by Eric Murphy
Will leaned back on the seaside railing and scanned the stores near the doorway Drury had used the night Will had spotted him while sailing with Sherman. Will raised the binoculars and froze.
On the top floor balcony was Brian Ord, the man he’d seen in the boat that had come close to Wavelength and who had given Bennett the order to “make it look like an accident.”
He had on the same hat with the floppy, broad brim, the gauze covering his face and hands, and the same oversized sunglasses. His hands were lying in his lap. He sat in his wheelchair taking in what must have been a breathtaking view. The door behind him swung open and out came Claire Calloway, her red mane flying in a sudden onshore gust.
She put her hand on Ord’s shoulder before moving to the railing and looking out. Her gaze drifted till it rested on Will, who was looking up with his binoculars. She dialed her cell and turned her head inward to talk before straightening out to point directly at Will. She hammered the air, which Will understood to mean that whatever she wanted to have happen, it had to be now and it had to be to him. Not a good idea to linger longer.
Yeats ambled back over as he finished committing figures to his phone, closing it and tucking it into his pocket.
“Hey, Yeats, I think we should really move from here right now. That woman Calloway, she’s up there on the balcony — no don’t look back. Let’s just get out of here fast, okay? She was giving someone orders and I’m sure it wasn’t to get our autographs.”
Yeats sprang the two helmets from the carrier, revved up the engine and slipped into traffic. Will risked a glance by the door to the building where he saw three red-feathered black helmets on parked scooters, their owners sprinting for their bikes as he and Yeats roared past. Well, as much of a roar as a 125cc scooter can muster.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Calloway wheel Ord back into his penthouse. Yeats shot down the road, past the “birdcage,” then past the Hamilton Princess Hotel, when Will said, “This isn’t the way back to Windy Farm, is it?”
“Nope. But I’m not leading those jerks in the Red Feather Gang back to the farm.”
“The guys with those red tufts on their helmets?” asked Will.
Yeats nodded, then wove his scooter in and out of traffic with a frightening surge of adrenaline. As Will glanced over his shoulder, one thing was certain: the three gang members weren’t gaining.
They sped along Pitts Bay Road then St. John’s Road till they turned into a parking lot leading to Admiralty House. Yeats sure could handle a scooter.
He braked, waved Will off the back seat, backed it in to a parking spot, and pulled it up on the center stand. He opened the storage box, slid their two helmets inside, insisting that they toss their shirts, shoes, socks, watches, phones and wallets in there as well. Then he motioned for Will to follow.
For a reason Will couldn’t understand, Yeats stopped in full view of the three members of the gang, who pulled their scooters into the same parking lot.
“What did you call those guys?” asked Will as Yeats resumed his steady pace away from their pursuers.
“The Red Feather Gang,” answered Yeats. “These guys are a bunch of unemployed youths who have been involved in small-time robberies. Their leader’s a guy called Dwayne something or other. He’s in Westgate Prison with charges pending. But I don’t fancy tangling with them so we’re going to lead them on a wild-goose chase,” answered Yeats, scrambling along a dock with a concrete bench carved into the shore-side rock. They passed a rusty cannon sunk perpendicularly into the rock, possibly as a bollard to hold ships fast, continuing along a beautiful swimming cove before slowly climbing some stairs, apparently wanting their pursuers to see where they were heading.
They skipped down stairs carved into the rock, brushing past broad plant leaves that tried to hide the damage to the land that had been caused by the military tunneling. There were rusty pintails on the left side where once had hung a door.
They passed a rectangular opening cut into the cave wall that allowed a glimpse of Bermuda’s opal waters.
“The Brits had a gun battery here once,” shot Yeats as he plunged farther into the cavern. It was a good thing that Yeats knew his way because it was dark. Will followed Yeats’s example and ran his right hand along the wall as a guide and kept his left in front of him so he could tap Yeats’s back to avoid slamming into him. He winced once or twice as his bare feet clipped the top of a sharp point of stone.
Eventually the tunnel widened into a room whose floor opened two yards above the sea that washed in under an overhang. The pool of emerald water was surrounded by walls of sharp, nasty-looking rock from which reflections played like water running down the walls’ striated surfaces. Curt voices closed in behind them.
“Okay,” whispered Yeats, “follow my lead and we’ll swim back around to the steps we passed and go back to the parking lot. Be sure to jump out far enough to land in the middle.”
Before Will could ask him if he was crazy, Yeats leaped away from the rocky outcropping, landed with a small splash, surfaced, swam out of Will’s way and waved for him to follow. The voices of their pursuers erased Will’s doubts.
He leaped, waving his arms like a flightless bird. Whoosh, he hit and went under. Before he surfaced in the marvelously warm water, he felt Yeats tugging at him to swim out of the cave and into the open sea. Will spat out the salty water and wiped his hair back from his eyes. The sight of the open sea that stretched before them startled him. Rougher seas would have battered them against the rock.
Yeats did the Australian crawl along the shore. And he did it with great precision, not with that inefficient side-to-side head-sway of those who couldn’t do it properly. Did Robin Hood have to do everything so well?
They swam into the cove and climbed the stairs in a crouch. Yeats put his finger to his lips then sprinted back to the scooter past a bewildered mother pushing her child in a stroller.
They slid on their street clothes and helmets before Yeats eased them back into traffic, making their way back to the safety of Windy Farm.
Chapter Fifteen
Spreading Manure
Compound bow: a bow that uses pulleys to harness power more effectively than a long bow.
With the use of a calling card to avoid expensive long-distance fees, Harley called her grandfather and told him a lot of half-truths: the ride had been exciting, and yes, they had managed to get some scuba diving in, apparently on a Civil War-era wreck. When he laughed and asked if they’d uncovered any lost treasure, she winced and said not yet.
Then Will called his mother in Toronto and spoke to her and his grandparents, telling them he and Harley were having an amazing adventure, which was true, that they loved the people and horses at Windy Farm, which was true, and that they were just helping out around the farm before they flew home, which was mostly true.
The cellphone was quite old but it did have a voice recorder, so he asked Humbert, “So, did that sound good?”
He recorded him saying, “You betcha.” He then played it back to Humbert who tilted his head to the side in puzzlement.
Will laughed as he crossed the parking lot and came up behind Aubrey, who was leaning on the railing to the covered paddock. Jason climbed up two of the rungs so he could lean on the top railing beside Aubrey, their shoulders now almost at the same height.
It made an interesting picture, the tall, broad-shouldered black man in casual clothes with his right leg crossed behind his left one, while beside him a skinny white boy stood on the second rung mimicking one leg tucked behind the other.
Without looking at Aubrey, Jason said, “Dr. Doan says that I’m not well because of what I saw happen to my parents. Dr. Doan says she thinks I’ll get better. But that could take a while, you see. That’s how come I start to shake and make that sound when I get nervous. And I get nervous a lot, Mr. Aubrey. So, I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday, about us being friends. Because I’m sick, maybe I’m not the best friend you could have right n
ow.”
Aubrey continued to stare into the dark paddock and made a little “hmmm” sound to indicate he was thinking. “Well, Jason, I think I’d prefer to be with you sick, than with anybody else who’s well.”
They stared into the darkness of the paddock where a horse could be heard pawing the earth like a drum, until Jason finally said, “Okay then, Mr. Aubrey.”
Will strode over to where Dr. Doan was working the elevated vegetable bins. They were about hip-high for people in wheel chairs and with limited mobility who couldn’t bend down to work a more traditional garden. These were rectangular containers running about ten feet in length, four feet in width and a foot deep, all sprouting green life.
“Can I ask you about Aubrey, Dr. Doan?” On her nod he asked, “What happened to his son, Anthony?” Will picked up a pair of gardening gloves that were sitting on a wheelbarrow and slipped them on.
With her eyes on her work, Dr. Doan explained, “Aubrey became a very successful businessman. The story goes that he determined he’d make a success of himself and earn the respect of others. He built up his quarry work and hired a team of men to work for him, cutting stone for roofs and walls and actually making the repairs or installations on houses all over Bermuda. His was a one-stop shop. Then he expanded into the water business, cleaning the roofs and cisterns, and then filling up the newly cleaned cistern. His is one of the biggest water companies on the island. But all that work meant he delayed other things — like marriage. So he married late and had a son they called Anthony. Aubrey’s wife died a few years after the boy was born, and people say that Aubrey immersed himself in his work and took Anthony with him when he played cricket. Anthony eventually took over the water business but according to newspaper reports, unbeknownst to Aubrey, Anthony had taken to drinking, and worse, drinking when driving.”
“Four months ago there was a terrible crash. Anthony had been out late with one of the company trucks. He went through a stop sign and killed a young man on a scooter — both dead. That was the first and only time Aubrey had any inkling that his son was something other than an upstanding citizen. When the police announced that his son was highly intoxicated at the time of his death, well it really took the wind out of Aubrey’s sails. Often our children are our only conclusive proof that we have lived, and that proof is an essential aspect of being human.”
Will took his lead from Dr. Doan who pulled up Bermuda onions and carefully worked the precious soil from the roots back into the bin before piling them in a bushel basket.
“When he saved our lives the other day, well, I think he was sitting on the boiler just hoping for a big wave to come along and take him away. He was dressed in his wedding suit. Said he was planning on meeting up with the spirit of his dead wife. He had closed up his house. Turned everything off — the water, gas, electricity, all of it. He wasn’t planning on coming home, that’s for sure,” said Will in a soft, sad voice, staring at Dr. Doan, hoping she’d offer some hope for Aubrey’s wellbeing.
“People say you have to move on from a disaster but in fact you don’t. You have to find a way to carry on, to carry the pain with you. Because if you can’t carry it, it crushes you.”
Will held the prongs up and let them drip over the bin and said, “He seems to be getting on pretty good with that kid Jason, right?”
She nodded in a non-committal way, and said, “Sometimes, when a lost soul finds someone more vulnerable than themself, it awakens hope, becomes an antidote.”
Will laid the pitchfork and the shovel across the wheelbarrow and rolled it beside Dr. Doan, who carried the bushel basket of onions back to Windy Farm’s kitchen.
“Charles Darwin found that it’s not the strong, or the clever ones who survive, Will. It’s the ones who can adapt that survive.” What she left unsaid was that she wasn’t sure if Aubrey could adapt, or if he’d survive. Will’s father hadn’t survived, Aubrey’s wife and son hadn’t survived, and now Aubrey might not either.
Yeats drove the small truck across the parking area, into the barn. He and Harley had loaded it with bags of fresh manure to, once again, be stacked in the hayloft.
Dr. Doan continued on to the kitchen with her onions while Will wheeled the barrow to the side of the barn where he hosed the tools off before hanging them up in spots that were identified by their painted profiles.
Will nodded to one of the volunteers, who tied four saddled horses to the outside railing where Aubrey and Jason had stood before they returned to Hamilton. Yeats went into the office to do paperwork while Will joined Harley.
Barn swallows swooped around them and up to their nests above the rafters as Will helped Harley hook six plastic bags of manure at a time to the big industrial hook. It ran along a track in the shape of an H that spanned the length of the barn and could make a right or left turn at either end. An orange switch box linked to an electrical panel by a thick black cable coordinated the industrial hook’s functions.
Will made the mistake of letting it swing back to its resting place, slamming it against the wall. Tempest the donkey responded by hoof-slamming his stall door closed. Will sheepishly made his way down the stalls to open it again. A loose mesh was secured on the outside to keep the animals in while letting air circulate.
Harley went up to the hayloft while Will loaded six bags on the hook, each bag weighing about ten kilos. On Will’s command, the hydraulic lift hauled the load above the truck’s cab, swaying all the way to the end of the barn, then to the right till he heard Harley yell, “Stop.” He’d lower it till she’d again yell stop and he’d wait for her to unload before reversing the process and starting anew. While the naked hook ran back to him, Harley stacked the bags in an overlapping manner so the piles wouldn’t topple.
After three loads, to avoid repetitive strain, Harley called down for them to switch places. Harley clambered over the bales of hay and clattered down the ladder where Will pulled a few strands of hay from her hair. She gave him a big smile and it felt like old times, when it was just the two of them. When Yeats wasn’t in the picture. He really had to stop thinking like this.
They loaded six more bags onto the hook and he showed Harley how to hoist and move them down the track. Just as they were to send them to the right, five back-lit figures filled the open doorway at the back of the barn.
Their tufted scooter helmets marked the five men as members of the Red Feather Gang. And the man with the gun in his hand standing in front laughing, was Drury.
“So, Harley, Will. How are you guys? We’ve missed you,” he said with false good humor before his tone changed to nasty. “But we mostly missed the letter you stole from us. We want it back and you too. So step away from the truck and come over here, won’t you? Before I lose my cool.”
From the corner of his eye, Will saw Yeats toe open the door to his mother’s office, pull the big compound bow’s string back with a wicked-looking arrow lying in wait, then ease into the doorway.
“Down! Now!” hissed Yeats.
Will and Harley dropped to a crouch as Yeats stepped out of the entranceway and let his arrow whistle over their heads. The three-pronged tip pierced the tops of the six bags of manure. The weakened plastic ripped open, drenching the gang with its brown, soupy contents.
Drury leaped backward into the doorway to Tempest’s stall. He leaned forward and stuck his head out and laughed at the plight of his gang members who stood, shoulders stooped, trying to shake off the liquid manure that seeped into their white clothing.
Still leaning forward, Drury swung his gun around to point it at Will, Harley, and Yeats. “Nice move. Now drop everything in your hands and keep ’em in sight.”
As a barn swallow swooped in and made Drury flinch, Will swung the hydraulic control against the near wall. Clang!
Tempest double-hoofed the door to his stall. Almost ripped from its hinges, the door whacked Drury in the butt, skidding him face-first into the smelly, soupy mess on the floor.
Chapter Sixteen
The Banyan
Tree
Bermuda Railway Trail: Eighteen miles of the old railway that ran the length of Bermuda from 1931 to 1948 have had the old tracks removed so it can be used as a walking and bicycling trail, with occasional use by equestrians.
Two gang members laughed when the donkey’s kick sprawled Drury into the pooling dung.
Drury sputtered, spat, and spewed, “My gun. Get my gun.”
Yeats whirled Will around and pushed him through the barn door. Harley was a half-step ahead of him.
Yeats sprang Harley into the saddle of the first horse, then Will into the second, before he vaulted into the third.
He yanked the reins hard left and rose into the stirrups. His mount bent its head down to gain traction as it lunged in the direction of the path that ran outside the paddock and into the wooded lot. Will and Harley’s mounts galloped in pursuit, their hooves throwing up clumps of red earth in their wake.
As the horses and riders thundered along the path, Will risked a look back over his shoulder. On the far side of the barn, the five members of the Red Feather Gang scrambled back to their scooters, some shaking their arms in a vain attempt to rid themselves of the coating of dark brown manure.
Thumping hooves and the haoh, haoh, haoh that grunted its way through his horse’s lungs drowned out the scooters roaring to life.
Yeats led Will and Harley around the border of an adjacent farm. The gang members, their white jackets streaked in dark brown, skidded their scooters in pursuit.
A tractor straddled the edge of a field and the earthen path that they cantered along. Knee-high red stumps studded the ground, which, as Will got closer, turned out to be bags of plastic webbing full of potatoes. Two field hands pulled up spuds, dropping them into a bushel basket before tumbling them into the red bags awaiting retrieval. The two pickers gawked as the three mounts thundered through, their riders standing in their stirrups like race jockeys.