by Philip Craig
I took the book. Free People, by Hamdi Safwat. The subject was Sarofim. The print was small, and there were no pictures. It seemed to be a combination of history and political theory. A very gray book. I didn’t know if I wanted to know that much about Sarofim or the Rashads.
Amelia gave Zee the letters. “Mail these for me, will you, dear? Since they moved the post office out by the triangle, I have to drive through that traffic jam in front of the A & P in order to mail anything. I hate it. But you’re going by there anyway, so would you be a darling . . . ?”
“Aunt Amelia, I hope you’re getting something out of this necklace business,” said Zee.
“Something? Oh yes. Quite a lot, according to Willard Blunt. But not anything public. Transferred funds from the Padishah’s Swiss accounts to the Stonehouse Boston accounts. Frankly, I can use the money. Father was a sweet man who knew much about many things; unfortunately, money was not one of them. The same was true of my husband and is true of me as well. Happily, Willard Blunt managed to prevent Father from spending everything before he died, my sister married wealth, and Raymond and I never needed more than we had. What more could any of us have asked?”
“It sounds okay to me,” Zee said. “But now you’ll be well off for a change. I’m glad.”
“As am I. Willard Blunt sent me quarterly checks for forty years. A trust of some sort, set up by some Stonehouse who properly doubted that his children would be as shrewd as he was. That money helped Raymond and me stay afloat on farmers’ wages, but now it’s run out, so this new money is just fine. The emeralds mean nothing to me, and I’m only sorry that Raymond isn’t here to enjoy the money they’re finally bringing. Not that he would live any differently. He was a man who always did what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a farmer and he was. He’d still be a farmer.”
Most people don’t like to talk about their money. There are exceptions, of course; usually people who have just made a lot of it and want you to know about it. Most other people don’t discuss it because, I guess, they think they’ll either embarrass you or embarrass or endanger themselves by whatever they reveal. Amelia Muleto seemed indifferent to the psychological issues surrounding money. She used money seriously but didn’t take it seriously.
I said this to Zee as we drove away.
“Uncle Ray was the same way,” said Zee. “Money was like air or food or shelter to him. He knew you needed a certain amount of it, but he never went after any extra. He appreciated the checks from Willard Blunt, but never thought about them very much. He was interested in his vegetables and wine and his family. Money was only a tool. As long as he had enough, he was satisfied. I doubt if he ever imagined that he might die and leave Aunt Amelia a widow without income. I doubt if she thought about it either. When it happened, of course, she dealt with it, because that’s the kind of person she is.”
“She’ll be going to the big Saturday bash, though.”
“In formal gown, looking splendid, you may be sure. She even has a role in the drama. She will accept the paste necklace on behalf of the Smithsonian while Aunt Emily presents the real thing to the Padishah. Aunt Amelia is still a beautiful woman. She dazzled high society when she was a debutante and now she’ll dazzle it again for one night. And then she’ll come back to her little house and live a life without grand balls or Padishahs or any of the other adornments that Aunt Emily thinks necessary.”
Zee quite apparently favored Aunt Amelia over Aunt Emily. That was good news for me because my economic system was more like Ray Muleto’s than Edward Damon’s. And I had to do without a trust fund, too.
“Did you notice the name of the royal family of Sarofim?” I asked.
“I thought I saw you twitch a little when you read the name. Do you imagine what I’m imagining?”
“That the jerk who nearly ran over us is the Padishah of Sarofim being passed off as a mere ‘Mister’ Rashad? Yes. And that Standish Caplan’s job is to make sure he’s entertained and keeps out of trouble while he’s over here.”
“And that Colonel What’s-his-name is his bodyguard?”
“Nagy. Yes. And the boat belongs to your Aunt Amelia’s brother-in-law.”
“Did anyone ever draw it to your attention that life is sometimes ironic?”
“You’ve been reading your philosophy books again. I can tell.”
I took Zee home so she could get some chores done before she changed for work. She was on the graveyard shift at the hospital. “For obvious reasons, we don’t use that phrase,” Zee had once explained, a bit testily. Zee had wonderful full red lips, which I could still taste as I left her West Tisbury house and drove back to Edgartown to find Manny Fonseca, the Portagee pistoleer.
5
Manny Fonseca had a lot of nicknames, all of them tied to the old West, which fascinated him. He was a gun lover and he considered it to have been his great misfortune to have missed every war fought by America in his lifetime. He had been too young for World War II and Korea and too old for Vietnam. Although the United States government had undertaken several undeclared and officially secret military operations while Manny was doing his turn in the army, and although Manny had done his best to be assigned to those activities, he had been stationed instead in Mississippi and been forced to content himself with becoming the camp’s small-arms expert. Manny had brought back home to the Vineyard his interest in shooting and now, in his mid forties, he was one of those guys who shot up a great deal of his income at the target range at the Rod and Gun Club. His wife and kids seemed pretty normal in spite of Manny’s mania. Manny himself wasn’t all that odd, either, even though he was constantly trading guns, buying guns, selling guns, shooting guns, talking guns, and reading gun magazines. He belonged to the NRA, had progun bumper stickers on his truck, was pretty far off to the right on most issues if he ever thought about them at all, but was only openly prejudiced against the Wampanoag Indians up in Gay Head. He called the Wampanoags “Japanese Indians” because of the imported trinkets that were sold in the shops at the top of the Gay Head Cliffs.
I stopped at his house and was told by Helen, his wife, that he was still at the shop. The shop was a clean white building in Edgartown, out toward the yacht club tennis courts. I drove down there, parked, and went in.
Manny was a woodworker. A fine finish carpenter. If it could be made out of wood, Manny could make it. He was a man you could trust absolutely to do good work, on time. A rare commodity on Martha’s Vineyard or anywhere else. His shop smelled of woods, oils, and paints. There was sawdust on the floor and in the corners of the rooms.
Manny was about to close up when I came in. He raised an eyebrow.
“How?” I said, holding up an empty hand.
“No jokes,” said Manny. “I haven’t had my evening whiskey yet. Besides, I don’t even want to think about those savages up there. ‘Professional Indians’ I call ’em.”
Actually, he loved to think about them. Whenever he wasn’t thinking about something else, he fussed and fumed about the Wampanoags. But I hadn’t heard the “Professional Indians” phrase before.
“What do you mean ‘professional,’ Wyatt?”
He smiled, pleased to tell me. “I just thought it up. Those injuns up there are all professionals. A professional is somebody who does something for money. Those people up there weren’t interested in being Indians until they found out it paid. For a couple of hundred years they didn’t want to be Indians. They just wanted to be like everybody else. But once they found out that this stupid government of ours would give them half of Gay Head if they were real Indians, they got busy and got themselves declared official redskins. They’re all a bunch of Professional Indians. It’s a damned crime!”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. I had my own complaints with Gay Head, the Vineyard’s westernmost township, the principal one being that there was no place to park up there to go fishing. Gay Head’s roads were lined with not only NO PARKING signs, but NO PAUSING signs as well. Gay Headers didn’t like other peop
le using their beaches, apparently. I took this to be a sign of general unfriendliness toward out-of-towners, of which I was one. I wouldn’t have cared except that Gay Head is a beautiful area, famous for its colored clay cliffs and for its fine shore fishing.
“Professional Indians, eh, Wild Bill?”
“You’ve seen those signs they’ve got up there at their so-called Tribal Council headquarters? ‘A federally recognized tribe.’ You think the Utes or the Navahos or the Apaches have little signs saying that they’re ‘federally recognized’ tribes? You bet they don’t. But these professional Wampanoags have ’em all over the place so everyone will know that they’re sure-enough Indians.” Manny, who as far as I knew had never seen a Ute, Navaho, or Apache, took a deep breath. “You know how you get to be an official Wampanoag?”
“No.”
“You’re a direct descendent of somebody who was a Wampanoag back in 1860 or something like that. You got an ancestor who was a Wampanoag, you’re a Wampanoag. What do you think of that?”
I didn’t want to think about that and said so. “I didn’t come here to talk about Wampanoags. I came to borrow a pistol.”
Manny brightened. “What kind of a pistol?”
“One I can wear under a suit jacket without anybody knowing I’ve got it. My old service .38 is too fat. Besides, all I have is a belt holster. I think I need something else.”
“Follow me home,” said Manny happily.
I did and we went down into his basement. He unlocked the door of his gun room and we went in. The place was an armory, with pistols, rifles, and shotguns in cases along the walls, a neat workbench with tools and gun parts laid out upon it. There were scopes, boxes of shells, containers of powder and shot, bullet molds, scabbards, holsters, and gun cases stored or hung around the room. The smells of cleaning agents and oils permeated the air.
“I gather that you don’t want anybody to know you’re carrying,” said Manny.
“I just don’t want to make an issue of it. I also don’t expect to use it.”
“Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” quoted Manny. He looked me up and down and side to side. “You got any preferences? You prefer something heavy? Something light? Forty-five? Nine mm?”
“No preferences. Like I said, I don’t expect to use it.”
“You got a permit to carry?” Manny was a law-and-order man.
“Yes.”
“You have big hands. You want something you can get a hold of. I got just the thing.” He unlocked a case and took out a pistol. “Here you go. A Colt Mark IV Series 80. Forty-five caliber. Load her up with 200-grain CCI Lawman slugs. Thousand feet a second. Mucho oomph. Take it.”
I took it. It was heavy but nicely balanced. Manny rummaged around in another cabinet and brought out a holster. “Top-grade cowhide. You can wear it on your belt or under your arm. You’ll want it as a shoulder holster. It will fit that weapon like a glove.” He unlocked cabinets, tossed me a box of ammunition, and dug out some man-shaped targets, earplugs and shooting glasses. “Let’s go up to the club.”
The club was the Rod and Gun Club, which had a newly renovated shooting range. From my house I could often hear the popping sounds of the Rod and Gun Club shootists at their play. It was Manny’s favorite spot on the island. We drove there, unlocked the gate, and went in. We parked and walked down to the table at the twenty-five-yard mark, and Manny got me into the holster and adjusted it to his satisfaction.
“You ever wear one of these rigs?”
“No.”
“Well, when you draw you just pop off the thumb strap and yank her out. I’d carry one in the chamber with my piece locked and cocked. It’s plenty safe.”
No gun is safe as far as I’m concerned, but I just nodded. Manny loaded two magazines and put one in the gun. “You know anything about this pistol?”
“I’ve shot a revolver.”
“This is different. Safer, actually.” He jacked a bullet into the firing chamber. “Now she’s ready to go. Here’s the safety.” He ran smoothly and patiently though the prefiring actions, with a strong emphasis on safety, then put the pistol on the table. “Put the plugs in your ears while I set up the targets.” When the targets were set, he came back.
“Watch.”
He put plugs in his ears, donned his shooting glasses, raised the pistol in both hands, and rattled off a series of booming shots. Cartridge cases streamed into the air and arced to the ground. Sudden silence rang. We walked up to the targets. The left-hand one had a tiny cluster of bullet holes right where the nose of a real man would have been. Manny looked satisfied. We walked back.
Manny showed me his grip, right hand gripping the pistol, left hand supporting the right, right arm locked stiff. I loaded the pistol and shot off a clip of bullets at the right-hand target, aiming at the widest part of it. The .45 jumped less than I expected, and all of the bullets were in the black.
Manny was pleased. I shot up the rest of our bullets, and after I made a few practice draws from the shoulder holster, we went back to his house.
I paid him for the bullets we’d used and for another box of them.
“You want to buy that weapon,” said Manny, “I’ll give you a good price.”
“No thanks, John Wesley. I’ll have it back to you on Sunday.”
“Lemme know how it goes,” said Manny enviously. Then, “Where you going to be, anyway? What’s going on?”
I couldn’t resist. “I’ve been hired by the Wampanoag Tribal Council to be a security guard at their Saturday-night meeting. They don’t want any interruptions by white-eyes from out of town.”
“Get outa here!”
I got. Actually, of course, the prospect of me working as security for the Padishah of Sarofim was no more outlandish.
On Thursday the Chief called me in and made me an official Edgartown special police officer. At home again, I called Vineyard Haven, ordered a tux, and told them to charge it to Edward C. Damon.
Zee was still working the night shift and sleeping days, so I went fishing alone. Up to Norton Point on the north shore, in hopes that maybe the blues that weren’t down off Chappy anymore might be up there instead. I know a guy who lives off Lambert’s Cove Road who lets me use an old road on his land to get to the beach. When my father was young there were still a lot of people up island who would let fishermen use their driveways to get to prime fishing spots, but over the last twenty years, as off-island people have bought up Vineyard land and built new houses where there were never houses before, the driveways and old roads have been closed to fishermen and hunters. There seem to be fewer available fishing spots every year. I felt lucky to know somebody who would let me in.
I wasn’t so lucky with the fish. I worked up and down the shore for most of the late afternoon but got nothing for my efforts. Still, it was a nice day. A fine August sun, The Elizabeth Islands across Vineyard Sound, pretty water between them and me, with boats of all kinds going west with the falling tide or east against it. Everyone was doing fine, since the wind was southwest and behind the people fighting the tide and the tide was with the people beating into the wind. I imagined myself in Jeremy Fisher’s catboat, going west toward Menemsha or over to Tarpaulin Cove across the Sound on Naushon or on west to Cuttyhunk. Of course in my imaginings, it wasn’t Jeremy’s catboat, it was my catboat.
In the old days the local fishermen used catboats for all kinds of fishing, and there was no reason why I couldn’t too. Some world champion bass had been caught long ago just off Cuttyhunk, and I might just go over there in my catboat and see if there were any more around. After the bass came back and the moratorium had been lifted, of course.
I got so dreamy about catboating around the south coast of New England that even if I’d managed to hook a fish he probably would have gotten off, and I got home too late to invite Zee to supper. I found some of the last of last fall’s scallops in my freezer, lettuce in my garden, and leftover rice in the fridge, and while the scallops were t
hawing in a pan of hot water, made myself an Absolut martini and called Zee anyway.
“What would you say if I told you I landed an eighteen-pound bluefish this afternoon at the change of the tides on Norton Point?”
Her voice was suspicious. “Did you?”
“No. I was going to invite you over for supper to help me eat it, but since I got home too late to invite you and didn’t catch it anyway, I’m inviting you to lunch tomorrow instead.”
“Tonight’s my last night shift, and I’m sleeping in tomorrow, so I’ll pass on the lunch. After four, though, you can pick me up at my house and take me to Amelia’s. She’s going to take a couple of tucks in my gown so I’ll look particularly fetching Saturday night when the Padishah proposes.”
“Well, I know he’s wild about you, and I certainly want to aid the advancement of true international love,” I said. “I’ll see you at four.”
T’d drive myself, but this way I’ll have a chance to see you.”
“I can pick you up again afterwards and then you can really see me.”
“Not tomorrow night. After Amelia does my dress, she and I are going to go out to eat together. After that, she’ll drive me home. It’s all arranged.”
“Rats.”
“And you won’t see me Saturday, either, because Amelia and I are going to dress at her house in the afternoon, and then one of the Damon cars is going to pick us up and take us to the party.”
“Double rats.”
“However, after the party you can drive me home!”
