A Matter of Mercy

by Lynne Hugo

  Caroline sighed and sank back into the couch. “Thanks to Mom, I do. I mean, ultimately I want to go back to work, but yes, I can do this. That wasn’t why I told Rid. I wasn’t asking for money.”

  “What would you want from him if you were to keep the baby?”

  Caroline sighed. “You know, at one point I really, really liked him or this wouldn’t have happened,” she said softly. “Maybe I just wanted to know how he felt. If he’d want to be involved. I guess I found out.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What do you mean?” Tires crunched on the gravel then. “I think the police are here. That was quick! Let me look.” Another upturned bug struggle, complicated this time by the afghan. Caroline huddled into herself, chilled as she stood without the blanket. At the kitchen window, she raised the blind she’d lowered moments before. Yes. Red and blue lights flashing on top of a squad car, two flashlights bobbing their way in divergent directions, one toward her porch, one toward Eleanor’s studio. “Yes, it’s them. Maybe I should call you tomorrow. Thank you so much, Elsie. I’ll be all right now.”

  “Let me know that you’re all right.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” This was punctuated by a knock on the porch door, the one facing the beach. Caroline hung up, went to the door, and peered through the glass.

  A patrolman was shining a flashlight on his chest, to illuminate his badge and ID. “Police, ma’am. We were called that there might be a prowler here.” Caroline opened the door. The outside air was palpable, heavy, and smelled of rain, or maybe snow. A closer look at the officer wasn’t reassuring; small statured, fine-boned, complete with acne, he could have passed for fourteen. She wanted to ask if his mommy knew he was out playing with cars and guns.

  “I thought I saw someone looking in that window,” she said instead. Best to just let him look around and go away. She gestured to the unkempt side of the house to the right of the drive, where beach plums and wild roses were high, thick and unruly. There was ground pine, too, all surrounded by the taller woods. “This afternoon I was out for a walk on the beach, and on my way back, I thought I saw someone in the yard.” Now she gestured to the opposite side of the house, left of the driveway, the side that looked toward the grants, where land sloped lower and the beach was visible. “I just don’t know. It could be nothing,” she added apologetically.

  “So that’s two different times you thought you saw someone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Male or female.”

  “I don’t really know. I wasn’t close enough this afternoon, and tonight I wasn’t even sure I saw anything. It was like a flash of motion at the window that could have been a face ducking down.”

  The other policeman stomped his way up onto the porch then, following the beam of his light. He looked older, like a bulldog, with heavy jowls and a neck that merged into his shoulders way too soon. He took off his hat, which the kiddie-cop hadn’t. Nodding to her in an old-school respectful manner that made her feel ancient, he said, “Evening, ma’am. We’re investigating the prowler. Have you seen anything since the call was made?”

  “No, nothing. I really wasn’t sure.”

  “She saw someone around the house this afternoon, too,” the kiddie-cop interrupted.

  “Anyone you recognize?” Bulldog asked.

  “No. No.”

  “We’ll walk the perimeter again, and check back during the night, ma’am. So if you hear our car outside, don’t be afraid. We’ll keep an eye out for you,” said the fourteen-year-old. “Now don’t hesitate to call again if you hear or see anything.”

  “I appreciate that. Thank you both.” Caroline felt as if she were in a low- budget movie, that they were all reading poorly written lines. She’d over-reacted and created this ridiculous scene, the same as going to the doctor and having no symptoms once you got onto the table in the one-ply paper gown.

  After the police were gone, Caroline suddenly thought to throw on the yard lights between the house and studio. She’d forgotten they were there. The porch light could stay on overnight, too. Tomorrow night before dark, she’d put on the light over the studio door. Eleanor used to work at night sometimes, so the whole studio could be lit up, which would make it awfully hard for anyone to be in the yard or driveway unseen. The only approaches were from the beach or the road. One side was impenetrable right up to the house with wild beach vegetation, and on the other side, beyond the cut-out yard it was largely the same.

  She called Elsie back to tell her that no one had been in the yard, but that the police were watching just the same. The microwave beeped, and juggling the phone to her left hand, she dropped a bag of decaffeinated green tea in a mug. She should have milk, she thought. But she shouldn’t have any trouble sleeping, she was so tired. So terribly tired.

  “I’m relieved to hear from you,” Elsie said. “I was going to wait another half-hour and call you just to check. And will you let me know how I can help, about the baby, I mean? Do you need a doctor?”

  “One way or the other, yes. But I think what I mean is yes, I need a doctor. If you know what I mean.” She gave a small half-laugh. “God, I hope you do, because I sure don’t.” Carrying her mug of tea, Caroline made her way back toward the bedroom. She’d been sleeping downstairs lately, in her mother’s bed. The goose down pillows and Eleanor’s quilt comforted her.

  “I believe I do. I’m sure I can get a referral.”

  “I’m, well, I’m sort of old.” She hated saying this. “I’m going to be forty-one when it’s born. He or she, I mean.”

  It was obvious she’d not thought Caroline was that age, or so Caroline interpreted the seconds of silence on the phone line before Elsie answered, “Let me see what I can do. For the time being, take two multivitamins a day, and get lots of extra calcium.” Still and ever the nurse, Caroline thought with a smile.

  “Thank you so much, Elsie. Good night now.”

  Elsie said, “Good night, dear,” and then something strange happened. Caroline was pulling back the multi-colored quilt on her mother’s bed just as she started to say Hold on a minute because she wanted to tell Elsie that she’d like a woman doctor in any event, but Elsie had already hung up. The line had a hollow, open sound and Caroline hesitated. Then, distinctly, there was another click.

  Chapter 16

  For once, Rid didn’t care about the shock absorbers. He let the truck slam- bam-bang off the beach and onto the potholed access road, his foot angry on the gas. Anything to get away from Caroline and whatever it was she wanted from him because whatever it was he wouldn’t give it to her. Couldn’t. Didn’t have it.

  He hit the steering wheel once with his fist. In the passenger seat, Lizzie anxiously darted in to lick his neck. Absently, he caressed her ears. “It’s all right, girl,” he muttered. “I’m not mad at you. Not at you.” As he drove, tears argued with anger. Or were because of it. He hated how he’d acted. She brought out the worst in him.

  In his weedy gravel driveway, another round of door slamming with a side order of foot stomping. That he couldn’t afford to lose this tide was a true fact. Just a damn true fact. He had a fat order to fill for Big Al and John who were catering a ninetieth birthday party for their father and wanted everything over-the-top perfect. His plan had been to use the first half of the tide to pick that order, which was for an extravagant twelve dozen oysters, and then to keep pulling out his stock to bury for the winter. He still had a fair number of hats and racks to get out, which was what happened when you stretched the season like tourist taffy, trying to eke out every penny. He could pick legally as long as there wasn’t ice, and he had to raise cash. Yet he couldn’t risk stock by leaving it in too long, either. This month was going to be tricky.

  He was not going to think about what CiCi’d said, and certainly not about whether the baby was a boy or a girl or how she suddenly knew so much about aquaculture. He was going to figure out how to fill that damn order. If the weather held, he could pull more stock tomorrow and the
day after. Right now, though, he had to pick and he didn’t have a lot of time. Rid glanced at his watch. Shit. Only twenty minutes until the tide would turn. He had plenty of legal size on his own grant, but she could be still be there, like a mine in the harbor.

  More than one way to skin a cat. Back in the truck, relieved to have come up with a Plan B that would give him a shot at filling the order without running into CiCi again: Mario was picking in the wild at Lieutenant Island and Rid stomped on the gas and headed that direction. Mario’s laissez-faire practice of not buttoning down for the winter gave him more time to turn a profit, that was for sure. There’d been a problem more than once with his apparatus getting loose in a blow and doing damage. As it was, Rid knew there’d been words between Mario and Bogsie, whose grant was on Mario’s west side. There’d been words between Mario and a lot of people. Mario liked his beer better than he liked diplomacy, but he sure had a nose for dollars. He cut corners, did things like pick in the wild every chance he got rather than using his own stock to fill orders, then motor across the bay on a skiff and hastily work his own grant on the back side of a tide. No part of his grant was as well tended as any parts of theirs, but somehow every time he seemed to come out ahead. About the only time Rid had seen him come up short was when he lost his truck, and knowing Mario, he was playing the insurance game to the hilt. Meanwhile, Rid and Tomas were playing chauffeur and making his deliveries while Mario nursed his mood.

  Now Rid sped down Route 6. Lizzie pulled her head in from the window when he told her to and he raised it. He thought again about CiCi and shook his head in reflexive refusal. “Can’t think about that now,” he said out loud, and switched the radio on to a hard rock station.

  * * * *

  He saw Mario. It would piss him off that Rid would fish the same place, but Rid knew—everybody did—that Mario had a knack for finding wild shellfish, like a built-in divining rod. Normally he was secretive about where he went, but he’d had to tell Rid where he was having Tomas drop him; how else could Rid pick him up? It must be killing Mario for the two of them to know. Hell, it served him right. Tomas had needed his truck that morning, or Mario would have used it. Just another day or two and there’d be at least a rental. The problem was using it commercially, and on the flats. That was proving complicated to work out.

  Lieutenant’s Island, south of Blackfish Creek, was deserted as usual, especially this time of year. Part of it was an Audubon Society bird sanctuary. Its shallows had had cultch refreshed right about three years ago. Rid had forgotten all about it to his irritation now. Probably most everyone had. Mario was right on, realizing that oysters there would be reaching legal size.

  Now from a distance, Mario looked like some overdressed snowman with his waders and waterproof sleeves over a heavy jacket.The wind must have picked up and it must be cold as a witch’s tit, too, because he had a hood up over his hat. Mario was bent from the waist, hands flying, hardly stopping at all to inspect for size or whether an oyster was good. He knew by feel. They all did. He already had two crates filled, a very good sign. No one else was around, also good.

  Rid put the truck in gear. When he got out, he avoided slamming the door. Mario hadn’t looked up yet. He pulled two plastic milk crates from the truck bed, gave a sigh as heavy as Lizzie ever did, and headed in Mario’s vicinity.

  Mario sensed his approach. His head swung in an exaggerated slow motion, encumbered by clothing. He straightened, his body all annoyance, or maybe Rid was just reading that into his stance. Mario crossed the flat to Rid, his feet crunching cultch lying atop the wet sand as he did.

  “What’re you doin’ here?” Mario demanded, squinting as if there were sunlight.

  “Got an order to fill, had to pick you up anyway.” Defensive, and for no good reason. He had nothing to be ashamed of. Rid didn’t look at him, but put down the crates and made a show of scanning the area.

  “I thought you were buttoning your grant.” The smallest whiff of sarcasm in Mario’s voice.

  Rid was suddenly too tired to dissemble. “Look, man. There’s a chick, she was waiting for me on the grant, wanting to talk and all, and I can’t deal right now. If I stayed—so anyway, I’ll pull my stuff out the next couple of tides, whatever. Got an order to fill now and figured I could pick that here. But I gotta move or it’ll be too late. Tide’s turned.”

  This was something Mario understood, trouble with a woman. “Shit, man. Pick what you can. If you’re short, you can take what you need outta there.”

  “Thanks. What deliveries you got for me?” Rid was making them, while Mario dickered with the insurance agent.

  “Down to Chatham, like I told you yesterday.”

  “Christ,” Rid muttered, though he had known it. Also that it would kill the afternoon. “What’s Tomas doing?” A sweep of offshore wind carried dry sand from the dunes, and Rid automatically turned his back to the land to protect his face, exposed and vulnerable as jellyfish at the same moment Mario did the identical dance of experience.

  “Man, I have no truck. You said. Look, never mind, I’ll get Bogsie or Tweed to—”

  “No,” Rid cut him off. “It’s cool. We three, we handle this together, remember. I got your back. Chatham it is.” He forced a jocular tone and smile. The three men harbored enough anger between them to fill their two working truck beds, Mario’s ruined one, and probably the whole goddamn bay. For no good reason. They weren’t really mad at each other.

  * * * *

  Night sealed the town like a dome, starless, moonless, complete, and Rid slouched at the bar in the Reading Oyster, putting away beer and nursing a burger and fries when it should have been the other way around. Tomas had Marie and the kids to get home to, as he was always reminding Rid. But Rid really couldn’t grouse since Tomas had talked his wife into having Mario for dinner. Rid was supposed to go over later for the three to go over lawsuit finances. Really, of course, it was a pretext to babysit Mario or he’d be in here drinking alongside Rid, a dangerous picture.

  Across from Rid, Billy wiped the bar up to the spot Rid occupied and picked up on the other side. “Another one?” he asked, an afterthought. The rafters above their heads were low, dark wood and between them were the racks from which glasses hung, gleaming in the low light. Billy wore dangle earrings in both ears tonight, which Rid thought was over the top. He considered starting something about it, but postponed a decision when a stranger he’d not heard come in quietly took the stool next to his. The proximity felt intrusive with the rest of the bar empty.

  “Yeah, gimme another one,” Rid said, at the same time he openly looked at the man next to him who was definitely not a fisherman. No fisherman would be caught dead or alive in that get-up. Had the country declared war while he’d been down in Chatham?

  “Hey,” the stranger said, nodding to Rid.

  “Yeah,” Rid answered, with an obvious scan of his boots and fatigues, on up to his head, which was shaved. “You, uh, stationed around here?”

  “You might say that.”

  The man’s face was a moon with a nose that appeared to have been flattened by contact with, say, a steel door. Rid tried to figure out what breed of dog he was reminded of: boxer? No, bulldog, maybe. Or shih tzu. A normal enough face until it got squashed like that.

  There weren’t any military bases nearby. “Like where?”

  “I’m not at liberty to divulge that.”

  Rid snickered. “Oh, yeah, some kinda secret mission, huh? A Green Beret? Or I guess you must be a SEAL, just swum up off the sub.”

  “Perhaps. Your name is Ridley Neal and I’m here to speak with you.”

  Instantly cold water sober. “Who are you?”

  “You don’t need my name. All you need to know I’m about to tell you.” He was wide-shouldered, big-thighed, the body of a high-school football player ten or fifteen years since the last down.

  Billy edged toward them and Moonface glared at him. “I’ll take a draft and privacy,” he said and waited while Billy, sullen
, drew the beer and put it in front of him. The bartender checked the near-empty room and lacking an excuse, disappeared through the swinging kitchen doors.

  “You got a problem, I’m gonna help you with it.”

  Rid guessed the man was somehow connected to Pissario, maybe here to try to scare him off his grant. Curiosity fought with irritation and lost. “First off, I don’t have a problem, and if I did, I wouldn’t ask you for help. Everything’s under control, thank you very much. That’s my grant and I’m stayin’ on it. You can tell your boss to fuck a duck.” Almost as he said the words, Rid knew he’d gone too far. Pissario wasn’t supposed to get any whiff that they weren’t retreating.

  But the man just shrugged. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, and you’re receiving my help purely as a byproduct. Helping you isn’t my goal, I assure you. But since you’ll get it anyway, I want something in return.”

  Rid studied the man next to him more closely, making no attempt to hide what he was doing. Now he wished he’d contradicted the stranger and told Billy to stay in the room. Maybe he could manage to call the cops. None of them had figured Pissario for this kind of crap, but there was no other explanation.

  “Why don’t you be straight? What do you want?” He tried to keep his voice even.

  The man’s mouth hardly moved with his humorless laugh. “Well, I’d certainly be the only straight thing out here. Look. You got a big problem that’s also a problem for someone else. I’m taking care of it for the someone else. You’ll benefit. Here’s what I want from you: I’m giving you a name and address. She needs help, you make sure she gets it. On the QT. You just watch out for her from a distance. Drive past her place every now and then, make sure everything’s all right. If it’s not, you pay cash, send someone to go fix it. No names. Long-term requirement. Simple as that. Here’s the name and address, all wrote out nice and clear.” He slid a small piece of pocket notebook paper across the bar to the top of Rid’s plate.