After a breakfast of orange juice, toast with peanut butter, and a bowl of stale Cheerios — Pete always left the bag open inside the box — he went back upstairs and took a long, hot shower. That brought him a few notches closer to human. As he got dressed, he started feeling guilty, thinking about how much Julia did for her father while Capt’n Wally pretended his wife didn’t exist. In a real sense, she didn’t exist. She had already checked out. He thought maybe another visit to the rest home might be in order if only to assuage his guilt.
He was resigned that he would never accept or get over what had happened … what was happening to his mother. Resentment and guilt stewed inside him with equal measures of anger. Facing rather than avoiding her situation might be exactly what he had to do … in a lot of areas of his life.
When Ben got to “Grave’s Edge,” he smiled at the man at the front desk — a balding middle-aged guy he didn’t recognize — and, without waiting to say what he was doing there, walked down the hall to his mother’s room. He hesitated outside the door for a moment, his gaze fastened on the old snapshot of his mother. He couldn’t get over how young and full of life she looked, and it was hard to accept that, of all the possible outcomes to her life, this was what fate had handed her.
Did she deserve it?
Did any of us deserve what happened to us?
With the suddenness of a rifle flash, memories of Iraqi children and civilians — lifeless rag-heaps lying by the roadside — passed before his eyes. He blinked hard until they went away, and he was left staring at his clenched fist as he rapped on the door.
Then he waited.
When he got no response, he turned the doorknob, feeling its slickness in his moist hand, and wedged the door open. It took only a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light in the room. It was obvious his mother wasn’t there.
Wondering what to do next, he closed the door and was turning around when he sensed motion behind him. He turned and saw Mrs. Appleby, striding toward him. He smiled and nodded a greeting.
“Benny,” Mrs. Appleby said with a tight smile plastered on her face.
“Mrs. A,” Ben said, trying to hide his agitation. He hooked his thumb toward the door like he was hitching a ride and said, “You know where my mom is?”
Mrs. Appleby looked up and down the hallway and then said, “She’s around. She’s quite the wanderer.”
This was the second time Mrs. Appleby had characterized his mother like that, and he wondered if it might be a cause for concern.
“Let’s try the TV room,” she offered.
Together they started back up the hallway toward the front desk. The same elderly people — or perhaps different ones — lingered in the lobby by the front door. Some sat in wheelchairs while others leaned on walkers or sat on the Spartan furniture. Several had expressions that flashed with the desperate hope that someone — a loved one — was coming to pick them up and take them away from this place. The lingering smell of feces and disinfectant was enough to dishearten anyone.
“I don’t know if I should tell you this or not,” Agnes Appleby whispered to Ben, leaning close to him as they walked.
Ben tensed, expecting some bad news about his mother, but he wondered why Mrs. Appleby was being so circumspect. If his mother had died or had a stroke or something, she wouldn’t be able to hide it. Maybe there was a problem with one of the staff or one of the doctors on call mistreating her.
Before Ben could say a word, she hooked him by the arm and led him away from the front desk to a corner of the lobby furthest away from any of the residents.
“What is it?” Ben asked.
Mrs. Appleby sucked her lips in, making them thin and pale as she shifted her eyes from side to side. She looked like a paranoid person about to reveal some secret about alien abductions or a plot to assassinate the President.
“It’s … well, I know it’s really none of my business, but sometimes … you know how sometimes you get a bad feeling about something, and you don’t want to talk about it, but you’re also afraid if you don’t say something, and then something bad happens, it will … it’s something you wouldn’t be able to live with?”
“I’m not quite following you here,” Ben said. “Does this have anything to do with my mother?”
Mrs. Appleby narrowed her eyes, her lips pursed as if she’d bitten into a lemon.
“No … No … Not at all.”
“What is it, then?”
Mrs. Appleby took a shallow sip of breath, held it for a moment. When she let it out, her nostrils whistled faintly.
“I don’t mean to be prying into your personal life, Ben. I really don’t. But I understand you’ve been seeing a certain lady.”
Ben was stunned. He drew his head back and looked at Mrs. Appleby with wide eyes. It took him a few moments to shift gears from his mother to Julia. “What are you …? No. Ahh — yes. I mean … What does this have to —?”
Mrs. Appleby cut him off by placing her hand on his arm above the elbow and squeezing hard enough to hurt. Her face was earnest and intense as she drew closer.
“It’s your sister —”
“Louise?”
Mrs. Appleby nodded tightly.
“Her husband, Tommy Marshall … He’s been cheatin’ on her.”
Ben scowled and shook his head.
“I don’t see where this has anything to do with my — “
But he stopped before he finished the thought. In a flash, something clicked into place, and he thought he caught her drift.
“Are we talking about my sister or Julia Meadows?”
“That woman you’ve been seeing? Miss Meadows? She’s a nice enough person, I suppose, but — well, I saw something out by her house the other night on my way home from work that got me to wondering.”
“You think she —” He wanted to put this as delicately as possible for a woman of Mrs. Appleby’s generation. “She’s been having an affair … with Tom Marshall?”
“I don’t think,” Mrs. Appleby said. “I know.”
Ben’s suspicions suddenly became reality. The idea of Julia doing the same things with Tom that she had done with him yesterday on the beach made his stomach churn. And the idea that Tom would have the balls to approach him to get a connection to sell the coke so he could take off with Julia and leave Louise ...
A vein began to throb in his temple.
“Are you positive, Mrs. Appleby?”
But Mrs. Appleby stared at him with wide eyes and shook her head firmly.
“He was creeping around outside her house the other night, ’n when I talked to him, he acted like a cat who ate the canary, all guilty and such.” She took a wheezing breath as though winded from telling him all of this. “I’m telling you just so’s you can … I don’t know. Do what you have to do. I know if Tommy was cheating on your sister ’n your mother ever found out? T’ would break her heart, t’would.”
“You and I both know my mother’s not really capable of understanding much of anything,” Ben said, feeling a stab in his heart even as he spoke the words.
“Don’t say that about your mother,” Mrs. Appleby said, sounding like a Sunday school teacher scolding a child. Tears gathered in her eyes, and it was obvious Mrs. Appleby was sad as much for herself as she was for his mother.
He nodded, chastised, but he was already mentally shuffling through numerous possible scenarios. He wasn’t sure what he should do with this information if it was true.
The first thing he had to do was find out if Julia had been messing around with Tom.
And if she still was …
After that —?
Well, he’d have to see.
But in an instant, his impression of Julia Meadows changed, and not for the better. He had surprised himself, the way he was falling for her so fast, but now he was conflicted t about his feelings for her.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Mrs. Appleby said.
“You didn’t upset me, Mrs. A.,” Ben said, knowing he was
lying and hoping she wouldn’t see it. He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. “I’ll have to see what’s what.”
Blinking back her tears, Mrs. Appleby gave him a sympathetic look as they locked eyes.
“I thought you should know before … you know, before something happens. That’s all.”
“Absolutely. I understand. Totally. Thank you for telling me.”
“You know what good friends your mother and I were … are, and I … I don’t want anything bad to happen to your family.”
It’s a little late for that, Ben thought, but he didn’t say it as he and Mrs. Appleby started walking down the corridor side by side toward the TV room. Before they got there, Ben happened to glance out the large bay window that looked out over the backyard. His mother, wearing a floral bathrobe, was walking across the wide expanse of lawn out behind the nursing home. Not far away was a sloping hill, leading to a bluff that overlooked the ocean.
“What’s she doing out there?” Ben asked. He watched her for a few seconds but then felt a jolt of panic when he realized his mother was unsupervised. As far as he could see, there was no attendant nearby.
Mrs. Appleby looked to where Ben was pointing. When she saw Lilly, her expression froze for a moment and then shifted into one of shock.
“Oh, gosh,” she said, glancing quickly at Ben. Then she started walking briskly toward the nearest exit. “How the dickens did she get out there? The alarm on the door should have sounded the instant she opened it.”
The mournful sound of the foghorn on Ram Island carried eerily through the dense fog. Between blasts, an eerie silence prevailed. The air was warm and heavy; the pewter gray sea was calm and flat, scored only by the expanding rings of black ripples the Abby-Rose made as she bobbed like a cork in the water.
Capt’n Wally’s mood had not improved. He’d lost his favorite knife overboard — a knife he’d had for twenty years or more. He’d foolishly left it on the gunwales while he was trying to unsnarl a rope that was jammed in the winch. At least so far, anyway, the day’s catch had been decent. The work sure would have gone better with a sternman to help out, but apparently his two sons had better things to do than help out their old man.
Telling himself to stop ruminating over things which he couldn’t control, he started up the engine and headed in a south-easterly direction. He’d haul traps along the way, and if he saw a trawler out near The Nephews, then maybe he’d come aside and see what was up with them.
Wally much preferred being out on the open ocean rather than on land. Here, he didn’t have to answer to anybody or put up with any bullshit. Here, he was master and commander. But it galled him no end to know that he wasn’t really doing what he wanted to do. Being all but ordered out to The Nephews to do grunt work for Richie Sullivan wasn’t his idea of not having to deal with other people’s bullshit.
Finding the trawler in the pea soup fog was going to be a trick. He leaned forward over the wheel, staring at the dense wall of gray in front of him. Looking sternward, he could barely make out his wake in the water. If the rising price of fuel weren’t cutting into his profits so deeply, he wouldn’t be doing this. He wouldn’t be Richie Sullivan’s or anyone else’s errand boy.
He spotted another of his buoys and pulled up alongside it. Cutting the engine, he timed it perfectly so he drifted up close to the buoy and hooked it with a gaff. After running the rope over the winch wheel, he started it up. Beads of water squeezed out of the rope like he was wringing out a sponge as he raised the lobster trap from the ocean floor. When it broke surface, he rested it on the gunwales, glad to see a dark mass flapping around inside the trap.
He had something.
After scraping off the kelp and seaweed that clung to the trap, he opened the door and dug out a solitary lobster. He scowled at the dark mass of eggs on the lobster’s underside.
“Fuckin’ berries,” he muttered. It was standard to cut a “V” notch into the end of the lobster’s tail to mark it as a fertile female so no one else would harvest it. As he reached down to his belt for his knife, though, he swore and spit over the side of the boat when he remembered losing it overboard.
Carrying the lobster into the wheelhouse, he fished around in his toolbox until he found a pair of tin snips, which he used to mark the lobster.
“Goddamned good fuckin’ luck,” he muttered as he casually tossed the lobster over his shoulder. Just then the Ram Island foghorn sounded, drowning out the splashing sound the lobster made when it hit the water.
Wally re-baited the trap and dropped it over the side, watching it sink slowly into the dark depths. Then he powered up to look for his next buoy. The further out he went, the heavier the seas became. The boat slapped the heaving waves, and every now and then a salty spray splattered against the wheelhouse window.
Wally was surprised when, without warning, the dark bulk of The Nephews came into view on his starboard side. In the heavy fog and the mainland long out of sight, he hadn’t realized he’d already made it out this far. He heaved quickly to port to avoid the rocks on the southern point of the island that appeared in the water like shark’s teeth at low tide. Many a boat had run aground on those rocks and gone under.
All thoughts of lobstering left his mind as he scanned the thick fog for any indication of the trawler. He might as well have had his eyes closed, for all he could see. The wall of fog was growing denser. The sound of the foghorn was muffled as though wrapped in cotton.
If the captain of the trawler had any sense, he wouldn’t be out here in fog this thick, but then again, these fishermen were a tough bunch, and they were interested in profit a lot more than their personal safety. If Richie said they’d be here today, they’d be here.
Powering down and motoring slowly, Wally circled the island on the starboard side, giving the point of land and rocks a wide margin of safety. His eyes ached from staring so long into the fog, and he doubted the trawler was anywhere nearby.
Maybe they weren’t coming … or had already come and gone.
Maybe Richie was busting his balls for not making the pickup the other night and sending him on a wild goose chase.
Maybe he should say Fuck it! and head back to the harbor.
And maybe he would tell Richie Sullivan to stuff it where the sun don’t shine because he wasn’t going to risk his life and another boat to pick up a fucking bale or two of weed.
But if he did that, his life wouldn’t necessarily be in danger, but things could happen that might make his life and livelihood a lot harder.
Wally was fuming, and not just about his knife as he came around the tip of the island and headed south, keeping the island in sight on the starboard side. The lonely cry of seagulls, unseen on the rocks above the heaving water, drifted to him. Off to port, so close he almost could have reached out and touched them, was a raft of eider ducks, riding the heaving swells. They started squawking and swam out of the way as he motored past them, but they didn’t fly off.
He was rounding the southern tip of the island when the huge, indistinct shape of a ship loomed out of the fog off his starboard bow. Wally eased up on the engine and approached the ship with caution, waiting until he was positive it was the trawler he was looking for, not a Coast Guard cutter, before he hailed it.
There was a flurry of activity on the deck, the indistinct shapes of men moving about. Then a man approached the port railing and called out, “Ahoy there, captain.”
Wally recognized the man’s voice immediately. It was Ernie Favaza, a grizzled old pirate out of Gloucester who ran his trawler to the Georges Banks and Flemish Cap only when there weren’t more lucrative opportunities closer to home. Behind him, on the deck, members of his crew — it looked like four people — were moving about.
“Finest kind,” Wally called out. “’S that you, Ernie?” He felt a measure of relief when he finally saw the name Sally Girl stenciled on the rusted side of the boat.
“Sure as shit is,” Ernie called back. “You were expecting the Pope?”<
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He and Wally had done enough business over the years to be friendly with each other, but they had only encountered each other in circumstances like this. It was a good idea, as the seamen said, not to “shit where you eat.” When you’re running drugs from Mexico or Colombia, it’s best not to know your contacts on a personal level. People in government would call it “plausible deniability.” Fishermen called it common sense.
“I understand you have something you want me to deliver,” Wally said.
“Got it for you right ch’ere.”
Even as he was speaking, two of the crew, young men wearing heavy-weather gear, shifted two bundles toward the railing. The bundles were wrapped in black plastic that glistened in the moist air. Another man threw a length of rope down to the deck of the Abby-Rose, and Wally quickly tied off. Both boats heaved up and down. This far out, the swells were heavier, but the men worked quickly and efficiently. They dropped the bales, each weighing about a hundred pounds, onto Wally’s deck. They landed with a dull thud that sounded like cannons in the distance.
“That it?” Wally called up as he shifted the bales to the stern and placed a few bags of rock salt on top of them.
“’S’all for now,” Ernie replied.
“Catch’cha later, then,” Wally said.
He quickly cast off, revved his engine, and pulled away, staying clear of the trawler’s bow. The boats had drifted with the current during the transfer, and he was now a considerable distance further south of The Nephews. Still, he didn’t trust the electronic navigation equipment half as much as his own sense of direction as he made a heading for Horse Head Cove, an isolated cove about ten miles north of town where he was supposed to meet his contacts.
The Cove Page 17
