Hard Aground

by Brendan DuBois

  Drying off took some time and a couple of grunts, and by the time I was done, I was exhausted. There was great temptation not to get dressed, but I plowed ahead. Then I resisted another temptation to put some dry towels on the floor and stretch out and sleep there.

  I got ahold of my borrowed cane, went out to the bedroom, took a gander at my sloppily made bed, and knew at some point I’d have to strip it and put fresh sheets down—but not tonight, maybe tomorrow.

  Maybe tomorrow.

  The slogan of all recovering patients everywhere, I guessed.

  I slipped into bed and switched off the lights and rested.

  And rested.

  Okay, why aren’t we sleeping?

  I thought about the oddest things, bouncing from one to another. Maggie’s murder. Paula and her sweetness and her being by my side. Diane Woods, being shoved aside by the state police, and also considering applying for the deputy chief’s job. My memories of my dear Cissy, bustling in at the oddest time … and that dream. Oh, that dream. Heroin, here, there, and everywhere. The little planned power outage. Dave Hudson and his poor wife, Marge, trying to gain entry to my house for genealogical purposes, and me … well, maybe me being a jerk about it.

  Then there was the whole writing business. Unlike for some, to whom it came easily, writing had always been a struggle for me, especially when it came to nonfiction, for—unless you worked for some websites or newspapers of notoriety—you had to write the truth, and keep the facts straight.

  I positioned myself in bed, and winced, just as there was a creak or a groan as the new wood continued to settle, still getting used to being part of the landscape.

  My old house, still not there yet.

  My somewhat old body, still not there yet either.

  Let the healing resume, and eventually, sleep did come.

  To be disturbed about two hours later.

  I woke from a dream I couldn’t remember, but I was hearing rain coming down, rattling on my new roof and my small, second-floor deck, and there was another noise as well, of someone closing the door downstairs.

  I called out. “Paula? Is that you?”

  No answer.

  Had I been dreaming?

  I switched on a small bedroom lamp, checked the time: 1:05 A.M.

  Maybe I had been dreaming.

  Then came the sound of a floorboard creaking.

  “Paula, if that’s you, I’d really appreciate you letting me know.”

  Still nothing.

  I thought of something else, and called out, “Dave Hudson, if that’s you or your wife, Marjorie, you better leave now. Right now. Or I’m calling the Tyler police.”

  More rain falling. A gust of wind rattled the door leading out to the deck on this floor.

  “Last chance.”

  Another creak of a floorboard.

  I reached for my phone, thought better of it. One more call to the Tyler cops, finally arriving once more to an empty house? Nothing like helping along the growing story of the nutty magazine writer living alone on Tyler Beach.

  Felix?

  No. At this hour, he would come, no matter where he was, but I wasn’t going to put him through that. Besides, he was still recovering from a gunshot wound, and he didn’t need to come out here for one more empty reason.

  Nope.

  I called out one more time. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re up to, but if you come up the stairs, I’ll blow off your goddamn head.”

  Then I thought some more and said, “And whatever you do, don’t steal my books. Anything else down there is fair game. But not my books.”

  A pause, and I said, “Good night.”

  Still no reply, but it didn’t take long for me to get back asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  My unplanned and unanticipated wake-up call came at just past eight A.M., and it was Paula, checking in.

  “You sleep okay last night?” she asked.

  I wasn’t about to get into my mystery visitor, so I said, “Pretty fair. How about you?”

  An intake of breath. “Hardly got a wink. Last night … a bloody mess it was. Two dead, both from the SUV. Neither one was wearing a seat belt, and when their car got hit by the tractor-trailer truck, they were both ejected between roll number two and roll number three.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, it gets better. So you have the SUV in one tangle of birch trees, and what’s left of the driver and passenger in another. Plus a big-ass tractor-trailer hauling fuel oil on its side, leaking, with the local fire guys freaking out that it was gonna blow.”

  “Rough night.”

  “Oh, it was long … but you know what? I owned that story. Nobody else did. I even caught some video and sold it to the nice TV folks in Manchester, and today, it’s going to be follow-up city.”

  “Which means no sensuous back rub with scented candles later on?”

  She didn’t laugh. Maybe she hadn’t heard me or didn’t like what she had heard, but she pressed on. “I’ll drop by if I can,” she said. “Rollie Grandmaison is out sick again. Poor guy’s been editor since I’ve been there and I think he’d rather die in his editor’s chair than a hospital room.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Not me,” she said. “I want to die when I’m over a hundred, looking out a window and seeing the Eiffel Tower. But that’s for another day. You take care.”

  “You, too.”

  I hung up the phone and wondered if I had enough energy to get up and check my drainage tubes and have breakfast.

  I fell back asleep while in the middle of contemplating just that.

  Breakfast was breakfast and I got the usual tube-drainage task done without spraying blood everywhere or falling on my increasingly flabby ass. At about eleven in the morning, a force of nature called Gwen Aubrey blew into my house, raising my hair and nearly lifting up the rafters in the process. She had been dropped off by her niece, Mia Harrison, who was up at the Lafayette House for a bit, trying to straighten out a time sheet.

  Mia’s aunt was in that odd age range that could be late sixties, early seventies, but she dressed and carried herself like she still had fond memories of being a head cheerleader back in high school. She had a thick mane of styled blonde hair, a tanned face with enough makeup to think she wasn’t wearing makeup, and gold jewelry around her neck, on her ears, wrists, and practically every finger. Gwen was wearing a tight white turtleneck with tight acid-washed jeans, said jeans decorated with glitter and stones along the pockets and rear.

  She was an inch shorter than I am, and her shape was what could be politely called full, or bosomy, or zaftig. She barreled into my house and gave me a big kiss on my cheek. “Christ on a crutch, Mia didn’t tell me you were such a good-looking boy. Wow!” she said in a booming voice.

  I managed to step back and avoid any other further kisses. “Come on in, and thanks for coming by.”

  She waved a hand dismissively and took the near couch; I dragged over a chair and sat down across from her. She brought in a scent of lilac that was strong enough to linger in my house for another week or two after she left.

  “Shit, it’s good to get out and about,” Gwen said. “I’m living in one of those active senior places up in Porter. Expensive as crap but at least you don’t have to make your own meals, beds, or laundry. I’ve gone through three husbands and twice as many boyfriends, and I figure I sure as hell have done my share. Life’s too short when you get to be my age to waste time on deciding what kind of laundry detergent to use.”

  “Well, I can see—”

  “Plus, it’s stuffier than hell up there, you know what I mean? You got the older guys who spend all day on the computer, keeping track of their investments. You got the older ladies who sit around and gossip and stick invisible knives in each other’s backs, and you got the old couples who are in a new place and still fight over grudges from three decades ago. Jesus Christ on a crutch, it’s nice to be out and around.”

  “Wh
y are you there then?”

  Gwen laughed. “Good goddamn question. Thing is, I’m on my own, I like it most times, and I got a nice nest egg. Thing with the place I’m at, once you’re in, you’re in …” She slapped a thigh for emphasis. “That means once this old broad’s body starts falling apart, I’ll have a place that will have to take care of me, per the contract, and they have to provide the care until I shuffle off to the great beyond. Can’t kick me out or put me in a wheelchair and abandon me at the mall. Pricey as shit but it’s worth it.”

  She shifted on my couch, looked around the inside of my house. “You know, I’ve driven past this place for decades, and this is the first goddamn time I’ve ever been in. Not bad … but what the hell happened here a few months ago?”

  “There was a fire.”

  “What? Electrical? Hot ashes from the fireplace?”

  “No,” I said. “It was arson.”

  “Holy shit,” Gwen said. “Did they catch the guy who did it?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Well, he’s dead.”

  “Did he die in the fire?” Gwen asked.

  “No,” I said, remembering a very dark and unpleasant time from last fall. “He died up in a town called Osgood.”

  “Jesus … did he die in a fire that he set? That would be freaking karma, wouldn’t it.”

  “No,” I said. “Somebody cut his head off.”

  Gwen’s roaming eyes froze and came right to me. “You kidding?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a fine-looking guy, even though you look like you’ve been battered around some. A man gets his head cut off … bet you have lots of interesting stories. Am I right?”

  I felt like I was being sprayed from a fire hose with a torrent of words and interest, and that I couldn’t move.

  “Funny you should mention stories,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Because I’m looking for—”

  “Yeah, well, before we get there,” she said, grinning, teeth too white and perfect. “I want to ask you one.”

  “That sounds fair,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  Gwen nodded. “Okay. For as long as I can remember, this place has always belonged to the government. It used to be a lifeboat station, then officers’ quarters when the artillery station got set up, and then for a while when the artillery station was replaced by radar to see if Russian bombers were coming this way.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard, too.”

  “Yeah, well, the question is, how in hell did you get this house? It’s always belonged to the Feds, it’s on a nice isolated part of the seacoast, and the value. I mean, Christ, I know the place is old but if it got torn down and replaced by a condo with four or six units, a paved driveway instead of that goat path you’ve got—could be worth millions, you know?”

  “I do know,” I said. “And the reason I got this house … a favor was owed to me.”

  “Last I knew, this place was under the … whaddya call it … stewardship of the Department of the Interior. The secretary of the interior steal your car or something?”

  “No,” I said. “The secretary of defense stole my health … among other things.”

  “Hell of a story,” she said slowly. “Mind telling it to me?”

  “Not today, I’m sorry,” I said. “Look, can I get you something to drink? Water? Tea? Coffee?”

  Gwen glanced at the chunky jeweled watch on her wrist and said, “Damn, not afternoon yet, I really shouldn’t have anything strong. Coffee will be fine. Black.”

  “Be right back.”

  A few minutes later we were both having late-morning coffee. “Before we start, mind telling me what the hell put you in the hospital?” she asked.

  “Some surgery on my back and shoulder.”

  “What the hell did they do?”

  I don’t know why she got me in a talkative mood—maybe it was her age or her presence—but I said, “Had two nasty tumors taken out.”

  She swore like a sailor on dry land for the first time in two years. “You okay now?”

  “Think so.”

  “They malignant?”

  “Don’t know yet,” I said. “They’re out for testing.”

  Another impressive string of expletives, and she said, “Okay, if it comes back malignant, you let me know. My age, I got lots of doctor and nurse contacts, get you first in line. If it’s benign, you have a party of a lifetime, okay?”

  “Deal,” I said.

  She took a slurpy sip and said, “Okay, what can I do for you? My sweet little Mia told me that you wanted to know what was happening in this little slice of paradise back in the 1950s.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hoo-boy,” she said. “I was just beginning to write for the newspapers back then, doing church raffle reports, collating school lunch menus, crap like that, when I got wind of a big story happening right under this roof, back in 1954, a year after the Korean War ended.”

  “I heard this place was being used as barracks for Navy corpsmen while they received training over at the old Exonia Hospital.”

  She laughed. “Sure. Barracks. Training. Story back then was that with the war over, lots of training was winding down. Them’s the rules of war, right? They can end on a certain date but lots of things are in the pipeline, like planes and ships being built, bullets being made, and training going on. With the war over, the corpsmen were getting their training, but they didn’t give a shit. Nobody gave a shit. The training was ignored or postponed, stuff was getting stolen, the barracks here was on a beach in the summer, and you had guys in their teens or early twenties who stayed here and partied because they knew they weren’t going to be sent to some bombed-out frozen landscape where you had thousands of Chinese boiling over the hills coming at you.”

  “And what was the story?”

  “Story was that some young girls from Tyler Beach and other locales came up here and got a hell of an education in sex, drinking, drugs, and other nefarious activities.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment, and Gwen leaned over the couch and slapped me on the knee. “Sweet Jesus, every generation thinks they invented sex or drinking or drugs. Everything you have now, from pot to whatever, was easily available back then. Guys and girls were humping to and fro in the backseats of cars or in the dunes. Nothing new.”

  “A scandal, then?”

  “Hell yes, a scandal. Somehow a North Tyler cop found out his niece was sampling the Navy wares, and he came down to get her. A fight broke out, then the shore patrol came down from the Porter Naval Shipyard and raided the place. Cleaned it out tight. And found out that one of the girls was a cousin to a U.S. senator from Maine—and that was that. Within twenty-four hours the place was cleaned out and locked.”

  “What paper did your story get in?”

  Another laugh. “I was working for the Wentworth County Dispatch—God rest its inky soul—and that story was spiked.”

  “Got killed.”

  “Like a zombie on TV getting its head blown off. That’s when I learned one of the unwritten rules of small-town journalism, that you don’t embarrass the locals or put them in a bad light. There was enough bad light with this one to light up a football stadium. So I ended up writing a story about how the brave trainees at this barracks were sent home, thanked everyone for their service, and that was that.”

  “Do you remember any of the names from back then?”

  “Whose names?”

  “The corpsmen who were here.”

  “Oh, Lewis, c’mon, I’m about ninety percent ahead of my neighbors in keeping my noggin straight, but I don’t remember that. I don’t even know if my notes still exist.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  She shook her head. “Boy, you give up easy.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, youngster. Just because I don’t know doesn’t mean I can’t find out. In fact, I can guarantee it.”

  “Why?”

  “Becaus
e I ended up dating one of the corpsman before he got out, and he’s still alive, and he’s living just over the line in Massachusetts. Bobby Turcotte, bless his soul.”

  That got my attention. “You always keep track of your former … acquaintances?” I asked.

  “Aren’t we being the gentleman,” she said. “Yeah, you know why? Because it gives me great joy to outlive them or outdo them. They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Honey, growing old and being in good shape while your rivals and old friends are shitting in diapers and eating Jell-O is the coldest dish you can think of.”

  I limped back into the kitchen to wash our few dishes, and Gwen insisted that she come along to help; I was being polite and tired and decided to let her do so.

  When the washing was done and Gwen wiped the dishes and put them away, she said, “Ask you a favor?”

  “Ask away.”

  “I spotted your deck over there. I’d love to take a look outside.”

  “Sure,” I said. “As long as you give me a hand getting it open.”

  Gwen got the length of wood out and got the door open with no difficulty. I followed her out. “Oh my …” she whispered.

  It was a windless, sunny day, and the sun was baking the wood of my rear deck. I got the plastic covers off two Adirondack chairs and we both settled down. The wood was fairly clear of sand and it was nice to sit down without worrying about a broom.

  The waves were gently rolling in, the sky was clear, sharp blue, and there were little bits of color on the water where lobster pot buoys bobbed up and down. A few miles out, the scraggly white forms of the Isles of Shoals looked close enough to swim out to, if one were crazy enough to do so. Gwen settled down and stretched her legs out to one of the deck’s railings.

  “My God, what a view,” she said. “If I lived here, young man, I’d spend most of my time out here.”

  I don’t know why I spoke like I did, but I said, “No doubt sunbathing and teasing the neighbors.”