Third Strike

by Philip R. Craig

  Well, I wanted to say, I don’t, so let’s get on with why you dragged me down here that sounded so urgent on the telephone.

  But Larry wasn’t going to let me push him. He’d tell me his story when the time was right. To him, this was just another form of building sculptures. You couldn’t rush it, or it wouldn’t come out right.

  I found myself feeling oddly envious of Larry Bucyck, who’d made a life for himself that was the polar opposite of mine, a life with no deadlines or obligations, no worries about money or relationships, dependent on nobody, nobody dependent on him. Eat, sleep, build sculptures, rake quahogs according to the earth’s clock. Not so bad.

  We sat on the rocks around the kettle behind Larry’s house. He stirred the chowder and I gazed down at Menemsha Pond, where the cottages and houses and docks that crowded its banks were beginning to show their lights. Beyond the pond, the sun was sinking into the sound, and we didn’t say much. Larry had made it clear that he’d tell me what he had to tell me when he was ready.

  I tried another sip of his wine, and this time I was ready for it, and it wasn’t so bad. It numbed my mouth and burned all the way down, leaving a faint aftertaste of fruit and rubbing alcohol.

  When Larry noticed my empty glass, he grabbed it and started to stand up.

  “No,” I said. “No more. Please.”

  “I got plenty,” he said.

  “One glass of that stuff was an adventure,” I said. “Two would be sheer folly.”

  Larry made his quahog chowder the way my grandmother used to, with a thin milk broth, lots of fresh-from-the-mud-flats chopped-up quahogs, plenty of potato and onion and crispy salt pork, coarse-ground black pepper. He served it in big wooden bowls he’d carved himself, with a loaf of round bread that he’d baked in an outdoor Dutch oven.

  It was all delicious, and by the time I finished eating I understood that Larry had figured out how to live the life he’d chosen.

  I’d always assumed he’d gone to the woods in Menemsha to escape the unbearable pressures and pains of baseball notoriety. Now I understood that he’d been seeking rather than escaping all along, whether he knew it or not, and it seemed to me that he’d found what he was looking for.

  We sat in Larry’s backyard eating bread and chowder, and afterward we sipped some kind of herbal tea and watched the moon rise over the ocean. Larry didn’t seem inclined to talk, and I gave up trying to push it.

  It was fully dark when Larry stood up, said, “Come on,” and started walking down the long wooded slope toward Menemsha Pond.

  We followed a meandering trail that might have been created by deer. The moon and stars of the August night sky lit our way. I remembered how pervasive smog and ambient city light obscured the sky over Boston. Down here on Martha’s Vineyard the air was pure and the lights were few. It was a Montana sky, big and clean. You could see for light-years into it.

  After about five minutes we emerged from the woods at a band of shoulder-high marsh grass on the bank of the pond.

  Larry put his hand on my arm and pointed off to the left. “This way,” he whispered.

  We skulked through the woods along the rim of the pond until we found ourselves hiding in a clump of rhododendrons alongside a house. A short wooden dock extended from the front of the house into the pond. It was dark.

  We appeared to be about halfway around the east side of the pond. A point of land extended into the pond about fifty yards or so off to our right. Farther off to the right it narrowed and opened to the ocean. Off to our left it opened up into a big round pond a mile or more in diameter.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Now we wait,” he said. “Watch over there.” He jerked his thumb at the point of land to our right. A cottage of some kind, a summer house, it looked like, sat just inside it, and another dock extended from it into the pond. Orange light glowed from a couple of windows. “You’ll see.”

  The salty breeze was sharp, and after a while I found myself shivering in spite of my fleece jacket. Larry wore just a flannel shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice the night chill.

  He crouched there, gazing over at the cottage and the dock, and I had no choice but to crouch and gaze with him. I saw nothing. No boat was tied to the dock, and I detected no sign that anybody occupied the cottage except for the lights in the windows.

  We’d been hiding there for at least an hour when I poked him and said, “Listen, I—”

  He slapped my shoulder and hissed, “Shh.”

  We waited some more. The moon moved across the sky, and the breeze lay down, and my legs cramped up, and I began to shiver in the nighttime chill.

  Larry was infinitely patient. Maybe it was easier, knowing what the hell he was waiting for, but I had the impression that he was prepared to spend the night out there kneeling on the mulch in the rhododendrons.

  I guessed it was well past midnight when he touched my shoulder and said, “It’s not going to happen. Let’s go.”

  We crept back along the rim of the pond to Larry’s deer trail, then followed it up the long wooded slope to his house.

  We went inside. His dog, which had been lying in the dust beside the door, lumbered to his feet and followed us. He had short legs, long ears, and soulful eyes. Mostly basset, with a sprinkling of other DNA mixed in.

  “What’s your dog’s name?” I said.

  “Rocket,” said Larry.

  “Because he runs fast?”

  He smiled. “Not hardly. Named him after Roger Clemens. He was kinda my hero.”

  “Your teammate back then?”

  He nodded. “Best pitcher I ever saw.”

  Rocket waddled over and curled up in a corner.

  Larry lit a couple of kerosene lamps. “How about some wine?” he said.

  “That stuff,” I said, “is not wine.”

  “It’s good, though, huh?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I wouldn’t mind having a little. Warm me up.”

  He poured two jelly glasses full, handed one to me, put the wine jug on the table, then stoked up his woodstove.

  Pretty soon, between Larry’s moonshine wine and the woodstove, my chill was gone.

  I leaned across the table and narrowed my eyes at him. “Okay,” I said. “No more bullshit, no more evasion, no more changing the subject. I want you to tell me what I’m doing down here, whether it embarrasses you or not.”

  He took a long pull from his wineglass, then set it on the table. “I’m not embarrassed,” he said. “I’m scared, is what I am. I haven’t been scared since I quit baseball. I’d forgotten what a crappy feeling it is.”

  I started to speak, but he held up his hand. “If they catch me,” he said, “they’ll kill me. I can’t prove that to you, but it’s what I believe. It’s how I feel. I’m scared to death. That’s why I whacked the back of your knees. This isn’t me, Brady. I stopped being scared as soon as I stopped worrying about where my fastball was going to end up. I don’t hurt people. I don’t believe in it. But I hit you. More wine?”

  I shrugged, and he topped off my jelly glass.

  He refilled his own glass full from the earthenware jug. “The other night,” he said, “the night I called you? Um, when was that?”

  “You called yesterday,” I said. “That was Thursday.”

  “Okay,” he said. “This happened Wednesday, then. High tide was around midnight. I was down at the pond fishing. Out on the end of the dock where we just were, right next to that house we were looking at. Guy named Mumford, I think his name is, owns it. The one we were watching. He’s a rich doctor of some kind, only comes down in the summer. I like to fish off that dock where we were, next to Mumford’s place. It’s a great spot for flounder, the way the currents curl in there. The flounder move into the pond this time of year, and from the end of the dock you can catch a mess of ’em just dropping a hand line, nice dinner-plate size. Clams or mussels for bait. So I’m out there on the dock, got my little kerosene lantern beside me, nice night, sky full of stars, big ful
l moon, flounder biting good, and then I see this big boat coming through the jetties into the pond. Oh, must’ve been sixty, sixty-five feet long. I didn’t think too much about it, lots of rich people, big boats around here, but then, what got my attention, soon as this boat passes through the cut it doused its lights. I could barely hear its engines, they’re so quiet, just burbling. Even so, I didn’t think too much about it. The flounder were biting good and it was none of my business. But still, it was unusual, you know?” Larry arched his eyebrows at me.

  I nodded and waited for him to continue.

  He splashed more wine into our glasses. I didn’t bother to object.

  “I’m not sure why,” he said, “but when that boat turned off its lights, I blew out my lantern. It seemed like it was going to pass right in front of me where I was sitting there at the end of the dock, so without thinking about it I kind of crouched down behind a piling. There was something sneaky about the boat, evil, almost, going slow and quiet like that, no lights, and it made me nervous. I could see that there were some men on the deck. They seemed to be looking around, kind of studying everything, watchful, suspicious, you know? It was pretty obvious they didn’t want anybody to see them, and that made me duck my head down even lower.”

  “Did you catch the name of the boat?” I said.

  He shook his head. “Never got a look at the transom.”

  “Make or model?”

  “I don’t know much about boats,” he said. “All I know is, this one was white, and it was a big fancy one. Had those gizmos twirling on top of the cabin. Radar, I guess, and lots of antennae and stuff.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So what happened?”

  “Well, like I said, the boat kind of spooked me. It wasn’t just the fact that it was running without lights, which if the Coast Guard ever caught them would be a giant fine. That was strange. But there was something else I couldn’t put my finger on. Those guys on the deck, maybe. All watchful and tense. I don’t know. So anyway, the boat turns on its searchlight, pans around the shoreline, then curves around and pulls up to Dr. Mumford’s dock. Then some other people come down from the cottage onto the dock with flashlights, and I caught a few quick glimpses of those men. I could see that they were wearing dark turtleneck jerseys and blue jeans and black watch caps, and a couple of them had machine guns slung over their shoulders. They were talking into walkietalkies or cell phones or something. I could hear the mumble of their voices across the water from their dock to the one I was on, but couldn’t make out any words. Couldn’t even tell if they were speaking English, but—”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Back up. Machine guns?”

  He nodded. “Those small ones. Uzis, maybe? Let me finish. So they tied off at Dr. Mumford’s dock and offloaded some wooden crates from the boat and lugged them to a van that was parked there at the end of the dock with its lights on and motor running.”

  “Any idea what was in those crates?”

  He shook his head. “They were, I don’t know, three or four feet long, and they looked to be pretty heavy. It took two men to carry one of them.”

  “How many crates?”

  He shrugged. “Six or eight. Maybe more. I didn’t count.”

  “What about the van? Any writing on it?”

  “Like I said, it was just moonlight and some flashlights. There might’ve been some kind of logo on the side, but I’m not sure. I couldn’t tell you the make or model, either.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The longer I kneeled there behind the piling, the scareder I got. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, but I wanted to see what they were doing, too. After they finished unloading those crates, some of the men stood around talking. I could hear their voices across the water, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying. And then the van drove away and the men got back on the boat, and it backed away from the dock, still not showing any lights.” Larry looked at me. “Then I did something stupid.”

  “They saw you?” I said.

  “The boat started to turn,” he said, “and they were going to pass right in front of me, and I guess I panicked. I—I ran, and almost instantly there’s a shout and then this big searchlight from the boat goes on, sweeping across the water toward me, and, Jesus, I realize they’ve spotted me. Their light’s panning around, and I’m running down that dock, seems like it’s about a mile long, and then they’ve got me in their beam and I’m waiting for them to start shooting their Uzis at me, but they don’t, and then I’m off the dock and zigzagging across the yard, trying to get behind the house and into the woods, and a couple times the searchlight catches me and they yell some more, but I can’t tell what they’re saying, not that I care. Couldn’t even tell if it was English. I just keep going, running as fast as I can, waiting for them to shoot me. But they don’t shoot, and I realize, they don’t want anyone to hear gunshots, and they’re out there on their boat and I’m on land, and if I just keep running they’ll never catch me. So that’s what I did. I ran all the way home. And they didn’t catch me.”

  “And you’re all right,” I said.

  “They saw me,” he said. “They know what I look like.”

  “How well could they have seen you?”

  “That spotlight, it was like I was on a stage. They probably had binoculars. I think they saw me pretty good.”

  “You’re saying you think they might recognize you?”

  He nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Not many people look like me.”

  I looked at him, imagined him running down the dock. Tall, skinny, with his scruffy beard and that gray-blond ponytail trailing behind him. He was probably right. “That was two nights ago, huh?” I said.

  “Don’t tell me not to be scared,” he said.

  “All I’m saying is, if they were going to try to catch up with you, they probably would’ve done it by now.”

  “I went back last night,” he said. “After I called you.”

  “You’re that scared, but you went back?”

  “I didn’t go out on the dock. I hid in the bushes, like we did. I just wanted to see if they came back again.”

  “Did they?”

  He nodded. “It was the same thing as before. They pulled up to the dock in front of Dr. Mumford’s place, and the van was there, and they offloaded more boxes.”

  “Did you notice anything different?”

  He shook his head.

  “So you brought me down here because you wanted me to see this boat offloading big wooden crates at night.”

  “And because I’m scared,” he said. “They saw me. They know I saw them. They had machine guns.”

  “But they didn’t show up tonight,” I said. “So maybe whatever they were doing, they’re finished. Maybe they’re gone, and you won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  Larry looked down at the table and shook his head. “Yeah, maybe I overreacted. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve bothered you. Maybe it’s nothing.”

  “No,” I said, “it’s something. Of course it’s something.”

  “I keep thinking I should tell somebody,” said Larry. “Except if I do, they’ll know who told. Me. The guy they caught in their searchlight. They had guns, Brady.”

  I took a sip of wine, blinked away the rush of tears in my eyes, took another sip, then said, “You called me, and here I am. So what do you want me to do?”

  He looked up at me and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “We’ve got to report it.”

  He shook his head. “Not me, man. I’m staying out of it.”

  “You want me to handle it. That your idea?”

  “You’re a lawyer.”

  “Meaning, you’re my client, whatever you tell me is privileged. Right?”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” he said. “Yes. I mean, you can report what I told you. Just leave me out of it.”

  I smiled. “Okay, so let’s see. I go to, say, the Coast Guard station here in Menemsha, and I say, ‘I’m a lawyer, and this client
of mine, he saw this big boat come into the pond, and there were men with guns, and they were offloading some big wooden crates.’ What do you think the Coast Guard people would say to me?”

  Larry nodded. “First thing they’d say, I guess, would be, Who is this client? What you’re telling us, it’s nothing but hearsay. Get your client in here so we can cross-examine him and get the story firsthand.” He reached across the table and put his hand on my wrist. “See, Brady? That’s why I wanted to show it to you. So you could see it for yourself. So it wouldn’t be secondhand.”

  “Relieve you of all responsibility, huh?”

  He nodded. “You put it that way, yeah, I guess so. So I’m telling you, you can’t mention me. If I tell you not to tell anybody where you heard what you heard, that’s what you’ve gotta do, right?”

  I nodded. “If you insist, yes. You’re my client. Whatever you tell me is privileged.”

  “I didn’t move down here to get involved,” Larry said. “All I want is to be left alone.”

  “If you really felt that way,” I said, “you wouldn’t have dragged me down here. You think you’ve seen something shady and dangerous, and you can’t ignore it.”

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I couldn’t ignore it. So I told you. I did my civic duty. So will you do it?”

  “Me?” I shook my head. “Oh no. Not me. Us. Whether you like it or not, we’re going to handle this together.”

  He shook his head. “Aw, man…”

  “You and me, Larry.”