The Last Refuge sahm-1

by Chris Knopf

  It’s not that easy to find a place to drink in the summer out here, for obvious reasons, but by early October the good places are mostly back to normal. Mine was loosely associated with a working man’s marina on a little cove slightly outside the busier parts of Sag Harbor. The Pequot was such a crummy hard-bitten little joint that even regular townspeople mostly overlooked it. The inside walls were unfinished studs and wood slats that had aged into a charred, light-absorbing brown. There wasn’t even an operable jukebox or Bud sign. There were Slim Jims, and lots of fresh fish year round, since the steady clientele were mostly professional fishermen.

  When it got dark the night after I found Regina I drove over there in the Grand Prix. Already autumn leaves were swirling around the streets in little vortices made by passing cars. The Grand Prix rumbled through the tangled whaling village streets of Sag Harbor like a PT boat, and I watched the leaves swoosh up behind me in its wake. The fall is a good time to be anywhere in the Northeast, but especially good to be out here with the soft-edged light and crystal salt air.

  At the Pequot you were rarely menaced by the threat of unsolicited conversation. It was a place where you could sit by yourself at a little oak table and a young woman with very pale skin and thin black hair pasted down on her skull would serve you as long as you stayed sober enough to clearly enunciate the name of your drink. You could almost always get a table along the wall over which hung a little brass lamp with a shade made of red glass meant to simulate pleated fabric. Though the place itself was pretty dim, you could read under those lamps, which I always did. It gave me something else to do besides sitting there raising and lowering a glass of vodka and something to look at besides the other patrons or the wonderful ambiance. You could get a lot of reading done before the vodka had a chance to establish a hold.

  I don’t even know why I went there all the time. I guess it was some ingrained impulse to put on a clean shirt around dinnertime, get in the car and drive someplace. To be someplace other than your house, at least for a little while.

  “You eating?” the waitress asked, holding back the plastic-wrapped menu till I gave her an answer.

  “What’s the special?”

  “Fish.”

  “Fish. What kind of fish?”

  “I don’t know. It’s white.”

  “In that case.”

  “I could ask.”

  “That’s okay. White goes with everything.”

  “You get it with mashed potatoes.”

  “And vodka. On the rocks. No fruit, just a swizzle stick.”

  “We don’t have fruit.”

  “Good, then I’m safe.”

  “But I can give you a slice of lime.”

  “That’s okay. Save it for the fish.”

  “Fried or baked?”

  “Fried.”

  “Okay. Fried with a lime.”

  “Exactly.”

  I’d been trying to read Alexis de Tocqueville, and not getting very far. It was okay, though I always felt with translated prose that I was missing all the inside jokes. But since this guy gets quoted a lot, I figured it was worth slogging through.

  “I think he would’ve shit his pants,” said the waitress, dropping the vodka with a lime in it on the table.

  “Who?”

  She pointed to my book.

  “If he came back he’d really shit his pants about everything that’s going on now.”

  “You read this?”

  “At Columbia. American Studies. My dad wants to ask you about your fish.”

  I looked past her and saw the owner of the Pequot coming toward my table. For a brief moment I thought I’d managed to turn a simple little dinner order into cause for a fistfight, but the way he was wiping his hands on his apron looked more solicitous than accusatory.

  His name was Paul Hodges and he’d been a fisherman himself at one time, among other things, though he wasn’t the kind to talk about what those other things were. He had a face that blended well with the inside of his bar. The skin was dark and all pitted and lumpy, and his eyes bugged out of his head like somebody was squeezing him from the middle. Old salts don’t usually look like the guys from Old Spice commercials, they mostly look like Hodges, kind of beat up and sea crazy. He had very muscular arms for a man his age, old enough, it turned out, to have a daughter old enough to study Tocqueville at Columbia.

  “You wanted to know the fish?”

  “Yeah, but only curious. I’m sure whatever you got’s gonna be fine.”

  “It’s blue.”

  I smiled at the girl. She rolled her eyes.

  “I told him it was white.”

  “Yeah. Blue’s a white fish, sort of. Maybe a little gray. Caught right out there north end of Jessup’s Neck.”

  “That’s great,” I told him, relieved he wasn’t mad at me about anything, since I really wanted to keep coming there and had less than no stomach to fight with anybody about anything at all. Ever again.

  “Bring it on.”

  He kept standing there wiping his hands on his apron.

  “You’re Acquillo’s boy.”

  I looked at him a little more closely, but no deeper recollection emerged.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Fished with him. You wouldn’t remember.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, but I seen you around with him before. Weren’t that many around here then. You knew who was who.”

  “True enough.”

  “Now I don’t know any of these fucking people.”

  I kept trying to fix him in that time, but all I saw was the old man behind the bar at the Pequot. I also couldn’t imagine my father fishing. Even though he was always bringing home a bucket of seafood for my mother to clean and overcook for dinner whenever he was out from the City. Even when he wasn’t there we lived on fish because that’s what people without a lot of money did in those days. It was basically free, and plentiful. You wanted to put on a little style you went out for a steak, or something like pork loin. Something that came from a farm, not the old Peconic Bay that was just outside the door.

  Hodges didn’t look like he was in much of a hurry to go back to the kitchen. Without asking, he pulled out the other chair at my table and sat down. I suddenly started feeling hungry.

  “I heard what happened to him,” said Hodges.

  I focused on my vodka, but had to answer.

  “That was a while ago.”

  “I know. He was a guy with some pretty firmly held convictions, your father.”

  “That’s true, too.”

  “And wasn’t all that shy about letting you know what they were.”

  “So you knew him.”

  “Not well. Just came out on the boat a few times. Crewed for me and my boss. Done his job well. Had to keep him away from the customers.”

  Hodges sat back to give his belly a little leeway and rested his elbows on the armrests of the chair.

  “Never bothered me, though,” Hodges added.

  “No. Me neither.”

  Hodges nodded, chewing on something in his head.

  “Not that I’d let him. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “How’d you want that fish again?”

  “Fried.”

  He nodded again.

  “Better that way. You bake it you got to deal with the parsley, the custom herb mix, the special lemony butter sauce. Fried, it’s just there kind of contained in its lightly seasoned breaded batter, ready to eat. No muss.”

  “Next time I’m going baked, no doubt about it.”

  He registered that and finally left me alone with my Absolut and Tocqueville. I’d almost started to get a little traction with the thing when his daughter showed up with a fresh drink.

  “On the house.”

  Apparently, once you actually had a conversation with the Hodges family there was no going back.

  The fish was pretty good, especially inside the lightly seasoned breaded batter. I stay
ed another hour and read, distracted from the packs of malodorous crew coming in off the late-arriving charter boats, and a cluster of kids, probably underage, who piled into the only booth in the place, elbowing each other and goofing on the world in urgent sotto voce.

  I walked the bill over to the girl and asked her if I could bother her father one more time before I left.

  “How long you been around here?” I asked him when he came out of the kitchen.

  “In Southampton?”

  “Yeah.”

  He pushed out his bottom lip and thought about it a minute.

  “’Bout forty-five years, give or take a few. Came out of Brooklyn. Don’t actually remember why, or why I stayed. Fish edible?”

  “Definitely sustain life.”

  “Then we done our work here.”

  “I was wondering about an old lady.”

  “Old lady like ‘old,’ or like, ‘lady’?”

  “No, just an old lady. Next door neighbor, wondered if you knew her.”

  Hodges picked a piece of something out of his back teeth, popped it back in his mouth and then swished it down with a mouthful of beer from a glass stowed out of sight under the bar.

  “At my age, old’s a relative term. Which old lady we talking about?”

  “Regina Broadhurst. Lived to the east of me at the tip of Oak Point. Been there as long as my folks were. Maybe longer.”

  Hodges smiled at something inside his head before he answered.

  “Sure. Seen her around. One of the old bitches down at the Center. Never said anything to me that I can recall. I don’t think she’s all that fond of men.”

  “The Center?”

  “The old folks hangout, the Senior Center down behind the Polish church.”

  I was genuinely surprised.

  “Senior Center?”

  Hodges looked at me like I’d disappointed him. He ticked off a few points on his fingers.

  “First there’s the two-dollar breakfasts Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then there’s the three-dollar cold cut and potato salad lunch every day. Then there’s the five-dollar Sunday supper. You eat better than anywhere else in the Village and it’s practically free. The worst you have to do is say a few prayers and put up with a bunch of fuckin’ old bitches like Regina Broadhurst who act like you’re the only charity case in the joint. Of course, they’re wolfing down the same free shit you are. Subsidized, anyway.”

  “I get it.”

  “Not exactly. I pay my own way. Work in the kitchen. Once a week, gives me full meal privileges. Can even bring Dotty with me.”

  “Dorothy,” said the girl without looking up from the small stack of checks she was tallying up.

  “You’re wondering why I’d eat anywhere’s but my own place.”

  Hodges looked defensive.

  “No. I can see it,” I said.

  “You can get tired of fish.”

  “He hits on the old ladies,” Dotty slid in.

  Hodges gave her a little fake backhand and lumbered back through the swinging door into the kitchen. I thanked him as he retreated and asked his daughter to settle up my bill.

  “He actually does it for the church,” she said to me quietly. “For years and years. He’s says he hates religion, but he does things for people. He hardly ever eats there.”

  “Nothing wrong with a good deed.”

  She seemed to be taking her time with my check. Stalling.

  “Why did you want to know about Mrs. Broadhurst?” she asked abruptly as she handed over the slip.

  “She’s dead. They fished her out of her bathtub today. I found her.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Just wondering if your dad knew her. He’s been around here a long time. She didn’t seem to have any family or friends.”

  “He’s going to be sorry he called her a bitch. You should have told him right away.”

  “Probably should have. But don’t be too sorry. She was a bitch.”

  She almost smiled at me despite herself.

  “That’s very harsh.”

  “I know. Speaking ill of the dead. God doesn’t like it.”

  “God doesn’t care. People do.”

  “Apologize for me,” I told her as I started to leave.

  She stopped me. “I know Jimmy. Or at least, I used to, sort of.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “Jimmy Maddox. Her nephew.”

  “Really.”

  “Wow, like a real asshole. I knew him at school. At Southampton High School. I’m sorry to talk about somebody like that, but some people you just can’t like.”

  “It’s okay. He’s not the dead one.”

  “I guess he’s still alive. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for a long time. He got into bulldozers or something.”

  “Construction.”

  “Big earth machines. Pushing lots of shit around. It would suit him.”

  “Lives in Hampton Bays.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “That’s what his aunt told me. She didn’t like him, either.”

  “Charming.”

  “No other family?”

  “That’s all I know about. Jimmy’s parents died when he was still in high school. I don’t know what happened to them, but he was the first kid I knew who lived in his own apartment. But unfortunately he wasn’t cool. He was just fucked up and pissed off all the time.”

  “Helluva way to live.”

  “Dumb way to live, if you ask me.”

  “Yeah,” I said to her, finally leaving, “only an asshole would live like that.”

  I’d pretty well forgotten about the whole thing with Regina after a few days. A talent for forgetting was something I’d cultivated since moving into the cottage. I also worked on my body, which was less than it was, but good enough for my age, considering. I’d wanted to be a boxer in my twenties—actually fought a little to help pay for night school. The only Franco-Italian boxer in New York was how I billed myself—in my own mind. I was too small and too light to be much of a hitter, so I figured myself a finesse guy, which people expected from me, being white. In those days, white people were supposed to be genetically smarter than dark-skinned people, so everyone figured if I could dance around the ring it was proof of my brilliance. This I knew from the dawn of cognition to be complete horseshit, despite my old man’s attitudes. But I was smart enough to know getting beat into pudding by another boxer was a shortsighted operating strategy. Better to get in and out of there quick and do maximum damage to the other guy’s self-confidence in the early rounds. Fool him into thinking you were actually somewhat of a contest. You win more fights that way and get to keep most of the face you were born with.

  More than anything, boxing had made hanging around gyms a habit with me. Decent conditioning was also prolonging suicide by alcohol, but that couldn’t be helped.

  Deep in the pine barrens above Westhampton a rummy old ex-cop ran a youth club boxing school and gym for retired military, other cops and people like me who’d rather cut their balls off than walk through the doors of a typical health club. I know that’s a kind of reverse elitism, but screw it.

  The guy’s name was Ronny and his gym was called Sonny’s, which made it authentic, at least, in that respect. It was off-white cinder block on the outside with pale green cinder block on the inside. The lighting was a little less dingy than the gyms in the city. The bags, ring and other equipment were tired but solid, and the stink was just within tolerable limits. Most of the kids were Shinnecock Indians and blacks, or a mix thereof, and the “coaches” were all local municipal thugs. I went there about three times a week to jump rope, do some calisthenics and spar with whoever. Usually one of the kids. I had to avoid the more serious guys so they wouldn’t pester me all the time into what they figured would be an easy way to nurture their egos.

  They always say you’re supposed to pick the toughest guy in Dodge City, hurt him badly and conspicuously, and the other tough guys would leave you alone. Rarely worked,
since there was usually a reason why the toughest guys were the toughest. But a bigger problem for me now was being fifty-two years old. So instead I just broadcast a don’t-fuck-with-the-crazy-old-man vibe, hoping to plant a seed of doubt with anyone wanting to exercise his dominance instinct. This, in fact, had worked pretty well so far.

  I was at Sonny’s working on the sand bag. The cop, Joe Sullivan, was there lifting some free weights. He ignored me for a while, then came over and stood next to the bag. I ignored him and kept hitting the bag in the loose pattern I’d been hitting it with for about thirty-five years.

  “Found any more dead old ladies?” he asked me when he saw I wasn’t going to acknowledge him just standing there.

  I kept working on the bag.

  “Hey, just a bad joke,” he said after another minute.

  I held the bag still with both gloves.

  “Not really,” I said. “I’ve heard worse.”

  Sullivan shifted his top-heavy body weight from right foot to left.

  “I haven’t dug up any nephew. You sure you don’t know the kid’s name? I mean, she’s not even planted yet, and we gotta do something with the house. Haven’t found a will.”

  “No will?”

  “Not that anybody can find. Not that anybody’s really looked, I should say. Usually there’s family that just does everything. I’m not really supposed to be involved in this shit, but I hate to hand the whole thing over to the court in Riverhead, where they’ll just pay McNally to settle it out, and I hate that dumb fuck of a lawyer. I guess it doesn’t matter. I just know what happens when the court has to handle everything itself. I don’t know why I give a shit.”

  Municipal guys on the eastern end of Long Island would rather sell their souls than concede to other New York agencies. There was often talk of seceding from Suffolk County itself. The spirit of disenfranchisement runs deep out here.

  I hit the bag a few more times, trying to re-establish the pattern.

  “Jimmy Maddox,” I said to him as he was about to walk away.

  “Huh?”

  “Jimmy Maddox. That’s the name of her nephew. Works construction on heavy equipment. Don’t know where, though I’m guessing he’s still in the area.”