by Philip Craig
“But you have some from me.”
“I don’t think you’re up to discovery right now. I’ll get you something hot to drink.”
She went out and came back after a bit with a teapot and two cups. I was still sitting there, thinking. As I raised my hand for the cup, the lights went out. I could see Zee outlined against the window where outside the sky glowed and thunder muttered. I heard her put down the teapot and cups, then she walked out of the room and I could hear a drawer open and close. Then a light danced beyond the bedroom door and she came back in cupping a thick candle and carrying two others. She lit these and the bedroom brightened, soft, yellow, and glimmering in that lovely light that only candles can give. She served my tea.
“Romance.” She smiled.
It was herb tea laced with rum. I scalded a tonsil and the next time blew the surface cool before I drank.
“You’re a good cook,” I said. “I’m glad I came.”
“You bring out the mother in me.”
“I do have a boyish charm, but behind this baby face and beneath this ivory skin lives a truly manly man, full of lust and mad passions I’m only able to control by dint of an iron will, which is another of my manly traits. I should warn you, however, that my superego is eaten alive by my id when I’m in the presence of a champion tea maker of your general configuration.”
“You must be feeling better,” she said. “Before you get so excited that you fall down on the floor, I think I’ll make that phone call to the police. They can send someone out here to protect us from each other.”
“Good thinking.” I sipped my tea, feeling not really too great. Then I put the cup down and lay back on the bed. Zee came back.
“Guess what?”
“What?”
“The phone’s out, too.”
I lay there and looked at her ceiling. The candles cast a wavy light that threw faint shadows everywhere. Quite lovely.
“I don’t suppose you have a gun of some sort lying around.”
“I don’t know anything about guns and I don’t have any. I’m barely beginning to learn about fishing.”
“It probably doesn’t make any difference. Billy’s not the type to wander around in weather bad as this. Not at night, at least. It’s hard to see your hand in front of your face.”
“Yes. Which means it’s just as hard for the cops to see Billy.”
“They’ll find him. There’s more of them than of him.” I tried to sound confident.
“I’d think so, too, if he was driving his own car. But you saw that car he was in tonight. It wasn’t that little yellow M.G. he usually drives. The police will be looking for the M.G., I imagine, not for the red car he’s driving now.”
I sat up and carefully put my feet on the floor. Outside, thunder and lightning cracked together and the rain doubled its intensity. “I think we may have a problem,” I said. “Billy doesn’t know where you live, but . . .”
“But it’s not a secret. He could find out. . . .”
“How?”
She was quick. “If I were Billy, I’d phone the hospital claiming to be a police officer looking for Zee Madeiras’s home. If I were a nurse, I’d probably give the information without thinking too much about it.”
I moved and winced and saw Zee wince when she saw me wince. I tried to think straight. “You didn’t mention seeing Billy carrying a shotgun in the hospital, so he’s probably got one of his daddy’s target pistols or even my pistol from the Landcruiser where I was stupid enough to leave it. He likes that gun. He almost shot me with it earlier in the day.”
“I think we’d better get out of here,” said Zee. “We ought to find some cops and let them watch over you. I don’t think my fishing rod is a match for his six-shooter!”
I waved a finger in the air. “Peace, peace. Even if he finds out where you live, he still doesn’t know I’m with you. Besides, finding a cop tonight might be hard. Most of them are probably out drug busting. Anyhow, if we go driving back down island looking for policemen, Billy might just spot us on the road. . . .”
“He knows my Jeep. He passed us, then turned around, remember?”
“He may suspect that I’m with you, but he doesn’t know.”
“Great. A suspicious madman. That’s very comforting, Jefferson. You’re a real psychologist. Now I don’t know what to do! Stay and get killed or leave and get killed? Some choice!”
I tried to put myself into Billy’s head. What would I do? Where would I go? How would I act?
Zee was clearer in the brain than I was. “We’re getting out of here. We’ll hide out up at Lobsterville by Dogfish Bar till morning. They should have him by then.” She headed for the kitchen. “I’ll fix a thermos of coffee and some sandwiches to see us through.”
“Good idea.” I was relieved by having a decision made by Zee, since I was too muddleheaded to make one myself.
When she’d fixed the food and coffee, she helped me through the rain to the Jeep and we went off. “I’m sorry about the discomfort you’re going to be in, Jefferson,” she said, “but you’ll survive it. We’ll have food and drink and I’ll keep the heater on as often as we need it. Maybe you can even get some sleep.” She sounded like a nurse—kind but firm. Realistic. Men like to think of themselves as the realists, but they’re wrong. Women are the gender of reality. They live in a concrete world of men, children, and feelings while men entertain themselves with great abstractions—money, power, fantasies of heroism.
I thought of a question. “Dogfish Bar? How do you know about Dogfish Bar? I thought you were just a neophyte fisherperson. Neophytes don’t know about Dogfish Bar.”
“What do you know about what I know? I keep my ears open, mister. Dogfish Bar is where they catch the bass. Right up there beyond Lobsterville. Billy will never think of looking for us there.”
Who could tell where mad Billy might think of looking? “Have you been hanging around with some up-island fisherman when I’m not around?”
“None of your business.”
True. I felt sulky nevertheless, and frowned into the darkness.
We passed through Chilmark and entered Gay Head, home of the lovely clay cliffs and the made-in-Japan Indian souvenirs sold to tourists by Gay Headers. I don’t really like Gay Head because I can never find a free parking place up there and they charge for using the toilets. When I’m king of the world I’m going to ban pay toilets as an affront to civilization.
In the darkness the wind shook the trees, the rain began to thin, and the sky to the east flashed and glittered as the thunderstorm moved off toward Nantucket. Zee took the Lobsterville road.
“All right,” she said, slowing down, “where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“Where’s the road to Dogfish Bar? You’re the big fisherman around here. Tell me where to turn. I know I turn somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
Gee whiz and gollee. Maybe she wasn’t hanging out with some up-island fisherman after all! I smiled into the darkness and my sulk went away. I told her where to turn—first left toward Gay Head light, then right. Ahead, all was darkness. No electricity up island, yet. The road was sand and full of dips and rises and holes and ruts. When we got opposite Dogfish Bar, we pulled off and parked in the beach grass and bushes. Our headlights illuminated the thin trail leading north over the dunes.
“Follow that,” I said, “and when you feel the water over your knees you’ll know you’ve gone too far. Come back onto the beach and make your cast and it’ll land on Dogfish Bar.”
Zee punched out the headlights and turned off the engine. Lightning danced in the east and thunder was faint. She found a soft rock station and the music eased out of the speakers. Personally I only listen to folk, classical, and country, but I’m a broadminded guy so I’d listen to this without complaint because I was her guest. I explained this to Zee. She expressed great admiration for my character and gracious ways.
After a while we had some coffee and food and she asked me a
bout bass fishing. I told her how I did it—fresh squid from Menemsha, night fishing only. You make your cast and then let the tide take the squid across the shallows. If a bass takes it, it feels nothing at all like a bluefish and you can tell the difference right away. You have to let the big ones run, and they’ll head for the rocks if there are any, and you have to play them a long time sometimes before you begin to get them in close and then all the way in.
I told her how they were getting pretty scarce along the East Coast and that I didn’t fish for them anymore, myself, except now and then, for a change, and only if I really wanted to eat one, and then only a little illegal one because I wanted the big ones to go back home and lay eggs and build the bass population up again.
I asked Zee if she’d noticed my Hemingway imitation, but she said she hadn’t. Then she asked me if I’d ever wondered why George’s nitroglycerin pills hadn’t worked better on our run from Cape Pogue to Edgartown and I said I hadn’t because I’d forgotten George mentioning it. And after I thought about it now, I said that maybe it would be a good idea to have the pills checked out, just in case George needed them again sometime. She said she’d take care of it.
While I was thinking about the pills and how comfortable I was, I went to sleep. As I drifted away I remember seeing the horizon off to the east glow with distant lightning. The wind still blew strong around the Jeep, but the rain had stopped.
When I woke up, the storm was gone, the sky was clear, and the sun was shining. I blinked into its rays and saw a red M.G. sportscar swaying and splashing up the road toward us, moving fast.
— 20 —
“Wake up!” I shook Zee and she was instantly awake. “There!” I pointed. She saw and reached for the ignition key. As the motor roared, I slid out the door. I felt as if my skin was tearing away.
“What are you doing! Get in here!” She clawed after me.
“No. This road dead-ends, and he’s between us and the highway. He wants me. I’ll let him see me, and when he comes after me, you go for the police. Don’t let him get too close to you because he might just shoot you in passing!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
I slammed the door and threw a look at the sportscar. It was only a hundred yards away, bouncing through pools of rainwater and throwing sand and mud into the air. I trotted around into plain sight and began a limping lope up the trail toward the dunes. I dared not pause to look behind me, but I heard the scream of the sportscar’s engine as Billy turned after me and tried to drive up the trail.
But the ground was too rough for the low-slung M.G., and as I gimped over the first dune I heard the whine of spinning wheels. Then I was running down the far side of the dune, hurting, and then I was climbing the second dune separating the beach from the road. As I topped it, Billy must have reached the top of the first dune, for I heard the crack of his pistol. I leaped down the far side of the dune, tripped and fell, got up, and ran.
I reached the beach and ran east toward Lobsterville. By now Zee should be on her way for help. I wondered how long I could run. I had never been much of a runner even when young and frisky. I was the guy who got a stitch in his side after a quarter of a mile and couldn’t stand it. Now I was thirty-five and not frisky at all, and I had shotgun pellets and holes of same all over my body and I was having a hard time standing them.
But fear is a wonderful motivator, as I’d found out in Vietnam when I’d done a lot of running first in one direction then another, never making much progress for long, but too scared to stop. Behind me, over the sound of the waves splashing against the shingle beach, Billy’s pistol popped again. Again he missed, but to my right some pebbles rattled. It’s hard to hit anything with a pistol under the best of circumstances. When you’re half crazy and are running and out of breath and shooting at a moving target, it’s even harder.
I ran on. Pretty soon Billy would figure out that he had to run me down in order to get close enough to shoot me. If I could keep running, maybe he’d give up and go home. Maybe I could run him into the ground. Why not? Stranger things have happened.
A hammer hit my left thigh and the leg collapsed and I fell, skidding through pebbles. Not good. I tried to get up, but the leg wouldn’t work. I rolled over and looked back. Billy was running toward me, pistol in hand. The bastard had shot me!
He came running up and stopped, panting, and looked down at me. Suddenly, far behind him, I saw Zee come onto the beach. She had her fishing rod.
“You turd,” said Billy, huffing and puffing. “You motherfucker. You chickenshit.”
I threw a rock at him. He ducked and laughed.
“Get away!” I yelled at Zee. “Run!”
Billy turned and saw her, then turned back. “I’ll get her next. You first, turd.”
He took a breath to steady his arm and raised the pistol as Zee made her cast. The diamond jig arched through the air and slapped down over his face, and she lay back on the rod and set the triple hook in his cheek. Billy screamed and staggered backward, clawing at his face. The pistol went off, then flew away into the surf. Zee backed and jerked on the rod, and Billy tore at the jig, blood bursting through his hands.
Zee had twenty-pound test line and forty-five pound test leader, and neither was going to break. She backed up the beach while Billy, screaming, reeled after her. Then he fell, and I saw the jig tear loose and fly away. Zee dropped the rod and came running, her fillet knife glittering in her hand. Billy staggered up, blood pouring from his torn face. He saw Zee, slipped on the bloody pebbles beneath him, gave an awful cry and plunged away toward the dunes, scrambling for cover like the wounded animal he was. Zee, her face contorted, swerved, running, toward him, then turned back to me. Billy thrashed up and over the dunes and was gone.
Then Zee had me in her arms, and she was crying and so was I.
By the time she got me back to the Jeep, the M.G. was gone. There were tire marks deep in the beach grass and a smear of oil, too. He’d done his oil pan a bad turn before he’d gotten away. I didn’t think he’d drive too far before his engine let go.
We stopped at the first house we came to, and Zee went in to call the police. The phone was working, and we were promised an ambulance and a police escort to the hospital. My leg was well awake by now and hurting quite a bit. It wasn’t bleeding too badly, though, which meant the bullet had missed the bigger arteries and veins. Zee gave me aspirin and held my hand.
The house had a fine view, and I could see the fishing boats and early departing yachts moving out of Menemsha Gut to begin their morning cruises. Several were small swordfishermen with long pulpits. Probably headed for the swordfishing grounds south of Nomans Land, I thought. Then I thought I saw the Bluefin heading out as well. But the ambulance came just then, and Zee helped me get into it and then got in back with me and we pulled away toward Oak Bluffs.
As we approached Beetlebung Corner we came to a near stop. I sat up and saw that there were police cars clustered around the red M.G. A young officer waved us by. I didn’t see Billy in anyone’s custody, but maybe they’d already taken him off. Maybe not.
“If they don’t have him now, they’ll get him soon,” I said to Zee. I was quite wrong, as things turned out, but I was sincere.
Neither my ambulance nor my police escort sounded a siren on the way, but I got to the hospital anyway and was hustled once again into the emergency room. The staff affected dismay, claiming I was taking up more time than any single person merited. From this I gathered that I was not as seriously shot as I might have been. This proved indeed to be the case, for after due procedure I found myself again in a clean white bed, another bit of lead removed from my flesh.
“How are you feeling?” asked Zee.
I put on my manly smile. She rolled her eyes to heaven, then kissed my forehead and took my hand and held it and I really didn’t feel too bad at all. After a while I went to sleep.
When I woke up I noticed a cop at the door. He glanced at me, then disappeared. A moment later
he was back and the chief walked in.
“How you doing?”
“Not bad. Why the armed guard?”
“That’s to protect the nurses.”
“Sure.”
“Billy’s still on the loose. We missed him.”
Not good, Kemo Sabe. “I saw his car up in Chilmark. He couldn’t have gotten far, and anybody who’d have seen him would remember him because of his face. He must still be up there somewhere.”
“We’ve got a lot of men scouring the area. If he’s there, we’ll find him.”
“If he’s there?”
“There was a lady up there walking. Her morning constitutional. Billy passed her in the M.G. She said it was making an awful noise and finally stopped a ways behind her. A man with a bleeding face got out, and about that time a car came up, stopped, and picked him up, then turned around and drove away.”
“Which way?”
“Back toward Beetlebung Corner. After that, she didn’t notice.”
I put a map of the Vineyard in my head. The island looks small, but there are over a hundred square miles of it. I couldn’t even guess how many miles of road and driveways wound through the trees and grapevines. From Beetlebung Corner alone you could take three paved roads leading away from Gay Head—Menemsha Cross Road, Middle Road, or South Road. A car could be a lot of places.
“What kind of car was it that picked him up? A black Caddy, maybe?”
“She didn’t know. Tan. Two doors. Newish. She doesn’t know one car from another since they stopped putting brand names on them. Lots of times I don’t either, for that matter.”
“Do you have any other good news for me?”
“Nope.”
“How did the big bust go?”
He rolled an oath out of his mouth and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Small fry only. The big guys got tipped again.”
“Fred Sylvia and group?”
He looked at me hard. “What do you know about Sylvia?”
