Mike’s job had lasted three weeks. The carpentry skills he had learned at the rehab centre were not advanced enough for the needs of the builder.
‘It’s rotten bad luck,’ Lily said.
Mike had helped to carry in the grocery bags, and they were all three sitting round the kitchen table, discussing his future.
‘I don’t know. Must have been my fault.’
Probably was, but it was bad luck too, the kind of inherent luck that dogs a loser like this, even when he tries to get his life together. He had liked the work, and seemed to have tried his best, and when his employer brought in another carpenter without warning him, Mike had gone round some local builders in Vermont, vainly trying to find at least a low-paid job where he could learn.
He had gone back to New Bedford. One man who might have given him a job remembered about the bridge, and said, ‘Whoa – wait a minute. Aren’t you the guy who – ?’
Ida and Shirley were away visiting Shirley’s family in New Haven. If Mike could not find work, he would have to go back to the rehab and ask for a psychiatrist’s letter to get Social Security special payments.
‘I walked out of that place proud,’ he told Paul and Lily. ‘A good job and a new life. “Don’t come back,” they said, like a kind of joke. So it would be tough.’
‘It would be a step back,’ Lily said. ‘Perhaps we can help you to find something.’
‘My record’s bad.’
‘You can’t have that hanging round your neck for ever.’
‘Hard to get rid of, though,’ Paul said more realistically.
‘But how’s he ever going to make something of his life if no one will give him a chance?’
‘That’s true.’ Paul’s resentment against Mike’s intrusions last year was forgotten. That didn’t matter now. He was sorry for the man, and he wanted to show Lily that he could be part of her work, because she was part of his.
‘Let’s see, maybe I have an idea that could tide you over.’
Here was a way to thank her properly for giving up so gracefully the excitement and acclaim of her conference.
Isobel knew that Tony wasn’t too pleased when Ida’s taxi driver turned up, one of Mud’s lame dogs, who was going to clear brush and thin saplings in the new field, and finish the fences and the horse shelter: things that would have been Tony’s jobs. He had no time to do them himself now, but he wasn’t happy about someone else moving in.
‘You stay clear of him, Bella,’ he warned.
‘Why? He’s quite nice, for a nut case.’
‘That’s it. He is a nut case.’
They knew, although no one had told them, that this Mike was the man who had jumped off the bridge that night when Mud was a heroine. Not that wanting to kill yourself was all that far out. It was talked about a lot at school, and a few of the kids had even overdosed, or cut themselves.
‘Anyway, I hardly ever see him,’ Isobel told Tony. ‘He’s down in the back field beyond your house all the time.’
He was up at her house occasionally, because he had helped to bring Cathy’s little blue sailfish up from Hidden Harbor, and he was scraping and repainting it with her in his own time. It was Isobel’s sailfish as well, but she had lost interest in it, because Tony, born and brought up near the ocean, thought boats were toys of the rich, unless they were fishing boats, or the Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket ferries, on which he was going to start crewing next year when his younger brother graduated from school and took over the bulldozer and back hoe.
Everyone had always thought that Isobel would grow out of Tony, if you can grow out of someone five years older than you. But at fifteen, she needed and wanted him more than ever. He had grown into a man, good looking and muscular, with thick curling black hair and a wide white smile. She did not mind too much about his other girls. They would never be special to him, like Isobel. They were just practice for him, while he was waiting for her.
Now she could not see the sense of waiting any longer.
Megan and Josie Phillips and Mary-Anne had all had sex. ‘I really want to,’ Isobel said.
‘No you don’t, Bella. You’re too young. Your Dad would kill me.’
‘He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t know anyway, but even if he did, what difference if we do it now? We’ll be doing it when we’re married.’
‘You’re not going to marry me, Bella.’
‘I am. Why not?’
‘Girls like you don’t marry Portugees.’
‘Shut up. You talk about racism. It’s you guys who perpetuate it.’
‘What if I married someone like Tony?’ she asked her father.
‘Well – he’s too old for you.’
‘You’re too old for Mudder.’
‘Yes. I knew you’d say that.’
‘Wouldn’t you care that he was black?’
‘No, of course not. I hope not.’
A lot of people talked liberally like that, but could not pass the test of, ‘But would you let your daughter …?’ Dad would, she honestly believed.
Mike had acquired a dog since he came to Cape Cod, a heavy young black dog, a Labrador, like half the dogs on the Cape, that some man had sold to him for ten dollars in a bar. He was rather quarrelsome, for a Lab. The people who rented a room to Mike didn’t want him to keep it there, so he offered the dog to Cathy, and of course she took it.
‘We don’t need another dog,’ Lily told Mike when she found out about it. They were only just free of one of Cathy’s strays, a terrier who had started chasing horses and had to be sent away.
‘I didn’t know what else to do with Hector.’ Sometimes Mike talked to Mud in a very dumb way, mumbling and not looking at her, and fumbling his hands as if they belonged to somebody else.
‘We always need another dog,’ Cathy said. ‘I wish we had six. Dad’s always bringing in more horses. Why can’t I –’
‘Arthur won’t like it.’
‘Arthur doesn’t care. They’ve met and Hector was a lamb. He just wants to get along with everybody and be a good dog and I’ll feed him and take care of him, and –’
‘And he’ll be no trouble and everyone will grow to love him.’ Isobel finished for her. Like all the dogs and cats and rabbits and guinea pigs and tortoises that Cathy had introduced. The latest before Hector was a dwarf donkey, who lived in the loose box with her pony.
‘Oh dear,’ Mudder said. But she could not turn away Hector and his thick pushy shoulders and destructive tail.
The woolly dog Arthur, who was twelve now, and getting a bit set in his limbs, as he was in his ways, growled and lifted his lip if the new dog came too near. Otherwise there was no trouble.
For some time, Isobel had known that there were a lot of beer cans and a few half pints thrown among the trees beyond the fence where Mike was working. She didn’t say anything, it wasn’t her business, and it didn’t matter, as long as the guy was doing the work. Then one evening when Isobel was in the yard outside Tony’s house, helping him to clean his car, they heard shouting from the end of the new field, and pretty soon, her father came across the road with a furious face.
‘What’s all the yelling, Dad?’
‘Mike, of course. I haven’t checked on him for a couple of days. He did pretty well on the shed, but he’s done a perfectly lousy job on a section of fence. Rails all crooked, ends of nails sticking through on the pasture side, and he wants me to advance his next week’s money because –’ He took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks and recovered himself. ‘Oh well.’
‘Want me to go up and straighten some of it out after supper?’ Tony asked sweetly, not sorry to hear that the intruder was no good. ‘There’ll still be just enough light.’
‘No, it’s all right. He’ll have to do it over again tomorrow. I’ll just have to keep an eye on him.’
The next day, it rained. The day after, and another day, Mike wasn’t there to keep an eye on. At the end of the week, Isobel came home from school, and found a big fight going on in the kitche
n. Mudder, who never did only one thing at a time, was making pastry and putting in her opinion indiscriminately on either side to the argument between Paul and Mike.
‘Give you another chance? I’ve given you chance after chance.’
‘That’s right, you know, Mike, he has.’ Mudder, flouring her hair to get it out of her eyes.
‘I’ve done the work. It’s not my fault if it isn’t good enough for you. Nothing is.’
‘Listen, Mike, be reasonable. A job’s a job. You turn up on time, and you don’t walk off till quitting time. If you’re not coming, you let me know.’
‘How could I know it was going to rain? Give me a break.’
‘It didn’t rain yesterday and the day before. Why should I make allowances? How are you ever going to get back into life in competition with everyone else?’
‘Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I don’t like being a slave.’
‘If you don’t like the job, you’re welcome to quit.’
‘Wait a minute, Paul.’ Lily turned round, and put flour on his sleeve.
‘All right, I’ll quit. That’s what you want, isn’t it, you bastard?’
Mike began to shout and Lily shouted at him, ‘Don’t talk to Paul like that!’ Cathy came dreamily through the door with Hector, just as Arthur got up from under the table to go out, and the two of them were into a hideous dog fight.
Lily threw a pan of water at their heads. Cathy and Isobel shrieked at both dogs, and Dad shouted orders. Everyone was telling each other what to do, and picking up chairs and trying to keep their legs out of the way of the ferocious, snarling mass of fur and teeth. Cathy was in a frenzy that Arthur would be killed.
At the height of it, the cushiony grey cat, who had lived with Arthur for six years, jumped from somewhere like a flying bat into the fight, and was immediately thrown out of it, her small brave body flung out of the turmoil like a rag.
Blood was being thrown out too.
‘Do something!’
Cathy screamed, ‘Arth! Arth! Hector! They’ll kill each other!’
Paul put down a chair and waded in and tried to grab one of their collars. He got Charlie and pulled him back, and kicked out hard at Hector. Dad’s hand was bleeding. He put it in his mouth. When Lily pulled it out to look at it, there was a puncture wound at the base of the thumb. She held it under the cold tap. Isobel flew for the first-aid box. She was good in emergencies. Years ago, her English Granny had taught her how to bandage and take temperatures, and she was always the one who nursed people, when they were hurt or sick.
Lily took Paul off to the Emergency Room at the hospital. Cathy went with them because it might have been her black dog who had bitten him. Isobel went too, because it was her father.
All the excitement had taken the tormenting attention away from Mike.
‘You’re welcome to quit.’ That cold politeness. You couldn’t fight it.
‘All right, I will.’
When the turmoil died down, it would probably turn out that he was fired anyway, so he would quit before Paul could give himself the satisfaction of firing him. He would walk down now and get his stuff from his room, and then hitch a ride into town and get a bus to New Bedford. In the little movie theatre of his mind, Mike saw with some pleasure the blood pouring from the man’s hand, and after she washed it clean, before the blood welled up again, the nasty little tooth hole, and the pad of the thumb already beginning to swell and change colour.
Serve him right. Smug bastard.
‘Don’t speak to Paul like that!’ Lily was too much in Paul’s power. It was wicked. She was the queen. For ten days, Mike had been part of her kingdom. He had not been able to see much of her, but she was there. That was the magic.
November. It would be November – you could trust November to take everything away and give him nothing. What was there for him in New Bedford? His mother acted now as if she had never said to him in the hospital, in the first shock of having her son pulled out of the canal like a dead cat, ‘You can come home.’
He couldn’t anyway. If she once got him into the pinched Fairhaven house, he would never get out.
He imagined Bernie painting the picket fence at Ida and Shirley’s house, and saw himself pushing open the gate and going to the door with white paint on the palm of his hand. But Ida was pretty thick with Lily. She would be mad at him for quitting. Everybody would be. Dr Theale at the rehab would be. Mike was supposed to do what all of them wanted, and be grateful.
Cathy would not be mad, but sad, because her boat wasn’t finished. And God damn. In the bus, Mike remembered that he had promised her he’d go down to the beach and drive in the stake that had pulled loose and let her boat drag over to the other side of the inlet the day before they brought it up to the house.
When he got off the bus, Mike went to get something to eat in a place where they didn’t know him. He stayed in the bar and grill until they threw him out, and then went back to the bus station and slept on one of the benches among the winos and derelicts. At first light, he put his stuff in a locker and walked over the Coggeshall Street bridge and out on to the highway, where a truck stopped for him.
‘What are you going to do on the Cape this time of year?’ The trucker had the radio on very loud, so there was no need for much talk.
‘Got a job to do.’
‘I wouldn’t work on no Cape,’ the trucker said. ‘They can have it.’
He let Mike off at Buzzard’s Bay. Mike did not want to walk across the bridge, although this one had a high suicide barrier on it to stop people being in charge of their own destiny, which was why he had had to go to Sagamore that night. He got a ride in a car that was going to catch the early ferry to the Vineyard, then walked by the back road into the village, avoiding Tony’s house and going quickly through the field to get to the toolshed without being seen.
The barn door was shut, and there were no lights in the house. A horse banged a hoof against the side of the stall. A dog barked. Mike waited, but it did not bark again, so he opened the shed door quietly, and found the sledge-hammer in the shadows.
Carrying it over his shoulder, he walked to Hidden Harbor by a roundabout route, turning down a dirt road and cutting through fir trees. He came out at the end of the inlet where the stone breakwater ran out between the open beach and the sheltered place where they tied up the boats. Behind him, the sun was coming up, laying a carpet of colour on the calm cold sea.
Mike clambered out over the big boulders until he had water on either side of him. He sat for a long while looking at a small green lobster boat chugging slowly out to its pots, and watching the hovering mirage of the New Bedford shore set down its feet and begin to look real. At last he climbed down and walked over the wet gritty sand to where the stake for Cathy’s boat would be lying somewhere among the long grass and beach-plum bushes. Gulls wheeled and called above him, making plans for the day. Back toward the road, a blue-jay squawked, announcing the distant thud of a horse’s hoofs on sand. They came nearer, travelling quite fast. Were here.
Paul on his bay horse, looking healthy.
He called to Mike, ‘What are you doing here?’ and Mike asked at the same time, ‘How come you’re riding with that bad hand?’
The dog Arthur came through the long grass to Mike and wagged his tail, and then went down into the water to scrape about for clams.
‘How’s the thumb?’ Mike kept his head down, searching for the stake.
‘Fine.’ Paul was holding the reins in one hand, the other bandaged. ‘Only a small puncture, but I had to have a tetanus shot.’
‘I’m sorry, if it was Hector.’
‘That’s all right. But Cathy’s upset.’
‘I didn’t want her to be upset with me. When the stake for her boat pulled loose, I promised her I’d knock it in, so she’d have it here for next season.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll do it.’
‘No, I’ll do it.’
‘I thought you’d left the Cape.’
; ‘I came back to do this. When I can find it.’
‘Here, I’ll help you.’
Paul got off the horse and put the reins over his arm. ‘Was this all you came back for? Or did you think you could persuade me to give you your job back?’ He was not angry, but smiling, which infuriated Mike.
‘Don’t kid yourself,’ Mike said. ‘You can stuff the job.’
‘And you might like to stuff this,’ Paul said. ‘You whine a lot about bad luck, but it seems to me that most of the time, you make it for yourself. Have you ever thought about that?’
‘I think a lot about how people who’ve had some luck go around telling everybody else what to do.’
‘Oh, grow up,’ Paul said wearily, sick of Mike.
‘Damn you!’ Heat rushed up through Mike and his anger exploded. He jumped back and grabbed the sledge-hammer, and swung it hard. In the instant, he saw Paul with his arms up, frozen, the bandaged hand against the sky, his mouth open on a shout, saw the horse rear and pull back, and saw the dog leaping at him with its teeth bared, water spattering off its coat.
The thud of the sledge-hammer was sickening. Paul made a strange choking sound, and fell. As the dog’s weight hit Mike, he kicked it into the sea. He hurled the sledge-hammer far out into the deep part of the water, and ran for the trees.
Lily woke to a staccato of hoofs outside. She sat up. Paul’s side of the bed was empty. Gone out for an early ride? But he wouldn’t be clattering fast like that. One of the horses had got out. She went to the window and saw Robin swerve round the corner of the drive, reins dangling and stirrups flying.
Paul must have fallen off and let go of the reins. Or a branch took off his cap and he got down for it, and the horse pulled free.
When she ran downstairs, Robin was eating the lawn, a front foot through his reins.
‘Where did you leave him, you faithless brute?’
Paul had probably gone down to the beach. He had an early appointment and would not have gone for a long ride. Lily got on Robin and trotted down the road and cantered along the sandy track to Hidden Harbor, expecting to see Paul at every turn, walking home. She was cantering over the fresh prints of Robin’s hoofs, where he had gone down to the beach, and come back.
Dear Doctor Lily Page 37