Hard Aground

by Brendan DuBois

  Gwen laughed and laughed and then looked up the coast, at Weymouth’s Point. “Hey, you can see Alice Crenshaw’s old house from here,” she said.

  Those few words froze me. Gwen could not have surprised me more if she had said that she was originally from Indiana and was my long-lost aunt.

  “Say again?” I managed to ask.

  “Oh, Alice Crenshaw. That was her place up there, am I right?”

  “Yes, you’re absolutely right,” I said, lots of unexpected memories flashing through me from years ago. “That was Alice’s place.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “We were friends for a while … until she moved out.”

  “That’s right,” Gwen said. “There was a scandal back then. Something to do with a body in the marsh from the 1940s, a fisherman getting blown up. Even the head of the chamber of commerce died in the mess. Am I right?”

  God, was she ever right. “Yes, you’re pretty much spot on. I had moved in just a while before all that happened.”

  “Alice was mixed up in it all, wasn’t she?”

  “She was.” And so was I, I thought.

  “We weren’t the best of friends,” Gwen said. “But we knew each other from my newspaper work, her being on some town boards and commissions. A real piece of work Alice was.”

  I stayed quiet and so did she, and we watched the ocean move its weight and water around, seagulls flapping overhead, other birds floating in the cove in front of us. Gwen stretched out her legs and closed her eyes, and it looked like she had dozed off. “Funny how history just flows along,” she said. “You’re living in a house that saw tremendous excitement and heroism back when it was a lifeboat station, and then a place for officers who shot off those big guns at Samson Point, and then that short time when it was basically a drunken party house.”

  She shifted her long legs. “Then life moves on. It’s a quiet, beautiful day, you’ve got a lovely and quiet house, and what happened back there, it’s all in the past. Seeing all this”—and she waved an arm—“hard to believe what happened here. Like sunbathing at the beaches on Normandy. But still …”

  Gwen turned to me, face a bit more serious. “What did that Southern writer say, about the past?”

  “It was Faulkner,” I said. “He said, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’”

  “Smart fellow.”

  “He sure was.”

  Gwen smiled. “I was talking about you, sport.” A pause to look at her chunky watch, and she said, “Dear me, time to roll. Look, I’ll get ahold of my old beau, Bobby Turcotte, see if I can pry him out of his rest home to get him to visit you.”

  She got up and so did I. “Do you think it’ll be a problem?”

  “Nah,” she said. “I’ll promise him a BJ like the good-old days and that should get him running.”

  I think she saw me blush, and that got another laugh. “Don’t worry, Lewis, by the time we’re done visiting, he’ll have forgotten everything. Gosh, like I said before, you kids think you invented everything from sex and drugs to rock ’n’ roll.” She checked her watch. “Guess I’ll go walk up to the Lafayette House and see if my niece needs some help beating up her boss.”

  At the sliding door leading into my house she turned to me, and like an old vision from years past, she touched my face like Alice Crenshaw did back in the day. “Oh, if only I were some years younger,” she said.

  I found it hard to talk. After a moment passed, I said, “That’s sweet of you to say, Gwen.”

  “Never been accused of being the quiet one.”

  “My turn for a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where’s Alice now?” I asked.

  She took one step into my house, turned back to me. “Oh, you didn’t know?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Alice moved in with a niece over in Worcester—nowhere near the beach, poor girl—and got Alzheimer’s, that nasty bitch of a disease. Suffered with that for years, and died two years back. By then, it was a mercy.”

  My throat was still thick. “I’m sure it was.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Felix gave me a ring later and asked me if I wanted dinner, and I said of course; he said he was bringing company, and before I could ask him what the hell was going on, he hung up.

  I next checked in with Paula Quinn. “Poor Rollie, he’s still sick,” she said.

  “Poor guy indeed,” I said. “Meaning you’re still the editor?”

  “For the foreseeable future, which means I’m off tonight and tomorrow night.”

  “Off like in vacation?”

  “Like hell,” Paula said. “In a spirit of generosity, a couple of months ago our corporate owners paid for Rollie to attend a two-day conference in Boston, something called the New New Journalism or some idiocy. Poor Rollie, I think it would have been wasted on him, but at least he would have a chance to eat and sleep somewhere nice on the Chronicle’s dime. But with him sick, the owners will be damned if this investment goes to waste. So off I go.”

  “Pick me up a nice T-shirt, will you? Extra-large?”

  “Sure, I’ll get matching ones, and later this summer we can have a wet T-shirt contest on your deck. How does that sound?”

  “Best invite all day—hell, all week.”

  She laughed and her voice lowered a bit. “How are you doing?”

  “As well as could be expected, and then some.”

  “Any report back yet?”

  “If I get the energy and verve up, I might make a call today. If not, I’ll take a nap.”

  “You all right emptying out your drains?”

  “I’ve got a technique down pretty well, although if I run into a jam, Felix is coming over with dinner tonight.”

  Paula sighed. “Yeah, if there’s one guy who knows his way around blood, it’s him. You be careful, all right?”

  “I promise I won’t leave the house, and I’ll make sure all the dishes are washed,” I said. “Hey, quick question. You ever hear of a newspaper called the Wentworth County Dispatch?”

  “Wow, you’re really going back in time now,” she said. “Sure. It was a small daily, covered Wentworth County, way back when there were rotary-dial phones and all us lady journalists wore poodle skirts and wrote for the Women’s Pages. Probably sputtered out in the late sixties, early seventies. What are you looking for?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure,” I said. “Earlier today I spent a fascinating hour or so talking to a former reporter for the paper. Gwen Aubrey. Ever hear of her?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any idea where there might be some back issues to look at?”

  Paula said, “Best bet would be here, I guess, in our bound back-issues section, since the Chronicle bought it out about a month before it closed. Or the Tyler library, or the one up in Porter. Curious about something?”

  “Always,” I said, and after a bit more chit and chat, we parted ways.

  I powered my way through the afternoon and managed to avoid a nap, and then I made a series of phone calls to my health-care system and listened to a lot of bad on-hold music. Eventually I talked to a very nice woman who expressed her sympathy with me, promised to do what she could to help me out this very day, and while putting me on hold to track something down, promptly disconnected me.

  So that was that.

  I decided to putter around on my MacBook Pro until Felix came; that gave me a thought, and then I buried myself in the odd world of rare silver from Sicily until there was a knock at the door.

  It must be Felix, I thought, and as I got up and lumbered over to the door like a bear that’s just escaped a bear trap, I wondered what kind of company he was bringing. Knowing Felix, I guessed it wasn’t a single person, because he would have said “guest.” He said “company,” which meant more than one, and I was sure that the company would be young, pretty, and female.

  I opened the door and saw Felix, flanked by two men in their early thirties with dark hair and brown eyes wearing blue
khaki slacks and work shirts. I was embarrassed to see that I was wrong, wrong, and wrong.

  “Hey,” he said, walking in, carrying two paper bags with handles and a small drink cooler.

  “Hello right back at you,” I said. “Uh …”

  The two men strolled in as well; they started talking to Felix in what seemed to be Greek. Felix replied, pointing to my living room, and then to the stairs, and both men nodded and trotted upstairs.

  “Those two are my distant cousins, Dimitris and Michael, from the home country,” Felix said.

  “The other one?”

  “Yeah,” he said, going to the kitchen. “They tried to migrate up to France, got caught up and arrested, and they contacted the Red Cross—and then contacted me.”

  From upstairs came the noises of things being dragged around and opened up, and then water running. Felix started taking paper-wrapped packages from out of the bags, and then opened my cabinet doors.

  “Well … what the hell are they doing here?” I asked.

  Felix stared up at the cabinet. “Somebody moved your sea salt and pepper mills … oh, here we go. Huh? Oh. Michael and Dimitris wanted to thank me for getting them here, and until they get settled into something more productive and long term, they belong to me. I told them where I was going today, we talked about this and that, and now they’re here.”

  “I can see that. What are they doing?”

  “What I told them to do.” He bent down, rummaged around some more, and said, “Hey, your cast-iron frying pan … hold on, here it is.” He stood up and put it on my stove.

  “Which is what?”

  “Oh, don’t be dense, my friend. The place needs a good cleaning, a good straightening out, and I know that having your books piled up in cardboard boxes is gnawing at you … like a fox chewing on some passed-out drunk’s toes.”

  “Nice thought.”

  “Thanks, I thought you’d like it.”

  Despite the bandage on his wrist, Felix moved quickly and fluidly through the kitchen; he popped two potatoes in my microwave, heated them up and tossed them into the oven, made a salad, and then heated up the cast-iron pan.

  “What do you have?”

  “Nice, thick steaks.”

  I gestured out to my deck. “Isn’t that what a grill’s for?”

  “That’s what one usually does, but I want to try something else. Bear with me.”

  He heated up a mix of olive oil and coarse salt in my skillet, while upstairs there was a chattering of Greek voices and the sound of my washer and dryer being used. Then the sound of something being scraped on the floor, followed by the two men yelling at each other in Greek and the hum of a vacuum cleaner.

  Felix unwrapped some yellow wax paper, tossed two beautiful thick, marbled steaks onto the very hot skillet. A burst of smoke and steam rose up; Felix kept a close look on the time while he charred one side, then the other, and then the edges as well. When he was satisfied, he put the skillet in the oven, washed his hands, and said, “Now we wait. What’s going on with you? Any word yet on your tumors?”

  “My tissue samples are still out there on the West Coast, probably having more fun than I am. I’ve talked to my health-care provider a couple of times, with no good answer.”

  “You making a list?”

  “A list of what?”

  “A list of those people screwing you over and making your life miserable. Then at some point, down the road, you can get back at them.”

  I rubbed at a spot on my kitchen counter. “Not the way I roll. Most times, that is.”

  “Yes,” Felix said, “but think of the satisfaction you’ll get, knowing someone who did you harm has been harmed in return.”

  “Sounds Sicilian,” I said.

  “Sounds human,” he replied.

  A little while later there was a shout from upstairs, and Felix walked over to the foot of the stairs, yelled something up in Greek. He walked back to the kitchen. “Silly brothers wanted permission to move your bed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they could,” he said. “They were making progress in cleaning your bedroom and thought your bed would be better next to the window overlooking the ocean.

  “Great idea,” I said. “Except the wind and sand can cut through there when the weather is right, not to mention how bright the sun can be, coming up in the morning.”

  “You’ve thought it through.”

  “I did, during my first week here. Did you tell them not to move it?”

  “You bet,” Felix said. “I told them you’d be embarrassed by all the skin mags they’d find between the mattresses.”

  I changed the subject. “How goes your labors, tracking down the … local youths you encountered down in Lawrence?”

  “Slow,” he said. “They’ve either scattered or have gone to ground.”

  “Plus the cops are looking for them, both from here and from Massachusetts.”

  “Yeah, there is that. But I’m not going to let the little bastards think they’ve gotten away with it.”

  It was time, I thought. “This antique silver that belonged to your family. You said it was an old serving set, something like that.”

  “Correct, sir.”

  “Was it a plate? Or a platter? Or something on four little legs? With upturned sides?”

  Felix had been making a salad over my sink and then turned. “It had four little legs. How the hell did you know that?”

  I limped over, retrieved my laptop, brought it over, and put it on the counter, swung it around so the sun wasn’t washing out the screen. “Check it out,” I said.

  Felix did that, leaning over, squinting his eyes. “Damn, that could be its twin.”

  “If so, you’re one lucky guy.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because that one sold at auction two years ago,” I said. “For just over a half-million dollars.”

  I had to give Felix credit because his thick eyebrows just lifted a bit, and he went back to preparing the meal. Using a thick pot holder, he took the skillet out, and the heavy aroma of the cooked steak filled the air. He removed the steaks with tongs, put them onto a dish, and covered the dish with foil.

  “Five or so minutes in there, and it’ll be perfect,” he said. “People tend to forget it keeps on cooking if it just sits there, and this gives the juices a chance to stay inside.”

  He worked in a flurry for a few minutes more, making a sauce with water, flour, a bit of wine, and some juices.

  The steak was charred, crispy, and tasty on the outside, and tender and juicy on the inside. The sauce he drizzled over the filets was practically a meal unto itself. It was one of the finest dinners I’d eaten in a long time.

  “What about your two men overhead?” I asked.

  Felix was working on his salad. “What about them?”

  “I’d think they’d be hungry.”

  “Oh, they’ll be fine,” he said. “They ate before we got here. Filled up at a Greek restaurant in Newburyport.”

  “You didn’t join them?”

  Felix grimaced. “My father’s Greek. My mom was Sicilian. I can speak Italian fluently, and Greek passably. The Greeks gave us a lot of wonderful things, from great plays and epics to the concepts of philosophy and democracy. Just don’t ask me to eat their food.”

  “All right, I won’t,” I said, and we continued eating until both of us were stuffed. Felix did some initial cleaning, and then one of the brothers—I couldn’t tell which one was Michael and which was Dimitris—came into the kitchen and started talking with Felix. It was more like talking at Felix, though, with plenty of raised voices and swinging arms. Felix gave back some of the same, and to add some emphasis, he picked up a carving knife and waved it around under Michael or Dimitris’s throat.

  I was wondering what in hell was going on until, after a heavy pause, Felix laughed and the cousin laughed back and slapped Felix’s back cheerfully as he came around the counter.

  “Michael’s going to clean t
he kitchen,” Felix told me, as he poured us two fresh glasses of Chile’s finest. “And then his brother is coming down to start in your living room. Let’s head out on the deck.”

  I got off the stool, gasped when a bit of pain rippled along one of my drainage tube outlets. “All that discussion over who gets to clean the kitchen?”

  “Sure,” Felix said, bending over to pull up the piece of wood blocking the runners, and then unlocking the door and sliding it free. “It’s a macho kind of thing. I told him I didn’t hire him to do dishes, and he told me that I had hired him and his brother to clean the house, and he said, expletive deleted, isn’t the kitchen part of the house? A few hundred words later, we settled things without blood being shed.”

  “Enough blood’s already been shed in this house, thank you very much.”

  It was a nice, sunny afternoon and we each took an Adirondack chair in the sun. Felix noted the slight breeze immediately and went back into the house to retrieve a wool blanket, which he draped over my legs.

  “There you go, gramps,” he said.

  “You keep that up and you’re out of the will.”

  “Good,” Felix said. “I wouldn’t know what to do with all those damn books anyway.”

  We each took a sip and I took note of the swells of the waves, the bright little dots marking lobster traps. I said, “That silver piece from your grandfather.”

  “My great-great grandfather.”

  “Any idea where he got it?”

  “Stole it, I’m sure,” Felix said. “That’s my family’s M.O., going back centuries.”

  “Gee, you sure sound shook up about it.”

  “Instead of looking at Roman history or World War II, you should take a look back at the feudalism that was in Sicily back then, and which hasn’t changed much. So I won’t begrudge his spirit that.”

  “What did you use it for?”

  Felix chuckled. “Believe it or not, it was near the front door. A handy place to dump the mail that needed to be checked out later, or to drop my car keys.”

  “Nice handy place you got there, Felix, worth about a half-million dollars.”

  “What can I say?” he said, taking another sip. “Fortune sometimes favors the brave, the lucky, and those too dumb to know what they have.”