by John Enright
The phone never rang. No one else came in. At one point Starks went off and came back with two demitasse cups of freshly brewed espresso and another old album. “Shipwrecks,” he said. John Starks was openly, brazenly gay. The way he talked, the queenly way he walked and carried himself. This was no fag in hiding. He was himself and confident about it. If you had no use for it, then that was your problem, not his. Dominick found this lack of pretense relaxing. They talked about the photographs, Starks giving what details he knew, anecdotes and background. Dominick asked questions, studying details. The old ferryboats captured him. There was something so portly and maternal about them. Here was one washed up onshore in the hurricane of ’38, an injustice somehow greater and more personal than the other shipwrecks.
Then it was time for Dominick to leave if he was to catch the last ferry back to the island. Starks said for him to come back, that he had more photos to show him. Dominick said he would. “You said you were a photographer. What are you shooting?” Starks asked. When Dominick told him black-and-white but that he couldn’t find a local shop to develop them, Starks told him to bring him the film, that he would develop them. It was his hobby, too, only he had a darkroom. “Tomorrow then?”
The next day, Dominick brought his rolls of exposed but undeveloped film and gave them to Starks, and they went back to looking at photographs. Dominick had been struck by the barrenness of the country in the old photographs. A tree was like a special event. Every vista was of empty land, with isolated, stark four-corner buildings stuck here and there like enemies both of one another and the tundra landscape. These days, trees and forests filled all the empty spaces. The bay islands, which now were covered with seemingly primordial woods, had once been stripped so bare that they looked like naked flesh in sepia—a thigh, a hip, a knee of some drowned giant. The coastal plains behind New Jerusalem were similar—boundless fields that could have been Iowa after a corn harvest. John Starks explained that this place astride the protein bounty of the bay had always been prime real estate and that the original human inhabitants liked to burn off the understory to keep the forests clear and parklike for better hunting. “Even though they didn’t graze, they pushed the forests back.”
Then came the next wave of inhabitants, the ones who came on wooden ships and built wooden houses and kept sheep and cattle that needed pastureland. “They also burned a lot of wood. It was their only fuel.” A typical New England farmstead would consume a dozen cords of firewood a year. A small hamlet would clear several acres of forest a year just to burn. “Combined with what they took from the bay and the outer banks, it was a real striptease,” Starks said. “Our forefathers didn’t fool around.”
Generally, Dominick had little idea as to what day of the week it was. It made no difference to him. There was no event or anticipation that set one day off from another, so he often lost track. His was not a life of calendar events. “Three days from now” was about as complex as his scheduling ever got. But he knew that on Friday and Saturday nights there was an off-season late ferry from New Jerusalem. He had a suspicion it might be the weekend, so when he got on the ferry that morning he had asked, and was told, yes, there would be a late boat that evening, seeing as it was Friday. He would not have to hurry back to the dock at dusk.
John Starks knew the ferry schedule, too. As the afternoon darkened he asked, “Can you take the late boat back tonight, Dominick?”
“I was planning on it; maybe have supper over here somewhere.”
“Good. Let me close up shop early and we’ll go,” Starks said, and he set about turning off lights and turning on alarms. He returned dressed for departure—tan leather gloves, a raw silk scarf, a camel hair overcoat.
It was only a three- or four-block walk—an old-town block up, a brick block over, another narrow block in, and then down a short Sherlock Holmes-style alley. On the way they continued their discussion of digital photography, their shared disdain for Photoshopped lies and deceptions, colors so enhanced they were a different color altogether, the dozens of framing and focus and contrast and brightness tricks that could be played with one lackluster shot until something better emerged, all the crispness and clarity and honesty of true photography murdered. Starks had a special hatred for those huge, pixel-blurred, printed-on-canvas works that pretended to be Impressionist paintings: “The neon-colored dories afloat on a never-to-be-seen blue sea, the cut-and-paste still lifes of flowers that grow in opposite seasons, blaze-doctored sunsets that even Turner would have been embarrassed by. If they want to be seen as painters, then why don’t they learn how to paint, instead of pushing their computer mouse around and just clicking?”
They entered by a low side door. Now that no one could smoke in pubs anymore there was no tobacco aroma to mix with and mask the sour-sweet smell of spilt beer and drinkers. The noise was the same though—the din of many layers of simultaneous conversations, men’s and women’s voices mingling, snorts and peals of laughter. Occasional full phrases came through—“Cheap as shit,” “So I called her again,” “No lie,” “He never did it again, I’ll tell you that.” Down a few steps to a low-ceilinged room with three dartboards all in use and through there to the busy barroom itself. John Starks led the way. He was a familiar there. They found an empty corner booth away from the bar. A waitress trailed them there with a tray and a rag to clear and wipe off the table. “Good evening, Sir John,” she said. “You’re a bit early. The usual?”
“Yes, thank you, Annie. Dominick?”
It was an Irish pub. Even their waitress had an old-country lilt to her voice. “A pint of Guinness,” Dominick said. They removed their coats and sat down. “Sir John?”
“It’s their joke name for me here in The Harp. I’m not one of them. I don’t have to work with my hands and I don’t have to work outdoors in all seasons like most of these gents do. So they pretend I am from a different class—different, not necessarily superior—and have mentally knighted me. I’ve been Sir John here for so long that some of the newer regulars think it’s my actual name. I had one chap ask me what kind of a surgeon was I then.”
“Probably had a bad back.”
Starks chuckled. “Actually he did, wanted a referral.”
“And a consultation.”
“I don’t do bar calls. Thank you, Annie. Anything special on the menu tonight?”
“No oysters, no chowder,” she said, putting down their drinks. Starks was having an Irish coffee.
“It being Friday, I’ll have the fish and chips. Dominick, I’d recommend the shepherd’s pie. Not the usual pub fare, a specialty of the house.” Dominick nodded in agreement. “And a shepherd’s pie. Tell Malcolm it’s for me.”
Dominick waited for the head on his Guinness to thin. “So, are there other members of The Harp’s royalty class, or are you the sole survivor of the revolution?”
“Oh, there are a few others. You can’t have many, you know. It spoils the illusion. There’s the Duke, who owns the place, and Queen Emma, who may actually be royalty somewhere outside The Harp. There’s the dead Prince. It being Friday, they may stop in later. Not the dead Prince, of course.”
“Cause of demise?”
“A fatal DUI or overdose. No one seems to remember for sure, but he was quite the favorite here before the gods took him.”
“A different class of people.”
“Absolute social necessity, even in a microcosmic culture like this pub.” Starks took a long sip of his drink, leaving a thin line of cream on his upper lip that he licked away. “Without contradictions there can be no definition. There has to be an other before you can have a self. More basic to our nature than walking upright.”
“So, why create classes? Why not just be yourself?”
“If everyone lived like a shaman in a hut on the edge of town, there would be no town to be around. Besides, creating classes gives one the comfort of solidarity. You know, the old us-against-them thing. There’s a lot of power there.”
“I’ve seen the doc
umentaries.”
“Also, you are spared the effort of trying to understand differences. You just lump the strange stuff together and call it theirs. You will have noticed that there is not a non-Caucasian person in this establishment. Those other racial classes are wholly excluded here. They have their own places to go. This is a working-class Irish bar, basically mono-class. Oh, some may be foremen by now and some retired, but it’s all one when it comes to who they are. Good people, don’t get me wrong.” Starks had finished his Irish coffee and motioned for Annie to bring him another. “Being peons with no one below them, they created an aristocracy, a mythic class of not-them.”
“Sir John,” Annie said as she came to the table with their dishes.
The shepherd’s pie was excellent—thin crusted, herbal, succulent, with tender lamb and sirloin chunks. “A royal peasant dish,” Dominick said, pushing his empty plate aside.
“Don’t confuse things,” Starks said. He had eaten only half his fish and chips and ordered another Irish coffee. “But don’t you agree that human societies invariably create an upper class? Why is that? In many cases they even worshipped them, deified them. From what Darwinian need did that impulse arise? Adoration of the wealthy is more prevalent in America today than it was in ancient Rome. No progressive movement will ever wipe that out.” Annie had come to take their dishes away. “Thank you, sweet Ann, but aren’t you getting a little bit broad in the hip there?”
“That would be because I’m pregnant, Sir John, and none of your fookin business.”
“Of course, no longer having life or death powers does lessen the level of respect,” Starks said as she walked away.
“You did call it an illusion.”
“Yes, an essential one. In order to accept me they must create a category that is not them.”
“Does your being gay have anything to do with it?”
Starks laughed. “Oh, I’d say so, yes. The sexual lives of the royal class have always been of special interest to the hoi polloi, the more outré and risqué the better. Every pantheon and royal family is filled with sex-obsessed superstars and deviants. What do tabloids feed the masses? Where would Zeus be without his sacred Priapus? Which brings us to you, Dominick of no last name.” Starks turned and caught Annie’s eye and waved her over. “Annie, bring us brandies that we might toast your new baby.”
He turned back to Dominick. “First off, I don’t believe your name is Dominick at all. It was just the first word that came to your mind when I asked you your name and you couldn’t come up with a last name to match. No one is named Dominick anymore, at least not in this country. And you are from this country, though you have spent time abroad, England or Ireland. The way you said ‘a pint of Guinness.’ But that’s alright. No matter what your given name may be, you are Dominick to me. I respect—nay, I admire—your chosen anonymity.”
Annie came with two snifters of brandy, and they toasted her. “To your beautiful belly, may it bring forth a beautiful child,” Starks said loud enough for others around them to hear. His toast was answered by a ragged chorus of “Here, here” and “I’ll drink to that” and “To Annie’s fair belly.”
“You,” Annie said, blushing. “If you weren’t such a great tipper, Sir John, I’d throw you out.”
Starks turned back into the booth. “Back to you, Dominick. In spite of your chosen appearance, your working class attire and your . . .” Starks waved his hand toward Dominick’s face.
“Be kind and call it a beard.”
“Whatever. In spite of your affected disguise, you are not a member of the general class at all. You are not the sailor I first mistook you for when you came into the museum. For one thing, you have done very little real labor in your life. A working man by your age has broken, sprained, and strained so many parts of his body that he moves with certain cautions and restraints, rather than your relaxed—dare I say?—floppiness. Your hands—though quite handsome—are soft and unmarred. I can tell by your teeth that you were raised with care, and you have yet to mispronounce a foreign word. No, Agent Dominick, you pass undercover poorly. Remember those Cold War spy movies where the American spy would get caught because he switched knife hands to cut and eat his meat?”
“Agent? Agent of what? Or should that be of whom?”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter either. I have nothing to hide. I just find it fascinating, that’s all. Someone who is not whom we pretend him to be. You, Dominick, are just a visitor to my museum, a man interested in old photographs, a photographer himself as it happens. You are not gay, so neither of us is sexual prey. A possible friend perhaps, but just as possibly someone who will vanish like any other tourist.”
“Well, you do have my film, which you have kindly offered to develop.”
“That’s right. I have a temporary purchase on your return. Which reminds me.” Starks reached over and fumbled around in the pocket of his camel hair coat. “Here,” he said, handing over to Dominick four 35mm film canisters, “Kodak T-Max 400, twenty-four a roll. It’s what I’ve been shooting. I’m sure you must be out or close to it. The only place you can buy it these days is online, and you don’t strike me as an online type of person.”
“Why, thanks, John. As a matter of fact I am almost out of film. What do I . . . ?”
“I’ll put it on your bill.” Starks waved him off. “Ah, look, Queen Emma has arrived.”
Dominick looked toward the bar, where a tall woman in a cape had made an entrance. Her back was to them. After receiving the greetings of those at the bar, she turned to survey the room and saw Starks and Dominick sitting in their corner booth. Starks blew her a kiss, and she smiled a queenly smile. If everyone else in the room was 100 percent Caucasian, Queen Emma was not—jet-black hair pulled back in a bun, a broad face with a permanent tan. Part something, not African, maybe Incan or American Indian or Pacific Islander. She was a large woman, but large the way a panther was large, not a bear. She was young. In her thirties maybe? Hard to tell. Her movements were graceful. She carried herself with an easy regality. Dominick could see why she had been granted royal standing. Someone handed her a glass of red wine. She headed in their direction.
“There you are, Sir John, my precious princess,” she said as she came up to them. “Have you been hiding from me?”
Starks stood up to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Hiding? Who can find you? You are never where you say you will be.”
“Well, I just got back and now you can avoid me no longer.” She glanced at Dominick dismissively. “We really must talk.”
Another round of drinks arrived at their table, unsummoned—another brandy for Starks, a brandy and a pint of Guinness for Dominick, and another glass of red wine for Queen Emma. Starks made no move to introduce Dominick to Queen Emma, and as she sat down Dominick got up and took his new drinks to another empty booth, back into the anonymous crowd as it were, leaving the nobles alone to their privileged conversation. He didn’t mind. He had less need of Queen Emma than she had of him. He’d had his fill of those types. He sipped his drinks and watched the crowd as it changed from guys just off work to a younger contingent getting an early jump at Friday night. Annie brought him another brandy, “From Sir John,” she said.
By the time Dominick retrieved his coat from where it was hung near the corner booth both Starks and Queen Emma were gone. He hadn’t seen them leave. In the pocket of his denim jacket were the four film canisters he had left on the table. He wondered what time it was.
Chapter 10
The front-page above-the-fold story in the next morning’s New Jerusalem News was headlined “Terrorists Strike Again at Old Grofton: Submarine Bomb”:
Federal, state and local authorities have again converged on the Old Grofton waterfront after a second suspicious explosion there. According to eyewitness reports a large underwater explosion off Darby Point at about noon yesterday sent a plume of water 30 feet into the air. The wave of water caused by the explosion, estimated at least 10 feet high, caused exte
nsive damage to boats and docks at nearby Larsen’s Marina. No deaths or injuries were reported.
The incident occurred in the same area as an explosion and fire on land last month that federal agencies have called an act of terrorism. The area is the site of the proposed Hercules Corp liquid natural gas terminal and processing plant.
Following the explosion the Old Grofton Police quickly cordoned off and evacuated all of Darby Point, and bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in. In the previous incident a second, undetonated device was found. There were no reports of other bombs being found this time.
By midafternoon several teams of divers from the State Police, Coast Guard and Navy were on the scene conducting underwater searches.
Special Agent Kerwood Rexroth of the FBI said that although the investigation was only in its preliminary stages, there was every reason to suspect that the explosion was connected to the earlier incident. “We have the same location, the same M.O., a similarly sophisticated and powerful explosive device. Only this time they struck in broad daylight, endangering lives and property.”
No individual or group has claimed responsibility for either attack, and authorities have not released the identities of any possible suspects.