“J. W. Jackson.”
His hand was brown and rough. “I remember seeing you up at the Marcus place,” said Uncle Bill, with a smile. “You were looking at Joe and Toni here, while they were supposedly birding down by Squibnocket.”
I suddenly remembered the flight of birds that had flown from the bush halfway down the hill.
“I didn’t see you,” I said. “But I saw the birds.”
His smile grew wider. “Some people used to say that I could walk through walls, but it was never true. Come on in.”
We followed the shaman into his house.
14
The inside of Vanderbeck’s house was as commonplace as the outside. I had somehow expected something unusual, something more shamanlike, whatever that might be. Maybe a mandala on the wall, or an African mask, or even one of those sand paintings that the tourists buy out West. Maybe a copy of some cabalistic tome lying open on a table. Instead, the inside of the house was just slightly shabby, ordinary New England. There was a fireplace, there were comfortable pieces of furniture that weren’t particularly old or particularly new, there were worn throw rugs of traditional design and size—none of them Navajo. The kitchen was the usual sort, housing a stove, sink, refrigerator, counters, and shelves. Maybe the shaman stuff was in some other room.
“Look around while Toni and I get the food on the table,” said Vanderbeck, seeming to read my mind.
Begay grunted, and he and I wandered through the house, our hands in our pockets. Besides the kitchen and living room, there was a small dining room, a bathroom with a claw-footed tub, and what might once have been a nursery but was now a small sunroom with a large window overlooking the vegetable garden. A stairway led down to a basement and another led up to what I supposed were bedrooms (and maybe the room with the shaman stuff in it; the pentangle on the floor, or whatever). We decided not to go down or up, but instead strolled back into the living room and found Toni and her uncle already plunked down in easy chairs and sucking on bottles of Molson.
“Nice place,” I said, sitting down.
“Been in the family for a hundred and fifty years or so,” said Vanderbeck. “When I go, Toni here gets it. Good place for kids. Mine are all grown up and gone away, but maybe these two will hatch some.”
Toni smiled at this idea, and Begay smiled, too.
“I see you had a nursery,” I said.
“Ah,” said Vanderbeck. “You noticed that, did you? Yeah, that’s what that sunroom was. The kids’ room, when they were little. We’d put them in there with their toys and blankets, and they’d play or sleep till they got tired of it. How’d you know it was the nursery?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my mind racing. How had I known?
“Maybe he’s just intuitive,” said Toni to her uncle.
I didn’t think of myself as intuitive. I preferred to think of myself as being very rational and cool-headed, and only believing things when I had enough evidence. But maybe Toni was right, maybe I was intuitive sometimes. Probably everybody is. For sure, I couldn’t figure out why I’d thought the nursery was a nursery.
“He just got married,” said Begay. “Maybe he has babies on his mind.”
“There are worse things than that to have on your mind,” said Vanderbeck. He finished his beer. “Let’s eat.”
We followed him into the kitchen, got more beer, and sat down to sandwiches and chips. Vanderbeck looked at Begay.
“Toni tells me you’ve decided to stay here on the island,” he said. “Long way from the res.”
“Yes, sir,” said Begay. “In more ways than one.”
“Call me Bill,” said Vanderbeck. “I’m not a sir.”
“Yes, sir,” said Begay. Everybody laughed.
“The fishing business is tough,” said Bill.
Begay chewed for a while, then swallowed. “How’d you know I was going into the fishing business?”
Bill waved a vague hand. “No secret. People talk. Lotta guys going out of business, others coming in. You know anything about pot fishing?”
“Buddy Malone’s going to show me the ropes,” said Begay. “I have some savings to keep us going if we need it. If I have to, I can always go back to my old job, and I can do it living here as well as I can living anywhere else, as long as I’m willing to travel.”
“He was a rep,” explained Toni. “He represented different people and products, and got the ones who wanted things together with the people who could produce them, and vice versa.”
“Ah,” said Vanderbeck. “A middleman.”
“That’s it,” said Begay. “You need gidgets, I’d put you in touch with a gidget maker. For a fee, of course.”
“Any particular kind of gidgets?” asked Vanderbeck. “Did you specialize?”
Begay drank some beer. I had the impression that he did that to give himself a moment to get his story together in more detail. “No specialization,” he said. “The process is the same no matter what the gidget. Firm I worked for handles all sorts of stuff, here and abroad. Anytime a ship goes from one port to another, there’s a chance that some of their gidgets are on it.”
“Big outfit, then?”
Begay had some chips. “Medium size,” he said. “Big enough to keep busy. They have a lot of connections, and they do a good job, so they get as much business as they can handle. It’s not very romantic work, but there’s money to be made.”
“I’d think that you’d probably end up dealing with some kinds of things more than others,” said Toni’s uncle Bill.
“Well, I guess we probably move more of some kinds of stuff than others. We handle a lot of kitchen appliances and farm machinery, for instance. And industrial piping. Valves and joints and that sort of thing. I didn’t know much about a lot of the stuff. I just got the interested parties together.”
“Toni says you were good at your work.”
“Well, I guess so. I haven’t missed any meals yet anyway.”
“I’m sure she’s right. Otherwise you wouldn’t be going fishing.”
Begay smiled. “How do you figure that?”
“Theory of Occupational Compensation,” said Vanderbeck.
I looked at Vanderbeck’s eyes and wasn’t sure whether I saw laughter or solemnity.
“I’m afraid I never heard of that one,” said Begay.
“Not surprising,” said Uncle Bill Vanderbeck. “It’s my private, unpublished theory. Vanderbeck’s Theory of Occupational Compensation. Some day I’ll write it down and send it to somebody to publish, so I can die knowing that I made a real contribution to social science.
“What this theory does is explain why people enter professions, and why some people stay in them and others leave. The first part of the theory says that each person enters a profession that forces him to compensate for his primary sense of inadequacy. For instance, when you first go to college it doesn’t take you any time at all to figure that psychology majors are all a little wackier than other students, or at least are afraid that they are. They’re more nervous and spooky and obnoxious. You remember?” He looked now at Begay.
“I remember,” said Begay, and so did I.
“That’s right. Those people all wanted to be the future shrinks of America to compensate for their fear that they themselves were crazy. You also noticed that the college jocks were flexing their muscles to compensate for their fears that they weren’t manly enough, and the ROTC guys were going through all that military stuff to compensate for their fears that they were afraid of combat. You get the picture.”
I got it. “You mean the same thing’s true right across the board, in college: the English majors are all worried about not being literate enough, the Business majors are all scared stiff about being economic failures, the Social Work people are afraid they’re not humane enough, and all like that?”
“That’s it. And after I noticed all that in college, I took a look at the professions people enter, and by God the same rules apply.
“But there’s mo
re: just because a person feels inadequate doesn’t mean that he actually is inadequate. When you enter a profession you discover one of two things: that, in fact, you are inadequate, in which case you stay in the profession, continuing to compensate; or that, in fact, you’re not inadequate at all, and don’t have to compensate, in which case you leave the profession.” He laughed.
Begay nodded. “Which explains why all professions are filled up with inadequate people.”
“Highway engineers are a good example,” said Toni.
“Okay,” I said, “but what happens when you leave your profession?” I had left a few myself, after all.
Uncle Bill handed me another beer. “Well, what you do then is enter another profession that forces you to compensate for your secondary sense of inadequacy. We all have more than one sense of inadequacy.”
Begay was smiling. “And if your new profession proves to you that you really are inadequate, you stay; but if you find out that you can do it, you leave the second profession and enter a third. Right?”
“Etcetera, etcetera. It happens every time.” Uncle Bill looked at Begay. “And now you know why I said you were probably good at your business.”
Begay thought back, and remembered. “Because if I wasn’t, I’d still be doing it?”
“Right.” Vanderbeck nodded.
I looked at him. “And what do you do?” I asked with an impulsiveness that surprised me. “What’s your profession?”
The shaman smiled at me. “I’m retired. I don’t do anything. I’m like you.”
How had he known that I didn’t have a regular job? I felt frustrated by him, and the frustration drove another question out of my mouth.
“What were you doing there on Luciano Marcus’s land?”
“Oh,” said the shaman. “I go by to look things over now and then. I take it that you’re working for Luciano Marcus for the time being. Well, I’m working for Linda, my sister-in-law, for the time being. Next time you see your boss, tell him I’ll be along for a talk one of these days. We should try to get this cranberry bog business settled out of court, if we can.”
“Marcus has men all over the grounds. How come nobody saw you and stopped you?”
The shaman drank his beer. “Beats me,” he said. “I’ve never understood why people ignore me as much as they do. Say, Toni, I think it’s time for us to meet your mother for that walk. Let’s get going.”
Joe Begay and I exchanged looks, got up, and followed his wife and her uncle out of the house. As we did, I said, “Someday maybe you’ll tell me what you used to do when you weren’t arranging for gidget sales.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But not right now.”
15
We met Linda Vanderbeck back at the Begays’ house. I had seen her picture more than once in the Gazette, accompanying the ongoing stories about the Wampanoags’ internal conflicts and efforts to influence Gay Head politics. She was an attractive woman, but not one who apparently tried to be. And she was full of vim. Her skin was tawny and her hair was long and black and tied back with a silver clasp that looked Southwestern to me, Navajo, maybe, or Zuni or Hopi. I could never remember which designs were from which people out there.
She had a firm handshake. “Toni says you wanted to meet me. We can walk and talk.” An elderly man came out of the house, followed by a younger version of Toni Begay. “This is my father, Charlie Pierce. Dad, this is Mr. Jackson, from Edgartown.”
“Howdy,” said Charlie Pierce, shaking my hand. He barely filled up his clothes, and looked as if he were made out of leather. His hair was gray, but his eyes were bright.
“Call me J. W.,” I said.
“All right, J. W. You call me Charlie.”
“And this is my daughter Maggie.”
“Hi,” said Maggie. “We met at the wedding. Zee’s beautiful! You’re a lucky man.”
“Yes.”
Charlie took a stick that was leaning against the house. “Where we walking today, Linda?”
“Along the beach,” said Linda, and we set off along a path leading there. I fell in beside her. She glanced up at me. “Well, what can I do for you, Mr. Jackson?”
“Call me J. W. Everybody does.”
“What can I do for you, J. W.?”
“So you won’t think I’m sneaking up on you, I’ll do the first telling. I just took a job with Luciano Marcus.”
She didn’t quite miss a step, but she almost did. “Go on.”
I told her about the incident in Boston, about the job Marcus had offered, and about the shotgun being stolen from John Dings.
“So I’m looking for anything that might help me figure out who done it,” I said.
“And you figure it was some Indian,” she said with a steely voice.
“I don’t figure anything yet. But you and Marcus haven’t exactly been hugging and kissing lately.”
We came out onto the beach. “I don’t like this,” said Linda Vanderbeck. “I don’t like being called a killer, or even being suspected of being one, and I don’t like anyone who even thinks such things. I don’t think I have any more to say to you. I think you should get away from me!”
But I didn’t leave. Instead, I said: “I’ve seen the names some of your rival Wampanoags have called you in the letters they write to the Gazette. Compared to them, being a mere murder suspect seems pretty tame. You aren’t just being tender-skinned about this because I’m not a member of the tribe, are you?”
“Jesus Christ! The old reverse racism argument. No, I’d feel the same way if you were a full-blooded Wampanoag.”
“Well, I’m not a full-blooded Wampanoag or a full-blooded anything else, and I’m not calling you a murderer. Not yet. What I see in you is somebody with a motive, and somebody who probably knows other people who might be glad to see Marcus dead. None of that means anything yet, but all of it might mean something.”
“Have you got a badge of some kind, Mr. Jackson?”
“No.”
“Then why should I talk to you?”
“So some guy with a badge doesn’t.”
“Bah!”
We were approaching the foot of the many-colored clay cliffs of Gay Head, the westernmost point of Martha’s Vineyard. A century before, in a winter storm, the City of Columbus, running between New York and Boston, had wrecked on Devil’s Bridge and spewed its human cargo along all the beaches of western Martha’s Vineyard. Linda Vanderbeck’s forefathers and many another Gay Header had exhausted themselves dragging the icy corpses, gear, and the occasional rare survivor out of the surf in the hours after that fabled wreck.
But today was another sky blue day, with no suggestion of a brewing storm except in Linda’s face and voice.
“We don’t have any killers in Gay Head. Our fight with Marcus is about the law. He’s got land that belongs to my people, and we want it back. We’ll beat him in the courts, if we have to. We don’t need to shoot him. Besides, he’s an old man, and he’s got a bad heart. He could die any time. It would be stupid to shoot him, and we’re not stupid.”
“Even Gay Head has its stupid people,” I said. “Its hotheads. Its stupid hotheads.”
She gave a bitter smile. “Yeah. Some of them wrote those letters you talked about. You should go talk to them, not to me.”
“But some of the hotheads in the tribe are with you on this issue. Can you give me the names of any people I might talk to?”
She shook her head. “You won’t get any names from me. I don’t know any murderers.”
“Most of us probably don’t, but none of us really knows. Almost every time a killer gets nailed, you can find some neighbors and family members who say he was a real nice guy, and that they couldn’t be more surprised.”
“If you find a killer in Gay Head, I couldn’t be more surprised. Your would-be killer up in Boston ran away. What I do, I do in the open. I don’t think I can help you, Mr. Jackson.” She paused and her father and Bill Vanderbeck came up to us.
“I like being under
these cliffs,” Bill Vanderbeck said to me, as we began walking again. “When I was a kid, my friends and I used come down to fish or take mud baths made out of the clay.” He smiled at his sister-in-law. “Now Linda and her friends frown on the mud baths.”
“They’re harmful to the cliffs,” snapped Linda.
His smile was unchanged. “But people still sneak down here and take them anyway. I’m sort of on their side.”
Charlie Pierce nodded and muttered something that caused his daughter to give him an annoyed look. Then she turned back to her brother-in-law.
“You always were obstinate,” she said. “Worse than your brother, when he was alive, and he was stubborn as a mule.”
“You were a well-matched team,” said Bill, agreeably. “Likes attract, they say.” He looked out to sea.
“I have to be stubborn,” she said. “If I wasn’t, the Luciano Marcuses of this world would take everything our people own. You don’t give a damn about what’s good for the tribe.”
“Maybe I’m just not as sure as you are about what that is.”
“You can go places other people can’t go. You can help us.”
“Maybe.”
“Did you get a look at the place, like I asked?”
Vanderbeck nodded. “I did.”
She was impatient. “And?”
“Fence all around the estate. Six men working the grounds. I’d say they were sort of combined groundskeepers and security people. Marcus likes his privacy, like you said. One road in. Gate. NO TRESPASSING signs. Some sort of camera pointed at the driveway. Up in a tree. Two more cameras farther along, so anybody driving in can be seen. If anybody is watching the screens, that is, and somebody probably is, part of the time, at least. Dogs let loose at night.
“I didn’t go up to the house, so I don’t know about that. Lots of walking paths. Flowers. Well-maintained place. Looks good.”
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