by Judith Field
I still had the boat hook in my hand. I thrust the hook once, twice, three times at her fingers, at the back of her hand, at her neck and face, even dodging to the side so I could reach that green fin that hung from her back. Still she hung on, her second arm now wrapped around the engine casing, legs dangling down, shifting her body as she prepared to lift herself back into the boat. Her face all snarl and hissing tongue. Hungry snake eyes.
The motor, in the end, did the trick. Really, I had no other choice, jabbing that hooked metal rod at her face, hard, before lurching toward the bow. Blood dripping from my hand onto the steering column as I turned the key, and then the roar of the engine as it came to life.
¤
Back when Ocean City was filled with Hamills, we were always heading back to the sea. Sometimes Granny or Cousin Simon would get one of the men to take us out in their fishing boat, the spray rising up onto our faces, but none of us minding. And always there was Granny’s cooler filled with those green bottles stacked amid layers of ice.
On most nights we just floated, the old folks drinking down the beer, us tossing the empties into the sea, green glass floating away with the current, the drone of the boat’s motor steady as it sent the shards of glass spinning away from us all.
¤
The sound of that motorboat engine, now, was not all that different. It shuddered for a moment and then kept whirring. My blood falling to the deck while hers spread outward and away with the ocean current, green scales mixed with the red.
I made it back to shore somehow. I must have untied the rope from the buoy, must have pushed off with the pole, or maybe my hands. I must have, somehow, steered myself back. I don’t remember any of it. What I do remember is the dark cloud slowly spreading outward as that creature, that woman, fell back into the water, and the sudden silence of everything except that motor, the mewing stopped, all the green-yellow lights gone. Despite the silence, I knew her people were still nearby. But now I knew something else as well. I knew I truly was the only Hamill in Ocean City, the only Hamill in the bay itself. There wasn’t going to be any more tossing of bottles into the sea.
The Old Fort Street dock is south of the pier. As I stood on the dock I could see sparks rising from the beach, a bonfire some kids had started. “The following restrictions apply: No smoking. No fires on the beach. No glass containers.” I knew the words by heart. I could even see the dim outline of the sign. It stood not ten feet from their fire. But, really, I couldn’t blame them. Those kids, they didn’t have that much time. There weren’t too many clear nights left. But tonight the clouds had parted long enough to allow everyone a glimpse.
My daughter, Cindy might have gone up to Bangor, those two boys of hers, my grandsons, born miles from the sea. But Cindy, if she came back, Cindy I was sure, would walk the shore with me, both of us carrying our shoes, feeling the weight of wet sand between our toes, looking for bits of worn-smooth glass, filling our pockets with those shards once offered to the sea. Maybe the boys, too. All of us walking the land together, telling our own stories.
Julie Day graduated from the Stonecoast M.F.A. program and the Viable Paradise Writers' Workshop. By day she writes IT documents as well as documents of the more clearly fictional variety. Some of her favorite things include gummy candies, loose teas, and standing desks. You can find Julie online at http://www.stillwingingit.com.
A NUN’S TALE
By Pete McArdle
SISTER MARY DISMAS WAS DEAD, about this there can be no doubt. Her heart had stopped in the cold winter’s night, the blood had congealed in her veins, and as the clock tick-tocked her temperature dropped ever closer to the room’s, which she kept at sixty degrees. She was not one to waste energy.
Sister Mary Dismas was as dead as—well, St. Dismas himself, who back in the 13th Century had confronted a powerful miller who was producing tainted Communion hosts. The miller’s response was to stab and quarter Dismas, then grind him to dust under the massive millstone. Dismas was then incorporated into a new brand of host called “Holy Pumpernickel,” which became quite popular with the local communicants due to its speckled appearance and nutty taste. A disapproving Vatican, however, soon stepped in, and after canonizing the hapless Dismas had the miller slathered in lard and thrown into a dungeon full of Shih Tzus, where he was licked to death.
In life, Sr. Mary Dismas was much like her namesake: brave, strong-willed, and uncompromising. She would not look away from evil, could not be swayed from the course of her duties, and preferred her hosts just as Dismas did: pure, white, and papery. But now she was dead in her bed, and this must be clearly understood or nothing wonderful can come of this story.
After cardiac arrest the brain dies slowly, discrete pockets of neurons continuing to fire hours after the heart has ceased to beat. At six A.M. sharp, the morning after Sr. Mary Dismas’s demise, an undamaged shred of the nun’s cortex ordered her to rise—and she opened her eyes. She clumsily climbed out of bed, knelt down on the hard wood floor, and began her morning devotion. As she prayed, the nun felt numb and extremely sluggish, but this concerned her little, for Sr. Mary Dismas had taught fifth grade for fifty-two years, never once missing a day. She was not about to start now.
After washing up, the nun carefully donned her religious habit and soon her tall frame was draped in flowing black robes and veil, her face encased in stiff white cardboard, a distaff Darth Vader. If she’d looked in a mirror, she would have noticed her ashen cheeks and fixed pupils, but there was no mirror in her little cell, for she abhorred vanity.
At breakfast, Sr. Mary Dismas found she had no appetite, none at all, so she used the time to mentally review the day’s lesson plan. The other nuns at her table might have commented on her unusual pallor or unsullied plate, but they were all quite old and senile to varying degrees.
We’re a dying breed, thought Sr. Mary Dismas, looking around at the other nuns’ ancient, furrowed faces. There’d been no new sisters at the convent for more than a decade, and sadly, there were none on the way. To girls today, poverty and chastity meant driving a used Audi and waiting on sex till they were seventeen. The school affiliated with the convent, Virgin Birth Elementary, was now staffed almost entirely by lay teachers and except for Sr. Mary Dismas, the nuns had been relegated to non-essential subjects such as art, music, and religion.
At seven-fifteen on the dot, the dead nun left the dining room, put on her old wool coat, and walked the short distance from the convent to the school, a squat brick building which was perfectly square and perfectly ugly. The structure’s only saving grace was a huge stained-glass window over the entrance depicting the Holy Family: beautiful Mary holding sweet baby Jesus, their heads ensconced in golden halos, and behind them, a glum, bearded, Joseph.
As she neared the school, Sr. Mary Dismas gazed up at Mary, at her long, strong arms enfolding her infant Son. This sight never failed to inspire the nun and resonate with her devotion to her fifth-grade pupils. In their year with her, they would learn and grow in a safe and orderly environment, and not just some students, by God, but every last one of them.
Today her left foot dragged a little as Sr. Mary Dismas climbed the front steps and entered the building. Perhaps it’s time for a cane, she thought as she came to the principal’s office and peeked through the small window in the door. Principal Withers was talking to a tall, angular man wearing a badge, who abruptly turned and stared right at Sr. Mary Dismas. The nun did not like the way the man looked at her, not one bit, and she hurried on down the hallway, as fast as her imbalanced gait would allow.
Arriving at Room 12, the nun turned on the lights and raised the window shades. As always, she took a new stick of chalk from the box in her desk and wrote the day’s agenda on a side blackboard. She loved the smell and feel of the chalk, the whisking sound it made on the blackboard, and the neat, clean look of her list:
8:00 Morning Prayer
8:15 History: How the Early Settlers Converted the Indians
9:00 Geography: Th
e Cathedral at Lourdes
10:00 Math: Properties of Isosceles Triangles
11:00 Penmanship: The Correct Way to Write Capital “Q”
11:30 Religion: Common Venial Sins to Avoid
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Health: The Scourge of Herpes
1:30 Literature: “My Dog Skip”
2:15 Science: What’s a Pixel?
3:00 Dismissal
Soon the fifth-graders began arriving, the boys jostling each other and the girls talking loudly. Sr. Mary Dismas gave them time to hang up their coats and settle in at their desks, then demanded silence with a few taps of her pointer against the blackboard. If necessary, a look from her glacier-blue eyes—dull gray today—would calm the stray overstimulated student. When the room was perfectly quiet, the nun called attendance.
“William Adams?”
“Here.”
“Nancy Avery?”
“Here.”
“Clarisse Benet?”
“Present, Sister.” Clarisse was the best student in the class. She had red hair, braces, and perfect penmanship.
“Tammy Caputo?”
“Pres-ent, Sis-ter.” Sr. Mary Dismas glared at young Tammy, who glared right back. At age eleven she already had distressingly large breasts and frequently chewed gum.
“Tommy Dodd?”
“What?”
Several kids snickered. The light of intelligence flickered dimly in Tommy and few would have predicted he’d eventually own more than twenty Tommy’s Tacos franchises.
“Tommy Dodd?”
“Um… here.”
“Bobby Dolton?”
Silence.
Sr. Mary Dismas looked up from her attendance sheet and saw Bobby’s empty desk. Bobby was an angry, disruptive boy with an unfortunate tendency to pick fights. Just yesterday, he’d been kept after school until he’d written “I will keep my hands to myself” three-hundred times on the blackboard.
“Amy Ettinger?”
“Here.”
The nun continued down the list until Joseph Zapolski had been accounted for, then she signed it and asked Clarisse to take it to the principal’s office. While the girl was gone, Sr. Mary Dismas led the class in an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and the Pledge of Allegiance, watching Tammy closely to see if she was chewing gum. Several boys were also watching Tammy closely, especially Mark McAvoy, whose head bobbed every time she inhaled. Sr. Mary Dismas made a mental note to move his desk to the front row after lunch.
When Clarisse returned, she handed the nun an envelope and quietly took her seat. Inside the envelope was a request from Principal Withers that Sr. Mary Dismas meet with him at her earliest convenience. That would be lunchtime, she thought, since the children’s education was far more important than anything the principal might have to say. Mr. Withers was a small man, both in stature and substance, and he’d come to Virgin Birth under murky circumstances. Sr. Mary Dismas did not trust him any farther than she could throw him, which would have been a considerable distance considering their size differential.
As the nun was placing the note in her desk drawer, one of her fingernails got hung up on the desk’s edge and tore halfway off the nail bed. Shockingly, there was no pain at all and not a single drop of blood. She looked up to see if anyone had noticed.
Were some of the children looking at her strangely? It was hard to tell, her mind seemed to lack its normal clarity. Resolving to deal with the damaged fingernail later, the dead nun closed the drawer and began the day’s lessons, starting with the inspirational story of Father John Trump.
Father John was one of the first Catholic priests to set foot in what is now New York, and at great risk to himself, he managed to convert scores of savage Iroquois to Catholicism, thereby saving their souls when they were slaughtered by other colonists soon afterward. When Father John’s twin brother, Donald, arrived in America, he built hundreds of luxury cabins on the Indians’ vacated land, attracting boatloads of well-heeled Catholics to the New World and helping Father John attain the rank of Cardinal.
Later, in Geography, Sr. Mary Dismas showed the class slides of Lourdes, France. After numerous shots of forests and fields, peasants and goats, a photo of the Cathedral at Lourdes made everyone go Oooh! The nun was explaining how, in such a poor region, the Cathedral at Lourdes came to be decorated with so much gold and precious stones, when there was a sharp knock on the door.
It was the third-grade teacher, Ms. Van Dyke, who motioned for the nun to come out into the hallway. Sr. Mary Dismas was annoyed, both by the interruption and the interruptor, a powerfully-built woman with a blond crew-cut and a man’s wristwatch. The nun had long been leery of Ms. Van Dyke and worried about her influence on the young girls.
“I have terrible news, Sister,” said the third-grade teacher. “Yeesh! What’s that smell?”
“Excuse me?” said the nun. She smelled nothing, her olfactory grid having just quit.
“It smells like sh— uh, rotten food or something,” said Ms. Van Dyke, wrinkling her nose and checking the soles of her work boots. “In any case, it appears Bobby Dolton’s been murdered. He never came home from school yesterday, and this morning the police found his body behind Virgin Birth, near the stream that runs in back of the playground. His skull was smashed in.”
“Dear Lord, the poor child!” cried Sr. Mary Dismas. Although Bobby had been her own personal crown of thorns, and had in fact aggravated her more than the rest of the class put together, she’d never given up on him. She’d been determined to spark some passion in the boy, to awaken the intellect that surely lay dormant. But not now.
“The kids don’t know anything yet, Sister, but it’ll be all over the news tonight. Also, ‘Mr. Big’ and some cop want to see you ASAP,” said the third-grade teacher, then she walked away holding her nose. Sr. Mary Dismas greatly disliked nicknames, acronyms, and dramatic nose-holding, but managed a “Thank you” to Ms. Van Dyke’s broad back.
The nun wondered who could have done such a terrible thing. The killer must have been familiar to Bobby to have lured him to the stream; someone seemingly benign yet vicious and powerful enough to have inflicted such a grievous wound. Someone who had reason to hate the boy. Hmm.
Ms. Van Dyke, a competitive bodybuilder in her spare time, had certainly had her problems with Bobby in the third grade. He was constantly acting up and had repeatedly called her Ms. Man Dyke in front of the other children. That was two years ago, however, and the list of people Bobby had infuriated was now long and comprehensive.
Sr. Mary Dismas was stunned and saddened by the boy’s death, still, class must go on. The meeting with the principal and the policeman would have to wait until lunch. When the nun re-entered the classroom, Clarisse whispered, “Sister, are you all right?”
“Yes, dear,” said the nun, “Why do you ask?”
“You look a little peaked, that’s all.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” said Sr. Mary Dismas, “and I see you remembered ‘peaked’ from our vocabulary list.”
Clarisse smiled shyly.
Still pondering the girl’s remark, the nun picked up a piece of chalk and was drawing a triangle on the board when she noticed her hand. It was two-toned, the back of her hand as white as the chalk while the palm purplish-blue. From watching “CSI: Las Vegas” Sr. Mary Dismas knew exactly what this was: post-mortem lividity.
Why that’s absurd, she thought. I’m teaching, talking and walking, though not walking so well, I have to admit. I must make a doctor’s appointment and stop watching that foolish show. The dead nun furtively rubbed some chalk on her palms and then continued with the lesson. “Class, this is an Isosceles Triangle. It has the following properties…”
Twenty minutes later, the class was this close to comatose—all except for the McAvoy boy, who was clearly entranced with Tammy’s mammaries—when a loud booming on the door made everyone jump. Sr. Mary Dismas walked over and opened the door to Pasquale, the school custodian. Although he kept the school immaculate, Pasqu
ale himself was a magnet for dirt and grime, a sweaty three-hundred-pound magnet to be precise.
“I don’ fine no smell in the hall like Meez Van Dyke say,” he said.
Sr. Mary Dismas cringed under the onslaught of mispronunciation, double-negative, and fractured tense, but forgave Pasquale since English was his second language. The custodian had arrived in America nearly a decade ago but he’d concentrated more on linguini than linguistics, and it showed. Recently Pasquale had had to work far into the night, scrubbing spray-painted graffiti off the gymnasium floor. The graffiti read “Pasquale the Pig” and the artist was probably Bobby Dolton, but there’d been no proof. Had Pasquale acted on a grudge? Hmm.
The custodian leaned in and sniffed, and in a stage-whisper loud enough to be heard in the parking lot said, “I theen maybe you got some B.O., Seester.”
There was muffled laughter from the class and Sr. Mary Dismas would have turned crimson—except that color was no longer possible.
“Thank you, Pasquale,” she said, smiling thinly, and closed the door. Her wobbly walk, torn fingernail, and purple palms had all been disturbing, but to think she reeked was unbearable. She’d always had impeccable hygiene, cleanliness just as important as godliness, yet apparently… she stank.
“Class, I have to leave you temporarily,” she announced. “Please spend the next hour reading ‘My Dog Skip’, then go quietly to lunch.” Sr. Mary Dismas slowly surveyed the room, making eye contact with each student for emphasis.
“Mr. McAvoy, please move your things here,” she said, pointing to an empty desk in the front row. “Now!”