Storm Tide

by Marge Piercy

  Johnny continued through Saltash center and out Dock Street along the harbor, up the state highway ten miles, then into the neighboring town of Sandy Bars. Only when he signaled a left turn toward the bay did he answer, “To what they call their town pier.”

  “What the hell for? There’s nothing there.”

  Johnny pulled into a cracked asphalt parking lot, a peninsula surrounded on three sides by muddy tidal marsh. A row of dories and small motorboats lay one against the other along the back fence. A couple of old-timers in hip boots hung out on the steps of the Sandy Bars harbormaster’s shack. This was a high-tide harbor; boats sat in the mud until the tide came up. Until then, there was no channel, no access to the sea. Johnny nosed the car up to a guardrail and shut the engine. “What do you see here?”

  “What am I supposed to see? Nothing.”

  “How does it compare to Saltash harbor?”

  “It doesn’t,” David said.

  Saltash had thirty draggers, ten lobster boats, fifteen sport fishing charters. Johnny knew the numbers by heart. In season there were slips for 215 sailboats, 180 powerboats and a waiting list triple that. There were tackle stores and restaurants; two thriving boatyards, a summer theater, picnic tables, parking for four hundred, a bandstand, public showers and a fish market. Johnny stretched his arm across David’s seat, sending him sideways to the door. “Now why the fuck do you think that is?”

  The boy hedged. “We have a better natural harbor.”

  “Study your geography, son. Saltash harbor is a shallow embayment with a tidal amplitude of ten feet, about the same as what you’re staring at. Sandy Bars could have had a fine harbor too, but nobody had the brains or the balls to make it happen. Thirty-five years ago I looked at Saltash and saw a town crying for an industry. That’s why you’re looking at this mud puddle in front of you while ten miles down the coast we have a beautiful working harbor.”

  “On which you bought up and sold—how many waterfront acres was it? Land you made valuable with public money.”

  So it was a pissing contest he wanted? “All right, David. Let’s say I made a little money in my time. Let’s say also that I managed to do something for my people along the way. What have you done? What did Gordon and his wealthy retired friends do? They don’t give a fuck about who works or who doesn’t because they don’t have to work. As far as they’re concerned, the local women can clean their toilets and the men mow their lawns. Take your best shot, son, go ahead. What else do your fancy backers accuse me of? Keeping the state from turning half of Saltash into a fucking bird sanctuary? Am I supposed to apologize? The land we kept out of the state’s hands is what we call the tax base, son. That’s what pays for the police and the rescue squad and the best school system within a hundred miles.”

  “Isn’t the principal of the school your sister, Johnny? Maybe we ought to rename the place Coincidence, Massachusetts. Because we sure have our share.” The little prick kept pushing. “And didn’t the selectmen happen to buy your land to build the school on? And didn’t you handpick the contractor so the roof always leaks and the foundation is cracking?”

  “The people of Saltash always made out,” Johnny said, a little louder than he meant to.

  “Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

  Johnny sighed. He was tired, as if he could sleep for the rest of the afternoon. “What do you say we have a drink together?”

  “Thanks. I don’t have the time.”

  Johnny laughed to himself. “Neither did your father, do you know that? In all the years we did business together, he never once had the time for a drink.”

  As he drove back, Johnny tried to figure it out, how this cocky little high school pitcher had come back to haunt him. Johnny had heard he was screwing Judith Silver, Gordon’s child bride. For all the cheap gossip Johnny himself had generated, this town had never seen anything like Gordon Stone and his drugs and naked orgies and string of women. But the kid had been hanging around his new secretary too. He’d have to find out what was going on.

  David Greene was a lightweight; youth and resentment, that’s all he had going. So what was so upsetting? Why did Johnny feel like he could pull the covers over his head and sleep the day through until morning? In front of Linda Greene’s house, Johnny offered his hand. “Well, son, goodbye and good luck. Tell your mother thanks for putting herself out.”

  The kid nodded and slammed the car door, never acknowledging Johnny as a man or an adversary with whom he’d have to contend in the future.

  And that was it, Johnny understood. That’s what was bringing him down. Under this boy’s contempt, Johnny was disappearing, shedding his importance. All his talent to move people, gone; his influence and the fear he instilled in men, gone; his eyesight and his stamina; his dear wife and what once seemed a small fortune. He was losing his life in pieces.

  History and experience, all his accomplishments meant nothing. They kept coming at him: ambitious young pit bulls, smelling weakness, hungry for a fight. If it was a dogfight David Greene wanted, then a dogfight he’d get. The old schoolteacher wouldn’t have been Johnny’s first choice, but he’d backed worse and he’d won. Her family had been in the town two hundred years, and if people weren’t crazy about her, they remembered her dad or her brother fondly. The Endicott clan alone were worth forty votes. It would be a dirty campaign, but Blossom could lick David Greene, and that was all he needed to get this depression off his back. To win, again. To win.

  JUDITH

  Judith’s secretary Mattie told her that David had been seen with a woman who just moved back to town. When her partner Austin retired, Judith had kept Mattie on. Mattie was fourteen years older than Judith and doubted she could have found another job as good. Therefore she offered Judith a fierce loyalty that Judith cherished. Mattie had white hair braided around her head in an old-fashioned style, hair that would come well past her shoulders if loosened. She wore thick glasses and was stooped, but bright and fast. She had made herself comfortable with computers. She kept up, with an edge of desperation, for her divorce had left her with little but her house and debts. Her two sons who lived on the Cape were more a drain than a resource.

  Mattie knew who Crystal was: the daughter of a dentist who had left town under a shadow. “His hands used to shake. The story was, he was addicted to painkillers and wrote himself script all the time. He got into trouble in two other states, people said, but his license was still good in Massachusetts. Finally he hurt a woman bad, our kindergarten teacher. A sweet lady. Johnny Lynch hushed it up but made him go.”

  “So how old was Crystal when her family left town?”

  “Most of the way through high school, I’d say. A pretty girl, but her reputation wasn’t. The parents split up. The mother went out West, I heard, and the father moved to Troy, New York. He and my ex-husband used to go fishing together and, every year, he sends my husband a Christmas card with a fish or a duck on it. I sent him a postcard years ago that Mick had left, but he just ignores it and sends him a card at my house every Christmas.”

  Mattie paused for a moment, her mouth dipping down. “I don’t know if I should say this. I never cared for Crystal. My boy Cal went out with her in high school, and it made me nervous. She had him twisted around her little finger. I kept finding condoms in his drawer, although he’d deny there was any of that going on. I was terrified she was going to get pregnant and he’d have to marry her. I was so relieved when they left town, I can’t tell you. She’s a sly one. She used to try to butter me up.” Mattie shook her head. “It makes me nervous, just having her back. Even though Cal’s married. I’m not even going to mention that she’s in town again.”

  Mattie reported two days later that Crystal was living with another woman, her own boy and a little girl at 114 Dock Street. That meant she had no money. Mattie also reported she was working for Johnny Lynch. Was David consorting with the enemy? To what degree? What was Crystal to him? Probably he knew her from school.

  Crystal Sinclair. Now
she had a name. Judith sat in her office, a little ashamed of herself for her curiosity. But David had withdrawn from her. Even when she was with him at his place she had the sense of something working against her, besides his squeamishness about the unconventionality of their arrangement. Someone perhaps; perhaps Crystal Sinclair. She had felt a kind of shadow between them that had not been there.

  Gordon asked what was troubling her, and she told him, briefly, trying to downplay her anxieties. She disliked keeping anything from him, but she did not want to burden him with her worries. He frowned. “Is she pretty?”

  “I have no idea. She’s younger than me, of course.”

  “It seemed to me, the way he looked at you, the way he acted, that he was deeply involved.” Gordon muttered something she did not catch. Then he said, “You’ll have to fight back.”

  “Perhaps. How many battles can we fight at one time?” Dr. Barrows had told her there would be no more operations. He could see no point to removing more of Gordon’s lungs. “We should make him as comfortable as we can,” he said. It sounded like a death sentence. She was sleeping badly again. Gordon was weaker. He was on painkillers, a system that released what he needed when he felt he needed help.

  “But couldn’t he become addicted?” she asked Dr. Barrows.

  “That isn’t really a problem at this point.”

  She sometimes felt as if Gordon were headed out to sea in a kayak, alone, paddling into the distance. He had drawn into himself more than at any time since they had been together. All his attachments seemed at a remove from his passionate concern with his body and his illness. If only David had been willing to run, that would have helped, for the only thing that had seemed to absorb Gordon was the possibility of defeating Johnny Lynch and finally ousting him from power, from control of the town. That snagged his attention, that roused his passion and his remaining energy. Sometimes she had thought that hope was keeping him alive. Johnny Lynch and Gordon had squared off against each other years ago. Gordon was convinced Johnny had been behind the great pot raid on his compound, that he had used his influence to cause trouble. He was also convinced Johnny had pushed through building codes specifically to prevent him from playing with his building projects. Johnny, Gordon said, had always been sick with jealousy of him, what he imagined as his scads of women, the pleasure and the celebrity he enjoyed. With Judith, it was a purely political animosity; but Johnny had brought the authorities down on Gordon’s head, costing him thousands in legal expenses.

  She was fighting a child custody case for a lesbian jewelry shop owner. It was being pushed hard by the father and his Boston lawyer. By this time he honestly hated his divorced wife and her new lover. There would be no compromise. Barbara had sent the woman to her.

  She found herself sitting in her office brooding about David, lying awake at night thinking of him. She missed him. It was unfortunate that she had fallen in love with him. Had she fooled herself about his feelings? Or was the problem the woman he kept being seen with? Was he in love with Crystal? Perhaps she should simply forget him. Or had he withdrawn from her because he was ashamed of backing out of the election? If only he would open up and talk.

  Barbara and she often had lunch together when they were both in court, even when they were on opposite sides of a case. They discussed forming a partnership in a few years when Barbara was ready to leave the district attorney’s office. The major pull keeping her there was the hope that her boss would be appointed a judge in the next year or two and she would then run for his office. Barbara would like to be the district attorney.

  Judith told Barbara about what was happening with David, or not happening. She repeated what she had learned of the woman who had come to Saltash when she was a little girl, who had lived in Arizona and in Seattle. And Nevada. Mattie knew Marie, who worked for Johnny Lynch; Marie told her that Crystal had gone to college in Las Vegas. A wandering woman looking for a better life? A better man?

  Gordon was eating less and less. Occasionally he still had a good day. He rallied when old friends visited or when his children came home, particularly Natasha. “I’ll be interning on Sanibel Island, where there’s a facility that treats wild birds and animals. I’m excited about it. I was lucky to be accepted.” Natasha arrived with an injured crow. He was moved into the shed that was an aviary, with a screened enclosure on the side.

  “Can you be here for the summer?”

  “I’ll stay for June. Then I have to report to Sanibel. It’s near Fort Myers. I can fly back, if it’s necessary.”

  Neither of them said aloud why it would be necessary. Judith began to feel an invisible guest at every meal, the Angel of Death.

  “Natasha, do you think I made a mistake getting involved with David Greene? Did I see more in him than there is?”

  Natasha shrugged. “You know him better than I do. I was surprised by your choosing him. I supposed you’d find an intellectual.”

  “No one I found could ever compete with your father. But I thought he was a good, solid, kind man. I sensed that he wanted to learn things, to grow. And he’s a Jew. I feel more comfortable being involved with a Jewish man. It’s one less problem. Besides, he has great physical presence. I guess I like that. And he loves the Cape.”

  “Good physical presence.” Natasha grinned slyly. “In other words, he’s a hunk.”

  “Not that, exactly. He’s comfortable in his body. He doesn’t sit in a little cab up on the top of the machine.” She did not tell Natasha that after several years of nursing Gordon, health itself was a treasure to her, strength and health moved her in and of themselves. “I thought he was as serious about me as I am about him. Now I have doubts.”

  “Maybe he figures he can have a girl on the side, since you’re married to Gordon.”

  “That may be. But I’d feel much better if I didn’t sense him withdrawing. And I’d feel much better if he was talking to me about it. He’s never mentioned her. Not once.”

  “Maybe he’s scared to. You know, Daddy had affairs when I was growing up. It wasn’t a secret.”

  “But I never have, until David. Now I feel vulnerable.”

  “Gordon loves you. I love you. If David doesn’t, he’s an idiot.”

  Barbara summoned her for a special breakfast together. “I have information on your friend’s friend. You’re not going to like this.”

  When Judith returned to her office at ten, she started a file labeled GLASS and encoded it for herself only. Crystal Sinclair had left no record in Arizona except for her driver’s license. After six years in the Seattle area, she had gotten in trouble for bad checks but had made restitution and the case was dropped. She next turned up in Vegas. She appeared in police records because a friend, a prostitute, had reported that Crystal had trashed her apartment and threatened her with a scissors. Apparently Crystal accused the woman of interfering between her and her boyfriend. According to the police report, they had been drinking together when the fight broke out, and Crystal, the other woman alleged, had gone crazy. The case dragged on for a year with many delays. Finally the woman disappeared, Crystal pleaded no contest and began to attend alcohol rehab meetings. Apparently the next year she left Las Vegas.

  So that was Crystal Sinclair, David’s new friend. Judith did not think David naive enough to have become seriously involved with her. Probably he knew her from school and felt sorry for her. She had had a hard life, obviously, and it could not have been easy for her son. Johnny Lynch had protected her father, the addicted dentist, so perhaps he viewed the daughter as owing him, or as under his protection also. She did not intend to tell David what she had learned. It would be unethical, as well as exposing Barbara. Moreover, if he had slept with the woman, she would come off as jealous. But the woman was trouble. She would keep that history in mind.

  DAVID

  I’d heard a couple of stories about fistfights, shouting, the time Slow Boat Richardson pissed on a candidate’s literature. I’d put it off every day this week, but this much I knew: you
could call them, write them, post signs in their faces, get your name in the papers and promise the world, but if you didn’t have the nerve to greet people face-to-face in the Saltash post office parking lot and ask them for their vote, you were not going to get it.

  Saturday, I got there earlier than the postmaster and sat in my front seat with a stack of six-by-eight cards, my picture on one side, on the other every endorsement for my good character I could come up with. The first to pull up was the Corn Man. White hair in a ponytail, red suspenders. Every August the land surrounding his small gray house, front and side yards, every arable inch down to the road, was crowded with stalks of butter and sugar corn.

  When he stepped out of his car, I waved. He looked away. I took a step toward him. He jogged to his left. I stopped in front of him with my hand out. He gave up and waited.

  “Good morning.” I pushed my literature against his tightly closed fist. “My name is David Greene. I’m running for selectman.”

  He looked from the picture on the card to me and back to the picture. I was indeed the asshole I said I was. Now what?

  “If you have any questions you’d like to ask?”

  “No, no.” He gazed longingly over my shoulder at the post office door.

  “Well, sir, I hope I can count on your vote.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, brushing past my shoulder and deftly pitching my card in the trash.

  As the sun rose and the wet surface of the parking lot shrank to a small dark puddle, I pressed myself on the Passionate Plumber who wore the zipper of his coveralls open to his navel and doused himself in Old Spice; to my ex–sixth-grade teacher, who proofread my literature; an electrician Holly dated in high school; the chief of police; a couple who tried to sell me a water filtration system; and a man who warned me away with open palms, his wrists and arms slathered pink. “Poison ivy! Poison ivy!” he said, slipping past me like a leper into a dark Calcutta alley.