A Fatal Vineyard Season (13 page)

“Fine,” said Mills. We shook hands once again, and I climbed into the Land Cruiser, flicked on the headlights, and started for home through the darkening evening.

I stopped and picked up the mail at the box at the head of our driveway and glanced through the bills and junk mail to see if, by chance, Zee had sent me a letter, even though there was no reason to think she had, especially since she hadn't been away long enough for a letter to get to me if she had sent one. Besides, in a few more days she'd be home again.

I drove to the house between the darkening trees, my headlights reaching down the long, sandy driveway, illuminating it like moonlight.

As I parked in front of the house, I remembered Zee's pistol under the seat. Time to put it back in the gun case. I turned off the headlights and the engine, got out of the truck, leaned back in and got the pistol, and shut the door.

As I turned toward the house, I heard a soft sound and knew, too late, that I had been stupidly careless. A sack was jerked down over my head and cinched tight around my neck. I smelled the smell of canvas and knew that what had happened to Larry in Oak Bluffs was now going to happen to me and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt a terrible fear course through me.

But there
was
something I could do. I dropped to the ground and rolled under the Land Cruiser, taking a terrible but glancing blow from some weapon as I did. My left arm went dead, and I was blind and suffocating, but I rolled and scrambled to the far side of the truck.

Curses followed me. Another blow struck my right leg as my assailant knelt and swung his weapon at me. A baseball bat? A tire iron? A crowbar? Whatever it was, it sent a ball of pain up into my brain. My cry filled the smothering sack. I couldn't breath. I'm claustrophobic, and I was panicked. I had to get the canvas sack off my head. I heard the clang of metal on metal as my attacker swung his weapon at me again but this time hit the truck instead of me.

Then I remembered the pistol in my hand. I got my right arm free and fired the gun, not knowing where it was pointed, except that it wasn't pointed at me. The sound was huge and hurt my ears, but I switched aim a bit and fired again, trying to keep my shots more or less level with the ground. I fired again and heard the bullet bang into metal. Another hole in my already rusty truck. I fired yet again and heard a curse, then felt the earth tremble. Running feet? I shot toward the sound, then listened, with muffled, ringing ears. I was faint from panic and lack of air and forced myself to be quiet until the tremor in the earth ceased.

Had my attacker fled, or was he just waiting silently? I couldn't tell. But my claustrophobic panic couldn't be held
in check much longer. I gathered my will and forced away my fear.

My left arm and right leg were afire with pain. I put the pistol on the ground and dug out my pocketknife with my right hand. I hooked the end of the handle under my belt and got a blade open with my good hand. The sack over my head was fastened around my neck with what seemed to be a strap of some kind. I got the blade of the knife under it and carefully cut it in two. Yet another argument for always keeping your knives sharp. I jerked the sack off my head and sucked in lungfuls of air. Life! I felt happier than I could ever remember feeling.

I lay there, breathing the sweet air until I had sated myself. Then I was quiet, listening and looking, hearing and seeing nothing as the night grew darker.

After a while, I closed the knife and slid it back in my pocket.

My arm and leg were hurting badly, but I ignored them and got the pistol back into my good hand. Then, moving slowly and listening hard, I slid out on the far side of the truck. I listened some more and tried to see through the darkness.

Nothing. No one. I got hold of the door handle and pulled myself to my feet. I looked and listened. Up by the highway I heard a car start and pull away. I put the pistol in my belt, opened the door of the truck, and got out the flashlight I kept there. I held it out at arm's length and turned it on. The beam showed nothing unusual in my yard.

I tried my hurt leg and found that it would support me. I edged carefully around the truck, sweeping the yard and house with the light. Nothing. I limped to the house and flicked on the switch for the outdoor lights. They flooded the yard. Nothing. I turned on the house lights, exchanged the flashlight for the pistol, and went from room to room. Nothing.

Whoever it had been was now gone.

When I was sure of that, I went out to the Land Cruiser,
where I discovered that by some miracle all four tires were still full of air in spite of my blind shooting, then drove one-handed to the emergency ward at the hospital.

An hour later I learned that I had a severely bruised leg and arm and a slightly cracked left humerus that wasn't serious enough for a cast, but was serious enough for a sling and some pain pills.

“I don't know about you, J.W.,” said the young doctor, who had often worked with Zee in the ER. “Your wife goes off-island for a couple of days and you end up in the hospital right away. How did you survive before you met her?”

“I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.”

“I don't think you should rely on the one who did this to you. You are going to report this to the police, aren't you?”

I had been thinking about that. “That would probably be the wise thing to do.”

“Good.” He shook his head. “I hope they get the guy. Do you have any idea who it was?”

“I never saw him.”

“Maybe it was a her.”

“I heard some cussing. It was a man's voice. If there was a woman there, she never said anything.”

“Well, be careful. We have some violent people on this island. We see their work in here oftener than you might think.”

That was no doubt true. The beaches, shops, hotels, sailboats, sun, and summer sex that drew thousands of tourists to the Vineyard every year constituted only one of its Janus faces. The face not known to those tourists was that of many affluent resort communities: low pay and high prices for locals, few off-season jobs, and all of the problems associated with the resultant poverty.

“I'll be careful,” I said.

“And don't use that arm any more than you have to.”

“I won't.”

He gave me some pills and a prescription, and I limped
out to the Land Cruiser and drove home. I hurt in several places and was filled with a deep anger I didn't make any effort to control. It was born from pain, fear, and frustration. Someone had tried to kill or at least maim me, and I thought I knew who it was. And the attack had happened in my own yard!

It was maddening and frightening and overwhelmingly personal. It hadn't been a public event, an attack on society, it had been completely private, an attack on
me
! And because it was so private, I wasn't at all sure I wanted to involve the police. Instead, the vision of personal vengeance gleamed bright and glorious.

My emotions boiled.

I drove down my long, dark driveway into the brightly lighted yard. I got Zee's pistol into my hand and went into and through the house, looking everywhere at once. Of course no one was there but Oliver Underfoot and Velcro, both wondering why they'd had to wait so long for their evening snacks. I snacked them, then realized I hadn't eaten anything myself for hours. I wasn't hungry, but forced myself to put together a sandwich. I had one beer as I ate, and then had another one.

I turned off the outside lights, then turned them on again. I turned off the inside lights. Now I could see out, but no one could see in.

I thought of how Jake Barnes had had trouble sleeping with the lights off and wondered—ye gods!—what I was becoming. I turned on the inside lights and turned off the outside ones. This was my house, and I wasn't going to let the Vegas brothers turn me into a prisoner in my own home.

Such vanity. Had she been there, Zee, I knew, would have asked how leaving the outside light on made me a prisoner. She would have pointed out that under the circumstances leaving the outside lights on was a sensible idea. Pragmatic Zee. Were women always more practical than men?

Then, as I thought of Zee and Joshua and Diana, I was
immediately awash in even greater anger and fear. The Vegas brothers could do terrible things to them.

But, no. I wouldn't let them get at my family. I'd kill them first!

I'd kill them first!

It wasn't a thought, but an emotion. It felt good. A world without Alberto and Alexandro would be better for everyone, not just my family, and I would be the instrument toward that end. There was even a moral charm to it. I would do unto them what they had done unto others and had tried to do unto me. The God of Paul might keep vengeance for Himself, but I didn't believe in God or Paul so I'd take care of the matter myself.

Oliver Underfoot wandered between my sandals and rubbed against an ankle, buzzing. He, too, was a killer, one who brought home his victims as presents for Zee and me. He brought mice, voles, birds, and chipmunks, had once brought a snake, and had once even brought us a tiny bat, although neither Zee nor I could figure out how he'd managed to catch a bat since we had never even seen one around the place.

He was simultaneously a natural born lover and buzzer and killer, a sweet, gentle cat who liked nothing better than a lap yet was a model for the cat song that Zee and I sang to the tune of “Folsom Prison Blues.”

I picked him up and laid him over my shoulder. He purred. He was happy. Across the room, Velcro was cleaning her face after finishing her snack. Cleanliness was next to godliness in catland, too.

I held Oliver Underfoot. Maybe there was a God and It was a cat. If so, I imagined that the God found both killing and loving to be equally acceptable activities for Its creations. Certainly Oliver Underfoot and his kin were innocent hunter-killers. There was no moral component to their lives. They held no hatred for their victims, nor were hated by them. They were violent, but not vile.

But I wasn't a cat. I wasn't innocent.

I put Oliver down and went outside into the dark yard. Overhead, the Milky Way arched across the starry sky from northeast to southwest. A fingernail moon was off to the south. Four thousand years ago, people who had looked up at the night sky were building Stonehenge, and four thousand years in the future other people would be looking out there just as I was doing and would be building temples of their own. Throughout time, people have seen and will see manifestations of their gods in the sky, have sought and will seek the intent of those gods, the meaning of those stars.

But I saw no gods nor any import or significance in the stars. To me, the magnificent universe, for all its beauty and splendor and mystery, was meaningless and devoid of moral character. It was indifferent to the busy lives of such fleeting human forms of energy as the Vegas brothers and me. It took no heed of our hates and fears and cruelties, of our loves and kindnesses. It was, as old Bill observed, right as usual, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

So killing the Vegas brothers was fine. The sun would still come up in the east, the tides would rise and fall, the stars would turn in the sky; nothing would change except that Alexandro and Alberto would no longer be around to terrorize other people.

I went up on the balcony and sat in the cool night air. On the far side of Nantucket Sound the lights of Cape Cod twinkled and gleamed. Human lights in cosmic darkness. Tiny dots that spoke of houses filled with people who had taken arms against that darkness and were living as well as they could inside the very cosmos that I found morally void.

The starry starry night filled my eyes and began to carry away my anger. I was alive and planned to stay that way as long as possible. I had Zee and Joshua and Diana to look after (although Zee would probably say that she needed no looking after and that she was quite capable of taking care of Josh and Diana, and me, too, if it came to that).

It seemed to me that my murderous impulses, however real, should be curbed if I could curb them. I wondered if I could. I willed them away. They didn't go. I willed harder. They looked at me with red eyes and sank down into my psyche. But they didn't leave. The red eyes still glittered down there and their forked tails lashed.

I woke in the morning tired and out of sorts after a night of tossing and turning. It was bad enough to be alone in our double bed, but my devils hadn't wandered off to someplace out of sight until almost daylight.

I made breakfast and listened to the radio. The news of the world sounded pretty much the same as it had yesterday. I suspect that we could stop listening or reading about the news for a year or so and not miss a lot. There would still be a crisis in the Middle East, famine in Africa, political unrest in Mexico and South America, and a plane crash. Republicans and Democrats would be blaming each other for economic and social problems, and unusual weather would prevail somewhere or other. Everything changes, nothing changes.

One change was that Hurricane Elmer was definitely heading northwest at the moment, although the weather people weren't making any real predictions about its eventual path. Bermuda was keeping an eye on the storm, as was North Carolina, because one never knows, do one?

No, one doesn't.

I did know one thing: my hope of being no longer involved with the problems in Oak Bluffs had been naive. The Vegas brothers and I still had business together, and through Alexandro I was also still tied to Ivy Holiday and Julia Crandel.

Because I didn't want Zee involved in all this, I cleaned her .380, reloaded its clip, and locked both in the gun cabinet.
Then, because I
was
involved, I loaded my old police .38 and took it out to the Land Cruiser and put it under the seat.

The canvas bag was lying on the ground where I'd thrown it last night. The crude but utilitarian homemade sack had the remains of a nylon strap around its neck. When the strap had been intact, you could yank it tight with one hand, and it stayed tight until you loosened it by manipulating the buckle.