A Hamptons Christmas

by James Brady

  “What are those?”

  “Legal easements and such, stuff only a damned lawyer understands, that boil down to they have a right, under usage and the seventeenth- and eighteenth-Century royal patents, to be buried in the Old Churchyard, in land owned by parties of another part, meaning me and Jake’s estate. I say they haven’t. They say they have. I retained a lawyer, they got one. SOBs, both of them. End of this month we’ll know for sure, when the Old Churchyard trustees hand down their final say-so on the matter. Some of the Baymen are highly offended that I’m standing up for my rights. And for Jake’s wishes from beyond the grave.”

  “So they steal his bones.”

  “Borrow.”

  “Borrow,” the girl agreed. Which inspired one final sortie from Sis:

  “And in any event, it wasn’t Baymen my brother wanted kept out of those graves. Not my responsibility to explain things to them if they can’t figure that out for themselves.

  “It was the late arrivals and the newly rich Jake resented. I can hear him now, ranting and ripping at a great rate: ‘I don’t need Calvin Klein or that pipsqueak Dick Cavett planted next to me over the centuries. Or Donna Karan. A man dies, he ought to get some rest. Peace at last, peace at last, God Almighty, peace at last. Which doesn’t mean Wall Streeters or Betty Friedan. I wouldn’t mind Billy Joel or Carl Yastremski or Ben Bradlee. But not that wife of his! I don’t need Sally Quinn and the earthworms both, nattering at me for all eternity, no sir!’”

  Sis Marley nodded vigorously at young Emma.

  “That was Jake. Never a word against the Baymen. Just the outsiders and rock stars and damned phonies. And your daddy.”

  Emma sort of snuffled then, tugging a dainty handkerchief from her sleeve.

  “You didn’t take a chill out there in the boat, did you?” Sis Marley shouted angrily, frightened she might have gone too far. “Admiral Stowe’ll be giving me hell if you did.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Come here, let me feel your forehead, see if you’re burning up.”

  She placed a solicitous hand on the child’s forehead. “Cool. That’s good.”

  Emma snuffled or sniffled again.

  “What in hell … ?”

  “Je suis triste, madame. C’est tout.”

  “Give me that in English, kiddo.”

  “I said I’m sad, that’s all.”

  “Oh, hell, not to worry. They always bring Jake back.”

  “Which is wonderful. And reassuring. But I meant I was sad that when Mr. Hucko washes up, he can’t be ‘planted’ in the Old Churchyard, where a Bayman belongs. That’s what Bob White said. That you’ll turn Reds Hucko away and won’t let him in there with Mr. Marley and Jackson Pollock and the rest.”

  Sis just shook her head but made no response. It was too damned complicated for a child and, besides that, in litigation. She didn’t have to justify herself to anyone, didn’t choose to debate the issue or get her young guest’s nose running again. So to mollify the kid, she called the Admiral for his approval of Emma’s staying for dinner. So that, as dusk closed in, Sis was hard at it, preparing the meal, letting Emma shell peas in the big old country kitchen. During which time, Sis Marley changed the subject away from her and her dead brother and back to where Dick Driver was the villain.

  “You listen up, now, girlie, to a version of what happened that you surely never heard out of your daddy’s mouth.”

  She recounted her brother’s earlier tragedies, then his decline into bitterness and eventually into hate, much of it occasioned by ill-treatment at the hands of Emma’s father.

  “And where’s that bastard now?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Emma said, technically correct, and sensing it wouldn’t be wise to reveal Dick Driver was actually supposed to have been here in the Hamptons, in recent days taking her for limo rides. “He travels a lot. I don’t have to tell you, construction men go wherever there’s a building to be put up or a bridge to be built. He used to send postcards to the convent from the most exotic places. I wrote back care of his bankers. Now that there’s E-mail, communication is faster. But I do miss the postcards. I kept a collection. Even the nuns enjoyed seeing them.”

  All during the day and into the evening and through a rather glorious dinner, Sis had expressed no interest in or curiosity about Emma’s mother.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Like one of those old movies about Welsh coal miners. With Donald Crisp leading …

  In the cheerful seasonal chaos leading up to Christmas, it was understandable that the controversy over the Old Churchyard and sale of plots to the Marley estate had cooled.

  With trees to be trimmed and shopping to be done, not even the most ferocious of Baymen was even marginally interested in graveyards. It took Peanuts Murphy to remind local people of what was at stake. And even he waited until the morning after Christmas, December 26, to relight the dampened fires of protest.

  “We got six damned days!” Peanuts announced, “and that’s it! Six days. If the cemetery trustees don’t reverse theirselves by the end of the year and cancel the sale of plots to the Marleys, it’s over. Once December 31 is come and gone, we’ve lost and Mean Jake’s won! He’s dead and we ain’t but he’s gonna beat us.”

  He placed phone calls, buttonholed men in the street, dropped by their homes, pounding on doors and shouting at windows, roamed the Montauk docks searching for men mending nets and looking into bilges. He stuck his head into Wolfie’s Tavern before eleven, when only the serious morning beer-and-a-shot drinkers would be there, and generally made a nuisance of himself. Which didn’t discourage Peanuts one bit. In the words of the Marine Corps recruiting commercials, he reckoned he needed “only a few good men” to convince the trustees of error and get them to reverse their approval of the Marley estate’s purchase of 109 gravesites in the Old Churchyard.

  But how to convince them when he was having trouble even finding them? The trustees were a nicely balanced demographic mix of blue-collar and moneyed locals. One trustee was in the hospital Uplsland having a hernia operation. Another was skiing at Stowe, Vermont, with the grandchildren. A third was visiting relatives in Pittsburgh over Christmas. And no trustee meeting was scheduled before January 15. By mid-afternoon of the day after Christmas, Murphy was licked. And knew it. How could he whip together a convincingly hostile crowd to pressure the trustees into action when the trustees wouldn’t cooperate by staying in town where he could find them and change their minds, wheedling and threatening if need be?

  Then it came to Peanuts! If he couldn’t sway the town, why not scare hell out of the Marley estate? Namely, Sis. Here was something which might be done. They knew where she lived, she never went anywhere, and she had it within herself to come to a decision without a quorum or any of that other crap and red tape. Now all Peanuts had to do was rally a few dozen or half a hundred Baymen.

  Which, even as stubborn as she was, might just be sufficient to impress the old lady. If only he could get the boys to turn out in the cold with snow threatening.

  My father took the call. When he hung up, he looked at Alix and me.

  “Jesse Maine. He says there’s trouble brewing over at Sis Marley’s.”

  “What is it?”

  “Peanuts Murphy got some Baymen and other locals whipped up about the cemetery. The Bonac Boys’re planning a march on her house. With the trustees’ sale deadline New Year’s Eve at midnight, they’re out to get Sis to renege.”

  “Oh, Beecher. Emma!”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. We’d better get over there. I don’t like having Emma alone with the old lady if there’s trouble.”

  Alix wanted to go with us, but the Admiral ordered her to stay here manning the command post and taking messages. “Call Jesse back and tell him we’re on our way to Three Mile Harbor. If he can meet us there, fine.”

  I’m not sure Alix bought it, but she stayed.

  “You bring Emma back here, whatever happens,” she told me.

/>   “Don’t worry. She’ll be fine.”

  We drove up in my Blazer to Three Mile Harbor and pulled onto the shoulder just short of where the Marley property began. No mob scene yet, not that we could see. A couple of Baymen lounged about the bait shop, shuffling their feet and trying to stay warm. It wasn’t a barricade that they were manning as much as it was informational picketing. Beyond them, beyond the gate, down the flagstoned path, Sis Marley’s big old house sat there peaceful enough, a warm, well-lighted place, the faux gas lamps of the porch and verandah throwing a soft light. Above us, the sky was dark. No moon, the stars masked over by cloud. It really did feel as if snow was coming—you know that cold, damp feel. I killed the motor, started to get out. But the Admiral stopped me.

  “To hear Jesse talk, I thought we’d have Baymen scaling the walls and having a go at the front door with battering rams. Let’s sit here a bit and see what happens. We shouldn’t be the ones to start something.”

  When it came to small-unit tactics, I took my lead from my father. He was the Annapolis graduate, the professional; I wasn’t. I’d attended a few wars as an onlooker, writing about them. We didn’t have long to wait.

  You could see the Baymen coming a quarter mile away from the torchlights they carried, could hear the singing. It was like one of those old Hollywood movies with the Welsh coal miners marching through the village to confront the mine owner, who was always Donald Crisp or someone. Or maybe Donald Crisp was the head miner, their union shop steward …

  Only in this case they weren’t heading to a coal mine but to the Old Churchyard, via the Marley place. And of a mind to take Sister with them. By force, if necessary. If the trustees wouldn’t reverse themselves, Sis Marley would have to.

  “Okay, Beecher,” my father said. “They’ve started it. Let’s go up there to the house so we can stand by Sis and face them down if necessary.”

  “Okay.”

  I knew one of the three Baymen at the gate, the biggest, most menacing of the three. “Hi, Beecher. Cold night.”

  “Sure is, Henny,” I said, without breaking stride.

  We were past them by then and through the gate. One of the others seemed about to start something but saw the Admiral’s hard face, his scarred hands, and didn’t. My father rapped on the door, then tugged on the cord dangling from a big ship’s bell.

  “It’s Beecher Stowe, Sis, and my son. Open up. Cold out here.”

  The door swung open and there, standing in the light, was Sis Marley with, by her side, young Emma Driver.

  “Hi, Admiral,” Emma said cheerfully. “This is a real nice house. Did you know Auntie Sis has a whole fleet of boats out back? We took one for a ride. She let me drive, too. Hundreds of boats, all sizes. Like the Spanish Armada they taught us about last term at the convent.”

  “I do, Emma. A fine fleet. And no Drake to confront them.” Annapolis men are precise about such matters.

  Now Sis Marley spoke up, a bit sour about it, I thought.

  “Well, come in, come in if you must. We’re just about finished dinner. Don’t let all the warmth leak out into the night.”

  “Thank you, Sis,” my father said. He had the old courtier’s gallantry, whatever his inner reservations, and understood that with a harridan like Sis, charm might take you a long way. She had, after all, graduated from Vassar. I didn’t know whether to smile amiably or look solemn, in keeping with a crisis atmosphere. The Bonackers were still a few hundred yards down the road, but I knew they were coming, could see their lights, dancing, flickering in the wind. I wasn’t yet sure if Sis knew they were coming. And why.

  Sis Marley planted her big hands on her corduroyed haunches, Emma small but standing straight, very much at her side, one hand raised sufficiently high to touch one of Sis’s big paws. Sensing her gesture, Sis relaxed and opened that hand so that the child could slip her own small, slender hand into that of Sis Marley. So we stepped inside and I closed the door behind us, wondering if I ought to turn the latch and lock it against the approaching Baymen.

  “Pull up to that fire, Beecher,” Sis said, addressing my father. “There’s snow coming if I’m not mistaken, and I’ve got coffee on the stove. With fresh cinnamon sticks to flavor it.”

  “Fine, Sis.” Let things develop at her pace.

  The windows in the front of the old house brightened, as the torchlights neared, and now you could hear the men, not individual voices but a kind of low, communal rumbling. I looked down at Emma, wanting to know if she were scared. And how badly.

  Sis fetched the coffee and then she said, quite offhandedly, “So Peanuts Murphy and his cronies are about to make a house call.” So she did know, knew just what was happening, but didn’t seem shaken by it.

  “Looks like it, Sis,” my father said.

  Emma, sensing something but not knowing what, said, “Hi, Beecher! Where’s Alix?”

  She wasn’t scared. Not much, anyway.

  “At the command post, Emma. In charge of telephone calls and messages from on high. You know.”

  Over the coffee Sis Marley and the Admiral talked. Not wanting to alarm a child, they used understated terms. Emma caught on anyway.

  “I thought you might have Chief Maine along,” she suggested. “He’s the sort of fellow for nights like this. All those battles with the Pequots.”

  The Admiral looked down at her, disapprovingly. “You forget, young lady, this is Sis Marley’s house and property. She’s in charge here, and not some fellows out there singing songs and waving torches. As for me, this is the work I do. Have done for years. And you may not know it because my boy doesn’t brag on himself, but Beecher faced down that mob in Algiers and saved the princess a couple of years back. Getting shot in the doing, as well. You’ve got professionals here, Emma. We’re equipped to handle this.”

  Emma’s mouth fell open and she looked up at me, eyes widened in admiration.

  “You never told me about that, Beecher. Wow! Algiers! Was it the Casbah? How big a mob was it? Where did you get shot? What princess did you save? Tell me it was Diana, or Caroline of Monaco, or someone like that? Please, please, please!”

  “Have another cookie,” Sis told her, handing around a tray with a big kettle steaming away. The cinnamon sticks smelled wonderful. “I’d like to hear that story m’self, Beecher.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  Now came a chant from outside, loud and growing louder.

  “Hucko, Hucko! Bury Reds!/ Hucko, Hucko! Bury Reds!/ Hucko, Hucko! Bury Reds …”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Damned Marleys shut us out. Them and their Hollywood friends …

  “Damn fools,” Sis said in the slightly smug tones of a Vassar graduate, “how do you bury a fellow lost at sea?”

  The Admiral nodded.

  “They don’t think these things through, Sis. Let’s get Murphy in here out of the cold. Talk to him quietly. Make him see sense over a cup of your coffee with cinnamon.”

  “I won’t have trailer-park trash in my house, Beecher. Hell with them!”

  “They’re Baymen, Sis, good men,” my father said quietly, “not trash. You of all people know better than that.”

  She nodded, accepting the scolding. Hadn’t she earlier defended the Baymen to Emma Driver?

  “I do. You’re right. It was anger talking. All that breaking into Jake’s mausoleum and stealing his bones. Damn-fool thing to do. I don’t take such matters lightly.”

  “Nor should you,” the Admiral agreed.

  Outside, the light of torches was closer still and the chant deep-throated, louder. They didn’t sing as well as the Welsh miners, but when it came to loud, they needn’t apologize to anyone. Menacing. It was that, too. Even if it came from men we all knew. Had known always. I glanced down again at Emma, who didn’t know these men and was only a kid, tugging Sis’s hand. Not scared, just bonding or something like that. She didn’t scare easily, give her that.

  Somewhere in the house, a phone rang. In ways, Emma reminded me of �
��

  “A Lady Dunraven calling, Beecher,” Sis said. When my father reached for the phone, the old lady pulled it back. “No, your son.”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Alix, Beecher. Jesse Maine’s en route. I told him you and the Admiral were over there.”

  “Good, we might need reinforcements.”

  “How’s Emma?”

  “Cool, just fine. Emma is a Junior League ‘Alix.’”

  “What does that mean, ‘Junior League’?”

  “It means ‘of good family.’ The right schools, the right stuff, and all that.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Alix, we may have a small riot here. Stay by the phone. I’ll call you back.”

  By now, my father was calling signals.

  “Stay here with the women,” he told me. “I’m going out to talk to Murphy if he’s the one in charge and won’t come in.”

  He opened the door and stepped out into the flickering illumination of the torches. I didn’t wait but went with him, ignoring his directions and brushing past Sis.

  “Murphy!”

  “I’m here, Admiral. Right up front where you can see me.”

  “You make a habit of this, Murphy? Leading a mob of men by night up to the front door of a single woman alone?”

  “You know I ain’t, Admiral.”

  “Well, then, why are you—”

  “You know damn well why. The Old Churchyard. The damned Marleys shut us out. Their rich friends, their Hollywood pals get planted. But when Reds Hucko washes up—”

  “The trustees sold those gravesites, Murphy. The Marleys bought them. Fair and square. Blame the trustees. Maybe you and I think they shouldn’t have put them up for sale. But they did. And …”

  “To hell with you, Admiral!” a man yelled from behind Peanuts Murphy. And then someone threw something, I don’t know what, but it hit the house with a thud. The front line of the crowd seemed to be surging toward us. Not fast, but moving. There were forty or fifty of them, two of us.

  “Can’t you control a few men, Murphy?” my father asked quietly, disdain in his voice, very near a cool contempt. “I thought you were their leader.”