The She

by Carol Plum-Ucci

  Mr. Shields was blathering in that "native islander" way I remembered. Actually, the natives gossiped a whole lot less than the summer people did. They were more accepting of each other; whereas the summer people from Philly were known to be more snobbish and judgmental. Somehow they also were more reserved.

  "I keep telling your grandfather I'm hooked up with this ace, crack team with a bubble drum that'll dive the canyon for thirty thousand. Stop any wayward talk that might still be haunting these parts, if you know what I mean."

  I sat there completely stunned. The room got even more cold as I let my arm go limp in amazement. Thirty thousand dollars? To find my parents' wreck and prove it wasn't in some she-devil Hades beneath the canyon floor? I laughed, though the whole concept made me some combination of jumpy and disgusted. I thought of Emmett's words—"Superstitions control the masses." I felt glad at least that my grandfather wasn't one of the masses.

  "Well, it might have been nice to get any remains back," I stumbled, but put some intentional emphasis on my next words. " Just so we could have had a normal burial!"

  If he caught my disgust, he didn't keep it. "So you been out on the water since?"

  "Uh, yeah. Once. In fact..." I sat there dizzily, feeling chilled to the bone. I could barely remember why I had called him, or I was too confused to make up a lie. "In fact, I came to you about a year ago. Last November."

  This time, he was silent.

  "I'm sorry," I went on. "I should have been more talkative. I wasn't feeling really great, and I rented an outboard to go see Edwin Church."

  "Oh, my lord," he breathed in awe. "You were that tall, good-looking blond kid. You really have grown up! Well, I'm not sure a trip to see Edwin Church is the perfect cure for what ails a person. Depends on what you've got, I suppose. My belief is, live and let live. Everybody has their own thing. Whatever works for you, you know?"

  "Yeah, well, going out there to see Mr. Church helped me a lot," I said. "I'd like to go out there again tomorrow. Er; actually, it's not me. It's a friend of mine from Philadelphia. She asked me to call and find out if you were busy. She thought maybe you could take her out there."

  He made a noise that sounded like a verbal shrug. "I'm not exactly setting the world on fire this time of year Could do with a little extra cash. How much time does she need? Which piece of Edwin Church will she be finding useful? The oceanographic institute piece? The Sigmund Freud piece? Or that, uh, eastern mystical schmear none of us really understands?"

  I had to laugh at that. There was no way to describe Mr. Church, and considering that, Mr. Shields had done a pretty good job. And he hadn't laughed, hadn't sounded judgmental at all. I had spent a couple of hours out there, and I told him that.

  "It'll probably work out best if you just want to work around high tide," I finished.

  "High tide's at ten. I'll get back and it'll be time to pick her up again. Oh well, I'll catch some striped bass for the missus while I'm back there. What's the young lady's name?"

  "Grey Shailey. She's tall, blond, very pretty, but with sort of a hardened criminal look around the eyes." I let the joke fly, just to squelch my sudden feeling of being outside myself again. Like I was in Emmett's body, looking down on me, and this whole visit sounded ludicrous. "She's summer folk and has been a little bit under the weather, Don't let her drown, okay?"

  I listened to him laugh, though the sudden coldness in the room was starting to spook me bad. I heard a clanking sound behind me and jumped around. I realized where the cold had come from, and why I'd just felt like Emmett was looking down on me. Emmett was back there. He was pouring himself another glass of wine, studying the label on the bottle so hard that I knew he wasn't really studying it. He had stinging red ears and a red nose. This house was so different than our place in Philly. We didn't get drafts from open doors because the lobby was three floors down. We had creaky wood floors and Oriental rugs. This place had cushy, silent, wall-to-wall carpet, at least in most rooms. I'd been ambushed.

  "I have to go now, Mr. Shields." I was in deep shit over payment now, because I could in no way give him this credit card number with Emmett all but on top of me. "I'll bring you the cash tomorrow."

  "Fifty dollars, up front," he told me. "No refunds. If the weather's bad we'll set a rain date. Spit on it?"

  It sounded a bit tightfisted to me, but somehow so familial; like I had been hearing business done that way my whole life. "Spat on it."

  Emmett was doing more of that studying thing, only this time it was the darkening sea, which I knew for sure he couldn't be studying so intensely.

  "Did he just say to you, 'Spit on it'?"

  "Yeah." I scratched my head, watching the rug uneasily.

  "Mmmrn ... You fall back into old ways easily," he said too cheerfully, "cutting business deals with local fishermen."

  "I don't know what made me say that. I never heard it before—"

  "You heard it plenty before. The fact that you spit on it without any actual recall of that custom? That makes me feel infinitely better." His sarcasm was overtaking his cheeriness, which made me stare. I watched the glass of wine going to his mouth.

  "I thought you just got sober."

  "I did."

  "Well, could you stay that way a while, please? I'm not used to talking to my brother when he's smashed."

  "I wasn't smashed, Evan. I was ... loosening the tight joints. Don't worry. If I start slurring, I'll go lie down. Guess we're both seeing each other in ways we're not accustomed to." He tore his eyes from the sea finally, moseyed over to the couch, and plopped down on it. "I'm not accustomed to thinking of you as being reckless."

  "Reckless?" I realized grimly he must have heard me talking to Mn Shields about visiting Mr. Church. "I wouldn't call a little ride in an outboard across the bay reckless, Emmett. I was doing it in third grade. As for seeing Mr. Church..." I didn't know quite what I wanted to say about that. "Can we just leave it at you have your peace and I'll have mine? I don't mind your beliefs. I think you could extend to me the same—"

  "Courtesy?" he broke in. "I always try to be courteous. I don't think courtesy is the issue at all. I don't think it would be discourteous for me to remind you—nicely—that my beliefs are a little more thoroughly investigated than are yours."

  There wasn't a whole lot I could say to that, because "You're wrong" would have been somehow wrong, though it felt right. I bit my tongue.

  "Besides, I wasn't ... at this moment ... addressing any belief system of yours that would propel you to the feet of a man like Church. I was talking about this Grey Shailey person. Is this the girl you were telling me about on Tuesday night? She's in Saint Elizabeth's?"

  I nodded.

  "She's in Saint Elizabeth's, and obviously she's got some kind of weekend pass or a release coming her way, and you are sending her to a man like Edwin Church."

  I rolled over onto my elbows, bouncing my fingers off the carpet, thinking about this. The way he put it, yeah, it sounded reckless.

  "No, wait..." I stumbled. "I'm just an innocent bystander in all of this. I have never told anybody I went to see him. She put it together called me up to Saint Elizabeth's, begged me to put her in contact with him. I'm just being ... diplomatic." It was a word I knew he liked.

  "Well maybe we should be courteous to all but save diplomacy for those who are well. You were not a well person yourself when you, obviously, came down here last year and didn't feel the need to tell me."

  I figured we were into it now, and I should just stand my ground. "Yeah? I was perfectly well when I came back."

  He looked at me, almost with a flash of interest. Emmett didn't like things he couldn't explain, and usually he would have been a little more smug, I think. But he was drinking, and the look lingered on me long enough for me to feel maybe he was in some weird, vulnerable spot—away from his desk, his books, his dissertation, his cronies in the philosophy department. All he had was picture windows, wine, and me.

  "I think ... I need to he
ar this." He lay down and stared up at the ceiling, probably so I couldn't read his eyes. He knows how I can read eyes and it spooks him sometimes. I couldn't see his eyes, but I sensed this was more of a curiosity question than something he planned to argue. It sounded almost resigned more than argumentative. He was searching for something ... in strange territory.

  "Place makes you feel strange, doesn't it?" I crawled over to him, got up on my knees, and patted his hair sympathetically. He shut his eyes and turned them away from me, twirling the stem of the glass on his chest. I could feel pain crawling off of him, bad memories. Because he wouldn't let me see his eyes, that was all I could read, but I gathered that his pain was like mine had been. He wanted to know what had become of our parents.

  "So ... what did our illustrious Mr. Church do to you, Evan?"

  I decided to skip all of what might have amounted to gory details to him and just get to the punch. Maybe he was just vulnerable enough to listen to me on this one.

  "It was a wave, Emmett. A monstrous, fucking wave. The biggest wave I've ever seen."

  I could feel him tighten, but his voice still sounded diplomatic. "So, in other words, he did that second sight ... thing on you. That thing with his hands that I used to hear about."

  "Yeah."

  "And it was a wave."

  "Yeah. I know that sounds completely crazy. I only believe it because—" and I went through the whole thing about touching the map. He never moved, never tried to interrupt, never did anything but blink.

  After I finished and a bit of silence followed, he said, "I wish you had come walking on the beach with me."

  "It's freezing."

  "I know, but I wanted to talk to you away from Opa. He's taking a nap now, I think. It's safe. There have been some things I've wanted to share with you—I was ready to last year. I thought you were old enough and enough time had passed. But that incident with the LSD made me put it off longer: Now? I find out you've been throwing yourself at the mercy of subhumans like Church, and you're sending your sick friends to him. You're my brother: I love you. I want to convince you to stop it."

  He sat up, and I figured he had fooled me into telling him about the wave and the map. He could do that to me sometimes, lure me into saying something he could take apart, just by not showing me his eyes and keeping his voice even. He's one of the few people in the world who could get away with it.

  He went behind the bar; and I could see the white-and-red bag. Only now that it was up close, I could see the bag was worn, like it had been around for a lot of years. He had a loose-leaf notebook full of papers, which he held up to me, not looking at all happy.

  "Edwin Church has some weird little power;" he said softly, but I knew just from knowing everything about Emmett that he was being sarcastic. "He can make you remember things more clearly. On a good day, he can even make you see the future. He's touched by God. He sold his soul to the devil. He did both! It's a highly opinionated world out there, Evan. And you have to be careful, because these days, everybody's right, and if you don't believe me, ask them."

  I didn't know what was in the binder or what exactly he was rambling on about, but I hated it when he got this condescending tone. "Uh, you're holding that damn thing up like a TV evangelist toting a Bible. Maybe you should come down off your high horse and say whatever it is you have to say."

  He lowered it and apologized. "Everybody's right. There's no way to find truth in this world, except for one. And here it is."

  He held the thing up again. Couldn't seem to help himself. "Evidence."

  He sat back down on the couch and opened the black book as I crawled warily up and plopped down beside him. My heart turned hot and started banging, though he was being vague enough that I couldn't have said why at the moment.

  "I don't think Opa told you the story about the Riley boat to make pleasant chatter. I think he was laying a big hint on me, telling me it's time I opened the floodgates of debate. He's right."

  He turned the first page, and a hefty legal document stared back at me. I looked where his finger pointed and saw the name of my parents' boat, the Goliath. Then my eyes bounced up to big bold letters at die top: SEARCHWARRANT.

  SEVEN

  "Oh, shit," I breathed, over and over, following his finger down this page, seeing these all-too-real names and facts: "Name of Vessel: GOLIATH. Location of Port: THE BASIN, ATLANTIC CITY. Owner/Operator: WADE BARRETT, MARY ELLEN STARN. Date: NOVEMBER 10," and the year, signed by a judge, and by two men who had the word "Agent" after their signatures and "DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION" beneath. The blue ink where the DEA agents had signed was now fading, but I ran my finger over it, hoping it might just disappear.

  I didn't know what exactly this had to do with my parents' death, but some sort of black energy was rushing off Emmett, making me feel electrocuted. This had to do with the man who rocked me in his lap and told great stories about our ancestors. And it involved a woman, a flight paramedic, who came home with tales of saving lives while reciting her version of the captain's prayer: "Lord, give me a stiff upper lip."

  "None of this will make any sense to you if I don't start from the beginning. The night they disappeared was not the beginning. It started two years before, I would estimate."

  He turned a page and pointed to a cassette tape in an envelope that fit into a three-ring binder. Emmett's way of keeping things organized for research had always gotten on my nerves. This was beyond reckoning—a three-ring-binder plastic job for a cassette. The cassette was dated about six months after Mom and Dad died, and marked "Talk with Mrs. Riley" in Emmett's scratchy handwriting. I guess that meant he'd been to see her and taped the conversation.

  His voice went on. "About two years before Mom and Dad's boat disappeared, the Riley boat disappeared. About two weeks before the Riley boat disappeared, Mom and Dad had dinner at the home of Claude Lowenberg. He was Dad's first mate. Remember him?"

  I nodded. "I just remember he was a very quiet guy."

  "Still waters run deep. He had a lot of friends. A lot of people trusted him. He'd heard some things that he shared with Mom and Dad. In essence, Captain Riley was in a lot of trouble, shall we say."

  He turned the page again, and there was a search warrant that looked pretty similar to Mom and Dad's, only it was a Xerox in black and white, and was more grainy looking. And the names were different. This one read, "Owner/Operator: CONNOR RILEY." And I snapped my eyes up to the darkened picture window, not really wanting to read any further.

  Emmett kept on. "Captain Riley had come on tough times. A lot of the container ships had. Federal Express had come onto the scene, driving prices down at UPS. The freighters were losing a lot of business. Sometimes the owners would get tempted to bolster their incomes illegally. They would drop off a small load of furniture in Jamaica that didn't really even cover the cost of the trip. They'd also pick up something to make the trip worthwhile—"

  "Oh, my God," I breathed. I let him talk on about Captain Riley running drugs, feeling it was about to hit closer to home, and the gray hatch was slamming in the wind.

  "Captain Riley had delivered a huge amount of Colombian gold up to Canada and had gotten paid for it." He pointed to a newspaper clipping that followed the Riley search warrant. It covered the disappearance, mentioning Connor Riley had come under suspicion of drug trafficking.

  "The DEA didn't find the shipment or the money, but they took a lot of his files, things lying about on his desk, and among them were some scrap sheets he'd scribbled out, with phone numbers, delivery names, estimates of his profit. He realized they would eventually put it all together and arrest him. They'd get him on circumstantial evidence, unless they came up with a witness, I don't know..."

  I looked at him funny when he said "I don't know." It was the first sign that he didn't know every last detail about this story. It made me want to listen for flaws in his arguments, in spite of how this black book intimidated the hell out of me.

  "Captain Riley decided to take Clau
de Lowenberg into his confidence. Riley said he was going somewhere safe from the law, and was going to fake a disappearance. On top of that, he was looking to pass around his cartel contact in the Caribbean, if any ships wanted to make a few deliveries themselves. And if they got into trouble and wanted to meet up with Riley later; the contact would help them with that."

  "Dad told you this?"

  "Yes. Almost as soon as they got home from dinner at the Lowenbergs'. Dad appeared to be in shock when he told me. They were friends with the Rileys, and were sorry if they really had been mixed up in the whole illegal business. Mom and Dad wanted no part of it. That's what Dad told me."

  "But, you don't believe him?"

  "I did. I think at that point, Dad was sincere. I think Mom was, too. Dad encouraged Claude to call the authorities. But Mom was awfully quiet that night. She let Dad do all the talking. She just kind of sat at the edge of the fireplace and looked at her fingers."

  "So you're saying Mom and Dad never used Captain Riley's contact in Jamaica, and never did anything wrong."

  "Not at that point. The Riley vessel disappeared not even two weeks later, The Coast Guard took a Mayday that sounded very similar to that ... that legend you used to call The She. Like Opa said tonight, a couple of drug-running captains had tried to fake disappearances after they realized they were about to be arrested. One gave false coordinates over the radio and added sound effects and hysterical comments like, 'We're being sucked, we're being sucked. What's that off the starboard bow?' Both of them were found and prosecuted. But Captain Riley's boat was not ever found."

  "So ... you think he faked it really well and got away with it?"

  Emmett laughed politely. "If I haven't given you enough evidence yet, get this. By the time the DEA got an arrest warrant, Captain Riley was already lost at sea. They leaned on Mrs. Riley. She had found out about the previous load of Colombian Gold and confessed. Then she swore up and down that her husband had said he was sorry, swore to never do it again, and went to sea to deliver a regular load of goods on schedule. She's kept to that story ever since, even though the Coast Guard found a female name on the crew list. As it turned out, the woman didn't even have a seaman's license but was a waitress over at the Seaview Country Club. The Rileys were members there. Even still, Mrs. Riley rather enjoys calling herself the widow Riley."