The Off-Islander

by Peter Colt

  The bartender kept bringing drinks. We were both happy to keep it to just beer. Lenny and I swapped some war stories and drank more beer. We talked about the shitty way we were treated when we got home. Some hippy had tossed blood on him when he landed in Seattle . . . someone had spit on him. He just wanted to come home to the Cape and spend summers on the beach, drinking beer and chasing skirts. He told me he didn’t go to the beach much because of the scars. He didn’t chase skirts because he had found a nice girl and settled down. Like everyone I knew or met, he was just trying to get beyond the war. To pack it up and put it in some box in the attic, only to be opened when drunk or we heard of another army buddy who died too early. We drank and ate pretzels till nine, when Lenny had to go home to his wife and their kids. I paid the bartender and went out to retrieve the Karmann Ghia.

  Chapter 7

  A sensible man would have found a hotel room or gone back to Boston. Even a slightly drunk man would have gone back to Boston . . . but beer and bourbon on an empty stomach combined to help me not be sensible. In the Ghia, I found my road atlas for Massachusetts and the page I wanted. I followed the road out of Hyannis and away from the roads I knew as a tourist. I kept the Ghia carefully in the lines and noticed how the headlights cut through the dark night. The sky beyond my windshield seemed vast and dark.

  I passed her mailbox twice in each direction before I figured out it was hers. I parked down the road from her mailbox and walked back to it. The sky was black with clouds, and the wind had come up. I turned the collar up on the trench coat. I could feel the weight of the Colt .32 under my arm, and it gave me an irrational sense of comfort. The things that I was afraid of didn’t live in the rational world but in my memories. None of the bad dreams could be stopped with bullets.

  I walked up the soft sand driveway. In the distance, I could hear traffic, but most of it was drowned out by the wind. I could hear the occasional gull but not much else. I could smell the smoke from a fire wafting toward me. The road was flanked on either side by scrub brush and the short pine trees that you find on the Cape and seemingly nowhere else. Half a mile through the soft sand, the road bent at a forty-five-degree angle and sloped uphill. A quarter of a mile after that, I saw the house. It was a small farmhouse that dated back to the days when Massachusetts was a colony and not a state. I could just make out in the darkness the shape of a barn. There were no lights in the yard, and we were too far from the road for the streetlights to reach this far. Now the sound of the surf pounding on the beach was distinct.

  I stood by the edge of the driveway for a minute, listening, and then moved around to the front of the house. A couple of the windows were lit by soft light. I stood quietly listening for something, not sure of what, but something. The wind slowed and quieted, and off in the distance I could hear the faint barking of a dog.

  The front door was flung open, and standing in it was a woman with long, wild gray hair wearing some shapeless black garment. In her gnarled, rootlike hands she held an old double-barreled shotgun. It was old enough to have hammers. She stared out at the night, and her eyes looked dead at me.

  “I know you’re out there.” I didn’t say anything but stayed still. I could hear my breathing, and even though I knew it was soft and low, it sounded like surf on the beach to my ears.

  “I know you are out there . . . I can smell the drink and cigarettes on you, so might as well say something.”

  I wasn’t sure of what to say, so I simply said, “Hello.”

  She brought the shotgun up, not all the way, but perceptibly.

  “Who’s that? Who’s there?”

  “My name is Andy Roark, I apologize for coming by late like this. I didn’t mean to disturb you, ma’am.” She turned her head so that one ear was toward me.

  “What do you want with an old woman at almost ten o’clock at night, Andy Roark?”

  “Well, ma’am, I am trying to find someone who I think you knew in 1968.”

  “Well, you’d better come in, then, and have a drink with an old lady and ask about 1968, then.”

  “Thank you.” I walked across the few feet to the door, and she stepped aside, shotgun pointed at the floor, as I drew near. The door frame and the ceilings were low. The ceiling had exposed, dark wood beams with off-white plaster between them. The light inside was soft, and it took me a minute to realize it was the product of a series of oil lamps with large glass chimneys. The inside was clean but smelled of something like damp sheepdog.

  “We’ll sit in the kitchen, I think, by the fire. Perhaps a drink to help you warm up, Mr. Andy Roark, who is interested in 1968.” Her hair was gray, shot through with rich brown, and I couldn’t tell if it was curly or just unkempt. It was a wild tangled mess. She smelled like a French dockworker. She led me down a short hallway to the kitchen. As we passed down the narrow passage, I noticed that there were paintings on every wall. They were mostly oils and looked something like O’Keeffe’s flowers and seascapes. I didn’t much care for them, but they were clearly art.

  The short, low hallway opened to a kitchen that was dimly lit by the low fire in the large hearth. I hadn’t realized that I had been cold until I drew close to it. Across from the fire was a large table made of rough-hewn planks that had been stained a dark, rich caramel. On either side were two matching benches. The old woman went to the table and lit a hurricane lamp in the center of it.

  “Sit down, Mr. Andy Roark, sit.” She pointed a gnarled finger at the far bench. She then turned toward some cupboards on the far wall. I could barely make out a sink and a rooster-shaped hand pump. She placed the shotgun in the corner by the counter and then reached up into the cupboard for a couple of glasses and a bottle of Old Crow. When she turned back to me, she fixed my gaze with two milky, unseeing white eyes.

  “A drink will warm you up.” She cackled, actually cackled, like something out of a bad movie. “Then we’ll talk about 1968, Mr. Andy Roark.” She put down two glasses, mismatched highballs from what had clearly once been different and expensive sets. She poured a finger of the bourbon into each glass.

  “Do you fancy ice or water? If you do, you’re out of luck. We don’t serve either in this bar.” She pronounced her words with that accent in Massachusetts that is handed down by the nuns. Either is pronounced “eye-ther.” She cackled again and took a healthy sip of her bourbon. I did the same and longed for the mellower burn of the Wild Turkey.

  “Now, Mr. Andy Roark, where are you from?” The unseeing milky eyes never left my face.

  “Boston.” I usually just say Boston.

  “I hear the South mixing with that Boston accent.” She overpronounced “Boston” the way that people do when they make fun of how we talk.

  “I spent some time in the service . . . they beat as much of a Southern accent into me as they could.”

  I could still hear Drill Sergeant Whitting to this day, with his thick, syrupy Southern drawl.

  “Roark, y’all speak like some kind of Yankee asshole . . . pahk the cah in the yahd. Y’all got to learn to speak like a civilized human being and shit, instead of a Yankee faggot. Y’all hear?” It wasn’t until after graduation that someone took pity on me and told me that he was originally from Utica, New York, but that he had been in the South for so long that he adopted their culture in all forms. Traitor.

  “Oh, a man in uniform . . . yes, yes, neat creases in your trousers and spit-shined shoes. Which service?” She waved a gnarled hand in the air between our faces.

  “I was in the army.”

  “Were you nervous in the service? Were you in Vet-nom?” The last was a potshot at how LBJ said Vietnam. It was something a lot of guys used to say. Now no one talked about Vietnam unless it was a plot point in some bad movie.

  “Yes, ma’am, I was in Vietnam.” Ten years after the fact it still felt strange to admit it. It was like admitting you had gone to the World Series but you weren’t part of the winning team.

  “Were you in the thick of it, or were you one of those men who ne
ver fired a shot in anger?” The milky-white eyes looked at where she thought my face was. The Old Crow burnt my throat, and I was running low on snappy comebacks.

  “No, ma’am, I was in the shit.”

  “Well, then, you should have another drink. On me.” She was smiling and her teeth were the color of a used meerschaum pipe. She poured us each another Old Crow without spilling a drop.

  “What brings you to my doorstep on this stormy night?”

  “It isn’t stormy tonight.” She seemed to have the quality of hearing things that only she could hear.

  “It will . . . it will storm.” She had the certainty that drunks and the crazy have.

  “Maybe so . . .” The wind was picking up outside, enough that you could hear the tall grass and scrub pines moving in the wind.

  “Well, Andy Roark from Boston, what brings you to my hearth, to sit at my boiling cauldron this night?”

  “I am looking for a man named Charles Edgar Hammond. His daughter, who hasn’t seen him since she was a little girl, has hired me to find him.” I wasn’t sure how much to say. It is always a guessing game. You want to spark interest and seem open, but you don’t want to give everything away.

  “What makes you think I know your Charles Edgar Hammond? Or that if I did, I would tell you anything?” She smiled as she said it, and I wondered if she had been pretty when she was younger.

  “Well, for three months in 1968, the VA sent his checks to the mailbox that you have had since 1949. Now, that could be some sort of coincidence, but I don’t think so.” The fire was flickering, and the oil lamp seemed to flicker with it in some sort of dance.

  “Do you remember 1968, Mr. Vet-Nom Roark?” I nodded and then remembered that she probably couldn’t see it.

  “Sure, I was around for that.”

  “So do I. So do I. 1968 was my last waltz at the ball, last dance, last dance . . .” Clearly the cogs in the machine were slipping a little. “In 1968, this was an artist commune. There were always twenty people in the house and another few in the barn. During the summer months, people would come and stay in tents. One year we even had people staying in an Indian teepee. Can you imagine such a thing on my lawn?”

  “Are you telling me that you don’t know or remember Charlie Hammond?”

  “What I am telling you is that on a good day thirty or so people could be living here. No one introduced themselves politely like you. We drank and ate and smoked and fucked and dropped acid. I might have rolled around with any three men named Charlie and not known that much about them.” Then she imitated me. “Good evening, ma’am, I am Andy Roark, one of the killer Boy Scouts.... I am looking for a ghost from years ago.... Do you know him? Andy Roark, many of the men I knew then I didn’t talk to very much.”

  “Charlie Hammond received three months of VA checks at your mailbox?”

  “Sure, he did. Everyone got mail at my mailbox. We had a blue ’48 Ford pickup that they would take into town for mail call every day. They’d sort the mail and put it in a big metal box out front, and everyone would get their own.”

  “So, was Charlie Hammond here? It sounds like his mail was.” I punctuated my question with some of the bourbon.

  “I don’t know. In 1968, while you were probably off killing little yellow men, the people here didn’t use last names. It was all first names or nicknames or names they chose. I don’t remember anyone named Charlie, but if he was here, he could have been Star or Wolf or Columbus or Bolivar or Che or Peace . . . that is just how it was. Not only that, but in 1968 we dropped a lot of acid . . . smoked a lot of grass and a lot of hash. I even had a few drinks. There were whole weeks that went by when I didn’t wear a stitch of clothing. Even if I was concerned about the details, and I am not, I am pretty sure that I couldn’t remember them.” She leaned over and picked up a fire poker and started to stir the embers of the fire.

  “So, it is possible that he could have been here?” I was hoping for an answer of some sort.

  “Andy Roark from Boston by way of Vietnam and blood and war . . . Charlie Manson and Ho Chi Minh could have been here in 1968 . . . I just couldn’t swear to it.” Her milky eyes were unblinking on mine in the firelight. “Now, Andy Roark, I hate to kick you out on a stormy night like this, but I am not long for this world and want to sleep.”

  “Of course, thank you for the drink and the hospitality.”

  “Oh, I haven’t done you any favors . . . you will chase ghosts and wrestle with ghosts, and I will sleep. Warm in my bed while you are caught in the rain . . . no, don’t thank me, killer man.” She started to cackle, and I knew it was time to leave. I took the trench coat, and with the Old Crow burning my throat and her laughter full in my ears, I made my way down the hall to the door.

  I stepped out into the chilly, damp air and paused to tie the trench coat around my waist and light a cigarette. I felt a drop on my face and then another. I could still hear her laughter or her laughing, I wasn’t sure. The moon was gone, I should have walked down the soft sand of the driveway instead of letting rain water pelt my face and put out my cigarette.

  Instead of walking down the driveway, I circled around the house toward the barn. In Scooby-Doo the bad guys always kept secrets in the barn. The barn had two big doors at either end. What should have been old, rusty hinges appeared to be well oiled. I was about to pull the handles and look inside. I stopped; it took me a second to see it in the dark, but nestled at the top of the doors was a wire and contact. An alarm. I went to the various windows; they were dusty and hard to see through. They were all wired, too. They were the newest things on an old, decrepit barn, populated by rusty hardware and cobwebs. All the doors and windows were wired on the ground floor. I heard the creaking, and hanging down on the side away from the house was a rope. A rope hanging from a davit and pulley so that things could be moved in and out of the hayloft. The hayloft doors weren’t fully closed.

  I found an empty trash can on the side near the house. I quietly brought it around to the rope. It wasn’t fun climbing up onto the trash can in the rain after so much whiskey. Trying to be quiet. Ruth’s house looked dark, but I didn’t want to take chances. My fingers just reached the bottom of the rope. I squatted down, on top of the trash can as best I could, then jumped up. I caught the rope in both hands. The rope was wet and I slipped a couple of times on the way up but always managed to stay on the rope. I pulled hand over hand until I could lock the rope between my feet. The doors were open enough for me to get one foot in and slowly by twisting my foot back and forth open them enough to slide between them. They were fairly loose on their tracks and I was inside in very short time.

  I paused in the hayloft. My breath was coming out in clouds of steam, reminding me I was not twenty-one anymore. I could smell hay, old animal smells, horse shit, and dampness. I knew why people put alarms on their houses, they had nice stuff they didn’t want stolen, but why an old barn way out on the Cape?

  I let my eyes adjust to the dark. If I were a better or more prepared private eye, I would have carried a small flashlight instead of leaving it in my car. I moved carefully around the hayloft; they usually had ladders and a lack of railings. I found the ladder and slowly went down it, descending into the murky abyss below.

  I paused at the bottom. I waited, listening. The army had taught us that. Get off the birds, into the wood line, and listen. Wait. Wait for the enemy to make a noise.

  The storm went on outside. Rain beat against the barn and in the few times it slackened the pounding of surf was the bass back beat. Then a crack of lightning, sharp brushes on cymbals, lit up the barn. Then the thunder that could only be the snare drums. No footsteps. No running. No yelling. Just me and a storm in a barn.

  I could see an old tractor at one end and bits of old farming implements. In the corners there was the usual trash that you would expect to find in an old barn, bits of tools, burlap sacks, old paint, tins with nails, all of it rusting in the damp, salty air of Cape Cod. There were bags of potting soil and bales of
hay piled near the door. The place was cluttered at the front by the tractor, but to the rear it was open.

  Then against one wall were a series of what looked like square bales. They were wrapped in heavy-gauge plastic. There were about half a dozen of them stacked up. I went over to where they were and started to run my hands over them. The plastic was damp and cold but was unyielding as to its contents. Finally, I took out my pocketknife and cut a small hole in the back of one. The smell, bittersweet, hit me immediately, marijuana. Weed. A lot of weed. She had at least a couple hundred pounds of it, wrapped up.

  It made sense. She was close to the beach. She had the space to store it, move it in bulk. Either she was dealing it large scale or just holding it for someone. Either way she would need security. Her sensing me coming down the driveway was not ESP. There must have been an infrared sensor somewhere. I went back up the ladder and then down the rope. I put the trash can back against the house. It was still raining and the lightning was still flashing.

  I made my way carefully down the driveway. The sensor was just on the other side of the barn, just far enough away from the house to give warning. I stepped around it. I didn’t want her to think that I had been snooping. Or that I might know she was involved in drugs.

  As I went down her soft sand driveway, the drops began to fall a little faster. I could see the men that I had been friends with, and I could see my dispatched enemies. The rain began to come down in sheets, and the lightning cracked, and every scrub pine was made sinister by the Old Crow and being tired. My hair was plastered to my head, and the trench coat could only stop so much rain. I slogged down the driveway with the ghosts. The weight of the Colt under my arm was comforting, if only as a talisman against my inner demons.