Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1)

by T'Gracie Reese

  SEA CHANGE

  A Nina Bannister Mystery

  T’Gracie Reese and Joe Reese

  We would like to dedicate this book to the memory of all great teachers, and especially Joe’s mother, Marie Reese. The jails in Texas are filled with hardened criminals who, if asked, might say, "I didn't like school much except fourth grade. There was nobody who could read Tom Sawyer like Mrs. Reese."

  Full fathom five thy father lies;

  Of his bones are coral made:

  Those are pearls that were his eyes;

  Nothing of him that doth fade,

  But doth suffer a sea change

  Into something rich and strange.

  Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:

  Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong bell.

  The Tempest, William Shakespeare

  CHAPTER ONE: BAY ST. LUCY

  “In Vineyard’s Haven, on Martha’s Vineyard, mostly I love the soft collision here of harbor and shore, the subtle haunting briny quality that all small towns have when they are situated on the sea.”

  William Styron

  “Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”

  Robert Heinlein

  “So, how do you teach Beowulf?”

  The sea spilled calmly out of a sun which, blood red while rising, had now mildewed into a kind of chalk white, and was making its way upward as slowly as the tide was creeping outward.

  “For which class?” asked Nina Bannister. “The eight o’clocks?”

  “No, no, they’re incorrigible. There’s nothing to do with them but make sure they can’t get at the piñata.”

  “There’s a piñata?”

  “Yes. Room 220 doubles as the Spanish classroom fourth period, when I’m off. Señora Fitzwilliams insists on having a piñata hanging from the ceiling.”

  “Why, for heavens sake?”

  “I don’t know. It causes all kinds of mayhem.”

  “I can imagine. More coffee?”

  “Just a bit, please.”

  Macy Peterson held a half-filled cup across the table while Nina poured, careful to miss neither the exact center of the dark brown circle beneath her, nor anything transpiring on the morning beach.

  There was, she decided, nothing to miss.

  Late September in Bay St. Lucy. Most of the tourists gone, the bed and breakfast owners resigned to the fact, the sea not caring about it in the least.

  Nor the gulls, which spun screeching, dived occasionally, made pests of themselves by attacking garbage cans beside the beach houses––cans which Nina had resolved long ago could not possibly have resembled in any way the whitefish and sea trout which the gulls were supposed to be making the most of.

  “Stupid birds,” she found herself whispering over the slight splash of the coffee.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. Just me coming to grips with dotage.”

  “Is that what you’re in? I’d rather refer to you as a ‘senior.’ Isn’t that better?”

  “Yes. I don’t mind being a senior. I’m just a bit concerned about graduate school.”

  It took a while for that to penetrate and, when it did, Macy struggled to keep the most recent slurp of coffee in her mouth.

  “That’s funny,” she was finally able to say.

  She had always laughed at the right time, even when she was a sophomore in Nina’s world literature class.

  When had that been? When had Macy been fifteen years old?

  Ten years ago.

  Pffffft. The time going by.

  Pfffft.

  “That’s very funny, Nina. Graduate school.”

  “Yes. Well, I’ve applications pending at two places. I suppose we all have. I do so want to get my first choice.”

  “That’s funny, too.”

  “I was just thinking. Ten years since you took world literature from me.”

  “Seems like yesterday, Nina. Except I keep wanting to call you Ms. Bannister.”

  “I do, too. That’s what worries me.”

  “So how did you teach Beowulf?”

  “Well. Don’t just emphasize the monsters, Grendel and his mother The girls won’t really care about them and the boys will have seen the video games.”

  “There are video games?”

  “I’m sure there are, but if they’re not in the stores they’re certainly on the computer. There is nothing more perfectly commensurate with Anglo Saxon oral literature than You Tube.”

  “That’s probably true. But you will come tomorrow and work with them? Ten o’clock?”

  “All right. Ten o’clock. Just a few remarks.”

  “I wish you’d come and teach them more. Once a week, maybe.”

  “No. Forty years is time enough for me.”

  “You don’t miss teaching, now that you’re retired?”

  “It is stunning how little I miss it. Even the good students, even those few years when I had a good principal. No. I miss none of it. Every good memory is counterbalanced by visions of chewing gum in the drinking fountains.”

  They smiled quietly for a time at each other, the smiles mixing like cream in steam rising from the porcelain coffee pot. Amazing, Nina found herself thinking. There she herself was, sitting across from her as though from a mirror, a young teacher with everything in front of her. Not at all similar physically of course. Macy was tall and slender, perhaps five eight, with long straight blonde hair—the exact opposite of Nina herself––who had always preferred the description of “elfin” to other things that are said about people five foot three. Her mouse brown hair, cut short, framed her face with her up-turned nose that might look a little elf-like.

  But that did not matter.

  What mattered was a look in Macy’s eye, which told the world and all her students that learning would take place, that Shakespeare was important, that poetry condensed truth and that there was such a thing as truth and it was preferable to its opposite, that being not falsehood—which was truth in another container—but simply noise without any meaning at all.

  Macy was, in short, an idealist.

  “You have to go, Macy.”

  “I know.”

  Nina rose, knowing by the bells at St. John Cathedral in the middle of town that it was seven o’clock.

  And knowing, of course, Macy’s schedule as well as she had always known her own.

  Seven thirty, teachers’ meeting.

  Seven forty five, in class, papers sorted, everything ready.

  Seven fifty five, first bell.

  They had entered the house, crossed the living room, and made their way out to the front staircase when Macy turned and threw up her hands:

  “I forgot! I forgot!”

  “What?”

  “It was the first thing I was going to tell you, and I completely forgot it!”

  “What is it, Macy?”

  It was cool this morning, cooler than it had a right to be in late September. Macy’s wire-rimmed glasses had fogged over with the same kind of mist that was hovering over the dunes beneath and behind the house. She tugged, almost nervously, as the turquoise scarf that settled so securely into her white windbreaker.

  “Broussard! Broussard is coming tonight!”

  “Tom Broussard?”

  “Nina, there is only one!”

  “No, there are a lot. We’re in Gulf Coast Mississippi here. There are as many Broussards as there are yellow perch. Not as many as there are Fontenots of course, or Guidrys, and not as many as there would be farther west, over in Louisiana—but still enough.”

  “He’s agreed to come! He’
s going to talk to us!”

  “When?”

  “Tonight!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No. Edie Towler called me at six this morning. Six o’clock in the morning! She’s so excited.”

  “Well…”

  “A real writer! The man has published, I don’t know, how many books?”

  “A lot.”

  “A dozen, anyway. And he’s coming to our little writers’ group. Nina, I’ve got so many things I want to ask him.”

  “You’re sure you want to ask him these things?”

  “Of course! Why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t we all?”

  “It’s just…”

  “We’re all really dedicated to writing well, and some of us will get published. I know it. Some of us will.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  “But to have the chance to learn from a writer the caliber of Tom Broussard…it’s once in a lifetime.”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  “So you’ll come, right?”

  “I’m not always good in writers’ groups, Macy.”

  “But you know Tom! Some people say you even persuaded him to come!”

  “I talked to him about it; I’m not sure if I was the one who ultimately persuaded him. And, yes, if it comes to that, I guess I do know Tom Broussard as well as anybody can know him.”

  “You taught him didn’t you?”

  “He was in my class. Whether I taught him anything….”

  “Didn’t he dedicate one of his books to you?”

  “I think it was one of the books that didn’t sell.”

  “Oh you! But do be there, won’t you?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Library, seven o’clock.”

  “Ok. I’ll come.”

  “Great. Well…I’m late now. Gotta go.”

  Nina watched her descend the stairs, catch her pumps on the rickety, next-to-bottom step that still had to be fixed, scrape across white shell-gravel, climb onto her bicycle, and pedal away.

  “Have fun with Beowulf and the piñata, Macy!”

  “It will be his last adventure! The dragon is dead, and now he must attack the piñata!”

  “Adieu, brave young teacher.”

  “Adieu…”

  “Don’t say old teacher!”

  “I won’t! See you tonight!”

  Nina waved as bike tires crunched oyster shells and the cycle lurched into the sand and asphalt lane that connected the real world of Bay St. Lucy with the row of ocean front shacks where she now lived.

  Then she went back inside

  She walked into the kitchen, opened one of the small drawers beneath the sink, and took out cat food.

  Furl, hearing this from his accustomed position on the deck, padded his way to the glass door and rubbed against it.

  She poured a handful of dry particles into his bowl, and, feeling now as if she herself had begun to pad rather than walk, crossed the room and slid open the door, somnolently addressing her tan and white animal with a useless command.

  Useless, since Furl was going to do exactly what he wanted to do, anyway.

  “Furl!” she said.

  He entered, soundlessly, on cat’s feet as did the fog in Sandburg’s Chicago—or was that a different poem? Heavens. Her mind, her mind––at any rate, Furl crossed the kitchen, ate two or three bites of whatever it was she was feeding him now, then returned to where she was still standing, having just closed the door.

  All right. That was all the food he wanted.

  Now he wanted out again.

  “Unfurl!” she said in the same imperious, uselessly authoritative, voice.

  She slid open the door and he exited.

  While she thought of Tom Broussard.

  “What a great writer!” Macy had said.

  Yes. Well.

  “This is going to be such a wonderful experience for all of us.”

  Nina looked at the kitchen clock above the stove.

  Seven twenty.

  She had promised Margot Gavin to be at the shop by eight.

  Plenty of time. Enough to stand sit on the deck for five more minutes and stare out at the ocean.

  “A wonderful experience,” she found herself whispering as she pulled the chair closer to the rail. “A wonderful experience indeed. More like a disaster.”

  But no need to worry about that now.

  No need to do anything now but watch the waves.

  The swell seemed more powerful than she’d remembered it being. It washed within inches of the poles beneath her deck, and it growled the dark constant murmur that always came near to hypnotizing her. Foam tracings scudded on top of it, shining white in the moonlight and dissipating on the dark sand as the waves receded. “Listen!” it ordered her. “You hear the grating roar of pebbles, which the waves draw back, and fling, at their return, up the high strand. Begin, and cease, and then again begin, with tremulous cadence slow, and bring the eternal note of sadness in.”

  Sadness? Not really, despite what that gloomy pessimist Matthew Arnold might have thought.

  This was not Dover Beach.

  This was the Gulf Coast.

  There was, of course, always the dull and intermittent ache that had begun with Frank’s death and that would never disappear completely, like the pain that amputees were said to feel for missing limbs; but that had nothing to do with the sea or its comings and goings. No, that elemental movement had always comforted her, always made her dream of distant places and bizarre adventures. She was Odysseus and not a retired high school English teacher; she was sailing forth at first light, out there, far, far, to the drear and vast edges of the world. Past the distant, ever burning lights of the oil platforms, past the cape islands that served as barriers protecting her little Ithaca of Bay St. Lucy—and all the way to the cave of the winds or the lairs of Cyclops.

  None of these visions bothered her. There was instead a thrill to them. There was…

  …and then she saw the porpoises.

  They had come to visit again, close to shore, glistening black bodies arcing and plunging, soundlessly, there and gone, up and under, telling her that all was well at nine bells.

  There! There they were again, twin shadows chasing each other southward toward Biloxi and Falls Bay, like marks of punctuation, dashes, extending an endless sentence forever across an otherwise blank and shifting Gulf of Mexico.

  They were there for her every morning at the same time.

  Always swimming in the same direction.

  She had thoughts of naming them. Something literary of course, as were all of the other things she had named: cats, dogs, roses, mopeds, raincoats….

  …but no, they were beyond naming, those two. They lived in a no-name realm, and if they experienced some immense pleasure by being together in the tide and the moonlight and the night sea air, why that pleasure was something that had no name either.

  They were simply they, and that was an end to it.

  And now they were gone, the glistening backs replaced by sun sparkle on the blue black waves.

  No, she thought, there was no sadness to the ocean, not a bit of melancholy in all the seas of the world.

  Good morning to you, Frank, she found a voice within her saying, as though some elemental part of him was spread out there before her, his smile beaming from the red and rising sun just as it had always done from the chair across from her.

  There was no answer, of course.

  Or perhaps there was.

  And smiling inwardly at the possibility, Nina Bannister rose, made her way inside, and got ready for the day ahead.

  Her blue Vespa sputtered its way through the middle of Bay St. Lucy while she thought alternately about the scrabble of palm fronds and storefronts, bakeries and balconies, hotels and hand-painted signs saying “Apartment for Rent, Ocean Frontage, Winter Rates now Applicable”—and Tom Broussard.

  She remembered him as an impossible student, all the worse for his brillia
nce, all the more frustrating to deal with because of an inbred certainty of his own mental superiority.

  Which did, of course, exist.

  But all the same––

  Then the shouting matches in class, the trips together to the principal, the even louder shouting matches in the hall, the forced study sessions—all of these things had given way to a feeling of immense relief when he did finally graduate and was once and for all out of her life.

  Except he wasn’t.

  The impossible young man had, frustratingly, learned something from her.

  And wanted to keep in touch.

  Occasionally one of her good students wanted to keep in touch, and did, to her great pleasure. A Christmas card now and again, or even a surprise visit to her classroom.

  But Tom Broussard came to her mainly in rumors and back page newspaper articles labeled “Police Blotter.”

  A time in the military.

  Then out of the military. Not quite a dishonorable discharge but not exactly an honorable one either. A separation labeled, in bureaucratese, something meaning essentially “Let’s just call it quits and never see each other again.”

  Then some years on the off-shore rigs, as young coastal boys such as Tom always were bound by custom and heritage to do.

  A stint in jail.

  Rumors of dark drug connections.

  How had she always been kept abreast of these things?

  Had he written her?

  Or had he just made sure the right newspapers arrived?

  It was too hard to remember now; suffice to say, there had been some bond welded fast by those unendurable encounters, so that he now wanted her always in mind of what he had been, as opposed to just how bad he could really be.

  And then he was in New York.

  Despite herself she thought of Death of a Salesman and Uncle Ben.

  “And when I came out of the jungle I was twenty one. And, by God, I WAS RICH!”

  And he was.

  Perhaps a bit older than twenty one…

  …but a best selling author.

  And now he was living here again, back in Bay St. Lucy.

  May God protect us, she thought, weaving the small motorcycle––which, she noticed, was precisely the same shade of blue as Macy Peterson’s scarf had been, and the sky should have been if the sun and elements were doing their job and not lazing about behind this oyster non-color thing that covered them every now and then in advance of storms—