The Price of Love and Other Stories

by Peter Robinson

  We saw the Newcomers in town from time to time, when they came to buy provisions at Lenny’s store. Sometimes one or two of them would drive the school bus to Logan for things they couldn’t find here. They were buying drugs there, and seeds to grow marijuana, which made folk crazy, so Lenny said. Perhaps they were.

  Certainly the preacher found many new subjects for his long sermons after the arrival of the Newcomers—including, to the dismay of some members of his congregation, the evils of tobacco and alcohol—but whether word of his rantings ever got back to them, and whether they cared if it did, we never knew.

  The preacher was in his element. He told us that the Newcomers were nothing other than demons escaped from hell. He even told Mr. Kiernan that he should have nothing to do with them and that he shouldn’t use God’s ferryboat for the transporting of demons. Mr. Kiernan explained that he worked for the ferry company, which was based in the city, not for the preacher, and that it was his job to take anyone who paid the fare to or from Pine Island. The preacher argued that the money didn’t matter, it was the devil’s currency, that there was a “higher authority,” and the ferry company was as bad as the Newcomers; they were all servants of Beelzebub and Mammon and any other horrible demon names he could think of and they would be damned for all eternity. In the end, Mr. Kiernan gave up arguing and simply carried on doing his job.

  One bright and beautiful day in July around the time when men first set foot on the moon, Mary Jane and I set off on our own exploratory mission. Mr. Kiernan stood at the wheel, for all the world looking as proud and stiff as if he were piloting Apollo 11 itself. We weren’t going to the moon, of course, but we might as well have been. It was only later, in university, that I read The Tempest, but had I known it then, Miranda’s words would surely have echoed in my mind’s ear: “O brave new world that has such people in’t!”

  The little ferry didn’t have any fancy restaurants or shops or anything, just a canvas-covered area with hard wooden benches and dirty plastic windows, where you could shelter from the rain—which we got a lot of in our part of the world—and get a cup of hot coffee from the machine, if it was working. Through fair and foul, Mr. Kiernan stood at the wheel, his cap at a jaunty angle, pipe clamped in his mouth. Some of the locals made fun of him behind his back and called him Popeye. They thought we hadn’t heard them, but we had. I thought it was cruel, but Mary Jane didn’t seem to care. Our town was full of little cruelties, like the way the Youlden kids made fun of Gary Mapplin because there was something wrong with his spine and he had to go around in a wheelchair, his head lolling on his shoulders as if it were on a spring. Sometimes it seemed to me that everywhere Mary Jane and I went in Jasmine Cove, people gave us dirty looks, and we knew that if we spoke back or anything, they’d report us to our parents. Mr. Kiernan was all right—he went very easy on Mary Jane—but my father was very strict, and I had to watch what I said and did around him.

  Riley McCorkindale was hanging around the ferry dock, as usual, fishing off the small rickety pier with some friends. I don’t think they ever caught anything. He blushed when Mary Jane and I walked by giggling, and said hello. I could feel his eyes following us as we headed for the path south through the woods. He must have known where we were going; it didn’t lead anywhere else.

  Soon we’d left the harbor and its small community behind us and were deep in the woods. It was cooler there, and the sunlight filtered pale green through the shimmering leaves. Little animals skittered through the dry underbrush, and once a large bird exploded out of a tree and startled us both so much our hearts began to pound. We could hear the waves crashing on the shore in the distance, to the west, but all around us it was peaceful and quiet.

  Finally, from a short distance ahead, we heard music. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before, and there was an ethereal beauty about it, drifting on the sweet summer air as if it belonged there, like the scent of rosemary or thyme.

  Then we reached a clearing and could see the log cabins. Three children were playing horseshoes, and someone was taking a shower in a ramshackle wooden box rigged up with some sort of overhead sieve. The music was coming from inside one of the cabins. You can imagine the absolute shock and surprise on our faces when the shower door opened and out walked a young man naked as the day he was born.

  We gawped, I’m sure. I had certainly never seen a naked man before, not even a photograph of one, but Mary Jane said she once saw her brother playing with himself when he thought she was out. We looked at each other and swallowed. “Let’s wait,” Mary Jane whispered. “We don’t want them to think we’ve been spying.”

  So we waited. Five, ten minutes went by. Nothing much happened. The children continued their game and no one else entered the shower. Finally, Mary Jane and I took deep breaths, left the cover of the woods and walked into the clearing.

  “Hello,” I called, aware of the tremor in my voice. “Hello. Is anybody home?”

  The children stopped their game and stared at us. One of them, a little girl, I think, with long dark curls, ran inside the nearest cabin. A few moments later a young man stepped out. Probably only three or four years older than us, he had a slight, wispy blond beard and beautiful silky long hair, still damp, falling over his shoulders. It was the same man we had seen getting out of the shower, and I’m sure we both blushed. He looked a little puzzled and suspicious. And why not? After all, I don’t think anyone else from Jasmine Cove had been out to welcome them.

  Mary Jane seemed suddenly struck dumb, whether by the man’s good looks or the memory of his nakedness I don’t know, and it was left to me to speak. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Grace Vincent, and this is my friend Mary Jane Kiernan. We’re from the town, from Jasmine Cove. We’ve come to say hello.”

  He stared for a moment, then smiled and looked at Mary Jane. His eyes were bright green, like the sea just beyond the sands. “Mary Jane,” he said. “Well, how strange. This must be a song about you. The Mad Hatters.”

  “What?” I said.

  “The name of the band. The Mad Hatters. They’re English.”

  We listened to the music for a moment, and I thought I caught the words, “Mary Jane is dreaming of an ocean dark and gleaming.” I didn’t recognize the song, or the name of the group, but that didn’t mean much. My parents didn’t let me listen to pop music. Mary Jane seemed to find her voice and said something about that being nice.

  “Look, would you like to come in?” the young man said. “Have a cold drink or something. It’s a hot day.”

  I looked at Mary Jane. I could tell from her expression that she was as uncertain as I was. Now that we were here, the reality was starting to dawn on us. These were the people the preacher had called the spawn of Satan. As far as the townsfolk were concerned, they drugged young girls and had their evil way. But the young man looked harmless and it was a hot day. We were thirsty. Finally, we sort of nodded and followed him inside the cabin.

  The shade was pleasant and a gentle cross-breeze blew through the open shutters. Sunlight picked out shining strands of silver and gold in the materials that draped the furnishings. The Newcomers didn’t have much, and most of it was makeshift, but we made ourselves comfortable on cushions on the floor and the young man brought us some lemonade. “Homemade,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s not as cold as you’re probably used to, but we don’t have a refrigerator yet.” He laughed. “As a matter of fact, we’ve only just got that old generator working, or we wouldn’t even have any music.” He nodded toward the drinks. “We keep some lemonade chilled in the stream out back.”

  By this time the others had wandered in to get a look at us, most of them older than the young man, and several of them lovely women in bright dresses with flowers twined in their long hair.

  “I’m Jared,” said the young man, then he introduced the others-Star, Leo, Gandalf, Dylan—names we were unfamiliar with. They sat cross-legged on the floor and smiled. Jared asked us some questions about the town, and we explained how the people there
were suspicious of strangers but were decent folks underneath it all. I wasn’t certain that was true, but we weren’t there to say bad things about our neighbors and kin. We didn’t tell them what lies the preacher had been spreading.

  Jared told us they had come here to get away from the suspicion, corruption and greed they had found in the city, and they were going to live close to nature and meditate. Some of them were artists and musicians—they had guitars and flutes—but they didn’t want to be famous or anything. They didn’t even want money from anyone. One of them—Rigel, I think his name was—said mysteriously that the world was going to end soon and that this was the best place to be when it happened. In an odd way, his words and his tone reminded me of the preacher.

  Someone rolled a funny-smelling cigarette, lit it and offered it to us, but I said no. I’d never smoked any kind of cigarette, and the thought of marijuana, which I assumed it was, terrified me. To my horror, Mary Jane took it and inhaled. She told me later that it made her feel a bit light-headed, but that was all. I must admit, she didn’t act any differently from normal. At least not that day. We left shortly after, promising to drop by again, and it was only over the next few weeks that I noticed Mary Jane’s behavior and appearance gradually start to change.

  It was just little things at first, like a string of beads she bought at a junk shop in Logan. It was nothing much, really, just cheap colored glass, but it was something she would have turned her nose up at just a short while ago. Now, it replaced the lovely gold chain and heart pendant that her parents had given her for her fifteenth birthday. Next came the red cheesecloth top with the silver sequins and fancy Indian embroidery, and the first Mad Hatters LP, the one with “her song” on it.

  We went often to Pine Island to see Jared and the others, and I soon began to sense something, some deeper connection, between Mary Jane and Jared and, quite frankly, it worried me. They started wandering off together for hours, and sometimes she told me to go back home without her, that she’d catch a later ferry. It wasn’t that Mary Jane was naïve or anything, or that I didn’t trust Jared. I also knew that Mary Jane’s father was liberal, and she said he trusted her, but I still worried. The townsfolk were already getting more than a bit suspicious because of the odd way she was dressing and behaving. Even Riley McCorkindale gave her strange looks in chapel. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. At the very least, if she wasn’t careful, she could end up grounded for the rest of the summer.

  Things came to a head after chapel one Sunday in August. The preacher had delivered one of his most blistering sermons yet about what happens to those who turn away from the path of righteousness and embrace evil, complete with a graphic description of the torments of hell. Afterward, people were standing talking, as they do, all a little nervous, and Mary Jane actually said to the preacher that she didn’t believe there was a hell, that if God was good, he wouldn’t do such horrible things to people. The preacher turned scarlet, and it was only the fact that Mary Jane ran off and jumped on the ferry that stopped him taking her by the ear and dragging her back inside the chapel for special instruction whether she liked it or not. But he wouldn’t forget. You didn’t cross the preacher and get away with it. No, sirree. One way or another, there’d be hell to pay.

  Or there would have been, except that was the evening they found Mary Jane’s body on the western beach of Pine Island.

  The fisherman who found her body said he first thought it was a bundle of clothes on the sand. Then, when he went to investigate, he realized that it was a young girl and sailed back to Jasmine Cove as fast as he could. Soon, the police launch was heading out there, the parking lot was full of police cars and the sheriff had commandeered the ferry. Mr. Kiernan was beside himself, blaming himself for not keeping a closer eye on her. But it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t as mean-spirited as the rest, and how could he know what would happen, anyway?

  By the time it started to get dark, word was spreading around town that a girl’s body had been found, that it was the body of Mary Jane Kiernan, and that she had been strangled.

  I can’t really describe the shock I felt when I first heard the news. It was as if my whole being went numb. I didn’t believe it at first, of course, but in a way I did. So many people said it had happened that in the end I just had to believe it. Mary Jane was gone.

  The next few days passed as in a dream. I remember only that the newspapers were full of stories about some huge gathering out east for folks like the Newcomers, at a place called Woodstock, where it rained cats and dogs and everyone took bad drugs and rolled in the mud. The police came around and questioned everybody, and I was among the first, being Mary Jane’s closest friend. The young detective, Donovan was his name, seemed nice enough, and Mother offered him a glass of iced tea, which he accepted. His forehead and upper lip were covered by a thin film of sweat.

  “Now then, little lady,” he began.

  “My name’s Grace,” I corrected him. “I am not a little lady.”

  I’ll give him his due, he took it in his stride. “Very well, Grace,” he said. “Mary Jane was your best friend. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Were you with her when she went to Pine Island last Sunday?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Didn’t you usually go there together?”

  “Sometimes. Not always.”

  “Why did she go there? There’s not exactly a lot to see or do.”

  I shrugged. “It’s peaceful. There’s a nice beach…” I couldn’t help myself, but as soon as I thought of the beach—it had been our beach—the tears started to flow. Donovan paused while I reached for a tissue, dried my eyes and composed myself. “I’m sorry,” I went on. “It’s just a very beautiful place. And there are all kinds of interesting sea birds.”

  “Yes, but that’s not why Mary Jane went there, is it, for the sea birds?”

  “Isn’t it? I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Grace,” said Donovan, “we already know she was seeing a young man called David Garwell.”

  David Garwell. So that was Jared’s real name. “Why ask me, then?”

  “Do you know if she had arranged to meet him that day? Last Sunday?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” I said. “Mary Jane didn’t confide in me about everything.” Maybe he did know that Mary Jane was “seeing” Jared, but I wasn’t going to tell him that she had told me just two days before she died that she was in love with him, and that as soon as she turned sixteen she planned to go and live with him and the others on Pine Island. That wouldn’t have gone down at all well with Detective Donovan. Besides, it was our secret.

  Donovan looked uncomfortable and shuffled in his seat, then he dropped his bombshell. “Maybe she didn’t tell you that she was having a baby, Grace, huh? And we think it was his. Did Mary Jane tell you she was having David Garwell’s baby?”

  In the end, it didn’t matter what I thought or said. While the bedraggled crowds were heading home from Woodstock in the east, the police arrested Jared—David Garwell—for the murder of Mary Jane Kiernan. They weren’t giving out a whole lot of details, but rumor had it that they had found Mary Jane’s gold pendant in a drawer in his room.

  “He did it, Grace, you know he did,” said Cathy Baker outside the drugstore a few days later. “People like that…they’re…ugh!” She pulled a face and made a gesture with her hands as if to sweep spiders off her chest. “They’re not like us.”

  “But why would he hurt her?” I asked. “He loved her.”

  “Love?” echoed Cathy. “They don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  “They call it free love, you know,” Lynne Everett chirped in. “And that means they do it with anyone.”

  “And everyone,” added Cathy, with a sly glance at me. “Maybe they even did it with you. You were over there often enough. Did they, Grace? Did they do it with you, too?”

  “Oh, shut up!” I said. Then I gave up. What was the point? They weren
’t going to listen. I walked down Main Street with my head hung low and the sun beating on the back of my neck. I’d lost my best friend, and the boy I thought was in love with her had been arrested for her murder. Things couldn’t get much worse. It just didn’t make sense. Mary Jane had stopped wearing the pendant when she bought the cheap colored beads. Jared couldn’t have stolen it from her, even if he was capable of such a thing, unless he had broken into her house on the mainland, which seemed very unlikely to me. And she hadn’t been wearing it on the day she died, I was certain of that. It made far more sense to assume that she had given it to him as a token of her love.

  The problem was that I hadn’t seen Jared or any of the others since the arrest, so I hadn’t been able to ask them what happened. The police had searched the cabins, of course, and they said they found drugs, so they hauled everybody into the county jail and put the children in care.

  I was so lost in thought that I didn’t even notice Detective Donovan walking beside me until he spoke my name and asked me if I wanted to go into Slater’s with him for a coffee.

  “I’m not allowed to drink coffee,” I told him, “but I’ll have a soda, if that’s all right.”

  He said that was fine and we went inside and took a table. He waited awhile before speaking, then he said, “Look, Grace, I know that this is all a terrible shock to you, that Mary Jane was your best friend. I respect that, but if you know anything else that will help us in court against the man who killed her, I’d really be grateful if you’d tell me.”

  “Why do you need me?” I asked. “I thought you knew everything. You’ve already put him in jail.”

  “I know,” Donovan agreed. “And we’ve probably got enough to convict him, but every little bit helps. Did she say anything? Did you see anything?”

  I told him why I thought Jared couldn’t possibly have stolen the locket unless he went to the mainland.