by Eric Murphy
“So, let’s have a look at that cut, shall we?” Aubrey said, ducking the question.
He untied Will’s neoprene-covered forearm, which looked like a giant, trussed-up sausage. Will winced when the bits of rubber were pulled from the wound, which gaped open. It had stopped bleeding but he could see the edge of a white tendon. He knew from science shows that tendons were white but had no idea they were this kind of bold white.
“If you’re going to wait till tomorrow to see Dr. Doan, we should close that wound up now,” said Aubrey, pushing his chair back. He pulled a saucepan from under the stove and put some water on to boil. Here again he had to reconnect a utility, this time the main gas line by reaching to the wall behind the stove. Aubrey glided out of the room with the grace of a dancer in search of his partner.
A chorus of peeps that grew in intensity broke the silence. Sherman answered Will’s questioning look by saying, “Tree frogs. We call ’em peepers. It’s the male’s mating call.” Sherman studied a kitchen shelf covered in silver cricket trophies with Aubrey’s name on them. Pictures hanging above the shelf showed Aubrey winning cricket tournaments or best player certification. Some of them showed Aubrey, who grayed with age as he continued in his winning ways, while the boy beside him in the pictures grew into a man. Will assumed this was his son.
Lowering his voice, Will asked Sherman, “Do all Bermudians leave their houses like this when they go out to the ocean? And what’s with the dark suit in the water?”
Sherman shook his head and waved his hand at Will as if to erase the question that was hanging in the air.
Harley put her index finger to her lips to shush Will just as Aubrey came back into the room. It really was amazing how a man that big could walk so lightly. He had a long strand of dental floss, which he dropped into the boiling water along with a curved needle.
Aubrey filled a little bowl with hot water and sprinkled salt in it before he turned to the sink and scrubbed his hands twice before drying them. Then he produced a box of latex gloves from a drawer, pulled on a pair, and handed another pair to Harley. He waved Will over and had him hold the gashed forearm above the sink, then poured the saline solution into the wound.
“You were lucky you did that in the ocean. The salt water helped disinfect it. This is just an added precaution,” explained Aubrey.
He patted the wound dry then sat Will down. He threaded the dental floss through the curved needle and, with the help of a pair of small, red-handled needle-nose pliers, drew the needle through one side of the gash, then the other. Will flinched as the needle nicked nerve endings. Aubrey tied a knot and had Harley put pressure on it with her gloved index finger before tying a second knot and cutting the floss. He repeated the procedure six times. Will really did look like Frankenstein’s monster now.
Aubrey peeled his gloves off and took Harley’s glove as well, which he carried out of the room. Will just stared at his forearm in amazement.
Sherman grinned and said, “Aubrey was a stonecutter for years. Started helping his dad, then quit school at fourteen to work full time. Eventually bought the quarry out there,” he said, wagging his thumb over his shoulder to indicate it was farther inland. “Didn’t have cellphones back then. You or one of your mates sliced yourself open, best to know how to close that wound, ’r else you’d run the risk of bleedin’ to death. Aubrey was a good stitcher if’n you needed one,” said Sherman with a nod and a smile of pride by association.
Aubrey handed Will a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers and held up two fingers to let him know how many to take. Then he stood there staring at his kitchen as if surprised by the empty fridge when he opened the door. He closed it quietly, opened a cupboard and pulled out two cans.
“I could warm up some soup if anybody wants some.”
“I best be on my way, Aubrey,” said Sherman, pushing himself off the counter. “Fish biting early tomorrow. ’Sides, wouldn’t do to show up an’ not eat the missus’s dinner, no sir, no sir.”
Will leaned back in his chair and covered his mouth as he yawned. “Actually, Mr. … uh, Aubrey, that fish sandwich hit the spot and if it’s okay with you, I’d just like to lie down. I’m awful tired after our long swim today.”
Aubrey walked them down the hall and pointed to a bathroom. He stopped to pull out a fresh roll of toilet paper and to hang fresh towels on the empty rack. He then led them to a small, clean room with two beds flanking a side table. He turned the table light on and pulled sheets down from the shelf above the empty closet. Harley took them and thanked him before she hurried to make their beds.
Aubrey told them they’d find new toothbrushes in the bathroom medicine cabinet, and then walked Sherman outside.
Will opened the window a crack and could hear the peepers’ chorus. Sherman and Aubrey walked past the window on the way to the dock.
“Gave me quite a scare there, Aubrey, you out on the boiler like that.”
“Didn’t mean to.”
The peepers filled in the silence.
“I’m a shrinking man, Sherman. Everything I thought I was, everything I thought I’d made and built all disappeared the way Anthony did.”
“Why the suit?” he asked in a lowered voice.
“It’s the suit I wore the day Julie said she’d take me as her husband. I thought I’d wear it to meet her again after all this time. Hoping she’d be willing to take me back after what I did with Anthony. Or failed to do with him …”
“You didn’t do nothin’ to — look, next time you feel like doing that, you give me a call and talk, why don’tcha? Me and the boys in ’a choir, we’re all powerfully upset by what’s happened to you and Anthony, you being a good man, a good friend, and a good father. No, don’t you be arguing with me none, now, hear? No sir, no sir.”
The peepers drowned out Aubrey’s answer. Sherman started up his diesel while Aubrey cast the lines off and the boat chugged its way out to sea with its white, red, and green lights draining into the deeper darkness.
Will sat on the edge of his bed and fell sideways till his head hit the pillow. He struggled to pull his legs up.
“You didn’t think that was all weird, him sitting there on the edge of the boiler in a suit? I just heard him say it was the suit he got married in. That’s a strange one to come home with to explain, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think he intended on coming back, Will,” said Harley in a hushed tone as she covered him with a sheet as though putting the matter to rest, at least for the night. But Will was focused on how the dream he’d had in Wavelength’s cockpit had been prophetic. He’d seen Aubrey before he met him and he’d seen the man wrapped in gauze holding four letters. In the dream he’d fired a gun at Will, a warning of the man’s intent to have him and Harley killed and make it look like an accident.
Will was the seventh son of a seventh son. That had been the explanation given to him for his sensitivity to the paranormal. He was the only one to connect with the ghost of his great-grandfather, Bill McCoy, the famous rum-runner known as The Real McCoy who haunted the family schooner in Lunenburg. McCoy had called his awareness of the paranormal a gift. Some gift. His dreams usually scared him half to death. True, in some cases, those dreams opened doors. Would one of those doors explain the significance of the name H.M.S. Lily on the envelope blurring like it was under water? Before he could think any further, he was asleep.
*
Will woke with a start. He sat upright and blinked, taking a moment to remember where he was. The peepers mating call said Bermuda. In the distance he heard the low thrumming of a boat’s diesel. It wasn’t a boat passing because the sound was steady, didn’t ebb.
He staggered to his feet, peered out the window to the ocean and froze. Just off the dock was a boat silhouetted in the moonlight, its white, green, and red running lights bobbing on the ocean. Had Drury and Bennett found them?
Chapter Seven
A Nocturnal Outing
Boston Whaler: A light, sturdy, unsinkable bo
at used commercially and for pleasure.
The boat Will saw through his window was stationary. If Drury and Bennett were there why weren’t they attacking? He turned to where Harley slept. Her breathing was regular and he didn’t want to wake her unless he had to, not after she’d shouldered so much of the effort to get them away from Wavelength.
Will tiptoed out of the room and heard Aubrey’s gentle snores. The man needed his sleep as much as Harley. So Will headed out the dockside door down to the concrete pier. If Drury and Bennett were on this boat, he’d yell and warn Harley. As he got closer, the boat moved in but not aggressively. It was only when he waved from the flying bridge that Will recognized Sherman.
“Sorry if I woke you, Will. I was just — well, couldn’t sleep,” said the fisherman.
“You worried about Aubrey? He’s sleeping. So’s Harley.”
“Oh, good,” said Sherman, his shoulders slumping with relief. “Hey, I’m up, you’re up. So why don’t I show you how pretty Hamilton Harbour looks at night?”
With Will aboard, Sherman moved off to deeper waters and around the point of land that arced in protectively.
“Am I right in thinking that Aubrey was sitting on that boiler, hoping a big wave would take him off?” asked Will, hoping for an explanation that would make sense of things. “Why would he do that?”
Sherman’s jaw twitched to the side as if he had trouble with the question. “A boat, a well-balanced one like mine here, sails through a storm just like she has for years, takes the best and the worst that the wind, water and skies can do to her, and keeps tracking until one day, this big wave comes along. A big, unexpected wave that slams her so hard that she staggers under the blow. Her load shifts and damages her structure, which causes her to list. Now that new reality robs that beautiful ship of all her grace. Well, Will, under those conditions, not all ships can right themselves or make it back to harbor, no sir, no sir. And that also happens to men on this ocean we call life.”
Will didn’t entirely understand but he did know that sorrow had damaged his own grandfather, had staggered him like he’d been hit by a big wave. It had taken a whole year for him to get back on track after his son, Will’s dad, had died. Some assumed he wouldn’t make it.
“I’ve been thinking about that wreck where we found the coins. Wouldn’t there be a record of her sinking and of her cargo? I mean, a big ship like that must o’ had a big crew and its sinking wouldn’t go unnoticed, would it?” asked Will.
“There were a lot of blockade runners operating out of Bermuda back then. My great-grandfather being one of them. Good money to be made helping the South.”
“I thought Harley said Bermuda and Britain had abolished slavery in 1834, so why would Bermudians help the South keep slavery?”
“Follow the money. Britain abolished slavery but she wasn’t above letting her shipyards build and sell those sleek and fast blockade runners, no sir, no sir. ‘Specially not when you were paid in cotton. With the blockade making it hard to get anything in or out of the south, the value of tobacco and sugar went up, but their biggest export, cotton, shot up in value because all the textile mills in the American North and in Europe were starved for it. Blockade runners would only accept payment in coin or cotton that they could sell to the British or French for a small fortune. Remember, Will, wars are fought for patriotism and profit. Follow the money is what I always say.”
“Did the same go for Bermuda?” asked Will.
“Well there were a lot of family links between Bermuda and the Carolinas — we’re on the same parallel. And with so many new people arriving to run the blockade, cost of housing and food here climbed out of reach, so people needed to make more money. That included black and white Bermudians, ’cause money is a color-blind magnet when you got to feed a family on an island where the cost of food and shelter went through the roof. My great-grandfather more than made ends meet as a blockade runner.”
“I’m sorry, what are or who were blockade runners?”
“You know the Civil War in the US pitted the North against the South over keeping or abolishing slavery?” Will nodded. “President Lincoln implemented the Anaconda Plan, a blockade meant to choke off trade that fed the people and the economy of the South so’s they’d give up their plan to break away from the rest of the country. My great-grandfather served on boats that tried to get around the blockade to bring the South goods that were critical to its survival and — hang on!” bellowed Sherman, throwing the helm hard a-port as a Boston Whaler cut across their bow and roared past them. The man at the helm cursed and yelled back at them, “Bloody idiots, watch yourselves or you’ll catch it.”
“That’s Drury,” blurted Will, recognizing both the voice and the expression. “That’s the guy who kidnapped us and shot at us. Follow him,” said Will, stabbing his finger at the receding boat.
“We wouldn’t likely catch him even if we wanted to,” said Sherman, trailing in the faster boat’s wake. “No running lights on, so not much good goin’ on, s’all I can say,” added Sherman as he turned to stare after the boat that fled into the darkness.
Within minutes they were inside the harbor.
Sherman pointed to the dock where the now-lit Boston Whaler was tying up.
“Why’d he run without lights and then turn them on now?” asked Will.
“Probably didn’t want anyone knowing where he’d come from. But in here, without lights he could cause an accident or draw the attention of the police marine unit.”
Sherman handed Will binoculars. He trained them on the Boston Whaler and saw Drury scamper across the road in the direction of the big cruise ship way down at the other end of the dock, all lit up so you couldn’t possibly miss that giant floating village.
Sherman brought them parallel to the dock. They saw Drury dash across the well-lit street, zigzag between tourists from the cruise ship, and disappear into a doorway wedged beside a colorful column. A second-story light came on. Will trained the binoculars on the second floor but the lit window had a set of blinds so he couldn’t see anything.
The ride had chilled him and his teeth chattered. The hoodie and bathing suit weren’t much to keep the ocean’s coolness at bay.
“Best we get you home, Will,” said Sherman, heading back out to the mouth of the harbor.
Will was so tired he didn’t remember stepping off Sherman’s boat or going back into Aubrey’s house.
Chapter Eight
Windy Farm
Schooner: A sailboat with at least two masts, with the foremast being smaller.
The next morning Aubrey pulled the tarp off of the small, white pickup truck with Dill Enterprises painted on both doors. He lifted the hood and reattached the battery cable. Nobody commented on the fact that undoing the battery cable wasn’t the usual thing to do if you were planning to be away for only a few hours. Being in a left-hand-drive car took some getting used to, but was less surprising than the narrowness of all the streets. Aubrey explained that cars were not used in Bermuda till 1948. The petition to keep cars out of Bermuda had been signed by a lot of people including US President Woodrow Wilson and Samuel Longhorn Clemens, better known under his pen name, Mark Twain.
Because horses and carts had been the main means of travel throughout the island, the roads were extremely narrow for the cars that were now zipping along, almost all with scraped bumpers. On more than one occasion, Aubrey had to hug the outside part of the lane so that the side of the pickup and the mirror whacked the tall grasses and trees that leaned into the road at their peril. It was scarier when Aubrey had to skim the many stone walls that lined the streets, on one occasion actually scraping the side-view mirror because an oncoming car was too close to the center line.
The mood in the truck was quiet as Will and Harley searched the bays for Wavelength. They came to a roundabout near the city of Hamilton where a man with a straw hat was waving at all the passing cars. The man called out, “Have a nice day. God bless.” He waved vigorously and smiled, his thi
n dark face framed by a bushy white beard. Will waved back, then Harley did, and they found themselves smiling at each other, then at Aubrey, who gave a small smile back.
Will looked to his right and saw a life-size bronze statue of the same man. He turned to Aubrey for an explanation.
“Johnny Barnes. Johnny was an electrician on the railway. For almost three decades now, he comes to this roundabout every morning, Monday to Friday, from four a.m. to ten a.m. to greet passersby. He’s become an institution and citizens of Bermuda honored him with that bronze statue.”
Aubrey took Harbour Road and drove for a few miles, then turned inland. At a big sign marked Windy Farm, Aubrey drove his pickup truck down the lane toward a mural. It was a portrait of a young ponytailed man hanging out from a tree. With his right hand and foot anchored to tree branches, he extended his left limbs to create an X as he overlooked Windy Farm below him. His left hand wore a falconer’s glove and above him hovered a hawk with thin strips of leather hanging from its anklets. The lower right corner of the mural was signed Yeats.
“Those strips of leather hanging from the hawk’s feet are called jesses, to secure the bird to its perch,” offered Harley. They drove past a covered paddock, circled around to the parking lot, and came to a stop between two white lines that made sure you knew not to waste space. Bermuda was an island after all and space was limited.
Dr. Marianne Doan pulsed with energy. She caught Will’s eye before Harley pointed her out. She had the same slim frame as Will’s mother. She was tall and her long strides made her look even taller. Or maybe it was the riding boots. Her lips were tight with determination.
She had burst out of the office next to the horse stalls, heading to the covered paddock when she saw Aubrey’s truck. Dr. Doan flashed a smile and cried out, “Harley, oh my goodness, you’re here.”
Harley sprang from the pickup and scooted over to give her a hug, which neither seemed in a hurry to end.