s bed as he came and went from his grant at low tides. Surreptitiously not because he could see her from that distance, but because Eleanor watched her as sharply as Caroline wished she could watch Rid, so she could not. And it wasn’t actually Rid she watched anyway, but more his truck. She had to actually see the truck arrive to be able to track his movement out to his grant. Otherwise, the figures looked too much alike from a quarter mile, and, lacking any discernible border, one patch of sandy bay bottom littered with oyster cages looked exactly like the next.

  He didn’t call. The first few days were hardest, but then Eleanor was worse—sicker, weaker, more pain—and Caroline stiffened herself by stuffing hurt and sadness in a bag of anger. So I’m lonely and scared here became a muttered Fuck you, Rid when she walked down onto the beach at mid- or high tide. If Elsie or a respite care giver were there for Eleanor at low tide, she went into town or over to Newcomb Hollow beach on the ocean side and walked until she was so tired she worried about making it back to the car. Not thinking about him, not rebuking herself, was fairly simple at home because her attention was so much on her mother. But when she was out of the house, however briefly, there was no neutral or restful place for her mind.

  * * * *

  October. Some days the offshore wind unsheathed its blade, but others were butter-soft, shining. The first two weeks offered a late Indian summer with beach grass gilt and silver shining in the Cape’s crystal light, waving under a topaz sky. Whitecaps. A symphony of gulls swelling overhead. Bluefish running. One warm Friday afternoon, Caroline opened all the windows in the living room and raised the head of the hospital bed, trying to bring the day to her mother, bring her mother to the day.

  Elsie had bathed Eleanor in the morning, a process Caroline intermittently forced herself to watch and couldn’t bear. Afterward, the sublingual morphine finally won and Eleanor was asleep, but it had taken much too long. Now Caroline and Elsie were in the yellow kitchen. The light beyond the window was an insult to what was happening indoors, a day Eleanor would have called an ode to joy. Instead she was oblivious to it, only able to focus on an argument with pain, and the recognition broke Caroline’s heart. Even visits from Eleanor’s friends had become difficult, the effort leaching her, leaving her worn and pale. Caroline had started putting visitors off when she could get away with it, trying not to give offense, sometimes accepting a homemade soup or pudding on the porch and saying that Eleanor was sleeping when she wasn’t. Otherwise they lingered, like a nice cake going stale from too much air, and her mother’s face looked like a snow sky when they left. Sometimes, though, when it was Eleanor’s best friends, like Noelle or Sharon, Karen or Carol, it was Caroline who couldn’t bear their presence, how they took what Eleanor had to give when it was Caroline who needed it most.

  “Your mother should have the drip now,” Elsie said, as she organized a late lunch for the two of them. She was making tea, practiced and efficient in her motions. Her sable hair was cut in a child’s straight bob, hardly a bit of gray in it though she looked to be in her late fifties. She definitely wasn’t the sort to color it, Caroline was sure; she didn’t wear a speck of makeup and her clothes were utilitarian, without a discernible style.

  Caroline slumped against the refrigerator, her face in her hands.

  “If you can be ready, you’ll help her be ready.” Caroline felt Elsie touch her shoulder and she lowered her hands from her face, which felt sticky. There was pressure over her eyes.

  “I’m not. How can I pretend to be?”

  “Don’t pretend. Can you start to accep
t it?”

  Caroline felt a flush of anger. “Easy to say.”

  “I don’t mean it to sound that way. Is there something that would help?” Elsie leaned toward Caroline, her brown eyes intent and direct.

  “When my father died, I felt cheated—you know? He died at his desk at work. He’d stayed late, the secretary had gone home. Mom finally went to the office to look for him when he didn’t answer the phone. A massive heart attack and we didn’t even know there was anything wrong with his heart. A little overweight, a little high blood pressure, no big deal. No goodbyes. No nothing. But in comparison to this? In retrospect, it seems a mercy.”

  Elsie crossed to Caroline, took one of her hands and led her to the kitchen table. She pulled out a chair and sat Caroline down, as if she were a child. The table was set, a turkey sandwich and a cup of tea at Caroline’s place. The tea, in one of Eleanor’s mother’s bone china cups, had a translucent round of lemon studded with cloves split on the rim like a slice of sun. The sandwich, too, was on the good china and had a pink cloth napkin folded next to it. A bowl of mixed fresh fruit was a little to the left. Once Caroline was seated, Elsie sat down with the corner of the table between them, the breath of her own tea rising next to Caroline’s.