by Philip Craig
“You can’t rouse my masculine vanity with that trick. Fine, you fillet the fish.”
“Okay, okay.”
The road from Gay Head leads around the south end of Nashaquitsa Pond and into Chilmark. In the early morning light that loveliest of island landscapes was ethereal as a dream. A layer of mist that lay over the pond had not yet burned off, and the anchored boats seemed painted on a mirror. Zee found the Cape classical station on the radio, and Vivaldi accompanied us all the way to her house. It was the Vineyard as it was supposed to be.
“Did you know that Bach belonged to the Vivaldi Society, but Vivaldi did not belong to the Bach Society?” I asked.
“No,” said Zee.
“It’s a little-known fact,” I said.
“So what?” asked Zee.
I raised a professorial finger. “Knowledge is to be valued for its own sake,” I said. “Gotcha.”
No one was waiting for us at Zee’s house. Together, we set the kitchen table. Then, while Zee filleted three fish, I filleted the fourth, peeled and sliced some potatoes, and got the coffee started. A bit of butter in the frying pan to cook up the potatoes, then in with a bit more butter and the fish fillets, then, while everything else was cooking, poached eggs in a second pan. Nothing to it. I dropped bread into the toaster. The fine smells of coffee and food filled the kitchen.
Zee walked in, wiping her hands, eyed the stove and got out the orange juice.
“Perfect timing.” She turned on the morning news and sat down while I poured coffee and loaded up our plates. We ate slowly and steadily while the announcer informed us how the world beyond the Vineyard had not significantly changed since yesterday. We ignored the weather report since it was a mainland station and the Vineyard has its own private weather systems that no one really seems to be able to predict. The sports report was of the Red Sox in another August slump. What else was new? The Red Sox are heartbreakers because they’re always just good enough to give you hope and never good enough to justify it.
“No bull pen,” said Zee. “No left-handed power. Great outfield, but shaky up the middle. Same old Red Sox.”
“We ought to go up for a game sometime. If you’re sitting in Fenway Park, even watching them lose can be fun.”
“Yeah, we really should do that. This is good stuff, Jefferson. Did anybody ever tell you that with just a little bit of advice, you could probably cook as well as I do?”
“I think you’ve mentioned it from time to time.”
“Well, I really mean it. This is good!”
“Why don’t you get your bathing suit and we’ll go to my place and get mine and some food and beer and newspapers and books and we’ll hit the beach just like the summer ginks.”
“You’re on. Listen.”
I listened. The announcer was telling us that the Padishah of Sarofim had completed a state visit to Washington and had returned to the island of Martha’s Vineyard for a last weekend at the summer house of his host, the well-known financier Mr. Edward C. Damon, before returning to his homeland on Monday.
“So he’s here,” said Zee.
I had been wondering when he’d show up. “We knew he was coming. Not to worry. If it ever got out that he or his henchmen tried to do a number on a couple of American citizens, he’d be in what some folks call deep international doo-doo. He’ll be gone on Monday. Nothing’s going to happen.”
And nothing did. Then.
26
When we got out of the LandCruiser at my house, somebody at the Rod and Gun Club was already popping away on the target range.
“They must shoot up all of their money,” said Zee, looking down that way through the trees behind my place.
“The serious ones all reload just because of that.”
Whoever was shooting was doing it systematically. There would be a silence, then two shots coming so fast they sounded almost like one, followed by a split-second silence, two more quick shots, another split-second silence, and then two more of the incredibly fast shots. After a while the sequence would be repeated.
“What’s that all about?” asked Zee.
“It sounds like Manny Fonseca or one of his pistoleering buddies. You know Manny?”
“Manny Fonseca, the woodworker? I know him.”
“Well, Manny puts three targets up, then practices his draw and shoot. Two shots in each target. You know, like John Wayne in Stagecoach. Ringo against the Plummer brothers? I think Ringo only had one bullet per Plummer, but Manny likes to put two in each target. Sounds like he’s shooting his .45 today.”
“Boys will be boys.”
“Manny and the guys like to shoot just like we like to fish. May be they do less damage. We killed four fish this morning, but all they kill are targets.”
“They’re still playing cowboys and Indians.”
“A gun is just a tool.”
“I still don’t like them.”
“Remember that this coming winter when I’m out there freezing my fanny in my blind and you start thinking about my famous duck with honey and marmalade.”
“Get your bathing suit. I want to get wet before I take my late morning nap on the beach.”
I collected food, drink, and gear. When I came outside, Zee was sitting in a lawn chair watching two of the Bad Bunny Bunch watching her.
“Why don’t you plant a bunny garden?” she asked. “You know, a garden without a fence. One just for the bunnies.”
“What an un-American thought. We don’t go around building bunny gardens. I never heard of such a thing. Get out of here!” I yelled at the bunnies. They didn’t move.
“Where do they live when they’re not trying to find a way through your garden fence?”
I gestured toward the woods. “In there somewhere. They probably have a bunny condo or something.”
“I think they live in holes in the ground.”
“Could be.”
“They’re cute. Let’s shoo them away and then follow them and see where they go.”
“You go right ahead. I’m going to the beach.”
“Tomorrow we’ll do it,” said Zee.
“Tomorrow you can follow bunnies if you want to, but I don’t think I will. I plan to devote myself entirely to meditation and spiritual exercise.”
It was turning into a beautiful day. We drove down to Katama, then turned east over the beach. There were the to-be-expected late-August clammers trying their hand on the Katama flats, and out on the bay, the pro quahoggers were leaning back on their rakes. There weren’t too many 4x4s on the beach today, but tomorrow there would be more than you could count. The weekends are the only time working islanders have for beaching, and on a fair day the beach between Katama and Wasque sometimes looks like a parking lot for 4x4s. There are more every year.
We drove on to Chappy and took the narrow road through the dunes, over the splintering wooden roadways that the Trustees of Reservations built at great expense to save those very dunes, and on to Wasque where we paused and watched a good many people fail to catch any fish. It was family day at Wasque. Umbrellas had been put up, and children were running around with balls and toys while their mothers watched them and their fathers made their casts into the empty waters of the rip. It was amateur hour. The casts were going every which way. We checked out the 4x4s and didn’t see any that belonged to serious fishermen.
“Forward, ho!” said Zee.
We took the road to Pocha Pond and were pleased to find no one there before us. I parked in the lee of the tall reeds that grow there, and we spread my double bedspread on the sand. An old double bedspread is far better for beaching than even the largest towel. You can spread out and relax and not end up with half of you in the sand. We nailed down the bedspread with a cooler on one corner and a beach chair on another, then stripped to our bathing suits. Mine was almost as small as Zee’s. I would be in style at Cannes, but I was quite daring by Vineyard standards.
The water is shallow at that corner of Pocha Pond, and we had to wade out
quite a way before we could swim. The pond was warm and clear, and we had it all to ourselves. Zee, who could swim like an otter, dived and did flips and turns, then swam along parallel to the rocky west shore of the pond. I swam with her. After a couple of hundred yards of this, we went ashore and walked back to the bedspread. By the time we got there we were dry.
It was a lazy day. After we finished the Globe, it was nap time. I have no difficulty at all going to sleep on the beach under a warm sun and proved it. We woke up for lunch, and afterwards, while Zee read her book, I went out with my quahog rake and my small basket and got myself some chowder clams. For reasons that totally elude me, Pocha Pond is home to many large hard-shell clams and practically no small ones. How the clams manage to get big without going through smaller stages is one of the mysteries of Chappaquiddick.
Quahogging is a pastime that allows the quahogger much opportunity for thought. You rake the bottom of the pond and then bring up the rake and have a look at what you’ve got. You keep the quahogs and dump the seaweed, rocks, and empty shells back. This process does not require much intellectual focus. While I raked, I thought about the theft, the kidnapping, Blunt’s suicide, and the anonymous telephone call. The first three were only puzzles, but the last was more than that. I would be glad when the Padishah and his crowd were gone. I wondered if the Padishah was actually foolish enough to risk the mutual security treaty with the United States for the sake of achieving a petty revenge for largely imagined insults.
Would Colonel Nagy obey his master if the Padishah ordered him to extract revenge on Zee and me in some way? The Padishah might be unstable, but Nagy was not. And would Dr. Mahmoud Zakkut, the Padishah’s political advisor, not strongly advise against any rash action being taken on American soil?
I thought of the tale Jasper Cabot had told me of the disappearance of Hamdi Safwat’s sister and the mutilation and death of his father, of the current reputation the Rashad dynasty had for the suppression and torture of its domestic critics and the tendency of those critics to die of “natural causes.” I remembered the anger and fear of the four young Sarofimians I had bullied only yesterday, and I wondered if, indeed, Nagy or some other agent might actually act on the orders of an angry, childish dictator such as Ali Mohammed Rashad, Padishah of Sarofim. I looked ashore. Zee sat in her beach chair, reading. A Jeep came out of the dunes behind her and went north toward the Dyke Bridge. Several had passed by since we’d arrived. Above the dunes, sea gulls soared. The wind moved the reeds behind the LandCruiser and wrinkled the surface of the water where I stood waist deep. The sun stood in the western sky, bright and warm. The sky was a pale blue dome. A few clouds floated over the spot where I knew Nantucket lay behind the haze on the horizon.
Everything I saw spoke of peace and beauty.
But Vietnam had been beautiful too. A rifleman with a decent scope could pick both of us off from the north side of Pocha and never show himself to either of us. I felt his eye between my shoulder blades and turned and looked, but of course saw nothing because there was no rifleman.
I filled my basket and waded ashore. Zee smiled.
“Nice batch. Chowder tonight?”
“You bet.”
“You have some white wine at home?”
“Is the Pope Polish?”
“I found your pistol in the glove compartment.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“It was here and you were way out there.”
“I didn’t really think I’d need it.”
“And you didn’t. You really thought you might?”
“I don’t know.” I found a Beck’s Dark in the cooler. “Did you ever notice that Beck’s Dark and Dos Equis taste like they came out of the same barrel?”
“No. Maybe they have German brewmeisters in Mexico.”
“I think it would be a good idea if you spent the next couple of nights with Amelia. I’ll drive you over after supper.”
She put her book on her knees. “We went through this yesterday, remember? The way I see it, you and Tare in this together, but if you don’t want me at your house, I’ll stay in my own. I have no intention of hiding out at Amelia’s.”
“You are a very stubborn person.”
“I’m stubborn? You’re the stubborn one!”
I lay down and put my hands behind my neck and looked at the sky. Those little lines and squiggles that you can see when you do that floated in their watery way on the edges of my vision.
“That Friday night when I dropped you off at Amelia’s, the night you were kidnapped. What were Amelia and Willard Blunt talking about when you sneaked up to the door and listened. You thought it might be romance, I remember. What was it really?”
“What a question. It wasn’t the romance I thought it might be, I remember that. Let’s see. Something to do with Willard Blunt’s nephew or grandnephew. Oh, I remember. They were making a present for him. A surprise. I thought it was a cute idea.”
“What was it?”
“A book with a hollow place in it. The little boy would get a pretty dull-looking book, but when he opened it he’d find something really nice. One of those superhero wristwatches. It would be the boy’s first watch. He and Amelia were pretty excited about it.”
“That was it?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Nothing more?”
“No.”
“For Blunt’s nephew or grandnephew? You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Why do you ask?
“What happened next?”
“I put on the dress, and Aunt Amelia and I worked on fitting it. Willard went into the den and worked on the book. I think he watched the Sox on the tube.”
“Did he make a phone call?”
“He could have. There’s a phone in the den. I guess he must have, if he called those young people who grabbed me.”
“We can check that out. We know the number of the telephone at the house the Sarofimian kids lived in. The phone company will have a record of calls from Amelia’s house. Did Blunt say anything about anything that might have had to do with the theft?”
“Nothing I can remember. He worked on the book while Aunt Amelia and I worked on the dress. Then we all went out to dinner. And, no, Mr. Blunt didn’t say anything then, either. He was just charming and sweet and sophisticated. Unlike some people I know who like to ask questions but don’t answer them.”
“I’m pretty charming myself,” I said. “I’ll prove it. You can stay with me. See how charming I am? But I want you to know that it’s only because of your primary and secondary zones.”
She put down her book and came over and sat on my belly, her knees on either side of my chest. “You don’t have zones,” she said. “You have zone. You’re all one big zone. It will be the death of you.” She leaned down. There wasn’t much cloth between her and me. I put up my arms and pulled her close against me. Her skin was hot. She had a great laugh.
27
When we got back to my house in mid afternoon, the Rod and Gun Club shootists were still at it.
“Must be a competition coming up,” I said, when Zee raised a brow.
“Dibs on the shower!” She grabbed her beach towel and was gone in a flash. I took the cooler inside and unpacked it and hung the bedspread on the line. Then I leaned my Remington twelve gauge against the wall by the front door and went outside.
“You’re next,” said Zee, coming inside while she dried her hair. “I even left you some hot water.”
“You’re a sweetheart.”
“You don’t know the half. When you get out, you’ll find an Absolut martini waiting for you up on the balcony.”
I did. She’d also brought up some cheese, crackers, and smoked bluefish pate. Paradise enou. Zee was in jeans and sweatshirt and was brushing out that wonderful long blue-black hair so the wind could help dry it. She was watching two of the Bad Bunny Bunch trying to find a way into my garden.
“Wretched Robert Rabbit and Horrible Harry Hare,” I said. “Wretched Robert is
the one with the floppy ear, and the one with the dark spot on his shoulder is Harry. They’re the two easiest ones to identify. The others all look a lot alike, so it’s hard to make a case against them. These guys are the gang leaders, I think. Bold as bears. Look at them. Hey, get out of there! See? No respect for my property.”
“I’m surprised you don’t sit up here with your shotgun and blast them. You’re a sportsman.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll do just that. I’ll use my twelve gauge. Be nothing left but a bunny tail and maybe an ear. You want to join the shoot? I mean, it’s your idea.”
“No thanks. What were you thinking about on the way home? What was on your mind?”
“Just you, my love.”
‘No. I was on your mind when we left the beach, but by the time we got here you were thinking of something else. What?”
“The case.”
“I thought you gave your badge back to the Chief. Look there. I think Harry’s thinking of digging a hole under the fence!”
“Get out of there, Harry!” I threw an ice cube, which Harry ignored. “Damned rabbit! Maybe I will get my shotgun.” I started to get up. It was a feint that worked.
“No you don’t,” said Zee. “I’ll run them off. Get out of there, you two!”
She went down the stairs and out to the garden, martini glass in hand. The bad bunnies watched her approaching, then slowly hopped away.
“They’re fleeing in terror,” I called. “Would you consider taking a job as a scarebunny? All you have to do is stand in the garden.”
Zee looked up at me. “This is my golden chance. I’m going to follow these guys and see where they live. Want to come?”
“I’ll watch from here. My interest in rabbit burrows is not as highly developed as my interest in martinis and hors d’oeuvres. But do carry on, by all means.”
“When I become a famous writer about rabbits, you’ll remember this opportunity and weep.” Harry and Wretched Robert hopped reluctantly into the woods, and Zee went after them. For a while I could see her moving erratically through the oak brush, ducking under branches and around thorns. Then she was gone.
