The police reminded me we live in a bad, bad world. A fellow veteran lent me a Franklin to get me home.
Still. A woman. You never know. Someone from away, perhaps. A fleeting relationship. Or a long-time prostitute with manners. Some lady looking for a break.
I started thinking about the Sisters again.
I suppose, being a minority, the third gender has to prove superiority. Maybe the Sisters overdo their act a tad. The Sisters give me lobsters from time to time. They let me blunder about in their territory at will. They have me visit on their boat, and baby-talk to Tillie, who lets them hold her upside down and nuzzle her bare belly.
I advertised in the Washington Post, Tom Tipper's hometown. He said government women get frustrated. He helped with the ad's text; so did Dolly, who writes a supportive column in the GreaterBunkportAmerican, a weekly. She also wrote a Harlequin novel. Larry the lawyer was the copyeditor. Doc Shanigan took digital pictures and created a Web site. I showed up as the kind, grizzly outdoorsman with his cute little doggie. The cabin and its neat interior, the boat and the pickup truck, both shiny in late sunlight, the snowmobile and the all-terrain vehicle, everything was there against a backdrop of islands and mountains in the distance. Odd man out, maybe, but a man of substance.
Tom Tipper told me to mention jazz. I visit his trailer to listen to the CDs he makes me order and we play duets. His keyboard blends with my sense of percussion. “Jazz attracts the sensitive, the intelligent, the spiritual, yet cool,” he whispered, “and the beautifully erotic."
LOBSTER YACHT'S, named YOU TOO, OWNER/SKIPPER, MAINE COAST. VIRILE ONE-LEGGED VET MARINE. NO DEBT OR TV. SHORE CABIN WITH PLUMBING. IN NEED OF SINGLE WOMAN. AGE 30-40. LOG FIRES. THE CHICKADEES SING ALL WINTER.visit www.james.holbert.com for pictures and ‘contact me'
* * * *
My publisher called. He said we had to talk. He knew he had specified crime but on second thought there had to be romance, too. “Put that in, okay?"
"Yes, sir."
Priscilla calls him Walrus. Bald head, big moustache, obese, waddles, very persistent. Walruses must be persistent to get all the food they need to gather that weight.
You're familiar with Alice in Wonderland, are you? She's in the public domain so I can quote without permission:
The walrus said,
The time has come
to speak of many things:
Of crime and ships and sealing wax
and cabbages and kings.
(and a romantic entanglement, okay?)
The ad drew a bit of e-mail. I countered with polite refusals. I mean they were certainly nice women, and I appreciated them taking the trouble to contact me, but there were problem kids in reform schools who came out once in a while, and/or weight problems, or Tillie-eating dogs in tow, even prowling former lovers on parole. One was stalked by a rich rapist.
"Never mind,” Tom said. “Luck is with the lucky."
Elizabeth didn't bother to e-mail or send a photograph, she showed up, saying it isn't difficult to locate a one-legged lobster-yacht owner/skipper in Downeast Maine.
And there she was. Striding into a full Thirsty Dolphin at Happy Hour on Friday. Coming straight at me, kissing me lightly on a grizzly cheek.
The audience applauded.
Elizabeth dropped her duffel bag so she could shake Priscilla's hand across the bar. She introduced herself to the good old boys, the Sisters and their squeezes, Dr. Shanigan, Sheriff and Dolly, Tom Tipper, Larry the Lawyer, Father Mikey, and Deputy Dog (Sycophant being on duty that evening) as Elizabeth Scofield, single, thirty-four years old, lover of jazz and small dogs (Tillie sat on the barstool next to me, she got picked up and cutie-pied), an adept at coastal sailing, presently boatless due to a settlement with a recently divorced husband. For work, our applicant told us, she did freelance journalism.
"Due for a long vacation.” She gave me a long look. “Right here in Bunkport.” She stared at me critically but not disapprovingly.
"Would the relationship work?"
She looked at the faces of my buddies.
"Is he okay? she asked, pointing at my head.
"A pervert,” the Sisters said. “He only likes women."
"But kind of neat as men go,” a beautiful squeeze called Evelyn said.
"A drunk, but not as bad as me,” Tom Tipper said. “Nobody is as bad as me.” He got up, spilling beer, trying to stare us all down. “But nobody, okay?"
"Good health,” Dr. Shanigan said. “Life signs of a man ten years younger. Blood tests, last month, were fine.” He glanced at Dolly. “No sexual encounters since then, I would think."
"A believer,” Father Mikey said, “with a new terminology. If he met God, God might like him."
"God might like everybody,” Priscilla said. “So do I, with a large number of exceptions.” She gave Elizabeth her wide smile. “I like your advertiser, though. Pays his tab. Can be helpful. Good boater if he doesn't go full blast in the fog. Walks home after four beers."
"After I caught him that time,” Deputy Sycophant said. “Boy oh boy, good thing I lost the paperwork."
Okay, so I had five beers that evening. Sycophant is a fuss body.
"Good slow lay,” Dolly said.
I don't know what Sheriff would have said. His cell phone, a minute ago, had called him out on a case of domestic violence in the trailer park that Deputy Dog was having trouble with. We could see Sheriff outside, putting on body armor and checking his shotgun.
Elizabeth put Tillie down carefully, took a few steps back, pirouetted, and asked if I found her attractive.
Sure I did. What man doesn't like long legs, a full bosom (hidden by a tightly buttoned-up blouse), long thick auburn hair, sparkling green eyes, slender well-cared-for hands, a sultry voice, like Marlene Dietrich. That voice could have warned me. Marlene was a chick one couldn't push around, not even in her movies. Ever see TheBlue Angel? Jeezum!
Priscilla had been watching Elizabeth's performance carefully. “Nothing is ever one thousand percent right. Tell us what's wrong with you, will you, dear?"
She patted her left breast. “This boob is fake."
She told us about her cancer, all through one breast when it was finally detected, and spreading into lymph ducts up to the armpit. The surgeon did his job and prescribed chemo that made her bald and sick to her stomach for quite some months but she had been in remission for quite a while now. The surgeon said, “This type always comes back.” Next time around it was likely to kill her. The oncologist said she might live into old age, dementia, and a final rest in a nursing home.
She turned to me. “I can have another breast manufactured from surplus flesh of my belly if the lopsiding bothers you. Won't take too long but I'll have to fly back home and stay awhile.” She patted the other breast. “This one is perfect.” She smiled. I admired her well-cared-for teeth. Even so, the smile was twisted. Nervous maybe.
My smile must have been nervous, too. One breast, one leg, a fine kettle of fish. A matching kettle of fish?
Priscilla winked. “What do you say, James?"
Right. James. She got that from the ad. I was a new man. Hi, I am James.
I could have hemmed and hawed, suggested that Elizabeth should stay in Priscilla's motel for a bit, that we do some introductory getting together, share a few meals in Bunkport's falling-apart lobster- and crab-pier's restaurant shack, but I liked those sparkling eyes and I'm used to lopsided anyway. Even my latest leg, mostly made in China, is a tad shorter than the other.
I would say we liked each other at first sight.
Love at first sight, according to Priscilla. She likes movies with “feel good” endings and reads pure romance. Tarzan and Jane stuff. Sentimentality, hard to find these days. Larry the Lawyer was on my side. So was Tom Tipper and Deputy Dog. “Love is for the lovebirds,” the deputy said. “And they are birds, dammit,” Tom Tipper said.
Like at first sight. That was okay. We agreed. Except Priscilla, she had been married once. She knew abou
t true love. Her husband died in Montreal during their honeymoon. Some say she squashed him.
Elizabeth moved into the cabin and the weather was fine for a week and we were mostly boating. I bought her a diving suit and cylinders and goggles and showed her where the last cod swims, and we saw two types of Maine seals, smiling at us from rocks overgrown with bright orange rockweed. We met with a bevy of harbor porpoises, and, briefly, with a thresher and a blue shark, both of them large, but not hungry, maybe it was too cold for them. She went ooh and aah spotting herons, ospreys, eagles, wild turkeys, turkey vultures, and listened to the lonely call of a loon. She also noticed the bleeding chair. There were cormorants (big black seabirds) on it, but they flew away as she pointed.
Elizabeth liked crime. She was also interested in the incident featuring the corpses on the TakeIt Easy. She kept asking around about what happened, even made notes, read newspaper clippings in the library, consulted charts.
And now this.
After she had climbed all over the giant buoy, she wondered whether we should contact the authorities.
I didn't think so. Why meddle?
She found a camera in her bag and clicked away.
"What do you care?” I asked and she said she was a journalist, remember? Taking pictures of amazing events had become a habit. I told her our Bunkport friends wouldn't like a write-up on easily misunderstood events, especially this close to home.
Why not?
I told her. The authorities like making a fuss. Anybody, any local body, who spotted the chair would know exactly what happened here. I mentioned fishing territory. Some fool lobsterman had broken the code. This was a Bitch Island Sisters reserve. The Sisters, I assumed, would have caught an intruding thief in the act and warned the trespasser, then, on another occasion, warned the fool again. And then, well, they killed him, created an example.
"Have anyone specific in mind, James?"
Me?
"So the Sisters shot this poor guy up?"
Well now...
"Tom Tipper was the victim?” Elizabeth wanted to know, which was a good guess, for Tom, who reads Nietzsche in German, and has become convinced that we've made up our own values and that, because we are wrong, the values are wrong too, may have been drawing the wrong conclusions. Amorality ain't immorality. But Tom, he doesn't really give a rat's ass about nothing no more. The way he is going I have been thinking of persuading Tom to sign himself into a mental institution. Save Sheriff the trouble of dragging him, kicking and screaming. A dry-out place behind bars someplace. Get some peace and quiet.
"Tom who?” I asked.
It was true I hadn't seen Tom Tipper for a while. I was sure Elizabeth—having gathered enough Down East lore during her investigations—might be guessing right. So the Sisters kidnapped the poor blighter, his recliner and all. They heaved the lot onto the back of the pickup truck and ferried the load to Bitch Island. They got their squeezes to help them maneuver chair and Tom on top of the giant marker. They tied everything up good, got back in their boat, and round and round the avengers go, firing away. Poff poff POFF.
All done now. Leave him up for a day to feed the vultures, then cut what's left loose. Weigh him down with four fifty-pound anchors attached to durable steel chain, and there he goes, off Bitches Ledge where the sea is, what ... five hundred feet deep?
"Sorry, Tom,” the Sisters would have said. But what the hell. Their law is the law.
Tom had it coming. Drunk out of his mind again, he had called the Sisters sexist names. He had been picking fights with big guys who felt embarrassed but hit him anyway, causing drunk-and-disorderly charges. Priscilla was about to ban him for messes made in the Dolphin's bathroom. Even I had avoided him lately, after he applied Zen to the art of shooting, showing me how to become one with his shotgun, and missing the target, a fifty-five-gallon drum at short distance.
Sheriff had pulled Tom's driving license. Tom, by now a habitual offender, still slammed his old truck around Bunkport's alleys. He would soon have to be arrested. The jails around here aren't known for comfort.
I drove out with Elizabeth to check Tom's trailer that the bank was aiming to foreclose on. The door was locked. Tom's dog, Cindy, wandered about outside, looking sickly. I offered her beef jerkies that I kept in the truck but her teeth were too weak. She snarled at Tillie, who wanted to play.
"Terrible,” Elizabeth said. “He could have gotten himself treated.” She shrugged. “Quit booze, swallow pills, what part of that is not to understand? But the Sisters went too far. Right, James?"
I huh-huh-ed.
"So you won't do nothing either?” (Elizabeth had picked up our double-negating ways).
I hah-hah-ed.
It wasn't that I wasn't horrified by what I was pretty sure had happened. Blame the Sisters? What do I know? I'm no part of a minority. Male heterosexual whites have it easy in Maine. We just bumble along, no need for defense. If white males would go out of fashion in Maine I might become vicious too. (This is where crime story #4 starts). We have a summer camp for city girls behind Bunkport, in the woods—pretty out there: a brook for skinny-dipping, a glade between the maple trees for campfires, some low hills for enjoying the views, a landscaped moss-and-shrub garden, Chinese style. And there are some comfortable lodges that belong to a trust set up by a long-dead wealthy lady. City girls can let go there, have themselves a nice vacation. But some of our trailer-trash rednecks liked to bother the girls for being different. The machos set fire to a lodge, punctured some tires, tore up tents, then raped a few of the young and pretty. There were no charges pressed, but Sheriff stepped in anyway, making arrests for DUI, driving to endanger, assaulting a police officer, and managed to hand out jail time. Enraged, the boys tried again, but this time the summer ladies contacted the Sisters by cell phone and before you could say Jane Robinson big motorbikes cut the boys’ vehicles off the road. There was some gunfire but no one got hit by bullets. The leader-rapist drowned in a shallow pond—I heard a whisper that some heavy person had a foot on his head. State detectives found no witnesses. The Sisters smiled sweetly. Beat-up rednecks claimed they had been drinking and couldn't remember having bothered no summer girls. Black eyes? They always had black eyes. Broken ribs? Same thing. People get careless with baseball bats. Who were swinging the bats? “Sorry, Detective, it was dark, I had two beers, you know how it goes."
Sheriff wasn't helpful either. Deputies Dog and Sycophant knew nothing neither. Tribal fights, liquor, minor bruises, boys will be boys, but no one died, except the drowned guy, but then, being no more, he couldn't press charges. Autopsy showed lots of liquor in the boss fellow's veins.
"Rape? Murder? Them are big words around here, Detective."
I didn't tell Elizabeth about all that, not then, but she kissed it out of me later. I didn't want her to get mad at me. We were having a good time. Intimacy can certainly be all it is cracked up to be. Shared laughs. Sex, ah, sure, sex too, but there is a limit to that. It's part of the thing, what with living in the same cabin and all. Good cooking. Tillie the dog took us for long walks. We hired a piloted airplane and I showed her the bays, islands, and coastal mountains. There were more warm and windless days, another brief Indian summer, and we lay about naked on my porch, sunning our scars.
Elizabeth had taken my truck to the Bangor mall to buy female stuff. I had gone boating. It so happened that Sheriff and I met on the water. Sheriff keeps rum on his boat, in case a hauled-out man-overboard needs warming up. There being a chill in the air again, we made some hot toddy.
Sheriff and I go back a ways. Back to when his wife got to knowing me a little bit better. Now that Elizabeth is in the way he no longer holds it against me.
In any case, the point was moot now that Dolly, having done with the departed dock builders, had gotten to know a Mexican landscape gardener who looked like, and was therefore named, King Carlos (of Spain). Sheriff told me he had found someone too, way out in Bangor. Which was good. A bit of distance makes the contact more exci
ting.
Sheriff, as I figured, knew about the bleeding chair on the channel marker. Eugene, our chief illegal clam digger, just wanted Sheriff to know. There was no dead body when he spotted the decorated marker, but another digger had heard shots earlier on that week. The other digger, having lost his license for working a closed area, hadn't bothered to go nearer.
Sheriff went out to check the crime scene but the chair was gone. The night's heavy rain and gale-force winds washed the marker clean.
"You didn't see no body?” Sheriff asked me.
"Me?"
He stared at me.
"No,” I said. “Elizabeth saw no body either. Just blood, cut ropes."
"She is going to talk to someone?"
"I hope not,” I said.
"And if she does?"
"I never saw nothing,” I said. “No chair either. Chair? What chair?"
We drank hot toddy.
"The victim is Tom, you know that,” Sheriff said. “Good riddance of good garbage. Pity. Right? Now how about perpetrators?"
"The Sisters?” I asked/told Sheriff.
"The Sisters?” he asked/told me.
Sheriff had checked on the whereabouts of Tom Tipper.
Like me, he hadn't been able to locate our friend. Like me, Sheriff had seen Cindy, Tom's dog, wandering about in bad shape. Unlike me, he had shot the old helpless and dying dog. Tom's old boat wasn't at its mooring. We all knew that Tom hardly had any lobster traps left and made his living, or his drinking, rather, by working traps owned by the Sisters.
"The chair?” I asked, for I hadn't been inside Tom's trailer for a while. Sheriff had. Tom's door was unlocked. Tom's huge old recliner was still there, beer-fart perfumed, in front of the DVD player (Tom didn't watch TV) with a Pat Metheny DVD in the slot.
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