by Jen Blood
I, on the other hand, wore jeans that hung loose at the waist and sagged at the ass, along with Diggs’ too-large pea coat, since my own reeked of smoke. My tangled red hair was pulled back in a ponytail and topped with a baseball cap, and I still wore sunglasses to hide my bruises. I made sure my cell phone was on, just in case the producers of Project Runway were trying to reach me.
A relatively nice spring day had given way to a chilly evening, the sun low on the horizon, the wind rising from the east. I kept thinking of Ashmont at the fire the night before. He had wanted me to see him—I was sure of it. I couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere deep down, Joe Ashmont wanted to tell me his story. I just hoped the desire wasn’t buried so deep he wouldn’t recognize it until after he’d blown my boat out of the water.
I navigated us through an inlet where jagged hunks of black rock waited just below the water’s surface, sharp enough to tear a hole in the hull and sink us both if I hit at the right angle. I eased back on the throttle as we approached the island Joe Ashmont had called home for as far back as I could remember.
Sheep Island was a tiny stretch of land marked by wind-battered evergreens and an unwelcoming shoreline of steep granite cliffs. I tied the boat off at a dock on the north side of the island, beside an old red skiff that I assumed belonged to Ashmont. Since Ashmont had seen fit to build his dock as far from his home as humanly possible, Kat and I were forced to climb steep ledges and fight knee-deep bayberry and juniper brambles to get there.
Ashmont’s house was surprisingly colorful, with peeling pink shutters, aquamarine siding, and a tarpaper roof. Buoys and lobster traps littered the overgrown front yard. A dog barked inside the house. Gulls screamed overhead. I thought I saw movement in one of the windows, but no one appeared. My brilliant plan was looking less brilliant by the minute.
Just when I had almost worked up the courage to knock on the front door, an explosion shook the ground beneath my feet. Kat and I stood there for a split second before she grabbed my arm and we ducked into a grove of spruce and pine.
I saw the muzzle of a shotgun before I saw Ashmont. He stepped outside wearing coveralls and his hunting cap, set far back on his grizzled head.
“You shouldn’t’ve brought her,” he said.
Kat looked at me. “I’m sorry, Joe,” she called out. “This was her idea.”
“Not you, you ignorant bitch. You’re not welcome here,” he shouted back. He was coming toward us, fast, his gun thankfully pointed at the ground. “I told you before, I never want to lay eyes on you again. I’ll talk to her—I won’t talk to you.”
Despite the big-ass gun Ashmont was holding, I couldn’t help feel just a twinge of satisfaction. I signaled for Kat to remain where she was and stepped into the clearing alone, my hands raised.
“You haven’t been all that keen on talking to me so far—I thought you might change your mind if she was here,” I said.
He stepped closer, until we were only a few feet apart. He hadn’t bathed since the fire—or possibly the Clinton administration—and his callused hands were black with grime, one curled around the handle of his shotgun while the other pushed his hat farther back on his head. He scratched at his ear for a few seconds before he fixed his gaze on me. His eyes were dark, the pupils way too large for someone remotely sober.
“You got questions she won’t answer?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “I think she’s told me what she knows.”
“That she fucked Hammond?”
I nodded. This appeared to surprise him. I heard movement behind me; before I could warn her to stay back, Kat joined me. Ashmont’s face darkened.
“I don’t want to see you,” he said.
“Well, you can’t always get what you want, Joe. You know that better than anybody. She just wants to know what happened.”
“You lied,” he said to her, shifting his focus back to me. “That’s what happened—she told every one of us a goddamn lie. She was the one who said to do it. Move the bodies, hide the evidence, make up the lie. Keep the secret.”
“She wasn’t the only one though, was she?” I asked. My voice was steadier than I’d expected. “You had your own reasons for burying the evidence. You called Reverend Diggins the morning of the fire. It was about Rebecca, right? Something happened—or something was going to happen. You were coming to get her. What changed your mind?”
I think I half-expected him to shoot me for asking the question. I’m not sure I would have cared. Instead of rage, though, Ashmont’s face fell. His eyes went glassy, but he wiped the tears away with a filthy hand.
“It was your daddy’s idea,” he said. His voice was little more than a growl now, and I know the words were meant to hurt me. “It was all Adam’s idea. You don’t know what he was dealing with—how scared he was of Becca. She was threatening him with something. He wouldn’t tell me what, but she’d turned his fuckin’ Garden of Eden upside down.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Kat asked. “Rebecca…?”
“My wife,” Ashmont said with a sneer. “You didn’t ask. You were so busy thinking you had it all figured out, trying to hide the truth when you didn’t even know what the truth was. You didn’t know shit.”
“Rebecca was on the island—I found her rosary,” I interrupted, before the conversation devolved into my mother and Ashmont beating the crap out of each other. “She died in the fire.”
Ashmont smiled at my mother—a greasy, trembling smile, but a smile all the same. “You got a regular Nancy Drew here, Doc. I was wondering why Becca ain’t been around to cook dinner the past twenty-five years. Shit, I thought she was out to the mall. Guess that’s one mystery solved.”
I ignored his disdain and tried to soften my tone for my next words. “And your son was in the fire?”
My tone had the opposite effect. Ashmont turned on me like a snake ready to strike. I took a step back.
“If he was even mine. That bitch screwed any man with a cross and a reason to use it from here to the Waldo county line.” He looked away, lost in the past. When he spoke again, resignation overrode the bitterness. “The goddamn kid never looked like me, anyway.”
“You said my father wanted her off the island—why? What was she threatening him with? Why would he want her gone?”
“I told you,” Ashmont said. “He wouldn’t say what she had on him—all I know is, it all went to hell once she got there.” His smile twisted cruelly at one corner. “Becca was a whore, but she knew what she liked. She’d spread her legs for any preacher she laid eyes on—only bitch I ever knew got wet during confession. Your daddy couldn’t take seeing Preacher Payson’s fall from grace.
“He was the one who called and told me she was out there—I never would’ve found her otherwise. So, Adam was gonna spend the day before with you,” he looked at me. “Then, that night we’d go out to the island. Me and Matt, your daddy, and Reverend Diggins. And we’d haul her out of there, one way or the other.”
“What happened to that plan? You were the one who called my father at the hotel that night, weren’t you?” I asked, only realizing it as I was saying the words. “Something happened—someone got to you, changed your mind about what you were about to do.”
“I changed my own mind,” he said. His eyes slid from mine. “That night didn’t have nothing to do with any of it—I just got to thinking, and then I called Adam and told him I didn’t want to do it. Payson could have Becca and the boy, I didn’t give a rat’s ass anymore. And I guess from there your daddy just decided he’d best take things into his own hands.”
“Bullshit,” I said, advancing on him so fast that he stepped back instead of shooting me where I stood. “Something happened. If you’d gotten that far with the plan, you wouldn’t have just changed your mind.”
He recovered more quickly than I’d anticipated. Before I had a chance to react, he dropped the gun and let it lay where it landed. With a single stride, he had his hand around my neck, pushing me backward u
ntil he’d slammed my back against a tree. He held me there, his face close to mine, his breath a rancid mix of whiskey, stale cigarettes, and epically poor dental hygiene.
“Nothing happened. You hear me, you little bitch? I told you: I called your daddy, I told him it was off. I’d had a change of heart. He called Diggins, tried to get him to help change my mind. I knew he was on the way over, so I told the Reverend to call your mum. No way that pussy would show his face if the mighty Doctor Kat was there, no way he’d let on just how far things had gone. And I was right… She showed, he didn’t. Matt saw him leave for the island, and two hours later everybody out there was dust. You do the math on that one, and tell me if it adds up to anything other than your daddy going out there and torching every last one of ’em.”
His hand held me still, but it didn’t tighten around my neck as he gauged my response—trying to figure out whether I believed the story, I knew. Before I could tell him I didn’t buy a word of it, a blast split the stillness, so loud that it rattled my teeth and left my ears ringing. Ashmont dropped his hand from my neck, his eyes wide. I waited to see if one or the other of us was dead. Neither of us appeared to be. Kat held his shotgun tilted toward the sky, her eyes pure iron.
“Get away from her,” she said.
Ashmont took a few steps, hands raised, sneer still in place. “Get off my land,” he said.
“You forget who has the gun here,” Kat said.
He walked toward her without hesitation and ripped the gun from her hand. The look on her face was one I’d never seen before—shame, I realized after a moment. Kat wasn’t used to being weak.
“Don’t play at games you can’t finish, Kat—it doesn’t suit you. Get off my land. I see you out here again, I won’t think twice before I put you both in the ground.”
Neither my mother nor I argued with him. We left in silence. My knees were knocking together during the hike back to the boat, and neither of us spoke until we were safely back at sea.
August 15, 1990
Rebecca sits in the greenhouse, the night thick with the slow broil of August, moisture forming at the small of her back and the nape of her neck. Tendrils of dark hair curl at her ears from the humidity. Tomatoes ripe on the vine sweeten the air so completely that she can almost taste them. She sits on a granite bench in the light of a full moon. When she first arrived, nearly an hour before, the stone was cool; now, it has warmed to her body temperature. She shifts, and the underside of her naked thigh sticks for a moment before peeling from the hard surface.
Isaac is late, but she is not concerned. Though he told her this morning that he would not come, that he can no longer see her this way, she doesn’t worry. He says the same thing every time they meet: what they are doing is wrong. He has a wife, children, a congregation; their time together is a sin. Rebecca nods her head, tells him that she understands, but in truth she understands far better than he ever will: what they are doing—what she is doing—is exactly as God planned it.
The moon is high above when Isaac finally arrives. Though he makes no sound, she knows he is there in a way that runs deeper than the five senses. When he stands at the entrance to the greenhouse, one hand on the doorsill, Rebecca’s heart slows. Her breath becomes less weighted. It is always this way. When they are alone together, it is the only time Rebecca truly believes that God might walk among them.
“I can’t stay,” he begins.
She nods. When she stands, he realizes for the first time that she is naked—she can tell by his virtually inaudible intake of breath, a sound no one would hear but her. A breeze stirs the air and the fine, dark hairs on her arms stand on end. It isn’t cold, but the breeze on her already-damp skin makes her shiver. Her nipples tighten, and she wonders if Isaac can tell in the scant light; wonders if he believes he is the cause. She hopes, for an instant, that he does.
“I told Mae I had to cover the plants in the garden—that there might be rain tonight.”
There hasn’t been rain in three weeks now. A passing drizzle here or there, but nothing significant enough to warrant a late-night trek to the gardens. Isaac knows this as well as Rebecca does. She imagines his wife, Mae, knows it quite well herself.
“So, go cover the plants.” She says it with no challenge in her tone, still making no move to go to him. Isaac remains in the doorway. The moonlight casts him in a glow that Rebecca believes makes him look distinctly Christ-like.
“Zion was asleep when you left?”
She nods again. Isaac takes the first step inside, and she gestures toward the plants at her feet. “Adam should tend the tomatoes—they’ll rot if we don’t pick them soon.”
He takes another few steps, under the guise of verifying her words. She considers telling him now what she’s recently learned of his sacred Adam—who, as it happens, is not Adam at all. Matt has been unable to find out the truth of his identity, but the Adam Solomon he claims to be died an infant in a Midwest hospital in 1954. The Adam Solomon Isaac considers his trusted confidante is nothing but a lie. She remains silent, however. All in good time.
Isaac kneels only a few inches from her, his back turned away, head bowed as though praying. Rebecca wonders what he would do if she reached for him now—let her hand fall to his head, allowed her fingers to curl in the soft thickness of his hair. It is an idle thought, though. She makes no move.
Still on his knees, Isaac turns until his head is even with her waist. She can feel his breath on her right hip when he exhales, warmer even than the night air. He reaches out and touches the back of her thigh with one hand, pulling her closer. They remain like this for a moment: the preacher and his whore, his face pressed to her sex, both hands at the backs of her thighs. His hands begin to move first, sliding up the backs of her legs. He straightens, his lips leaving a trail of wet kisses up the soft flesh of her stomach, to her breasts. When his teeth graze a nipple, she gasps; he bites down harder at the sound, his hands at her buttocks, and he finally stands before her. She can feel him now, hard inside his jeans, pressed against her naked stomach.
They remain that way only a moment before he turns her away from him—as he always does. It is unspoken, but understood: she will never lock eyes with him when he is this man. She reaches behind her, unable to stop touching him now that she’s started, her hands lighting on the worn cotton of his t-shirt, the denim of his jeans. There is nothing in the world but this instant.
She hears his clothes fall to the soil beneath them. Isaac guides her to her knees, one hand at her shoulder, the other on her hip. Though everything she has ever been taught runs counter to the notion, she knows this is a holy moment. Isaac kneels behind her, naked now. His hand is at her back, guiding her forward; she complies until she is on hands and knees. A single pebble in the soil bites into the heel of her left hand. Isaac reaches between her legs and she knows that he finds her wet, ripe for this moment. He positions himself at her entrance with one hand, wrapping his other arm around her neck, his right hand braced on her left shoulder to keep her still. It is the closest to embracing her that he ever allows himself.
When he fills her, he does so completely. He makes no sound—does not speak her name, does not moan, barely breathes. Rebecca is also quiet, knowing the risk of someone finding them like this, but she is unable to match his absolute silence. With every whimper that escapes her lips, Isaac moves with a little more violence than before. She believes that in this moment, he sees them all: Eve, Jezebel, Delilah… She is the whore Magdalene beneath him, at once Christ’s greatest weakness and his solitary comfort, during his trials on Earth.
Isaac’s mouth is at her neck, but he does not kiss her. When her inner muscles contract around him, he bites into her shoulder, hard enough to pull her back from the pulse of white light running through her. Present once more, she pictures the scene as an onlooker would: She on hands and knees beneath him, their coupling increasingly frantic as Isaac buries himself deeper with every thrust. They are animals—a fact that Rebecca alone freely acknowledg
es in this place. Every day they eat, they sleep, they excrete, and then have the arrogance to ascribe a higher meaning to their lives than those of every other creature on the planet. But in this instant, the single instant when Isaac can no longer stop himself and his strangled cry breaks the stillness, the truth is undeniable:
They are animals.
Just as God intended.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The boat ride back to Littlehope was notably silent. Kat stood starboard with her eyes on the horizon, and I didn’t have a clue how to reach her. But then, I never really had. Night had fallen, dark and starless. The forecast called for heavy rain and high winds over the next few days, and I could feel it in the damp bite of the ocean breeze.
My mother’s cell phone rang just before we docked back in Littlehope. I was grateful—the silence was getting old. There were still questions I needed answered, but the standoff between Kat and Ashmont had thrown everything off kilter. I could handle my mother drunk, raging, irreverent, in control, out of control… I just didn’t know how to handle her when she was weak. I’d never had to.
The call was from the hospital. She stayed on the line while I docked the boat, and didn’t hang up until a good ten minutes after I’d cut the engine and checked my watch pointedly a dozen times. Apparently, all she’d needed was the chance to play Dr. Everett again—once she was off the phone and out of the boat, Kat got behind the wheel of her Beetle without waiting for me, clearly back on top.
“His story doesn’t change anything,” she said, once I’d gotten in the passenger’s seat.
“Excuse me?”
“That shit Joe just told us. So he and Matt had their own reasons for keeping things quiet—it’s not like I thought they were keeping the secret to protect me all that time.”