Cape Cod

by William Martin

  Her cry echoed from Cornhill to Tom’s Hill and lost itself in the marshes above the Little Pamet. She dropped to her knees and pounded the sand. The log was gone, and with it her future.

  Had Solemnity done this? Or had the old Indian Keweenut hidden it someplace else? Keweenut was too frightened of his legacy to move it. It was Solemnity, then, for certain.

  She damned him. She damned them all. Solemnity had stolen her future. The Bigelows had stolen her land. One might even have sold the log to the other, neatly closing the circle of treachery.

  She damned them all again. Then she felt the tears rising again, but this time she did not permit them. She had to stay strong for her boy. She dug her fingers into the sand and squeezed as though holding on to the earth itself. She had been swindled and betrayed, but she would not be defeated… ever.

  CHAPTER 19

  July 11

  The Works of Serenity

  “One of the Indians in the painting is supposed to be Johnny Autumn. He was hanged after the wreck of the Whydah. When I saw the painting, I did some digging,” explained Carolyn Hallissey.

  “You didn’t find much.”

  “Records from the trial. Legends from the locals. You know… Was Black Bellamy coming back for Serenity or for an Eastham girl named Maria Hallet, or was he just coming north because the heat was on in the Caribbean?”

  “Plus juicy tidbits about Serenity’s brother.” Geoff flipped through the pile of sheets and found the quote from Paine’s History of Harwich: “ ‘After his scandal, Solemnity Hilyard spent a brief time ministering in a Praying Town. Later he and the woman disappeared on the same day. Neither was ever heard from again.’ ”

  “A man of mystery,” said Carolyn.

  “And the mystery of the log?”

  “In the whole folder there’s not a mention of it.”

  “Then maybe it did wrap Mrs. Jones’s fish guts, just as Samuel Eliot Morison says.”

  “Maybe.” Then she leaned close, as if letting him in on a secret. “But… what… if… it… didn’t?”

  He liked her. He was cynical enough to know she might be giving him an act. But he liked her, because she liked what she was doing. He would have liked her even if she hadn’t been the best-looking museum director he’d ever met. Pretty faces were a temptation, but enthusiasm…

  “I’d love to bid on that log,” she said. “I’d love to find it even more. It’s how careers are made.”

  That helped. The career-driven ones were easier to resist. Their motives were obvious.

  “Why do you want to find it?” she asked.

  “To settle my mind about it… and get the money.”

  She slipped her arm through his and led him toward the door. “Two honest motives for two treasure hunters.”

  They flirted right out to his car and said good-bye. Nothing wrong with any of it, as long as he went home to his wife. Of course, he and Janice hadn’t finished what they started a few mornings before, and things had been downhill ever since.

  He liked what he’d read of Serenity. As the fog burned off, he took a right at the National Seashore Visitors’ Center and followed Nauset Road through the area where she had lived.

  There would have been few houses in 1717, even fewer trees. All across the Cape, mature stands of hardwood had fallen in that first century to make boats, shingles, firewood, and farmland. Men had changed the face of the Narrow Land in two generations. Now scrub pine and locust were so thick that you couldn’t see half the summer houses scattered across the Eastham plain. It was comforting to know that if given a chance, nature could cover her scars.

  The land of Serenity sat now in the middle of the National Seashore and so would be safe forever… but it was the Bigelows who had sold that land to the government in 1961. And they had swindled it out of the Hilyards. A harsh word, but what else could he think? Jeremiah had died, Solemnity had disappeared, and Serenity had moved to Billingsgate. Why on earth would she have moved to a sand dune, unless she’d lost everything? “Swindled” was the word. He found himself getting angry.

  At the Nauset Coast Guard Station, he turned north along the cobalt blue sea.

  It was pretty stupid, getting mad over something that had happened so long ago. But sometimes history had a way of surfacing right in front of you, and you had to face it. A half mile offshore, a salvage vessel was anchored over the remains of the Whydah. Treasure hunters had found Black Bellamy’s dream and now dreamed it themselves, hauling millions in gold and artifacts off the bottom.

  Carolyn Hallissey had said she hoped to anchor an old ship in Portanimicut Pond and make it the Whydah museum, so that people might see pirate artifacts and find a connection with men driven to go “on the account.” She had used Geoff’s word, and it made him like her even more.

  Find the connections. Study the flow of people through time or a place or an old house. Speculate on the things that made their lives unique and yet like yours. You didn’t do it because it was your job. You did it because it was a way to understand. Find the connections and die happy

  And if there were connections to be made with pirate artifacts, imagine what might be found in the journal of the sea captain who had brought the first settlers to this place.

  ii.

  When he came home Janice was browning onions and garlic in a pan of olive oil. “Were you working?” she asked.

  “At Old Comers Plantation.”

  “Doing what? Taking tickets?”

  “Are we arguing tonight?” He stood in the kitchen doorway so that she couldn’t escape. The original house had had three good-sized rooms back to back—parlor, dining room, and great room with beehive ovens and hand-pump plumbing. But in some misbegotten modernization, the beehives had been torn out, the plumbing redirected, and a galley kitchen squeezed into a pantry at the back, a cramped little piece of New York on the shores of Cape Cod Bay.

  She dropped a fistful of linguini into a pot of boiling water.

  He took out two Molson’s Goldens, wiped the lips of each can clean, popped them, and put one beside the range. “I don’t hear ‘Sesame Street.’ Where are the kids?”

  “At my grandmother’s.” She eyeballed a cup of white wine into the pan.

  A collander of mussels was draining in the sink, a can of tomatoes stood open beside the stove.

  “No kids, mussels marinara… We can’t be arguing tonight.”

  “We’re looking for answers.”

  “How’s the toilet flushing?”

  “That’s a question. Everything’s going down fine. For now.”

  The wine reduced. In went the tomatoes, followed by a dash of oregano, a bit of basil. All done as though he were not standing two feet away. She could ignore him the way Larry Bird could make passes—no eye contact at all.

  “I have an answer for you,” he said. “I was at Old Comers doing research.”

  “You’ve made up your mind?”

  “About one thing. This thing between our families has had a lot of chapters since the Mayflower.”

  She dropped the mussels into the sauce and threw in another shot of wine.

  They ate on the deck, in the quiet of the July evening. The mussels marinara tasted of sun and sea. The Washington State Chardonnay calmed her temper and cleared his head. They talked rationally. They disagreed like adults. They drank more wine.

  “The future’s been dropped in your lap, Geoff. You can’t throw it away because of the past. Think of me. Think of the kids.”

  “If Clara had lived, she might have signed the sailing camp over to the town and taken this out of my hands.”

  Janice looked into her glass. “She didn’t. Be thankful the decision is still yours to make.”

  Twilight faded. Except for the sound of an occasional car gliding by the foot of the hill, the calm of the summer night embraced them.

  “You know the difference between you and me?” he said.

  “Aside from the obvious ones?”

  “You grew up h
ere. You know how depressing it can be in the winter, when the hillsides are brown and half the people from Bourne to Provincetown are collecting unemployment while they wait for the tourists.”

  “Winter can be nice, but it’s damn lonely,” she said.

  “Even lonelier on a narrow bed in a gloomy New Hampshire prep school, staring at the picture of John Lennon curling off the wall, humming ‘Good Day Sunshine’ and thinking of those boyhood summers, fishing with your father on salt-fog mornings when you were so into the fish you wouldn’t notice the fog burning off. But just before it disappeared, you’d look up and see wisps of it in the air, like spun silver… Memories like that get a lot of people through the winter.” “I have memories, too. We have them together.” She refilled their glasses. “But spun silver feeds the November rain.”

  “I know. I’ve thought a lot about it.” Then he took her hand and led her down the hill, through the locust grove, to the barn. In his office, he flipped on the track lights above his drafting table.

  “Geoffrey… elevations?”

  “Just sketches.”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  There were a dozen views of seventeenth-century reproductions. All had the steep-pitched roof and narrow clapboards of the Aptucxet trading post. Some had the traditional diamond-pane windows; others had Palladian windows at the gable ends. And he had begun to toy with floor plans as well, all roughly rendered in 2b on yellow trace.

  She looked at them as though he’d just given her Picasso’s sketchbook. “This is what you were made to do, Geoff.”

  “I’m no fool, Jan. That’s a lot of damn money your family’s offering.”

  “It’s the future. Let me go get some more wine.”

  But she never made it to the house.

  After a few moments, Geoff heard the sound of running water. At first, it puzzled him, so he went down the stairs.

  Her sandals were on the threshold, her T-shirt and shorts just beyond. His eyes followed the path that led to the outdoor shower stall at the end of the barn. Bra… panties… steam. As she turned beneath the spray, the places that the sun never touched glistened in the starlight.

  “C’mon in, the water’s fine.”

  Geoff stripped and joined her. They kissed with wine-tasting tongues, then kissed again and tasted the water caressing their faces. He soaped her breasts and behind. She washed the part of him that grew against the curve of her belly. The water flowed over them, making their skin like a single surface. The steam rose into the sky. The dark embraced them.

  She whispered, “If you want to feel your fantasy, you have to give as good as you get.”

  A thought fled through his mind: always negotiating. But it was a good deal.

  He slid to his knees in the gentle spray. He let his tongue play gently over her nipples and follow the moisture toward the dark blond cleft. She hooked a leg over his shoulder, and…

  The headlights hit her right in the eyes.

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “Turn off the water. Maybe they’ll go away.”

  The gentle spray stopped. The headlights went out.

  Janice peered over the top of the stall. Geoff, still on his knees, poked his head out the side and looked up toward the driveway.

  “Whose car is that?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  The cool night air quickly went cold on wet skin.

  The car door opened with an ungreased thwop.

  “I’d know that sound anywhere.” She shivered.

  “Geoff! You about?” Rake’s old voice cracked. “Geoff! Janice Bigelow! Kids!”

  “Be right up!” Geoff reached into the locker beside the stall—towels, soap, and two white terry-cloth robes. He offered one to Janice. “To be continued.”

  “I’ll finish by myself… the shower, that is.”

  Rake was smiling like a fisherman who’d filled his boat while his friends were getting skunked. “Didn’t take you away from somethin’, did I?”

  “Just a shower.”

  Rake looked toward the sound of the spray. “Showered under a palm tree in the Pacific for two years. Never did it with no pretty girls, though. Always fightin’ two or three other guys for the soap.”

  They went inside, and Geoff got out two beers. Before he could ask any of his questions, Rake began to answer them.

  “Went cruisin’ this mornin’, out over Billin’sgate. Needed to think.” Rake dropped a large box on the table. Then he took off his hat and scratched through the white hair. The hard old face softened when the hat was removed. “Decided it’s you and your Bigelow wife or nobody…. Too old to have nobody.”

  “What’s in the box?”

  “Don’t go gettin’ buck fever. ’Tain’t the log.” He lifted the lid off the box, revealing a pile of yellowed, hand-lettered sheets. “Broadsides, written by Serenity Hilyard herself.”

  Geoff riffled through them, and a residue of disintegrating paper came off on his fingers. “Writs of Assistance are Rubbage” was lettered across the top sheet.

  “Been keepin’ ’em since I was a boy. Tom Hilyard found ’em in the wall of the house on Billin’sgate, in the busted-off barrel of an old blunderbuss. My father kept ’em, give ’em to me. Was plannin’ to show ’em to that museum gal—”

  Janice came in, looking fresh and not the least bit frustrated in her terry-cloth robe.

  “But better off trustin’ my own relatives.” Rake looked at Janice. “Even if she is a Bigelow, Clara trusted her.”

  “Yes. Yes, she did.” Janice went to dry her hair.

  “She’s a little, uh, skeptical about all this.” Geoff tried not make any fast verbal moves. Treat Rake like a nervous deer who had finally decided to trust the salt lick by the back door. “I’m ready to listen. I just wish you’d come to me earlier.”

  Rake was squinting toward the bathroom and the whine of the hair dryer. “She wants the development, don’t she?”

  “Tell me about the log.”

  “Takin’ this a step at a time, Geoff. Not givin’ all my trust till you’ve earned a little. That’s my way.”

  “Where’d you first hear about the log?”

  Rake shook his head. “Not where’d I first hear of it. Where’d I last hear of it? That museum gal. Someplace, sometime, she seen somethin’ that led her to me.”

  “The doorstop?”

  He rubbed a hand over the quarter inch of gray stubble on his chin. “Read about Serenity, son. Tell me what you think. Maybe I’ll tell you more.” He went to the door.

  “Wait a minute, Rake. You haven’t touched your beer.”

  “Don’t want to drink too much, don’t want to say too much, ’specially if there’s somebody here”—he glanced at Janice, reappearing from the bathroom—“who’s skeptical. Read what’s in this box, then say how skeptical you are.”

  Janice took Rake’s arm. “We love you, Rake. Geoff and I and the kids, too. We just want to do what’s best for everybody.”

  “Somethin’ in that log scared your Great-Grandpa Charles plain shitless back in 1911. It might scare your pa today.” He pulled on his hat and gave the brim a little snap with his finger.

  The car door thwopped; the valves clattered to life.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” said Geoff from the deck.

  The fog was blowing in from the east on a cooling night breeze. It struck Geoff on the insteps, traveled up his bare legs, under his robe, and made his balls shrivel. He hated when that happened.

  iii.

  The right thing to do. Had to give ’em that stuff, and if they read it right, give ’em more. But no sense in tellin’ too much, and never tell how little you really know.

  Past the gas stations in Wellfleet… fog gettin’ thick… Hunch forward. Always good to hunch forward, get closer to the windshield, easier on the eyes. Night drivin’ got harder and harder….

  Had to get home and study the list. Get old, need to make lists. Otherwise, forget your asshole if it wasn’t drille
d in.

  Fog so thick, couldn’t even see what Indiana Jones was doin’ on the drive-in screen. There was a guy you could use. Archaeologist with a bullwhip. Show him the list. Let him figure what Tom Hilyard meant by “The book of history will set us free from the evil that bricks us up.”

  Fog even thicker… No matter. Don’t give a damn about strip malls and motels in Eastham…. Should slow down, but the nitwit on your tail, why don’t he pass?

  Comin’ up on the rotary now. Not many brake lights. Fog too thick, and not many out at this hour, but still that jerk behind you, pushin’ you along… Be an old bastard and put on your brake.

  That backed him off…. Hated rotaries, especially in the summer, with all the tourists who’d never seen one before… Stop, go, start, stop… Accident every day. Even worse in the fog.

  Off the rotary, into the dark, and… good. No lights ahead. Nervous damn stretch—two lanes runnin’ straight and flat through pine woods for thirteen miles, speed limit fifty, and damn-you-straight-to-hell if you were an old man who didn’t go over forty. Somebody always itchin’ to pass. Tourists comin’ the other way. No wonder they called it Suicide Six.

  Damn that bastard… Right up on your tail, and flashin’ his lights! Put your foot on the brake. Make him pass… but they’ve put up those rubber stanchions. He can’t pass.

  Three flashes, then one, then three… Morse code? For what? “Get off the road you old bastard”?

  Well, foot to the brake and fuck him… forty, thirty-five. High beams in the rearview… Three flashes, then one, then three. Fuck him, let’s fight about it! Twenty-five—

  Bang! Son of a bitch bumped you! Slow down—no, speed up. Thirty, thirty-five, forty… Right on your tail, high beams still flashin’. Bang!

  Swerve to the right and grind on the shoulder, curve to the left and thwump-thwump-thwump-thwump. Rubber stanchions against the rocker panel and… bang!

  Hold on, hold on, the overpass is comin’. Can’t swerve if he hits you there. Hold on! Think of a followin’ sea, a followin’ sea and a high wind… Now, deep breath, to calm the churnin’ gut, deep breath. Bang!