Cape Cod

by William Martin

  Now his grandsons came running over the dune, drawn by the sound of the gun.

  “Grampa!” shouted Dickerson. “What are you shootin’ at?”

  “Buzzards, boy, comin’ to feast on your birthright.” Charles looked at his sons, then bored his eyes into Aggie. “I’ve seen a lot of changes on this Cape. I brought some of ’em about myself. It might be good to leave this island unchanged, make it a gift to the future.”

  “Ethan and Clarence are plannin’ for the future,” said Aggie, “for Dickerson and Hiram and Clarence’s boys, too.”

  Just then the blueprint flew off the table and went tumbling across the lawn. Little Dickerson chased after it and stopped it before it blew into the creek.

  vi.

  One hot night in August, Mary put on her cloche hat and heels, Rake donned a starched shirt and straw boater, they bundled their old clothes below, and they took the Paintin’ Tom to Provincetown.

  In a little café they had bouillabaisse, floating with fish, mussels, lobster, and linguiça. They soaked up the broth with thick, crusty Portuguese bread and wished they had some wine. They bought tickets for the Provincetown Players, then strolled along the streets.

  There were artists, actors, someone who looked like John Dos Passos, more sophisticated-looking people than Mary had seen in months. And from every other door came the jazzy wail of a sax or a clarinet. She relished the long, lonely rum runs with Rake, but Provincetown throbbed with the kind of life that a New York girl loved.

  She told Rake she wanted to meet someone famous, so he introduced her to Perez Nance, who was sitting on a bench in front of Town Hall, watching the world go by.

  “The best rumrunner in Provincetown,” said Rake.

  “Shhh. My little one don’t know that.” Perez pointed to the baby carriage beside him. “But your lady friend, I hear she’s a better rumrunner than most men.”

  Rake put an arm around her. “Better to look at, too.”

  Mary liked the compliment, but this was a cosmopolitan place, and a girl of her talents should have been on the arm of someone fancier than a fisherman, talking to someone who didn’t smell so much of garlic and sweat. The thought shamed her as soon as she thought it. But she slipped out of Rake’s grasp and pretended to be interested in Nance’s baby.

  “John M. Nance,” Perez said proudly. “M. for Manuel. Someday he’ll go to Harvard, like Rake’s brother. Be whatever he wants. Lawyer, doctor, fisherman—”

  “Rumrunner?” said Rake.

  Perez laughed. He and Rake were part of a brotherhood. They stayed out of one another’s way, helped if someone was in trouble, and passed words to the wise when they might be sufficient. They were fishermen before anything else, and they lived by the rules of the sea, not the syndicates.

  Perez asked, “You goin’ out tonight?”

  “Never come to P-town without goin’ on to Rum Row.”

  “Watch yourself. It’s gettin’ dangerous.”

  “Too dangerous for Iron Axe?”

  Perez tapped his knuckles against Rake’s chest. “Too dangerous for you, too, my friend.”

  “How dangerous?” Mary’s interest in the baby faded. She didn’t mind tempting the Coast Guard and risking a few months in jail. But this sounded serious.

  Rake looked into the Portagee’s eyes and laughed. That made her feel better. Rake was daring, but no fool. And when he told Mary not to worry, she stopped worrying. She couldn’t think of another man who could do that to her.

  At 2:00 A.M. the trucks were waiting for Paintin’ Tom at Ballston Beach in Truro. This was the back shore, with sandbars and surf that made for the most dangerous landing of all. On a rough night, Rake would have refused, but heat and humidity were like a weight smoothing out the surf, so he ran right onto the beach, as bold as a gull.

  The lead trucker, a burly Irishman named Malloy, had been needling Rake since he first saw Mary. But tonight he stood on the dark beach and applauded as the tide gently lifted the Paintin’ Tom off. “Mary, that’s one helluva rumrunner you got. Only man I ever met could land liquor on the back shore. A helluva catch, darlin’.”

  “And you’re a helluva truck driver,” she called.

  Rake went fast along the shore and didn’t muffle the engine, because all they carried now was three bottles of scotch. “ ’Nother great night. ’Nother twelve hundred and fifty dollars, cash money.” He handed her the roll. “Count out three—make it four hundred.”

  She threw her arms around his neck and gave him another kiss. “Like the man says, one helluva rumrunner.”

  “And one helluva catch.”

  She took her arms away. “But, Rake—”

  “But, but, but. You like me well enough out here, when we’re on the boat, in rumrunner’s rags, but when we go to P-town, you twitch every time I touch you.”

  “Rake—”

  “Well, honey, watch this.” He sped up the beach until they were about a mile south of Race Point Light. Then he ran the boat onto the sand. There were half a dozen shacks along the rim of the dune, others scattered through the great desert beyond, and kerosene lamps lit the darkness in spite of the hour. “Writers, mostly, thinkin’ great thoughts.”

  He grabbed two bottles of scotch, took her by the hand, and without a word, went toward a big cottage.

  “Rake, that’s a Coast Guard station.”

  “Was.” He marched her right up to the door. “Gene! Gene! It’s Rake Hilyard.”

  An intensely thin man with a black mustache appeared at the screen door. “Rake Hilyard?”

  “Brung some Haig and Haig. Gen-u-ine pinch bottle.”

  “I haven’t seen you since last summer.”

  “Been workin’ for a syndicate.” Rake shoved the bottles into the man’s hand. “But was thinkin’, when I come by and seen your light, what a good customer Eugene O’Neill always was, back when I was independent.”

  Mary made a funny noise and stiffened like a bluefish left in the sun.

  “Can’t stay, Gene, but wanted you to meet Mary Muldowney. Fine actress.”

  O’Neill studied her with his dark, sad eyes.

  And she overcame her shock enough to mumble, “I… I like your work, very much, Mr. O’Neill. I think it’s very… uh, entertaining.”

  “She’s good, Gene. Take it from me.”

  O’Neill was already retreating behind the screen. They said he was shy, and a visit in the middle of the night could not have made him more gregarious. “Get in touch with me in New York this fall,” he said to Mary. “Mention Rake’s name, we’ll see what you can do.”

  They were halfway back to the boat before Mary could say anything else. “You look awful smug, Rake Hilyard.”

  “ ‘I like your work, Mr. O’Neill. I think it’s very entertaining.’ His plays’d depress Will Rogers.”

  “He’s the greatest dramatist in America.”

  “Who introduced him to you? Hank, or a fisherman?”

  “A fisherman” She agreed, but she didn’t like to surrender without a fight. So she stopped and unbuttoned her blouse. “But Hank went skinny-dippin’.”

  “Skinny-dippin’?”

  “What’s wrong?” She let the shirt drop in the sand, then unbuttoned her baggy borrowed trousers. “You afraid?”

  “Well, uh, the water’s cold.”

  “The night’s hot.” She unhooked her brassiere.

  He kicked off his shoes.

  “That’s a start.” She slipped off the brassiere and stood frankly before him, her exquisite breasts round and white, tipped with delicate buds of flesh.

  “Should be ready if the undertow gets you.” The words caught in his throat. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Don’t you like a little danger?” And as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she slipped her hands into her bloomers and pushed them down. “I’m goin’ swimmin’.”

  He watched the white body glisten in the black water. He felt the warm southwest wind on his face. Was she enticing him o
r showing him that a fisherman and a New York actress could never be well matched, even on a beach at night? Or was it both? There was only one way to find out. So he stripped and waded in.

  He chased her through the waves. She swam away. He caught her, and she laughed and swam away again. And then again. And then she rode a wave to the shore, where he caught her again and threw his arms around her.

  He kissed the salt from her neck and her nipples. She touched the hard muscles lining his flanks and the hardness thriving in the cool water. They sank to their knees and the foam came up around their legs. They lay back on the sand slope. The sea surged over them, and in the swirl they lost their bearings.

  He rolled over her and she over him, and they were the wave and the sand, and their rhythm was the rhythm of the waves, and the waves drew them back, fast and faster, back, past Adam and Eve, back, to the first moment, the first coupling at the edge of the sea.

  There was an old blanket on the boat. They wrapped themselves together afterward and sat on the dry sand. Their bodies were naked and cool in the scratchy wool.

  “Now, who’s done more for you? Hank Fonda or me?”

  “Rake, you’re the best man I ever met.”

  “Then stay.” He twined his fingers into her wet curls and pulled her face to him.

  “I have to go to New York.”

  “O’Neill goes to New York and comes back. You can, too.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “I’ll go with you. We can have that world of yours, all flash and pretend, then come here and have this.”

  The sea rushed up, foaming around their bodies. She felt him growing against her. She gave a lascivious little laugh and slipped herself onto him. “Nothin’ like a man.”

  “Nothin’ like a man… to grow old with,” he whispered.

  The softness of his voice above the rush and retreat of the waves was more seductive than anything she had ever known.

  Then he shouted, “Oh, Jesus!” and pushed her off. The tide was lifting the boat, and Rake went running, bare-assed as birth, after the Paintin’ Tom.

  vii.

  “Boat comin’… comin’ fast,” said Manny.

  “Let him come.” Perez kept hauling the trawl from the starboard bucket.

  “You got anything?” asked Manny.

  “Haddock. Gimme a hand.”

  “Bait and haul. Bait and haul.” Manny took the tail. “Break your balls doin’ this.”

  “This the way men used to fish, the way my father fished, before draggers… and rumrunners.”

  “So why we no more runnin’?”

  “I told you. We’re done with it. Too dangerous.”

  “Eh, maybe so”—Manny watched the boat—“but it no done with us.”

  It was the Gray Lady, pounding so fast across the waves that she seemed to be riding on top of them.

  Nance loosened the axe in his belt. “Keep doin’ what you’re doin’.”

  Sammy the Snake, strapped tight in his life jacket, was holding up a gaff.

  “Maybe he want to tie up,” said Manny.

  “Don’t throw him no rope,” answered Nance.

  The Gray Lady made a circle around the Pilgrim Portagee, and the smaller boat began to rock drunkenly as the wake rolled in, whacked against itself, and rolled back out again. Perez and Manny bumped into each other, and Manny fell on the pitching deck.

  A half a dozen faces were at the stern of the Gray Lady, laughing at Perez and Manny like kids at the Keystone Kops. Then Sammy fished the gaff into the water and caught the Portagee’s trawl. A switchblade sprang to life in his hand and slashed the line.

  “Dat sonamabeetch!” cried Manny.

  Perez felt the line go slack in his hand. “Twenty bucks’ worth of fish!” he shouted over the thrumming of the Fiat engines. “Full trawl.”

  Sbardi appeared from the wheelhouse. “You been duckin’ your job, Nancie. I don’t like when somebody ducks a job.”

  The Gray Lady drifted closer, and Sammy hooked his gaff into the transom of the Portagee. Then he and half a dozen others stepped aboard. One of them was dressed in a white suit and wore a pasted-on white Vandyke. He looked about the foolishest thing Perez had ever seen.

  “Your new crew,” said Sbardi from the stern of the Gray Lady. “We gonna give you a chance to show you still our buddy.”

  “I don’t want no crew, I don’t want to be your buddy, and I don’t want your boat.”

  “You ain’t gettin’ the fuckin’ boat, Nancie. That offer been withdrawn. You made me do my own spyin’. But you do what the boys say, you get back in my good graces.”

  “I’m done runnin’ rum. Too dangerous.”

  “Too dangerous if you don’t,” said Sammy the Snake.

  Sbardi stuck a Parodi into his mouth, and one of the others lit it for him. “We busted a few Irish legs, found out what you could’ve told us three weeks ago. We know where Flip’s trucks are goin’ tonight.”

  viii.

  It was September. The summer people had left. Rake’s brother Billy had gone to Harvard. Rake’s sister had married an Orleans fisherman named Eri Hartwig and gone to live with him. Jack’s Island had grown quiet. The days grew short.

  Mary often thought she should have left him that night at the beach, gathered up her clothes and simply walked off into the dunes, but she could not. Rake hoped, after that night at the beach, that she might stay, but he asked for something only once.

  So they took what the summer gave them of blue seas and warm days, of decks piled high with liquor and pockets stuffed full of cash. And they hoped that the cool winds would not come.

  “How much you figure you got now?” he asked.

  “Close to five thousand. More’n I’ve ever had in my life.” She leaned back and looked up at the sky. “I do love it here, Rake. When you’re on the water, under the stars, you feel that you’re somethin’ special.”

  “You are somethin’ special.” He pulled a package from under the wheel. It was flat, crudely wrapped in newspapers, with a red bow in one corner. “Was plannin’ to give you this when we got in. But—”

  “It feels like a picture.”

  He lifted the blanket that covered the V-berth hatch. “Go in and open it.”

  “But the light?”

  “Ports are blacked out. Keep the blanket down.”

  A rumrunner loaded to the gunwales was not a swift beast. Without speed or claws, it relied on darkness, quiet, and stealth, like any creature of the night. The Paintin’ Tom always went blacked out, the engine muffled by a U-shaped length of pipe that funneled the exhaust into the wake. But they could never be too careful.

  While the Paintin’ Tom slid through the bay, Mike Malloy drove his truck across the causeway. Tonight they were landing on Jack’s Island, and never once had there been trouble there. But Mike was always cautious, even with an empty truck. When he saw the body lying face down in the road, he almost drove around it.

  “Hey,” said his partner, Eddie. “That’s Elwood.”

  “Never stop on the causeway.”

  “C’mon. Who else you know wears a white suit and has a white Vandyke beard?”

  So Malloy stopped the truck a few feet from the body and pulled a thirty-eight revolver from under the seat. Then he waved a white handkerchief out the window to tell the boys in the second truck to keep their eyes sharp.

  Eddie took the shotgun and got out. He nudged the white jacket with the muzzle; then he knelt. That was a mistake. Elwood turned out to be someone with very black hair, a pasted-on Vandyke, and a .45 automatic.

  Ten minutes later Malloy looked at Eddie. “Bebber mop ob de cobway.”

  “Ahhh?”

  Malloy looked at the driver of the second truck and made the sounds again. What he was saying, through a knotted gag, was “Never stop on the causeway.”

  “Bebber min bat. Bis maht ink,” said the other driver. Never mind that. This marsh stinks.

  “ ’N a bide bill isin.” And the tide’s stil
l risin’.

  “Baby it ust ese ancupps.” Maybe it’ll rust these handcuffs.

  Maybe… but it would take more time than Malloy and his friends had, or Sbardi’s men needed….

  Aggie Dickerson Bigelow never slept well on the island, especially when Ethan was off in Boston on business. She heard everything, even the clunk of an oar against the side of a boat.

  A little while ago, that clunk had brought her straight out of bed, and she had seen a fishing boat going up the creek, with men on either side using oars as poles. At the boathouse, six men had gotten off, including, of all people, Elwood Hilyard.

  Now she rocked in the chair by the window, hummed a nervous little tune, fidgeted with the braid that hung over her shoulder, and watched the boat glide back to the mouth of the creek.

  She didn’t care how good the beer tasted on a hot afternoon. The Hilyards were now using the Bigelow side of the island, where her children slept. She had to do something. So she went into her father-in-law’s room.

  “Wake up, Grampa. Wake up.”

  It was nearly time for his painkiller, and he was easily roused. He smelled old, not simply sick, but used up, like a pile of autumn leaves turned over in March.

  “Elwood and five other men snuck up the creek a while ago. They’re running rum on our property now.”

  Out on the Pilgrim Portagee, Sammy the Snake was listening for the sound of an engine.

  Perez had already heard two trucks, but Sammy hadn’t budged, and Perez wasn’t helping him with any of this. He considered gangsters bad luck on a boat. He considered this island worse luck. Here his old nemesis lay dying. Here he had seen things that had broken his youthful heart.

  “Hey, Sammy,” Manny was saying, “where you get dat name, ‘Sammy the Snake’?”

  “Shhh. Tryin’ to hear the boat.”

  “Sammy the Snake. You don’t look like no snake.”