by James Brady
“Why, you son of a—”
“Peanuts!” I said, “don’t say things you’ll want to take back.”
“Oh, yeah.”
The first rank of Bonac Boys was at the porch steps now, coming on.
It was then the door opened behind us and Sis Marley came out. Emma Driver hanging on to her.
Seeing them standing there in the porch light, the old woman and the kid, seemed to give pause to the leading ranks of Baymen and Bonac Boys.
Mean Jake’s sister and heir grasped the moment. Forty years earlier she’d graduated from Vassar and had spent all that time living it down, shaking off the good breeding. Now was her chance fully and finally to put Vassar to rest.
“Listen to me, you fellows,” said Sis, tossing aside a cigarette to make room for talk, her voice carrying easily in the suddenly still night, “If you had the brains of a piss clam, you’d know there never was a problem with burying Reds. Or any genuine Bayman. Instead, you’ve been listening to a lot of crap, sorry to talk so, girl …”
“It’s okay, Auntie Sis.”
“ … stuff that troublemakers were peddling cheap. And you bought high. Don’t you know there isn’t a man in East Hampton Jacob Marley would rather rest alongside than Hucko. I could name people, lots of ’em, he wouldn’t be comfortable with, but a Bayman like Reds, a fisherman, wouldn’t be among them.
“But just in case you’re still confused, any of you, listen up to what I’m telling you.”
There was a real hush now, forty or fifty men standing still in the cold night, listening. Maybe they weren’t going to buy what she told them, but they were willing to hear it. In the back ranks, taller than most, I could just see Jesse Maine. Jesse and a half dozen of the Shinnecocks, including that new shaman, the one who looked into men’s eyes. Having Jesse there made me feel better. And then Sis Marley began and made everyone feel better:
“Until December 31 when the trustees’ sale is final, I didn’t want to go public, make any announcments. Then this innocent young child here, brought up strictly over there in Switzerland by the holy Sisters, asked me to explain things so she’d understand. She pinned me down, so to speak, about just what was at issue here. So in response to her questions, and any confusion there might be among still be among you, let me say this:
“Since men first went down to the sea in ships here on the East End, their dead have been buried in the Old Churchyard, if found. And if they never were found, a stone was set up there in their name. Jake Marley didn’t leave behind instructions to buy up cemetery space to keep Baymen out; he wanted the Old Churchyard kept local, so there’d always be room there for men like Reds Hucko. And for others who lived and worked out here, artists like Pollack, a good man like Alan Pakula, a gentleman like Tony Duke when it’s his time. Jake didn’t want the last hundred plots taken over by movie stars and CEOs and rich outsiders buying up graves, the way they buy acreage on Further Lane or down by Georgica Pond.
“No one’s banishing Reds Hucko or any other decent East Hampton Bayman from a plot near my brother. Jacob Marley knew the value of good land and could afford what it cost, saving the Churchyard for you. Not in spite of you.”
Peanuts, up front, rubbed a big hand over his face, not knowing quite what to say, what to believe. The rest of them murmured, going from one foot to another, in an uncomfortable silence. Which Sis Marley now broke.
“There’s snow coming, maybe a big one. So I think you and the Stowes and the Shinnecocks and everyone should just go home now nice and quiet. But talk it over among you. And if you want, come by the Old Churchyard Tuesday or Wednesday morning after the storm, say by about ten, we’ll have a little service for Reds Hucko. Fetch a preacher, one Reds would feel comfortable about, not some Holy Joe, and make the arrangements. Or whistle up that tame nun of yours, the Sister Infanta they’re all talking about. If she’s busy, praying down there by the high water mark, I’ll read the damned lesson m’self. No charge. Not for Reds. And we’ll set up a stone. Let Peanuts decide the words to chisel into it. And we’ll have ourselves a service. Courtesy of the late Jake Marley. For Reds Hucko. And ditto for any Bonacker goes back a generation or several. So long as there’s gravesites there, the men of East Hampton waters will be welcomed. Whether the body’s washed up or not.
“And now, Amen! And God bless all here. Good night.”
The men broke up now, a bit shamed, some dousing their torches, a few keeping them for illumination down Three Mile Harbor Road to where they left their trucks. In the light you could see the first flakes of snow falling. Real snow, this time, not that teasing you get before Christmas.
We bundled a sleepy Emma Driver into one of Sis Marley’s big old down comforters and carried her back down the lane to where the Blazer waited. Jesse walked with us the length of the lane, just to be sure nothing happened. Not that it would; not after what Sis told the Baymen.
But Tuesday at ten wouldn’t work out. Not because of the Bonac Boys or second thoughts by Sis. But because of last winter’s first big snow …
Chapter Twenty-eight
I love Alix’s feet but prefer them toasty warm, if you know what I mean …
I suggest that if you’ve seen one blizzard, you’ve seen them all, but this snow did have its moments. Not that a self-respecting Great Plains blizzard lashing the Dakotas or a sixfooter closing Snowqualmie Pass, would have taken notice, but for East Hampton it was pretty fair. And would end up being memorable. Mainly because at the height of the storm, at its worst, Emma got us all, even the Admiral, down with a serious bout of the guilts.
“Mother Superior always asks, shouldn’t we be helping out in some way, girls? And not just letting people freeze to death or go hungry? You know, the way she had us tithing for the Manila streetwalkers last year?” Alix Dunraven was not only willing to go along with Emma and Mother Superior in “helping out,” she was desperate to try out what the car dealers told her the Hummer was capable of in a pinch. Or a deep snow.
The night before, driving home from “rescuing” Sis Marley (who really didn’t need much rescuing), the snow was already falling. By the time I fell asleep about one A.M., getting up one last time to be sure to tuck in the big old L.L. Bean down comforter around Alix’s feet (I love her feet anyway but prefer them toasty warm, if you know what I mean), it was really coming down heavy. You could see that from my bedroom window in the yellow headlights of the occasional car driving along Further Lane. At seven, when I first stirred, I knew it was a big one, with cornices already building in a serious way on the roof of the garage, and shrubs and even the tall privet hedges bending low under the weight of snow. I love big storms of any sort — wind, rain, snow, ice. Always have. If there’s an AP dispatch about a typhoon in Bangladesh or an avalanche on Mont Blanc, I digest it line for line, avid for details. Such events bring out the boy in me, and because I’m forever suspecting Alix is more like I am than she really thinks she is, it made me want to share the excitement, and my enthusiasm, with Her Ladyship.
“Alix, wake up, wake up! Look at the snow!”
“Super, darling,” she murmured sleepily, a cosmopolitan who’d skied Val d’Isère and surely had seen snow previously, lifting both arms to draw me back to bed.
Yes, well, you know how I am, how I went back. Malleable, isn’t that the operative word?
A bit later she got around to looking out the window and she, too, jumped up and ran about the bedroom, clapping her hands. Seeing a naked Alix run about and clap her hands is always pleasant, and once she slowed I caught up and kissed her here and there and kind of stroked various parts of her, as one does on a cold morning. Enjoying all the snow at the same time.
If you know what I mean.
Over breakfast she said, “What a marvelous opportunity to try out the Hummer, darling. See if it’s what the brochures claim.”
Emma joined us before we were finished.
“Gosh, did you see all the snow? And it’s still coming down. The Admiral says if the te
mperature’s below twenty Farenheit and the wind is blowing over a certain speed, this might qualify as an official ‘blizzard.’ Do you think it will, Beecher?”
I told her I did, yes.
“The Admiral and I had sausage and eggs. Inga made them. She lets me have lots of ketchup, too. The Brides of Christ, unfortunately, don’t allow ketchup at table. A light vinaigrette but no ketchup. The French influence, don’t you think, Alix?”
“I’m sure you’re right. Though we English are hardly the ones to ask about cuisine, haute or otherwise.”
“The Admiral said he’d make us grits one morning. What are grits, Beecher, do you know?”
“A southern dish. Some grainy kind of thing. I don’t like it much.”
“Nor does the Admiral,” Emma said. “But he says they served it at the Naval Academy and so it reminds him of when he was twenty and that always cheers him up.”
She hadn’t yet been afflicted by the guilts; nor had she started working her ways on us, but was still regarding the blizzard as an entertainment we’d put on for her delectation.
“Vive la neige!” she called out, “hooray for snow!”
And when Alix told her we were taking out the Hummer, Emma volunteered instantly to brush the car free of snow. “Have you a good broom, Beecher?” she inquired. “That’s what’s needed with snow this dry and soft.”
And that’s what you want around in a snowstorm, a Hummer idling at the curb and a kid who lives in Switzerland and knows all about clearing off the snow.
“One broom coming up.”
According to the Weather Channel, one of my father’s favorite listening posts during foul weather, the snow might continue for another eight or ten hours on the East End of Long Island and could total twenty inches before ending. The temperature was twenty-one, the wind was gusting to twenty-five miles per hour.
“Not yet blizzard conditions,” a slightly disappointed Admiral informed us. Clearly, my own passion for storms was inherited.
Togged out in mittens, boots, and her familiar anorak by Willy Bogner, her red nose and cheeks courtesy of East Hampton, Emma had done a workmanlike job of getting the snow off Alix’s Hummer.
“Can I drive, Alix?”
“You’re underage,” I said flatly. Emma ignored me.
“If my feet reach the pedals I should be able to handle it, Alix. You could sit next to me and take over if I lose control.”
“You’ve got to be seventeen,” I said, “or sixteen if you’re in driver’s ed.”
“When the snow’s cleared, Emma,” the Admiral said, neatly undercutting my principled stance, “I’ll roll out the Packard and give you a lesson in the driveway. So long as we don’t venture onto the village roads, you’ll be all right.”
The kid gave me a look.
“A smashing notion, Admiral,” Alix enthused, “Beecher’s caution does him credit. But in life, one takes one’s chances, doesn’t one?”
“Come on,” I said, “let’s get rolling or Emma’ll have to sweep the Hummer again.”
The plows had already come past once, clearing Further Lane, but blocking our gravel drive with a foot and a half of plowed snow. Alix didn’t hesitate but shifted into four-wheel drive and low gear, bucking the Hummer right through, tossing up fluffy snow to right and left.
“Jolly good!” she said. “Power to spare, I’d warrant.”
“Can I at least steer?”
“Perhaps later, Emma. Let me get the feel of it on snow.”
Va va vroooom!
At Egypt Lane we turned south to roll down between the parallel fairways of the golf course to Old Beach to see the ocean.
“Golly, look at those waves,” Alix said. “Remember when we swam out there with Prince Fatoosh?”
“I do. We raced and you won.”
“Well, you came second, Beecher. Don’t be modest, now.”
“Who’s Prince Fatoosh?” Emma wanted to know.
“Arab friend of ours,” I said. “He and I were at Harvard together, Dunster House, Dunster funsters, both.”
“We had an Arab girl at the convent. But she didn’t get on. Kept kneeling down to face Mecca at the most awkward times. Such as when Sister was saying the rosary. Or during math class. It didn’t go over at all well. But she was allowed to drive cars when she was only six. She said her father the sheikh had blocks fastened to the pedals so her feet could reach.”
“Can we walk on the beach?” Alix asked.
There was already a foot of snow down and drifting much deeper in places and the wind was getting up. I wasn’t much for walking on beaches in blizzards.
As we retraced our tire tracks up Old Beach Lane, Richard Ryan’s red pickup pulled up alongside, another East Hamptoner enjoying the snow. “Wind’s out of the northeast now,” Richard Ryan shouted through a rolled-down window. “Lazy Point’s cut off and they’ll be getting green water from Gardiners Bay across Gerard Drive at high tide.” Richard looked happy about all these promising developments. It was clear the Admiral and I weren’t the only ones to enjoy a good storm. Why that book about a “perfect” storm sold so well. I felt pretty good about things and waved Richard off with a “Happy New Year!” Richard shouted and waved back.
“Let’s drive into town and look around,” I suggested. “With the Christmas trees still lighted along Main Street and Newtown Lane, it ought to be lovely.”
At Pantigo Lane, across from Gay Lane and in front of the Methodist church, we ran into Reverend Parker, shoveling the church sidewalk.
“Hi, Beecher. Enjoying the storm?”
“Yes, we are.” I got down from the Hummer and reintroduced him to Alix, who’d met him last year, and to Emma.
“Here, Rev, take a breather. Give me that shovel,” I said.
He was winded and handed it over without an argument. I worked for a time while he chatted with the ladies. “Today everyone’ll just stay home. But I worry about tomorrow. Some of the old folks, they don’t buy provisions more than a day ahead. They’ll be getting pretty hungry by tomorrow night. And I ought to get around and see if they’ve got food. And enough heat.”
“Won’t the village or the town do that?”
“Oh, sure. They’re pretty good. It’s just some of the old folks won’t answer the door unless it’s someone they know.”
Reverend Parker was looking at the Hummer. Much in the longing way a teenage boy looks at a classmate’s brand-new, secondhand convertible, an eager, pleasant hunger on his face.
Which was when Emma Driver got the guilts and spoke up.
“Just suppose …” she began in that wheedling way of hers, as she had on that first night at the Admiral’s house when he had let her stay over.
But her idea wasn’t a bad one. Not bad at all. Make ourselves useful in the storm, get some good out of the Hummer. Pry a list out of Rev. Parker of the old folks he thought might be the worst off, then stock up some provisions and maybe firewood and candles, in case the electricity went out in the storm, and drive the Rev. and a few of his helpers around town in the Hummer through the drifts.
“Why, that’s a smashing notion,” Alix announced. And of course the Rev. didn’t see anything wrong with it. Even when Emma, as she usually did, went a bit too far:
“At our convent, Mother Superior stresses direct action. ‘There’s the difference between Roman Catholics and other Christians,’ she always says. ‘Protestants give you a good hymn and wring their hands over stuff, but we go out and do something about it.’ Mother Superior always says—”
“Emma,” I interrupted, “why don’t you start taking notes of groceries and other stuff the Rev. thinks people might need?”
Soon we’d emptied a few shelves at the IGA grocery store on North Main Street and loaded up the Hummer with the necessities.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Beecher,” the Rev. began …
“It’s nothing. Thank Emma for the idea. I’m just salving my conscience.”
Full dark comes early in Eas
t Hampton the last week of the year, and with the snow falling heavier than ever, we were working with full headlights from about three o’clock on. Rev. Parker had assigned two sturdy young women to us, and it was they who got the old folks to open their doors while Alix and I, with Emma’s assistance, carried in the supplies. The old people were pretty nice, coming out into the storm to wave their thanks and call out a New Year’s greeting. By seven, we’d stopped at every house on the list, been greeted, thanked, even kissed.
When we got back to Further Lane, the Admiral saw our lights and came up to the gate house.
“Well, you’ve had yourselves a day. Come in, come in, get out of the cold.”
“We did,” I said. “Though I meant to get out the toboggan and never quite got around to it.”
When he looked down at Emma, he saw a tired little girl. But not yet that tired …
“Tomorrow, Admiral, I thought we might get a list of Catholics and Jewish pensioners. Load up again and go out.”
He nodded.
“Not a bad idea. I happen to know the Catholic pastor here, Father Desmond. I’ll give him a call tonight. He probably knows the rabbi as well.”
My father is a wonderful man. But I’d never before known him to display interest in any local clergy not his own or to demonstrate much philanthropic industry. Emma Driver, it seemed, was contagious. Not even Scrooge had suddenly gotten so virtuous.
Inga produced a hearty winter’s-night dinner, and we were invited to share my father’s table so as not to have to scrounge on our own after a day of running errands in the storm. Before dessert and coffee had been served, Emma was asleep. I caried her upstairs and Inga took over then. “I’ll get her to bed,” she said. “A fine girl, this one. Fine.”
“Yes. She is fine.”
My father had some good brandy, and Alix and I joined him before the fire in his den.
“Your Hummer live up to the press notices, Alix?” he asked, lifting his snifter to us.
“Very much so, Admiral. As did young Emma. And your son and heir. Top marks all ’round.”