The Body in the Kelp ff-2

by Katherine Hall Page

  Faith parked the car next to the bait shack and tried to keep upwind of the smell. Sonny was at the end of the dock where two boats were unloading their catch. Faith regarded the still-quivering, glistening bodies in the hold with anticipation. The only way she'd ever get fresher fish would be to catch it herself—an unlikely prospect. She selected what she wanted and followed Sonny into the offIce, where he weighed it out. He was a small man, but trim and muscular. His blond hair was crew cut, since he had never bothered to change his hairstyle after his military service. Faith had heard he was the star pitcher and coach for the Fish Hawks. She wondered if he'd given the team its name. As he wrapped the fish, she noticed his nails were bitten to the quick and his hands were red and chafed from his work. He handed her the bag.

  “It will be delicious," she commented.

  “Waal, can't say I ever cared much for the creatures. I like a good steak myself," he said.

  “That's got to be a bit harder to find than fish on this island." She smiled.

  “Ayup, but we always want what we can't get, Mrs. Fairchild." The intensity of his glance full in her face seemed to pin her against the wall next to some coiled rope, netting, and a long fly trap black with prey.

  “I suppose so," she said without looking away. She paid and joined Pix on the dock, wondering as she did whether what had just occurred was an oblique reference to Matilda's house, the quilt, or a come-on. Maybe all three. She'd never heard him say "Ayup" before either. A reminder of turf?

  He stood in the doorway and watched them go to the car.

  “I'm sorry he didn't have any scallops. Maybe Monday," Pix said.

  “What do you know about him? He seemed almost sinister today. The last time I was here, he was full of jokes and talked my ear off. Do you think he's heard about the quilt?"

  “No, or he would have said something. Sonny and Margery Prescott are as honest as they come. We've known them for years. He's probably worried about the catch today, or maybe he's not feeling well. You know there can be logical explanations for things, Faith. You're beginning to imagine bandits behind every bush."

  “I suppose you're right. I do feel surrounded by a kind of cocoon of suspicions. I keep looking at people and wondering where they were when Bird was killed, or the house broken into, or even if they have the kind of drill that made the holes in Roger's boat.

  “Well, Sonny certainly has a drill like that, I'm sure. And I'm equally sure he didn't do it." Pix's mouth was set in a firm straight line. It reminded Faith of the lines they used to have to draw under the predicate with their rulers when she was in grade school. The line suddenly curved toward the rest of the sentence.

  “I thought this was going to be the perfect vacation for you and you'd fall in love with the island. How wrong could a person be?"

  “Not very wrong at all! I do love the island, and while it certainly hasn't been the perfect vacation, it hasn't been dull. And anyway, nothing more is going to happen, except when we find the treasure." Faith was surprised to hear her declaration of allegiance to Sanpere and even more surprised to realize it was true.

  Both children had gone down for gaps when they returned. Pix decided to go home, take an allergy pill, and lie down too. The "nannies" reluctantly relinquished their role and went with her. Pix had promised to take them to the danceat the Legion Hall that night, and they had to decide what to wear. This could take all afternoon.

  As Pix was leaving, Faith said, "If you don't feel up to it, I can take the girls to the dance for a while and you can lie down here."

  “Oh, I'm sure I'll be all right. These pills are magic, though I do hate taking them. They make me so dopey.”

  Pix was loath to take even an aspirin and was driven to any form of medication only if in dire pain. Faith had found this to be characteristic of New Englanders. They seemed to revel in the antique remedies enjoyed by their foremothers and -fathers, righteously avoiding the relief provided by modern medicine. "Let Nature take its course," one parishioner was fond of saying whenever she heard of an illness in the congregation. Faith reflected if we had let Nature take its course unhindered all these years, most of us would be dead.

  “Call me if you need me," she shouted after Pix. "Otherwise, I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

  After they left, she felt a certain relief. The children were asleep and it was nice to be alone. It would have been nicer if Tom was there—he had called early in the morning to make sure she was still alive and kicking, or so she had accused him. She was extremely happy to hear his voice, though, and they agreed he would call at the same time for the next few days.

  Now, after the intensity of the last twenty-four hours, she was content to go into the kitchen and poach some fish for the mousse. She decided to bake some bread too. The real comfort food. The real comfort smell.

  She couldn't keep her thoughts away from the scene in Bird and Andy's shack. She plunged her hands into the dough, trying to knead away the memory of all that redness, all that blood. As she built up the rhythm and felt the dough smooth into an elastic texture under her hands, she wondered how Bill Fox was. The Fraziers hadn't called. His silent grief had a self-destructive quality, or perhaps it was self-preservation—if he gave way to what he was feeling, it would be impossible to be whole again. Either way it was terrible. She tried to think about Bird. Who was she? Was it simply her startling beauty that had enthralled Bill and Roger, or had it been more than that? Faith had categorized her immediately as the flower child of parents poised in the sixties forever, picturing Bird's mother in black tights, ballerina flats, sack dress, and Student Peace Union button, teaching little Bird to weave, silk screen, or whatever. Or maybe Bird was as romantic in her way as Bill, yearning for what she imagined the sixties to have been like and re-creating them in her person. Whatever she had been, she had a kind of consistency Faith admired—from afar. Bird had decided to live a certain way and had not merely adopted a few surface trappings—the beads, the hair, and inevitable water-buffalo sandals.

  Faith put the bread to rise again and went upstairs. Zoë was lying in the cradle awake and talking softly to herself. Faith leaned down to pick her up and thought how much simpler it would be to adopt Zoë than go through the whole tedious business of pregnancy again. Maybe it wasn't such a crazy idea. It could be that Bird didn't have any family, or perhaps if she did, they wouldn't want the child or be able to take her. And Andy had told the police he wanted nothing to do with Zoë, that she was all Bird's idea.

  Ben was up too, and they all went outside again. He taught Zoë by example how to roll down the little hill behind the cottage and soon they were shrieking with delight.

  It was late in the afternoon and Faith was gathering her small charges for mousse when the phone rang. She grabbed them to hurry inside before it stopped—something that happened with irritating frequency.

  It was Pix, or some approximation of Pix. Her nose was so stuffed up, she sounded like a caricature of herself.

  “Faith, cud you ruddy tage de gurls to de danse?”

  Faith hastened to interrupt her. It was a horrible sound.

  “Don't say another word. Please. Of course I can take them. Why don't you plan to spend the night here, both of you? Then you can get settled in bed when the kids go to sleep. You know there's plenty of room.”

  In between major trumpeting into possibly an entire box of tissues, they established that Pix would come over after dinner and spend the night. Samantha was going home with Arlene, and Faith could drop them there no later than eleven o'clock, which Pix and Arlene's mother had established as a reasonable curfew.

  Faith hung up the phone and turned her thoughts to what to wear. It wasn't going to be Capote's Black and White Ball, but she didn't think she should turn up in jeans. Pix had told her that there would probably be a few square dances sandwiched between the band's renditions of Pink Floyd and Lawrence Welk favorites. The Saturday-night dances attracted a wide age range. Faith lacked the requisite circle skirt and petticoats
for do-si-doing, but she thought she would dress for the spirit of that part of the soiree and decided on a pale-blue Eileen West sundress with a wide skirt. At the last moment she tied a black ribbon around her neck and promptly took it off in the car. It had been a close call.

  The girls sat together in the backseat, which made her feel only slightly ancient, and they spent the whole trip talking about what they should have worn and each reassuring the other that what she had on was perfect. Faith wondered how many permutations a wardrobe that seemed to consist chiefly of oversized khaki pants, form-fitting Guess? jeans, and extra-large T-shirts could allow, but evidently enough to cause concern. Arlene had a black barrette with rhinestones in the shape of a star on it that was destined to appear and disappear from her hair all night as clouds of doubt rolled by.

  Faith pulled into the parking lot in front of the Legion Hall, a large, barnlike structure that had been used for everything from dances and band concerts to basketball games and graduations in various incarnations. She parked next to a Corvair. You could spot cars of virtually every era on the island, and although pickups were the vehicle of preference, she had seen everything from a Model T to a Mercedes traveling along Route 17.

  They walked in, bought their tickets, and were enjoined to guard their stubs for the raffle. Arlene and Samantha were trying to enter as nonchalantly as possible, walking behind Faith and using the abundant fabric of her skirt as a shield.

  “There's Becky!" Arlene cried, and they scurried over to a group of girls who were leaning against the wall, pretending to look bored.

  Faith looked after them. She wouldn't return to adolescence for a second. Well, maybe a second out of curiosity, no longer. It wasn't as if your own trials and tribulations were enough; everybody else was your age and having them too. And the boys' palms were always sweaty. She sighed. Even a boy with sweaty palms might have been welcome. What was she going to do for three and a half hours?

  She sat down on one of the folding chairs set against the wall and spread her skirt out in an attractive manner. She loved to dance, and she hoped someone would have the courage to ask her. She smiled encouragingly, then decided she looked like a lunatic sitting there grinning and fell to studying her surroundings instead.

  It was not dark inside, but it was quite dim. In the center of the room a huge ball covered with tiny mirrors slowly turned and sprinkled the dancers with irregular patches of light. Up on the stage the band had blue spots trained unsteadily on them, and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. It didn't look much like the island. More like The Blue Angel. Marlene Dietrich's role had been usurped here by a young woman, with short platinum-blond hair, dressed in leather. She was wailing some lyrics into the microphone, but there was too much noise for Faith to decipher them. The band had energy and was good and loud. She squinted through the smoke and saw from the name on the drum that they were The Melodic Mariners. Two of them looked to be in their forties, the rest somewhere between fourteen and twenty-one. They were all having a hell of a time, to judge from their expressions.

  The music stopped, and with barely time for "A one and a two and a three" they launched into the slow cadences of "The Blue Danube." Nobody seemed to find the change disconcerting. A few stood up to dance, a few left the floor, but mostly they stayed, stopped boogying, and waltzed.

  Faith turned her attention to the crowd to see if she recognized anyone. Pix had been right. It was all ages. Small children were dancing on their fathers' and grandfathers' shoes. Middle aged women were dancing sedately together in perfect step. The teenagers were using the music as an excuse to make out on the dance floor, rocking slowly from side to side when they remembered they were supposed to be dancing.

  Faith spotted Sonny and Margery Prescott on the floor. They weren't Ginger and Fred, but they weren't half bad. They danced in that practiced, semiprofessional way people who like to dance and have been married for a long time do. She also saw Nan and Freeman Hamilton sitting next to an enormous fat woman dressed in trousers with a skinny man perched comfortably on her knee. She'd have to ask Pix who that was. Paul Edson and his wife, Edith, were on the other side of the Hamiltons. They were staring at the crowd. Paul probably liked to keep close tabs on everyone's physical and financial well-being. He seemed to be studying one couple in particular. Looking to see if she was still wearing all her jewelry or if hard times were setting in? Maybe they'd like to get rid of their small camp down by the shore that they never used? Faith imagined this was what was going through his mind and wondered why Nan and Freeman hadn't moved away from them. Then she remembered Edith had been a Hamilton and on the island, kinship mattered more than real estate transfers. Nan and Freeman didn't seem to be paying them much mind, though. Paul was the only man Faith had seen wearing a suit. There were a few ties of various natures, some dress pants, even a few neatly pressed jeans, but no suits. He must know the mores. Maybe he liked to set himself apart, in which case Faith thought he could have picked something more distinguished than the navy polyester model he was sporting. Edith was wearing a lilac pants suit, no doubt of similar venue, and they looked like bookends.

  There seemed to be a lot of activity around the rear door to the outside. Faith noticed the people leaving for a breath of fresh air were returning with very rosy cheeks. The dances were dry, not even BYOB, so those desirous of refreshment drank it out in the parking lot or made do with the punch ladled out of a large pot sitting on the pass-through into a small kitchen. She hoped Arlene and Samantha didn't dis- appear out the back door. She was there to chaperone, but it was not a role she relished. They were still glued to the wall with a steadily increasing group of girls. An equal and opposite number of boys was gathered by the entrance.

  The time passed more quickly as she became engrossed in people watching. Those returning from the outside began to be a bit unsteady. The room got warm, and people who had arrived in freshly pressed shirts and dresses began to sweat and wilt. The smoke grew even denser, and the Mariners announced they would be taking a break. The floor cleared, but many of the dancers stayed and arranged themselves in two long lines facing each other.

  Freeman mounted the stage and took the mike in his hand.

  “Get ready for `The Lady of the Lake,' he called out. "And if you don't know it, don't worry. The person next to you does.”

  Faith joined the ladies' line and saw Arlene and Samantha follow suit. Two boys quickly placed themselves opposite them. Faith looked across. She was opposite Joe Prescott. The one who had tried to attack Eric and Roger at the auction. He smiled encouragingly at her. Well, she reflected, if she thought someone was trying to get away with what she believed to be hers, she might try to throw a punch too. Besides, bygones were bygones. In some cases anyway.

  The music started. It would have been impossible to sit still, and she was glad she had decided to dance. An old man with a string tie was playing the fiddle. Another man was plucking a flat-backed mandolin, and a woman named Dorothy was on guitar. Faith knew her name because every once in a while someone would shout, "Hit it, Dorothy." She was obviously a local favorite. Freeman was a good caller, and Faith had no trouble following. Over the years the dance must have been performed countless times under this roof. Skirts swirled, feet stamped, and hands clapped. Two more dances followed, then they played "Soldier's Joy" for Nan Hamilton and "Red Wing" for Freeman, who demanded equal time. The Mariners returned and Faith collapsed breathlessly on the nearest chair. Sonny and Margery were next to her. Sonnygrinned at her. "Don't get much of this up to Boston, do you?"

  “No. In fact, I've never been to a dance like this before."

  “A few years back they wanted to cut out the old dances. Said the kids didn't want to do them and would stop coming, so we tried for a while. They were the first ones to complain," Margery said.

  “I think it's important," Faith told her. "Otherwise they would never know how to do them and a whole part of the island's history would be lost. I hope there will be some more, and the mu
sicians were wonderful.”

  Sonny looked at her appreciatively. "They just do it for fun. We have an awful lot of good times in the winter. Those three will come by and we'll have a musical evening. There was an English lady here last summer, and she heard them play down to the inn. She said a lot of the songs were old English and Scottish ones. And here we thought we'd invented them on the island. Anyway they've been here a long time.”

  Sonny was being his friendly and loquacious self, and Faith didn't think it all could be chalked up to the nips he was having out by his Chevy. By dancing she had taken a step away from being an off-island onlooker to becoming at least an appreciative outsider. She thought of the quilt. Little did they know how much and how well she was getting to know the island.

  Sonny and Margery excused themselves to dance, and Faith was lost in thought when she heard a familiar voice.

  “You were stepping pretty lively from what I could see, Mrs. Fairchild, and I hope you'll give a poor old man a dance." It was Freeman.

  “Show me the poor old man first," answered Faith.

  “Now that's what I call kind." He pulled her to her feet and energetically steered her onto the dance floor. It was "The Beer Barrel Polka" and fortunately it was half over. After they had spun around for a while, there was another of those abrupt changes of direction and the Mariners segued into "The Tennessee Waltz."

  “My favorite," said Freeman. "Are you game for another?"

  “Absolutely.”

  The waltz afforded more opportunity for conversation, and after they had maneuvered over to wave at Nan, Faith commented that the Edsons didn't seem to be dancers.

  “I guess that's true," observed Freeman. "Come to think of it, I never have seen Paul dance. Edith used to be pretty spry when we were younger."

  “Maybe he likes to sit and take the lay of the land.”

  Freeman slowed down a bit and appeared to be thinking of something. When he responded, his voice had lost some of its teasing quality.