The pre-veteran charges about the empty trailer, kicking walls, until, crying, he falls back into his cot.
Jacko, his half-brother, happens to drop in and finds moldy bread and a dented can of sardines. Jacko says today is the day he has to surrender himself to jail. “Take care, kid,” Jacko says.
Jacko must have made a phone call in town (the trailer's phone is dead), for a social worker in a minivan picks up the child and houses it in a shelter for the homeless. Uncle Joe, a small man with a weathered face and bright eyes under tufted eyebrows, picks me up. Me? I mean the pre-veteran.
"If you don't give a shit,” Uncle Joe tells me, “it don't matter."
Uncle Joe would repeat that saying often, to himself mostly, in case things did seem to matter. It calmed him down, he told me. He wouldn't be tempted to throw his tools around or hit me. In fact, he never hit me, all because of his magic mantra.
Jacko told me, when I asked him what the point of it all was (meaning him going back to jail a lot), that the point is something that depressed people worry about, the non-depressed don't. Like him, Jacko, for instance. He just worked in the jail's garden. During winter he read comic-strip books. “Me worry?” Jacko asked. Jacko didn't look worried to me. He looked more like puzzled.
Tom Tipper, the ex-Harvard guy who escaped to Bunkport, my beer buddy at the Thirsty Dolphin counter, told me to reduce everything back to nothing. Everything comes from nothing anyway, and everything goes to nothing. “You can't worry about nothing,” Tom said, “because there is nothing there to worry about.” He would drink more and say, “Essentially, of course.” He would drink more and say, “Of course, the exact opposite is also true.” He would drink more and say, “But then nothing is.” He would drink some more and say, “Get it?"
I would like to get it.
Sometimes I did, but not when the old seafaring couple got knocked over like tin soldiers hit by pebbles from a slingshot.
The military shrink, born in Laos, who looks like a late teener and is about half my size, the doctor I see every two months or so, told me to make a list of things I like to do and give him a copy. Whenever I see him he consults the list. Am I eating sliced radishes on sourdough toast? Go for walks with my dog? Go boating for no purpose? See that married woman? Quit after the fourth beer? Smoke a joint once a week? Try to read novels in Spanish with minimal use of my dictionary?
Maybe because I hadn't seen Dolly for a while and was going slow on radishes on toast, I couldn't help reaching for Uncle Joe's deer rifle, checking the clip, arming the weapon, taking—using the scope attached to the barrel—meticulous aim, and pulling the trigger gently.
Twice.
The pirates, shot through the heads, hit the deck sideways. I cleaned the rifle, put it away, and lit a joint while the Take It Easy took it easy, drifting away erratically, vaguely aiming for open sea.
While, some hours later, I was ruminating, a chopper, alerted by a lobsterman checking his traps, who phoned the Coast Guard, dropped a crew to sail the yacht to their base at Southwest Harbor.
The next night a Guard lieutenant mentioned the event at the Thirsty Dolphin, after guzzling complimentary cold ones (support our troops) from patriotic Priscilla.
"We found four corpses,” the lieutenant told us: “Two perpetrators, two victims—it looked like to a state police detective we called in. Must have been a triple event. Crime andpunishment, for those who read Dostoyevsky. Amoral guys shooting immoral guys shooting a moral old man and his moral wife."
The lieutenant is the head of the literary society that meets at the public library once in a while. He is smart.
"I would like to remind you,” the smart lieutenant said, “that justice carries a badge in our great country. Vigilantes will be arrested, prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” He pounded the bar. “We've got Homeland Security now.” He pounded the bar again. “Okay?"
We all pounded the bar. "Okay!"
"The victims,” the lieutenant continued, “were killed point-blank, with 9mm bullets fitting the pirates’ pistol barrels. According to the state police expert (he dropped his voice) who had the FBI looking in too, the pirates, in turn, got shot from some distance, say sixty feet. Bullets came from a rifle that we are now looking for.
"Who?” the lieutenant shouted.
"Who?” we shouted after him.
The lieutenant told us he supposed the shooter fired from an island, maybe. Or from another vessel, maybe. He was shouting again. “Are we dealing with an insurgent trying to save the world on his liberal own? Is anyone around here trying to think out of the box?” The lieutenant glared. “Would anyone in this town dare to believe there is no box?"
"A Che Guevara?” Tom, who wears a silk-screened Che Guevara T-shirt, asked.
The lieutenant glared at us through the righteous eyes of Fundamental Christianity. The sacred quest has started up again. Evil will be wiped out and replaced by A-1, one hundred percent, first-quality Good. This service will be rendered by uniforms, and suits with badges. Was he making himself clear?
We told him he was making himself clear.
Surprisingly, the lieutenant calmed down.
"Any of you ladies and gentlemen noticed anything remarkable relating, possibly, to this incident?” he asked us gently.
A sympathetic silence filled the Thirsty Dolphin.
"No?” he whispered.
We told the lieutenant that it is hard to notice much with all of those islands blocking the view, and there was some fog the day the yacht was found drifting, and being on the water is kind of fatiguing anyway. It's the reflected sunlight that makes us extra tired. Hell, we are mostly working men (and in my case, crazy), we have no time to check on pleasure boaters. As the lieutenant said just now, interfering with pirates is government business, right?
The lieutenant asked Priscilla to pin his card on the big tamarack beam above the bar. In case some relevant detail ever came to mind. He also mentioned a reward. Ten thousand dollars, to be paid by one of the Take It Easy's owner's holding companies. Another ten thousand by the insurance people. Maybe more. There might be a Certificate of Reward, possibly issued by the governor, who knows? Otherwise by the Coast Guard. Signed in ink. Not stamped.
"Sure thing, Captain, when we hear something you'll be the first to know,” Priscilla said, wiggling hippo hips and grinning helpfully. “Just leave it to us."
Did I tell you I was in Vietnam?
I did?
Okay, there I was, on my fourth stretch out (I kept signing up, liking that harbor-master job at the officers’ club far away from the front lines), and one of the native masseuses introduced me to her grandpa. Old codger sat cross-legged in a cave in a hill overlooking my yacht-club harbor. Grandpa rather reminded me of my uncle Joe, partly morphed into the Dalai Lama. The hermit came out of the silence when I handed over greenbacks.
What Paleface wanted?
I asked for guidance. Why not? Old Silver Long-hair was right there and who knows what those holybolies discover in their, what is it again? Transmutations? And lo and behold, the hermit, in a croaky voice, smiling benevolently, did come up with a high-level tidbit. “Grandpa wants you to know that the unforeseeable invariably happens,” my masseuse translated, “but the predictable hardly ever occurs.” She smiled and patted my cheek, “Grandpa wants you take care now, you hear?"
Now ain't what the hermit said the truth?
Next thing, just after I got back to the harbor, my right leg got shredded along with four of my buddies’ entire bodies. The masseuse (who used to sing love songs to me) and her psychic grandpa vanished.
Jet planes from a nearby carrier applied napalm to any habitation overlooking the harbor. Our patrol, checking out the area, reported finding parts of enemy kids, women, and farm animals but no traces of any military folks or the grenade-firing gadget that had interfered with our pleasures.
After amputation I got flown stateside, and the Veterans Administration equipped me with a technological
leg. A chaplain told me that Uncle Joe, having slipped on the ice and broken his skull, was no longer living. A captain in dress uniform saluted and said he felt sorry for my loss. Once my new leg hurt less I got a seat on a military plane flying to Bangor. A jeep took me to Bunkport. I moved back into Uncle Joe's cabin and Larry the lawyer had me sign a form that I accepted everything Uncle Joe left me. There were no taxes, as Uncle had Larry set up some kind of trust. I did have to pay Larry.
Before I became his ward I knew Uncle Joe from saying hi whenever we happened to see each other, and saying yes, I wanted a hamburger. And two hot dogs. And a shake. “Thank you."
Once I moved in he made sure I went to school and took me “naturing and maturing” on weekends. I learned local navigation and general boat tending in the You Too. We kept up appearances by doing some line fishing and we kept a few lobster traps going, but fish wasn't Uncle's first interest. “Fishing is regular work,” he told me. “There ain't no money in regular work.” He looked at me furiously. “No pleasure either."
Uncle and I used his snowmobile to hunt our yearly deer without the costly license. Again, once a year, he set me up to shoot a moose to stock our freezer and sell the surplus meat for cheap to Thirsty Dolphin buddies. Uncle wouldn't have no dealings with substances, but we brought in loads of Cuban cigars (although he didn't care for Castro) and excise-free cigarettes from nearby Canada, to sell to truckers aiming for “all them other states.” If the winter sea got rough we hitched a trailer-sled to his snowmobile to keep the business going. Depending on the season we took tourists for rides on water or snow, preferably when there was a storm brewing so they could be thankful for our bringing them back alive and hand over big tips. Uncle might give me a fiver once in a while so I could smoke cigarettes and get sick with my buddies. He also got me a bicycle, so I didn't have to wait for the summer school bus, paid for decent clothes, taught me to cook muffins and lobsters and some strange spinach-and-egg dish, and got me the dog Millie as company when he was out. Millie was a comfort, like her descendant Tillie is now.
Later, when puberty hit, I did some break-ins in rich folks’ summer cabins to pay for dope and booze. Uncle grumbled. When Jacko, in between jail time, gave me the use of what he called a “found” muscle car that he completed with stolen license plates, Uncle lost the vehicle and boarded me out at a school at the far side of the state. I had to do yard work and house cleaning for bus money so I could get back to him for holidays. He was changing then. Getting old, he even forgot to get drunk sometimes, the cabin was dirtying up, and the You Too needed painting and fussing with the electronics. I got so busy helping out that I had no time to tend to my bad habits. When school was done I moved back to Bunkport and took care of him. When I got drafted Priscilla had a state nursing service take over. Priscilla claims I loved Uncle Joe, and I wouldn't argue with such a powerful personality, but I never figured out what “love” means.
Uncle would have agreed. “Care about nothing and nothing will take care of you very nicely.” He did want me to do a good job on anything that might come up. “Just for the hell of it, Jimbo.” Tom Tipper taught likewise but left out the “good job.” Tom definitely tended to overdo negation, to the point where nihilistic insights led to disorderly euphoria and Sheriff, on occasion, had to transport a handcuffed Tom to a Bangor crisis center.
Father Mikey, when stopping off at the Thirsty Dolphin between services, told us about love being the Mystery. The Mystery, by its very nature, could not, the father said, be explained.
"Anyone wants to fight the Mystery?"
Silence in the Dolphin.
"Then the Mystery has won."
Another triumph for the noble priest.
Uncle Joe said that's what he liked about the Church. “It goes every which way, Nephew.” He sometimes went to Mass. “To be with the Mystery."
When I asked whether Uncle would be in hell now, Father Mikey smiled. “What if he is? A well-organized man, Vetty, and Joe was just that, will be comfortable anywhere."
Ah well. Me worry? But just to be sure, every clear full moon, I float flowers (in winter cedar branches) just off Snutty Nose Island, where Uncle liked to fish for cod, and once in a while caught one, and, because it was endangered, put it back carefully.
We floated his hat when the current and the wind were outward, again behind Snutty Nose Ledge and the island.
Same place where Jacko, couple of weeks after Uncle died, in a rowboat that he actually paid for, successfully overdosed on whiskey and heroin, after mailing a note to Sheriff. The note said where to collect the boat.
Jacko left a note pinned to his chest :
I'M DONE
THANK YOU
The crime story? you ask.
Two dead pirates aren't enough for you? And now a suicide? A suicide is not a crime, you say. Okay. Here we go.
Crime story #1 (continued)
I was happy in the cabin that I cleaned up after Uncle's death. New oak floors, new roof, new plumbing. Coastal art on the whitewashed walls, by up-and-coming Maine artists. I linseed-oiled the hand-hewn posts and beams. I enjoyed the view from Uncle's sturdy bed on wheels, that I moved about so Tillie, who slept in my arm, could enjoy the best views. I always spent more than my disablement check, filling the hole with cash I found under a loose board in a walk-in closet.
Uncle's savings, even with inflation, could last me a lifetime.
"I got all my needs covered,” I declared on a fourth beer.
"Oh dear,” Priscilla said. “That means you haven't."
An Abinaki Native American further down the counter, raising a forbidding hand, agreed. He told me to be careful. Had I heard about the invisible ever-present Thunderbirds, who trap happy humans into learning situations until the goddess Manitou steps out of the woods and takes us away altogether?
"You must be getting bored,” Deputy Sheriff Sycophant said. Deputy Dog thought so too.
Everybody agreed that contentment equals depression. As I mentioned before, it's a bad thing to be happy.
Stupid too. Tillie comforted me. Dolly was busy at that time.
"Breed koi,” Dr. Frederic J. Shanigan, MD, said. Koi are big carp that come in exotic colors. They freeze in their ponds in winter but thaw back to life in the spring. Dr. Shanigan breeds them for money on his island that none of us got invited to. Our medical recluse—who brags about his beautiful island home designed by an architect from far away, an Oriental who even created a Zen garden: artfully arranged rocks surrounded by white, carefully raked gravel—lives about ten miles out of Bunkport Harbor. He has a clinic in town that's mostly run by Nurse, as Doc likes to travel. He uses his expensive powerboat as a ferry to the mainland, and a small but fast seaplane for getting further away. He is a sporty type who kayaks as well. Fastbuck Freddie heals for money only. No insurance, no treatment, unless there is top dollar in advance. Doc refers old people to out-of-the-way clinics because Medicare cuts into his bill. A pregnant homeless woman turned up with her baby stuck sideways. Doc sold her pain pills he got as samples. Priscilla, when she saw the woman collapse on her doormat, called the county helicopter service. By the time the chopper got to Bangor Hospital it carried a dead mother and a still-born baby.
But, you know, even Freddie Shanigan has different aspects. I had a splinter festering up my hand and Doc took it out for free. Priscilla broke out in shingles and Doc was right there with the injection and the ointment. Again: no charge. He treated Dolly, Sheriff's wayward wife, for a fungus infection. Tom Tipper, treated free for side effects of alcoholism, claims Freddie sees us as members of his sacred inner circle.
I still won't breed no koi or shoot, like Doc, the herons that sneak up into the pond to eat them.
"Learn to fly,” Sheriff, who used to be Air Force, said. That would be nice, but I get sleepy a lot. The boat can be anchored and the truck parked, but planes need somewhere where they can put themselves down. There are strips in Maine, but mostly they are private and the owners use trespasser
s for target practice.
I let that go, too.
Dolly smiled at me in her special way. In between lovers, was she? Beautiful woman, Dolly is.
Maybe Dolly wasn't what I needed either.
Priscilla said we were getting close here. Female companionship would be the answer.
"Right,” Tom Tipper agreed. “I can come over for dinner."
I said Tillie, sitting next to me on her own barstool, needed to go out, and please excuse us.
The subject came up again when the Big and Little Bitch Islanders, led by the Sisters, their lead lobstermen, showed up for refreshments.
The Sisters also suggested I should look for intimate company. “Be like us, get yourself a woman.” The Sisters are powerful personages, housed in powerful bodies, who use the young ladies they refer to as their “squeezes” as stern men. They own powerful fishing boats (Bad Cat is the leading vessel), and a refurbished WWII landing craft. The landing craft ferries their motorcycles and pickup trucks to the mainland and back. They stomp about armed.
"Get yourself a squeeze or two,” Big Sis told me.
"Sure thing,” I said.
I wasn't too sure.
Shouldn't I know better? There was the high-school teacher who got me to get her into trouble and we might have married if I hadn't found a helpful medic. The Vietnam masseuse didn't mean well, either. There was the one-night-stand in a Boston singles bar where lonely secretaries, nurses, some widows, maybe, a divorced woman or quietly dressed twenty- and thirty-pluses, in sensible shoes, toting handbags, looking through intellectual-looking paperbacks, glance at men shyly. The glancer I ended up with told me she was a biologist's assistant, single, no complications, the last boyfriend was long gone. She preferred a motel until she got to know me well enough to invite me to her apartment. She had booze in her bag. I was alone when I woke up late the next morning. No wallet, no car keys, even my twenty-dollar watch was missing. No goodbye note, either.
EQMM, March-April 2009 Page 17