Strange Fits of Passion

by Anita Shreve

  The sand grew softer, muckier, wetter, sucking in my boots, making a squelching sound when I pulled them free. I guessed that I had veered too close to the low-tide mark, that the harder sand was to my right. My progress seemed absurdly slow; I felt that I was trying to run through molasses, the sticky medium of childhood nightmares. I thought of Caroline and pulled a boot free with a smack from the muck. What if she woke up and began to cry? Wouldn't that wake Harrold? And if she woke Harrold, mightn't he just take her with him, leave with her in his car? I plunged on more frantically.

  I turned to my right, in the direction of the harder ground of the spit, expecting the ground to begin sloping upward to the dunes. But the ground seemed flat all around me. I stood still, disoriented. I took a deep breath, tried to think clearly. I could see nothing, not even a shape I thought might be the fish house. Above me, the paste was moving slowly over the moon. If there were a break in the clouds, I thought, the moon might provide enough light for me to see my way.

  I took a step forward, then another. It seemed to me that I had badly miscalculated somehow; the ground was growing soupier, not firmer. I backtracked, tried another direction. This was slightly better, but my inner compass was spinning in confusion: This certainly was the wrong direction. I retraced my steps, went back to what I thought was the position I'd been at before I began to maneuver. The moon broke free just at that moment for only a second or two, but I could clearly see the end of the point, the dinghy, the boat. Confidently, I took a step forward.

  The ground gave way like a trapdoor in a stage. My leg vanished up to my knee. I fell to the sand, as if someone had yanked my foot from under me. When I put out my hands to stop my fall, my arms plunged into a vat of glue.

  It felt like that in the darkness—a vat of gritty glue; it had that consistency. I couldn't pull my arms out. I couldn't pull because I didn't have any leverage. The vat of glue seemed to have no bottom. My foot was sinking, and my arms could not find firm ground.

  I thought, in rapid succession: Honeypot. Willis. Caroline. This can't he happening to me. Caroline. Jesus God, Caroline.

  Lie flat, I told myself. Had I read this in a childhood story about someone caught in quicksand? I tried to spread myself out and lie as still as I could. Nothing happened. I didn't sink. If I didn't pull and twist, I realized, I'd be better off. I felt hard spots under my shoulder and the knee that was free. I used these for leverage, and as slowly as I could, I began to roll over, away from the muck. I could feel the muck in my hair, in my ear, inside my collar. Close to me, I could hear the crawling of a wave up the sand. A crab or something small scurried over my face. I made a sound and tried to blow it off me. Gently I rolled and began to pull. One arm slipped free, then another.

  Inch by inch, I slithered back onto the harder ground. Pulling my leg out was more difficult than freeing my arms had been: My knee was bent, and heavy with the muck. If I called out for help, the only person who could conceivably hear me would be Harrold.

  I began to shiver then. The soupy ground was cold and wet with icy salt water. The water had already seeped through my woolen coat, my sweater. I was thinking: If I lie here any longer, I will die from exposure, and dying is not a possibility, because I can't leave Caroline.

  I gritted my teeth and groaned audibly with the effort.

  Then I said out loud, Goddamn fuck, and I didn't care if Harrold heard me.

  I pulled my leg free.

  I rolled over and over, away from the honeypot. I was crying, mixing tears with the muck that covered my face.

  The paste slipped past the moon. I could see my way. I rose to my feet, stumbled forward. I began to run then to the dinghy.

  The rest was nothing by comparison. I pushed the dinghy into the water, got inside. I lay forward in the bow, paddled with my cupped palms over the edge. The water stung, felt colder than ice.

  I tied the dinghy to the mooring, slipped along the bow of the lobster boat, and fell into the cockpit. I opened the door to the cabin. Only then did it occur to me that it might have been locked. This thought took my breath away. I so easily might have gone through all of that horror with the honeypot only to find the bulkhead door locked tight. But it wasn't.

  I found this fact momentarily encouraging, as if the ease of opening the cabin door were a sign that I was doing the right thing.

  I felt for the cabinet with my hands, fished around in the darkness for the small object I had come for.

  When I got back to the cottage, Harrold was in the same position as when I'd left. What I should have done, what I ought to have done, is to have walked straight up to him and fired.

  Instead I sat at the kitchen table with the gun in my hand. My hands were shaking so badly that I was afraid I might shoot myself. I put the gun on the table. I could not stop the shaking. I felt a sudden wave of nausea, got up quickly, and vomited into the sink, trying to stifle the sound of my retching. I wiped my mouth, saw my reflection in the window over the sink. My face and coat and hair were black with muck. It was as if I had on a mask, were not really myself at all. I smelled like low tide.

  I went back to the table, sat down. I thought it astonishing that Harrold had not come to when I had vomited.

  I tried to breathe deeply so that I could stop the shaking. I felt another wave of nausea, fought it back. I was waiting for the shaking to stop. I was thinking: I have no life as long as he exists.

  I put the gun in my hand, felt its weight. This weight, or the cold metal of the object, calmed my hand. I stood up, walked to where Harrold was sprawled against the couch. I heard only a high ringing in my ears. I raised my arm and aimed. I was thinking: Is it better to aim at the heart or at the head?

  Behind me, I heard a hoarse, whispered shout and a gasp, or perhaps it was the other way around. I turned to see. It was Jack, in his yellow slicker and his boots. He had come at the accustomed time. Our last morning together. I stood with the gun in my hand. He looked at me, then at Harrold, then at me again. I must have seemed to him a sea monster, a mucky creature from the deep with an incomprehensible object in her hand.

  But he comprehended soon enough. He started to cross the room.

  "What the...?" he said.

  On the couch, Harrold stirred.

  I thought: If he exists, I have no life.

  I was aiming at Harrold's heart. Jack's hand was only inches from my arm. I fired. Harrold bounced forward from the couch, clutching his shoulder.

  Jack shouted and turned toward Harrold. Harrold opened his eyes, looked, understood, didn't understand.

  "Maureen...!" he said.

  I shook my head.

  "My name isn't Maureen," I said.

  I fired again.

  Or perhaps I fired first, then said my name wasn't Maureen.

  I lowered my hand.

  I stood as if paralyzed, rooted to the floor.

  Above me and around me then I could hear a strange sound. It was a sound that began slowly at first, then gathered pitch. I looked at Caroline's door, but the sound wasn't coming from there.

  I looked at the couch, but the sound wasn't coming from there, either. Harrold had fallen forward onto his knees, and I was certain that he was dead.

  I looked at Jack, as if he might tell me about the sound, but he didn't seem to be able to. I could see that he was not its source. He was looking at me, saying my name. He was wearing his yellow slicker. His face was weathered, he had deep grooves at the sides of his mouth, and he was saying my name. I remember that he had his hands out, palms upward, as if he had an object in them he wanted me to see.

  The sound became a keening.

  I looked out the window to the end of the point. I could see the green-and-white lobster boat bobbing in the water. There was a mist of daybreak just above the horizon.

  I thought then of the woman in the hospital, of the woman behind the wall in the labor-and-delivery room.

  The sound became a howling.

  I think it was then that Caroline began to cry.


  January 15–Summer 1971

  Everett Shedd

  When I got there, good Lord, there was a sorry sight. I hope I don't ever see anything that sad again, 'n' that's the truth.

  Mary was on the floor, holdin' this man in her arms. Jack was cradlin' the baby, walkin' with her in the living room. There was blood everywhere—on the couch, the floor, on the wall behind the couch. All over Mary Amesbury.

  Well, Mary, you wouldn't of believed Mary. She had her coat 'n' her boots on, 'n' she was covered with mud—from the low tide, don't you know. On her face 'n' hair 'n' everything. And that mixed with the blood ... well.

  Mary, she just kept her eyes shut. She was holdin' this man—course I know now it was her husband, Harrold English, but I didn't then, not right away—'n' makin' this sound 'n' rockin' back 'n' forth, 'n' it was the sorrow you felt in that room, not the horror of it all at first, but more like somethin' very deep 'n' sad had kind of settled itself in there.

  I went out to the car 'n' called over to Machias to ask for a car 'n' an ambulance, even though I knew that was a dead body in that cottage. And then I went back inside.

  Jack, he was as white as a milk sky, he was. But he hung on to the baby 'n' tried to get her to stop cryin', 'n' he kept lookin' at Mary, 'n' then I said to him, Jack, what happened here?

  Jack, I think he'd been waitin' for me to ask this. He cleared his throat and stood over by the sink. He's got a deep voice, don't you know, husky, and he spoke slow that mornin', like he was thinkin' as he spoke. He said he'd come around four forty-five. He didn't say why he had come, 'n' I pretended to make out as how he was just goin' down to his boat, but I think he knew I knew that wasn't strictly the case. Anyway, he said he saw the car, 'n' then the lights on in the cottage, when normally there wouldn't be any, 'n' then he thought he saw this man get up from the couch 'n' hit Mary at the side of her face. So Jack, he started up the slope to see what was goin' on, 'n' by the time he made it to the back stoop this man had Mary up against the table 'n' was beatin' her. He said the man looked as if he would kill Mary, 'n' Jack opened the door, 'n' then there was the shot.

  A shot? I said.

  Just the one, Jack said, 'n' I think he regretted that straight off, because even I could see there'd been two shots.

  Whose gun was it? I said.

  Jack was holdin' the baby, mind you, 'n' I think this question might of stopped him a second, but then he said, straight up, it was his, he'd given it to Mary Amesbury a week or so earlier, for protection, one night when she was scared 'n' thought she'd heard a prowler.

  Then Mary said, from the floor where she was holdin' the man—her husband, that is—Jack, don't.

  Jack, he looked at her 'n' then at me, 'n' then he just turned away from me.

  And then Mary got up 'n' came over 'n' sat down at the table. And as I say, she looked pretty dreadful, 'n' I was wonderin' what had happened to her she got all that muck all over her, 'n' she began to talk.

  This is what she said that mornin', 'n' she never wavered from it, neither.

  She said her husband had come around two-thirty or three in the mornin', 'n' he'd been drinkin'. He raped her, she said, 'n' hit her once while he was rapin' her, 'n' knocked her out. And he'd attacked her with a fork once afore that.

  A fork? I said.

  And she said, A fork.

  After he'd raped her, he'd fallen asleep or passed out, 'n' she had gone out to Jack's boat, 'n' got the gun in the cabin there, 'n' come back 'n' shot her husband while he was asleep. Once in the shoulder 'n' once in the chest. And then she said that Jack had come in the door after he heard the shots, but that Harrold was already dead by then.

  And then Jack started to say, That's not—

  And then Mary interrupted him and said to me, That's what happened, 'n' she got up 'n' went to Jack. They stood there for a minute just lookin' at each other, 'n' I'll tell you, I was embarrassed to be in the same room with "I'm, to have to look at 'em, at somethin' that raw between 'em, 'n' then she kissed Jack on the mouth, with the baby between 'em, 'n' then she took the baby from him 'n' sat back down again at the table.

  And I thought to myself: If she tells this story to the police from Machias when they get here, they aren't ever goin' to see each other again.

  The trouble was, Mary was her own worst enemy. It wasn't that she was proud of what she'd done, or that she was glad of it in any way. That wasn't it 'tall. It was more that this was the most important thing she'd ever done, 'n' she wasn't goin' to lie about it.

  So there we were, the three of us—well, the five of us, if you want to get technical—'n' the sun come up, 'n' I said to Mary, Why?

  And she thought a bit, 'n' then she said, Because I had to.

  And that was it.

  They were goin' to put her in the county lockup, don't you know, but they couldn't really keep her there, 'cause it wasn't a fit place for a woman prisoner of any duration, so they made arrangements with the state, 'n' Mary, she's at the Maine Correctional Center now in South Windham, which is where the women go.

  Now, since that mornin' I've had lots of time to think about all this 'n' mull it all over, 'n' this is what I think now. I think Jack was in the house with her when she shot Harrold English, but he couldn't say that, could he? Not because he wouldn't want to implicate himself. Oh, no—that's not our Jack. But because he saw right away her only hope was in self-defense, 'n' she's got no self-defense case if he's standin' right there beside her. I don't know exactly how it went—maybe he tried to get the gun away from her. And Mary, she wouldn't say he was there because she didn't want to get him involved. Sort of like that great old story "Gift of the Magi." You ever read that one? By O. Henry, it was. My kind of story, don't you know. Well, it weren't exactly like that, but the feelin's were the same, you follow me?

  Anyway, at the trial, all this was confusin' to the jury, weren't it? The defense lawyer, Sam Cotton, local boy from Beals Island, his argument was this: Mary shot her husband while he was asleep—they allowed as that's what happened, even though actually, Mary said, he'd woken up when she pointed the gun—but she did it in self-defense because she believed that eventually, that day or that night, he would kill her.

  Tricky.

  It was the "eventually" that was the problem, wasn't it?

  The prosecutin' attorney—Pickering—he argued that Mary had had time to call the police—me, if it came to that—'n' have Harrold English arrested for assault. But the problem was that Mary didn't go up the hill to the LeBlanc place, where there was a phone; she went down the point to Jack's boat, where she got the gun 'n' come back 'n' shot her husband in cold blood.

  Now, Mary, she kept talkin' about the rape 'n' the blow that had knocked her out, but the problem is, in Maine, a husband can't legally rape his wife, and maybe everywhere else as far as I know, so the prosecutin' attorney, he made short shrift of that one—settin' aside the blow almost as easy as he set aside the rape.

  And then there was the fork.

  Unfortunate, that, the fork. Well, I mean to say, a fork. How much damage can you do with a fork? Pickering, he made mincemeat out of the fork. Even got a laugh out of the jury, if I remember correctly.

  So you see, Mary Amesbury, she just didn't help her case 'tall, did she? And even with me 'n' Julia 'n' Muriel testifyin' as to how beat-up she looked the first day she come to us, it wasn't enough, was it? Particularly so when you had Willis Beale testifyin' that Mary herself had told him the bruises were from a car accident, 'n' Julia, she got recalled 'n' had to say Mary had told her the same thing too—very damagin', that was—and in light of the fact that Sam Cotton couldn't produce a single witness from New York City to say they'd ever suspected anythin' amiss between Harrold English and his wife, or who had ever seen any bruises on Mary.

  Well, that was it, wasn't it? And I guess it was too much for the jury—got ourselves a hung jury, didn't we? Pretty much split down the middle, far as I can make out.

  After the trial, don't you kn
ow, the judge thanked the jury for their services and dismissed them, and straight off, Sam Cotton, he asked for a dismissal, but Pickering stood right up and said there was goin' to be another trial, and he asked for a date.

  And then about ten days ago, Sam, he must have heard who the judge assigned was, 'n' it was Joe Geary, who everybody in Machias knows has a soft spot for women. He gives 'em light sentences, don't you know. So Sam, he decided to waive Mary's right to a jury trial—I think he figured she'd make out better with Geary—'n' so the whole thing gets thrown to Joe Geary in September, when they have the next trial. It was in the papers.

  So there you are.

  It's in his hands now, in't it?

  The muck? That was from a honeypot. Those are nasty patches in the flats. Can suck you in, give you a fright, I'll tell you. Like quicksand. Mary Amesbury had a run-in with one, tryin' to get to Jack's boat.

  The baby? Julia Strout asked to take her. Has her still.

  Willis Beale

  Well, I'll tell you right off the bat what I think happened that night. This guy, this Harrold English, he done what any guy woulda done; he drove up to get his wife and kid and bring 'em back home, and he surprised Mary and Jack in bed, in flagro delecti, if you catch my meaning, didn't he? And there was some kind of a scene between the three of them, and there was Jack with his gun, and one or the other of them shot the poor son of a bitch, and that's what I think.

  There's your motive, if you're lookin' for one.

  Mary's coverin' up somethin' for Jack. Even Everett, he thinks so. He didn't say so to me, but I heard this around.

  I think, near the end, they didn't care who knew what was goin' on. You ask LeBlanc. He'll tell you Jack was there five-thirty in the morning the day the baby got sick. It was Jack went up LeBlanc's place for the phone. And I myself saw Jack comin' and goin' all that day to Mary's cottage, like they was real old friends. I saw him from the fish house. He didn't kiss her in public, but they weren't foolin' anybody.