Fishermen's Court

by Andrew Wolfendon

  I make a burst toward the door, but again Jim blocks my way. The two men move in on me gently but firmly, sandwiching me between their bodies and locking me in with their arms. No one says a word. It’s an awkward tableau, to say the least.

  I hear the blast of the ferry horn.

  Fantastic.

  The lid is on the snake terrarium.

  . . . . .

  “Beth, look who’s here!” Miles calls out as I follow him into his kitchen. He’s carrying my backpack and shopping bag.

  Beth comes running in from another room with a squeal and a lit-up smile and practically leaps into my arms for a hug. “Finn! Oh my God! I can’t believe you made it out here in this weather!” Her enthusiasm throws me. Maybe absence does make the heart grow fonder.

  “Kelsey, Dylan, come say hi to uncle Finn!” she shouts.

  I’m not really the kids’ uncle, we just say that, but I am Kelsey’s godfather. Kelsey comes prancing into the kitchen, smiling through her braces, a fourteen-year-old foal in short-shorts who’s all leg and almost a foot taller than the last time I saw her. We do the lean-in hug. Dylan, who must be twelve now, backs out of a room down the hall, doing a robot shuffle and holding an Xbox controller. He robo-waves at me.

  “Uncle Finn’s had a long trip,” announces Miles. “I’m going to show him his room, let him rest for a while, and we’ll see him at dinner.” Oh, okay, nice to have my schedule worked out.

  It is emblematic of Miles’ and my relationship that I have let him talk me into coming to his house after I’d resolved with all my heart not to. I am terrified that he and his family may be endangered by my presence, but Miles believes everything is fine and “We all just need to chill.” And so I have allowed his version of reality, as usual, to trump mine.

  He escorts me to a preposterously inviting guest bedroom in the back part of the house on the first floor, landward side. It has a hideaway TV, motorized curtains, and a full attached bathroom with heated floor and whirlpool bath. It looks like the demon spawn of Martha Stewart and the Anthropologie website. There are more pillows in here than have touched my head in a lifetime.

  “Why don’t you take a warm shower,” says Miles, “then maybe nap for a few hours, or read a book, whatever will help you chill. Later on, we’ll have a glass of wine with Beth before dinner and catch up. After dinner, you and I will find someplace where we can... talk.”

  Miles has a way of making suggestions that are actually edicts. “I might do that,” I say, just to assert some autonomy—an old dance of ours—“or I might take a walk into the village or out to Seal Point to watch the storm.”

  “Why don’t you just make yourself comfortable here?” he responds, upping the insistence factor juuuust a hair.

  “Are there bars on the windows I should know about?”

  “Yes,” he fires back in a Peter Lorre voice, rubbing his hands together, “you are our very special guest, heh-heh-heh. All we ask is that you never look in the basement, heh-heh.” He laughs and starts to head off but then stops and turns to me with an earnest expression. “Finn, I need to put this out there, so there’s no... dishonesty between us. Your sister Angie called me five or six months ago, when you were in the hospital after that...” He doesn’t have to say the words. “I didn’t call you then because I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to know. The point is, I’m aware you’ve had some... issues of late. And I just want to tell you, there’s no judgment from me. You’re safe and loved here and... that’s all. We’ll talk later.”

  He leaves, closing the door before I can reply. Another annoying Miles habit. I love the man, but sometimes I want to jump up and down on his face with hard shoes.

  I flop onto the bed. It’s stupidly comfortable, as I knew it would be. I’m sure the mattress cost more than my car. Damn. So Miles and Angie chatted after my first fling with pills and booze. That certainly puts a fresh spin on things.

  The situation at hand suddenly becomes Poland-Spring-clear to me. Miles doesn’t believe a bloody word I’ve told him. Not about the bad men in my home, not about being followed on the ferry, not about the danger I’m in here on Musqasset. He thinks I’m three scallops short of a fisherman’s platter. He believes my recent brush with death was exactly what it appeared to be on the surface—another suicide attempt—and that I made up the bad-guy story, either because I’m embarrassed to admit the truth or because I’m flat-out bonkers.

  I need to convince Miles I’m telling the truth. Because if he doesn’t believe me about the danger I’m in, then I’m not the only one in danger here. And I can’t stay in this house.

  Luckily, I do have that digital recording from the boat.

  Or do I? I check the app on my aging phone again, confident I simply overlooked the location of the recording in my earlier anxiety. But there’s only one place the file could be stored: under “Recordings.” And that whole screen is blank. How did I do it? How did I manage to delete the file? Why does technology hate me? God damn it! Alone, the recording didn’t prove much, but in context it provided pretty good corroborating evidence.

  . . . . .

  Miles and Beth allow me to make dinner, so I assemble a pasta puttanesca and Caesar salad with the ingredients I brought along. Chopping and sautéing at a leisurely pace, I’m able to stay busy for a couple of hours and channel some of my nervous energy—while keeping a vigilant eye on the road and grounds through the kitchen’s bow windows.

  During dinner, I find it pretty easy to keep the conversational focus off myself. First, Beth talks about some New Age-y webinar she’s involved with called The Power of Words, which sounds a bit daffy and full of Law of Attraction-type wishful thinking to me, but which she seems to take very seriously, and then I manage to get Miles talking about himself, never a difficult task. As he tells me about his recent career exploits that led to his winning a seat in the Maine state senate, I begin to feel steadily queasier.

  Why? Well, first a bit of background on Miles’ career:

  When Miles was fresh out of law school, Beth’s dad, a big Maine real estate developer with his finger in many pies, pulled some strings to get Miles into the top-echelon law firm where Miles is now a partner. Miles chose to specialize in real estate and environmental law. Over the years, he did the legal work for several projects Beth’s dad was involved in—a PGA golf course, a resort hotel, a riverfront shopping complex. Helped him get around some pesky environmental speed bumps. I’ve often chided Miles for being, not to put too fine a point on it, Beth’s dad’s bitch, and for betraying all the values he stood for in college.

  But in the years since he last saw me, Miles explains over dinner, he has started working his way back onto the green side of the fence. A few years ago, over his partners’ objections, he decided to represent the Penobscot Indians, on a pro bono basis, in a case involving a new power plant on the Penobscot River. The tribe claimed it owned the water rights. “Long story short, our litigators prevailed in court. The story got some positive press. Made the firm look like a company with a conscience.”

  “Since then, his partners have backed off, and he’s taken the lead on a couple of other big pro bono cases,” adds Beth. “He saved an area near the Appalachian Trail from development. He also got the laws changed around noise pollution in Maine’s state parks.”

  “It’s a win/win/win,” as Miles describes it. “The firm gets some positive press, the environment gets some protection, and I get my face in the papers as a champion of the blah, blah.” Meanwhile, Miles explains, he continues to work behind the scenes for his high-end developer clients. Got to pay the bills, after all.

  The publicity he got from the pro bono wins was what allowed him to samba into the seat for Maine state Senate District 29, he says. And he now has his eyes on bi
gger prizes. He leans over the table, lowering his voice to conspiratorial level. “There’s a situation shaping up, knock on wood, that could—could—land me in Washington before long.”

  “Holy crap,” I say, duly awed. It makes sense, actually. With his Hollywood looks, graying temples, legal smarts, and easy charm, the possibilities are endless.

  “Maybe we should wait till we know more about that before saying anything else,” Beth chastises him with a smile.

  The whole time Miles has been talking, Beth and Kelsey have been gazing at him with near worship in their eyes. (Dylan is absorbed by a complicated spaghetti-art project on his plate.) As for me, my belly has turned to lead, and not from the pasta. What’s making me queasy? Well, I already knew Miles was enjoying a lucrative law career and making strides in the political arena, but hearing this latest development—and seeing Beth’s and Kelsey’s faces light up as he alludes to it—has brought my dilemma into bold relief.

  What am I to do with the terrible facts I learned last night?

  After we clear the dinner dishes, Beth pours Miles and me a brandy and says, “You two probably want some time alone.” She adds in a teasing tone, “And you’re probably going to go off on one of your wild conversational... excursions, which I don’t understand at all, so I think I’ll excuse myself for the evening. I’ve got some journaling to do for my course. But maybe we can all do something tomorrow.” We say our goodnights, and Beth departs.

  I had hoped Miles and I could go somewhere private, outside the house, to talk, but rain is whipping the windows like strands of wet seaweed. We’re not going anywhere.

  I’m hoping Trooper Dan has gone to ground for the night as well.

  Miles suggests a move to the study—yes, he actually has a “study,” which he refers to without any apparent irony. And so we stand up and do something I never thought I’d have the chance to say I did in my lifetime: repair to the study for a brandy.

  Chapter 10

  Miles parks his brandy on the oak mini-bar and says, “I think I’m going to have something else instead.” He stoops and reaches under the counter, and I know with alarming certainty what his hand will be holding when he rises.

  He does not disappoint. Was there any doubt? The Glenmalloch.

  Fate? Karma? Cosmic joke?

  He sets the bottle down on the mini-bar, where it proclaims its presence like a telegram from beyond the grave.

  “How ‘bout you?” he asks.

  “I think I’ll stick with the brandy.”

  Gazing at the Glenmalloch bottle, my head begins to swim, and I feel as if I’m standing on the ledge of a skyscraper. But then I realize the bottle is offering me an opening, a chance to jump straight to a topic I thought I would have to weave my way toward ever so gingerly.

  I grab the bottle and blow a laugh out my nose, pretending the distinctive black-and-gold label has just now jarred a memory loose. “Do you remember our college graduation night?”

  “Oh God,” says Miles, shaking his head. “Parts of it. Without a doubt the drunkest I have ever been in my life. An epic cringe-fest, from start to finish.”

  “Do you remember the Glenmalloch?”

  “Duh. You gave me that beautiful bottle as a gift. It was even better than this twelve-year stuff. Sixteen-year, right? Came in a special bottle. It must have cost you a fortune. And I, like an ass, proceeded to swig it like it was PBR. Got completely toasted, for no apparent reason.”

  “I think you had stuff you wanted... needed to get off your chest. Do you remember how we got home that night?”

  “I know we left without Beth. I caught endless shit for that. I have these strange memories of being out in the woods somewhere, thrashing on the ground. So drunk. I remember you standing there patiently, trying to get me back in the car. I woke up on my sofa the next afternoon with one shoe on and… a hospital wristband. What the hell was that all about?”

  I have a question of my own to ask first. “Do you remember the cop? On Carlisle Road?”

  “Oh God, I’m not sure. You and I got pulled over a few times in those days.”

  “Yes, we did.” I pause meaningfully for a moment—he knows why—and then say, “But on that night, we saw a cop at a speed trap on Carlisle Road. Remember? We thought he was going to follow us, so we had to get rid of the bottle.”

  “No! No!” He groans theatrically. “Tell me we did not toss a bottle of sixteen-year-old Glenmalloch on the side of the road. Please tell me that, I’m begging you, Finn.”

  I shrug a what-can-I-say.

  “No!” he groans again, grimacing. “I always hoped you kept that bottle and drank the rest of it yourself. Maybe had a nice goodbye toast with Jeannie. I certainly proved myself unworthy of it.” He looks me in the eye and shakes his head in tragic disbelief.

  Gazing into Miles’ eyes, I am positive he’s recalling that night for the first time in eighteen years. This reaffirms what I already knew: Miles has precisely zero memory of throwing that bottle and zero knowledge of what happened in the aftermath. I was sure about it already, but I still had to ask. Why my certainty? Because Miles passed out so badly that night, I had to take him to the ER, where he was treated for alcohol poisoning. So yeah, he was about as conscious as a bowling trophy by the time the cop’s blue lights came on. And even if, by some form of alien telepathy, he managed to acquire trace memories of what went down on Carlisle Road that night, Miles is quite literally the last person on Earth who’d want to awaken that long-sleeping dog and start the police asking new questions about it. He has nothing to gain, everything to lose. He was not the source of the private knowledge in that suicide note.

  So who was? And where does that leave me?

  I now see, with clear eyes, my only viable path forward with Miles.

  I plop myself into one of the study’s brushed-leather armchairs, clap my hands to my thighs, and fix Miles with a gaze. “I need to be straight with you, bro.”

  “Okay,” he says, intrigued by my sudden shift in tone. “Fire away.” He sits in the armchair facing mine.

  “I think you invited me out here under false pretenses.”

  He probes my eyes to see if I’m messing with him. “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t know you had talked to Angie back in March.”

  “I’m sorry, Finn.” He pauses. “But that changes things... how?”

  “Oh, come on, Miles. It changes everything. For starters, you know that I swallowed some booze and pills and was hospitalized once before. I’m sure you also heard Angie’s amateur diagnosis of my fragile mental state. But see, I didn’t know you had that information when we spoke last night. So, crazy me, when I was telling you about that shitstorm in my parents’ kitchen, I thought I was talking to a friend who was believing every word I—”

  “Finn, I do believe—”

  “Shh, Miles. ...A friend who was believing, literally, every word I was saying and wanted to help me because—”

  “I do want to help you.”

  “I know, Miles, but you want to help me in the my-poor-friend’s-out-of-his-fricking-gourd kind of way. And I thought you were offering to help me in the my-friend’s-life-is-in-danger-and-together-we’re-going-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-it kind of way.”

  “I want to help you in whatever way you need or want help,” he says, reaching out to touch my hand.

  “I appreciate that, Miles, but tell me honestly: when I was describing my run-in with those thugs, did you believe that really happened or did you think it was just another suicide attempt on my part?”

  Imagine the face of a hooked trout. That’s what I’m looking at now.

  “What does… ‘really�
� even mean?” he stammers. “What we call reality is just a series of neurological events. If you believe what happened was real, then it was real. To you.”

  “Let’s skip the neuro-epistemology lesson tonight, Miles. Tonight I just want to know what game we’re playing, you and I, as friends. I need you to tell me straight: do you believe me, factually, or not?”

  “Finn...” The man is squirming as if an electric eel has crawled up his ass.

  “It’s okay, Miles, I already know the answer. I just need to hear the words from your own mouth.”

  “Okay—do I have doubts about you being pursued by psychopathic hit men who are trying to make you commit suicide for no apparent reason? Finn, I mean, Jesus. Step back and look at this objectively. Which makes more sense, that you’ve had a mental breakdown or that these ‘events’ are really happening? You just got out of a psych hospital yesterday, for crying out loud. I’m sorry, man. This is killing me to say...”

  “It’s okay, Miles. It’s okay.” It’s time to let the trout off the hook. “For what it’s worth, I think you may be right.”

  “What?” If he were a dog, he’d be cocking his head diagonally right now.

  “I think your instincts were dead on,” I tell him. “I think inviting me out to the island—getting me away from everything—was absolutely the right call. In just the few hours I’ve had to myself this afternoon, I’ve already started to have my own doubts about what happened. The shrink told me hallucinations and delusions are a common effect of the chemical cocktail I took. And I was already in an iffy mental state before the... incident. So I’m starting to think it’s possible I concocted the whole thing in my mind, as a way of—”

  “It’s okay, Finn,” says Miles. “No judgment here, just friendship.”

  “Here’s what I propose: Let’s stick to the ‘treatment plan.’ I’ll stay here as we agreed, get as much R and R as I can. Probably spend a lot of time alone, if that’s okay. In a couple of days, when this storm has blown over, so to speak, we’ll... reassess.”