Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649)

by Jerome, Celia

  “Pea-brained worrywart, more like,” Grandma told him.

  I glared across the table, but told Piet, “Yes, he senses the future. Future danger, specifically, for people he is close to. Like many other oracles throughout history, his warnings are subject to interpretation. He’s very protective but not very precise. At least he tries to be helpful,” I said with another glare.

  “Hah!” came again from the family matriarch, which Elladaire took for a laugh so she imitated it.

  I wasn’t laughing, not when the old biddy belittled my father. “Dad never pretended to be a rustic countryman. He prefers the city and the dangers there to whatever lurks in swamps. My grandmother thinks it’s heresy to find fault with Paumanok Harbor.”

  Since Grandma Eve knew she wasn’t going to shake my faith in my father, she turned to Piet. “So what do you call yourself?” she demanded of him.

  He put down his fork, reluctantly. “Uh, Piet, with two syllables.”

  “No, what are you?”

  “Dutch, mostly.” He eyed the plate of toasted garlic bread, hoping she’d pass it.

  Not until she was finished grilling him, it seemed.

  “Do not be impertinent, young man. What do they call what you do?”

  “Oh. Lucky, mostly. But the record keepers at Royce list me as a fire-damp.”

  I waited to see if he had nerve enough to ask my grandmother what people called her. Most terms were unspeakable in front of Elladaire. I suppose an herbalist would describe her strength. She could make anything grow, and she could make any plant into something tasteful, healthful, or effective, for whatever effect she wanted. She was always cooking up something to cure heartburn or heart attacks or heartache. And she could read tea leaves.

  If it walked like a duck, quacked like a duck, Eve Garland was a ducking witch.

  Which meant I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the meal.

  “Tea?” she asked.

  Not on your life. Or mine. I said we didn’t have time to stay that long, even if she had mixed berry pie. “It’s past Elladaire’s bedtime, and Piet traveled all last night and—”

  “And you don’t want me to look into your future. I understand that, Willow. What I don’t understand is how your mother raised such a thick-headed child.”

  Eve had been demanding to read my fortune since I was seventeen. And she wondered where I got my stubbornness?

  She didn’t speak to me, but to Piet: “Her lummock of a sire wanted her raised like an ordinary, unexceptional child. He refused to let anyone test her. Now look where we are; she doesn’t understand what she does or know how to control it. We all suffer for her ignorance.”

  Before I could try to defend what was, in truth, the truth, Piet spoke up. “From what I hear, Willow has done incredibly well in difficult situations no one could anticipate. According to the department, her talent is so rare no one could tutor her. They also told me that your little enclave here might have been wiped out without her.”

  “Hmph. If there is a monster in that bog, it’s her fault, I swear,” she muttered, but brought out the pie. “Well, everyone wants to know if you two are going to get rid of those plaguesome bugs. May I read your leaves, Mr. Doorn?”

  “No, ma’am, I hate tea. Never drink the stuff. Besides, I know I can shut the bugs down when I find them. You’ve seen what happens when I don’t.”

  “Then you don’t believe the outcome is already decided, waiting to be actuated?”

  “I believe anything is possible, ma’am, because I’ve seen a lot that is impossible. Willow and I will do our best no matter what the leaves say, and that’s all anyone can ask.”

  “Very well.” She gave him a jar of her special salve for his burns. “Do you believe this will work?”

  “If you say it will, then I have confidence the scars will heal.”

  “What I say is not the point. If you don’t believe for yourself, the recipe won’t be effective.”

  “It’s a placebo, then?”

  “Why would I spend all afternoon in the stillroom if I doubted its success? You have to help it along, is all.” She turned to me. “You should take that to heart, Willow. Believe, and toughen up your backbone . . . and get your roots dyed.”

  “Thank you for a lovely meal,” I said, relieved to get off so easily. And to have the rest of the pie to take home.

  Then she said, “Oh, that man your mother married called when he couldn’t find you at home.”

  “That man is my father.”

  “Which explains a great deal. It does not excuse it.”

  I wrapped Elladaire in her blanket, not the dogs’ this time. “Thanks for having us. I’ll let you know what we learn so you can tell the rest of town.” She would, anyway.

  “He said he had a warning for you.”

  “You waited till now to tell me?”

  Grandma scowled. “What difference does it make? His premonitions are for the future, when they make sense at all.”

  They did, but usually when it was too late to do anything about them. Others I never figured out, like his old tables. “What was it this time?” I pasted a smile on my face so Piet would understand not to take my father’s pronouncements too seriously.

  “He said to watch out for a boil on your ass. I’ll make more salve.”

  Could a person die of mortification? If so, I would have been buried almost twenty years ago, after running naked though an outdoor cocktail party when a snake slid over my foot. Better not to dwell on why I was naked, but it involved a blond lifeguard and an old swimming hole. No one in the entire village ever forgot, despite my begging the mayor for help.

  This was almost worse.

  “I don’t have—That is, my father’s alarms are sometimes garbled. I bet he means I should stay away from broiled bass. Sometimes the stripers have too much mercury. Or he could be telling me not to boil water in a glass. That’s it! I did once and broke my mother’s favorite Pyrex pot. It made a mess and she—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll help you put on the ointment.”

  “I don’t—”

  He was choking, trying so hard not to laugh that he woke up Elladaire, who was half asleep on his shoulder while we walked home down the road. I laughed also and felt a lot better for it, until I spotted a hulking bulk on the porch. Lord, don’t let it be another monster. I already had all I could handle.

  In a way, a port-a-crib is worse than an alien ogre. I couldn’t figure out how to open it, for one thing, and it meant Jane thought Elladaire was mine for the duration, for another.

  I did not want a baby. I wanted my life back. My work, my apartment, my mean little dog. I didn’t want to be wiping noses and butts and sticky fingers all day. And, yeah, I didn’t want an interesting man paying more attention to a babbling baby than to me. We should be making a plan for dealing with the fireflies if they appeared tonight, not making a bed and a bottle and how the hell did women do this?

  Piet set the crib up in the living room. We’d move it upstairs later, but this way we could hear Edie if she woke, while we went outside to wait for the bugs. I brought the big lantern flashlight, two bottles of water, the insect book, a hooded sweatshirt, and my drawing supplies.

  “I wish we had a plan.”

  “I wish I had more of your grandmother’s pie.”

  I’d left it on her table when I hustled the baby and Piet away. “Sorry. She sells them at the farm stand. I’ll buy one for you tomorrow. Meantime, do you know any telepaths or empaths we could beg to come help? We need someone who can communicate with the swarm.”

  “I know a busload of espers, but I never heard of one who’d ever seen an alien animal, much less spoken to one. Nor am I acquainted with any bug-hunting linguists. Sorry.”

  “It was a long shot. I called one of our weirdest characters, old Mrs. Grissom who talks to her decades-dead husband. She gives reports back on his opinions and advice on any number of subjects. Neither one of them had any suggestions for dealing with the pyro-beetles
. Mrs. G did hint that I was crazier than she was. She only spoke English, not insect.”

  “You said your mother turned you down, too. She only talks to dogs. And your cowboy speaks horse. What else have you got?”

  “A crayon.”

  “That works for me.” He pulled me down to the wicker love seat he’d dragged out to the lawn. “Like I told your grandmother, we’ll do the best we can.”

  “But what if you frighten them away?”

  “Then I’ll cruise downtown, maybe find those wetlands, see if the fire department has any calls.”

  “And leave me to handle Elladaire and the flamers by myself?”

  “She’s asleep and they like you. Everyone likes you, even your grandmother. She doesn’t understand you, but anyone can sense the love between you.”

  “I’ll take the bugs.” I started sketching. The only plan I’d come up with was to use scratchboard and a stylus. That’s the hard paper with a black coating that you scrape off with a sharp pointed tool to make multicolored designs. Maybe the night flyers could associate with the inky dark background and the bright colors. I etched a sheet full of bugs, spending extra time on those lacy wings and big eyes, sending my thoughts and mental images as well as words. “Come on, buddies, come talk to me. I’m all you’ve got.”

  Piet whispered, “I see them.”

  I didn’t take my eyes off the board on my lap. “What are they doing?”

  “Pretending to be firecrackers, it looks like, or shooting stars, diving around way overhead.”

  I scratched out a bursting chrysanthemum with cascading fountains of light. I looked up, and there it was.

  Piet whistled. “You really can talk to them.”

  I flipped to a fresh sheet. I scratched out Piet and me on a chair, and a ball of tiny dots over our head. “Come on, guys. Let me know how to help.”

  The ball formed, and then disappeared.

  “No!” I wailed. “You’ve killed them!”

  “Sh. They’re there. The fires are gone, is all.”

  “They’re scattering!”

  “Maybe your father meant a roiling mass, not a boil on your ass.”

  “No, they’re upset. They need the flashes of light to see each other. You put out the fire, so they can’t fly together. Do something.”

  He raised the flashlight into the sky, showing widespread individual insects, not a knot of wings. In the light, some re-formed their circular gathering shape, but others flew off out of the lantern’s beam. They all seemed confused, unfocused, and in distress, like a beehive when the queen’s gone missing.

  “Higher, go higher,” I shouted, “out of his range. He’s a friend, but he doesn’t like fire. And you”—I kicked his leg—“dial it down if you can. They are not incendiaries!”

  How do you visualize higher? I dropped the heavy flashlight and held my second picture up overhead, as high as I could reach. Then I stood on the wicker sofa, with Piet holding my legs to keep me steady. “Higher, go higher.”

  And they rose, without the sparks, but casting a soft glow. Fire wizard One, fireflies One. A draw. I drew as quickly as I could by that dim light. Piet with his hands out, welcoming, points of light landing on his head and shoulders.

  “I’d never have believed it,” he whispered in awe. Hundreds of hard-shelled beetles landed on us, with no fire, just warmth and a feeling of comfort.

  I let out a breath. “There. See? No harm. You have each other, and us. You are still beautiful. Piet is beautiful, too.”

  I could hear the hum of thousands of wings. I didn’t know if they understood my words or what they were saying back, which was so frustrating I could weep, but I kept talking, trying to create images in my mind that they might relate to. I was a Visualizer, after all. People hugging, people holding their hands out in peace, that big peace sign from the East Hampton fireworks.

  “I don’t know what you want or how to help you. I need you to tell me, or show me if we cannot talk. Why have you come?” I grabbed up my board and the wooden stylus and drew a fire with an angry face. “I know one of my kind hurt your kin, and I know we have to stop that person, but why don’t you leave if you are in danger? Not everyone cares for you or admires you the way Piet and I do.”

  They rose up again, not high enough up to overcome Piet’s power but with a stronger glow, made more intense by their close formation. They did not have the brilliance of fireworks, but they were visible against the night sky. The warmth remained, and the whirring. Was it the sound of their minds, trying to speak to me, or just their wings?

  “Show me.” I held up a blank page.

  First they separated and formed tiny knots of individuals, which shifted to the flowers I’d first seen at East Hampton’s display. “Is that your home, or do you like our summer gardens better?”

  The flowers drooped and disappeared.

  “What did you do to them?” I demanded of Piet.

  “Nothing. I think they are trying to show you something is wrong. Wait, they are lining up to make something else.”

  “What is it? I can’t tell.”

  “A big bug?” he guessed. “Something with wings, it looks like.”

  “Those aren’t wings, they’re fins. It’s a fish, I think.” A huge fish, spreading across the sky. I fixed it in my mind, its big eyes, its peculiar array of fins or flippers, six of them, like a beetle. Then it—they—turned so the outlined fish was standing on its end as if the forks of the tail were legs. “A merman? A hybrid?”

  The fish shape righted itself and dove. I did not sense the playfulness of earlier displays, but a great leaping, like a dolphin breaking through the waves. I tried to cast my mental picture and my questions back at them. “A big fish, chasing you? Are you afraid, so that’s why you left home?”

  They shifted to lots of little fish, again like I’d seen the first night they appeared.

  “But you don’t eat fish. That’s what the book said. Don’t go near the water if you’re afraid. I try not to go on boats.”

  The whirring, buzzing got louder, as if they were as frustrated as I was. “Okay, I’m trying. So there’s this big fishy thing. A friend?”

  The lights got brighter, almost sparks. “NO fire!” I shouted out loud and in my own head. “I’ll lose you. Piet really really has a thing about fire. He can’t help himself.”

  I lost them anyway when a loud car engine roared up the private road. Piet stood, as angry as I was to be interrupted when we were finally making progress. Maybe his anger at the car extended his range, tamping down even the lesser glow. I’d have to ask how his emotions affected his talent, if it did at all.

  I turned the flashlight to the sky. “Where are they?”

  A man lurched out of a souped-up pickup truck. “Where’s my kid?”

  I lost the lightning bugs, but found Elladaire’s father.

  CHAPTER 13

  NO WAY HAD I BEEN LOOKING for Roy Ruskin. He found me, though. I flashed the lantern on him while he stood by his big-wheeled truck. He put an arm over his eyes to cut down the glare. His arm was full of tattoos. His head was shaved. On some, either was a fashion statement. On Roy, they were the signs of a skinhead, a convict, or a gang member. Or all three.

  “Edie’s father?” Piet asked quietly.

  “Yes, poor kid. Do you have your cell phone with you?”

  Piet patted his breast pocket.

  “Good. There’s an order of protection against him, so call nine-one-one if he looks like trouble.”

  “He looks like he was born that way.”

  Roy lowered his arm and tried to light a cigarette. His lighter wouldn’t work, of course, so he cursed, then threw it and the cigarette down on my lawn. That’s the kind of jerk he was. “Hey, Willy, I’ve come for my kid.”

  “You’re wasting your time, Roy. And you’re interrupting our stargazing.”

  “That what you call it now? I don’t see any telescope.”

  “I don’t see a party going on either. You weren’t i
nvited, so get going. This is a private road.”

  “Come on, Tate, don’t be so hoity-toity. A hundred people use this road every day going to the farm stand.’Sides, we’re old friends.”

  “I’ve never said more than ten words to you, and you know it.”

  “Yeah, but you’re friends with Jane, my wife’s aunt. That counts.”

  “Mary’s not your wife anymore. You’re divorced. And Janie is my hairdresser, nothing else.”

  “Then why’d she leave the brat here?”

  “She didn’t.”

  He started toward the porch. The line he walked couldn’t pass a blind cop’s sobriety test, but Roy kept coming, even after I said, “Your daughter is not here. Everyone knows I don’t want anything to do with children. Janie would be crazy to leave a baby with me. Ask anyone in town.” The word was Roy Ruskin had no aura or special talent, so I didn’t worry about lying to him. I needn’t have bothered.

  “Jane said she left the brat with someone I’d never mess with. I figured your grandmother. Shit, no one messes with Eve Garland ’less they want their dick falling off. Then I heard you were shacked up with some hotshot imported fireman. What happened? Us local volunteers aren’t good enough for you? Maybe they’re not, the way things are going. Too bad I can’t join the fire department, what with all the time they take for training.”

  I knew Roy couldn’t join the fire squad because no one wanted a drunk and a stoner watching his back in an emergency. I defended the volunteers. “They do a great job. Piet has new technical training; that’s why he came to help.”

  “And that’s why Jane parked my kid here, I bet. Well, I can look after my own kin, and I aim to do just that.”

  “We can’t let you.”

  “Is that supposed to scare me?”

  Roy scared me. He must have threatened Janie if she told him anything at all. I only hoped she called the police after he left.

  “Your lover boy don’t look like much to me. Maybe you ought to try a local stud for a good time.” The pig adjusted his privates in case I missed his point. “Or aren’t we good enough for that either?”