A Solitary Blue (21 page)

Jeff didn't know what to say. He had let himself get tied up in his feelings with Dicey and through her with them all; and this was what happened, it was probably bound to happen.

“I've got life preservers. Gram made me plunk three weeks'
earnings into them,” she told him impatiently, “and I don't care if you don't want to.”

That was true, Jeff knew, she didn't care if he didn't want to, even though it meant a lot to her. He was confused and kept looking at her. She waited impatiently for a couple of minutes, chewing on her lower lip, then turned her back on him and started walking down the path to the dock. He watched her walk, her long legs and bare feet, the cutoffs and T-shirt, and he followed her. He hadn't made up his mind, either to go or not to go. He felt that he'd disappointed her and he should apologize; he didn't want her to be angry at him. He got into the boat.

She hoisted the sails and cast off from the dock without saying anything. They moved out onto the bay, and still she didn't say anything. When Jeff finally turned to look at her, he realized that she didn't even know he was there. She paid attention only to the boat, to the tiller and to the wind in the sails. She looked the way she sometimes did when they were all singing. She caught Jeff's eyes and grinned at him.

“You really like this.” He was surprised at the intensity of her happiness.

“Yeah.”

“But you said you only sailed once before you came here,” he reminded her, checking up on the truth.

She brought the boat about, heading to the southwest on a reach, and instructed him to sit on the gunwales so that it would ride level. Waves slapped up against the side. Dicey sat back, her legs stretched out, her hand brown on the tiller.

“Across the bay, on a yacht. Boy, that was a time. Because we had to get across, to see what Crisfield was like, if we could live here. And Gram. We got to Annapolis, and we were sleeping out on this lawn — that was pretty easy because they were renovating the house so there was nobody there to know about us. We had to convince these two guys to sail us across. They wouldn't have done it to help out, they weren't that kind. So I told them we were going to visit relatives, an aunt who worked full time, in Easton, whose children were in day camp so it didn't matter what time we got there, and I told them we were staying with an old lady who knew our parents, but was too old to keep close tabs on us.” She stopped speaking, thought. “The hardest thing, all the time, was trying to remember all the different ends you had to cover and let it slip out in conversation,
not as if you were making it up. And trying to look casual, too, because if these guys had figured out that we really needed help they wouldn't have offered it. James kept asking them if the boat could sail all the way across the bay — and I kept thinking to myself what a dumb question. Until I figured out what he was up to. Then it had to be some kind of a dare, because — it was a funny kind of friendship, no friendship at all. I couldn't have pulled it off without James that time.”

“That time?”

“Other times — I just kind of knew what to tell people so they'd leave us alone.”

“How come you wanted them to leave you alone?”

She ignored the question.

Jeff remembered that they had come down alone from Connecticut, and he saw a picture of the four of them, and those sneakers. He didn't feel sorry for them at all, any more, just impressed. “But you could have gotten help from someone, the police, or welfare. Couldn't you?”

“Once we tried. Once. They wanted to put Maybeth into retarded classes, or something, and Sammy kept getting into trouble. My cousin dressed Maybeth up, and they all fluttered around her, because she was pretty, and talked about her marrying a rich man. My cousin didn't want to keep Sammy, she wanted him to go live somewhere else. There was this priest, he meant well but. . . .” Her voice trailed off. She didn't want to talk about it.

Listening to her, imagining it, knowing them all, Jeff knew he couldn't understand; but he understood the important thing. James had tried to tell him, saying, “what we were up against.” Jeff hadn't understood before he heard Dicey's voice, telling it. He saw now what they had had to fight through to get to Crisfield. He felt his insides ease up, relax — and he felt tears behind his eyes. And he understood himself a little more, too. He changed the subject. “I know a priest, he's OK. Actually, he's a monk, a brother, but a priest too. He's — a really good man. Where'd you live, before?”

“In Provincetown, out on Cape Cod. Right on the ocean. Not right on, but back behind the dunes, but it really was right on it.”

“I was at the ocean once. Not Ocean City, that doesn't count, but — ” Because he felt suddenly like talking, Jeff told her about the island, about the beach there. Then, when she asked him,
he told her about how he'd bought a boat and gradually worked up the courage to explore because of being frightened.

“What were you doing there anyway?” she asked him, not interested in his fears.

“Visiting my mother. But she took off with her boyfriend. There was just my great-grandmother and a couple of elderly cousins we called aunts; they weren't interested in what I did. So I did what I liked.” He could hear in his voice some of the feelings of that time, and he made a business out of adjusting the jib. Because he didn't want Dicey thinking he wanted her to feel sorry for him, because he knew he'd been lucky after all. In the long run. And the long run counted more than the short run.

“Where's the boat?” Dicey asked.

He told her about the last night in Charleston, on the island, and how he'd sunk the boat. That made her smile. Then he told her something he had only just remembered, wondering why the memory had sunk so far back into his mind that he hadn't ever recalled it. “The man who sold me the boat and rented me docking space, he was waiting when I swam back to the dock. I'd thought that nobody knew or cared where I was, what happened to me, as long as I was out of the way. Well, I was right. But he came out onto the dock with a towel. He'd known where I was, it turned out. When I hadn't come back by sunset, the way I usually did, he'd gone out looking and seen the boat tied up. Listen, Dicey, I can't say it the way he did, but he said he figured
if she gator gotchuh you's already a goner.
He called me
suh.
He said — I wish I could imitate it the way it was —
Suh, you come down here looking like she hounds of hell be chewing at your heart and no gator bites so bad. So I be watching this morning.
I guess, if I hadn't turned up, he'd have found my bones. Or something. I guess.”

Dicey didn't say anything. He thought she might ask about his mother and was glad she didn't. Then she said, “I wouldn't have sunk the boat. I wouldn't ever.”

“I wasn't in your kind of trouble,” Jeff pointed out.

“I guess you were in your own kind,” she said. “It's time to bring her about. Will you please get your weight back into the boat so I can do it?” she asked impatiently.

Brother Thomas came down for a week at the end of July, and the week stretched out to two, then three. He seemed tired, Jeff
thought, subdued, and he didn't get rested up. He talked late with the Professor, night after night. Jeff fell asleep to the sound of their voices. Jeff went to bed early because he got up so early, before dawn. One dark morning, Brother Thomas sat drinking a mug of tea and watching the silky gray sky when Jeff came into the kitchen. He didn't greet Jeff, didn't even seem to know he was there.

Jeff went to the bathroom, took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, and was awake by the time he came back. Brother Thomas sat in the same position, his hands in his lap, not leaning back against the chair. The level of tea in his mug hadn't changed. “Good morning,” Jeff said. “It's early.”

Brother Thomas greeted him then, his face pale above the black suit and white collar he had never, on that visit, gone without. “Couldn't you sleep?” Jeff asked. “Can I get you a bowl of cereal?”

“No, thank you; I'm not hungry.”

Jeff sat down to eat. “You look like you didn't sleep.”

“I guess I didn't. Do you always go off at this hour?”

“I have to pick up whoever is coming with me, then get the line set. Sunrise is about six,” Jeff explained. Then he had an idea. “Do you want to come?”

But Brother Thomas wasn't interested.

“You might like it,” Jeff said. He couldn't understand Brother Thomas's lack of energy; it wasn't like him, not like him at all. Something was wrong, he knew that, and he realized that this same barren feeling he was getting from Brother Thomas now was the only kind of feeling he'd gotten from the man this visit. Something was very wrong.

Jeff chewed and thought. Whatever it was, even talking with the Professor wasn't doing any good. But what was it? OK, Jeff said to himself, surprising himself, if you're supposed to have a talent for knowing how people feel, what's Brother Thomas feeling?

He glanced at the man sitting hunched, staring out at the sky but not seeing it. Bleak, Jeff felt, bleak and hopeless, some inner landscape as barren as the moon's surface, cold and lifeless.

What can I do? Jeff asked, inside himself. He figured, if the Professor's intelligence couldn't help, then that wasn't the way. He wondered if he should do anything, even if he could think of what. But he thought he would try. Something was wrong, he didn't know what, but he wondered what he could give to Brother Thomas — who
had given so much to him one way and another. “You ought to come,” he urged him. “You ought to try it, you used to be good at netting crabs off the line. Besides, you'd like my friends. I don't know who it'll be today.”

“Are these the Tillermans?”

“Yes. It would tire you out, too; we'll let you do all the work. You remember how much work it is, don't you? So you'll sleep well tonght.” Jeff worked to persuade him. “But it gets hot.”

“I don't mind,” Brother Thomas said. Although he didn't say he wanted to go along, he went. They needed a flashlight to get to the boat and cheek the supplies, but once they were away from the dock, Jeff told Brother Thomas to turn it off. The motor worked noisily as Jeff took the boat out to the deep center of the creek, then along into the bay. In predawn darkness, black waves made the boat buck slightly. Brother Thomas's shape was black at the bow of the boat. The last stars faded from the sky, but Brother Thomas didn't notice them.

It was James who waited at the end of the Tillermans' dock, in sleepy untalkativeness, two apples in his hand. But after the dawn had begun, a pool of light on the eastern horizon spreading out to illuminate the whole sky, and after he had eaten the apples and tossed the cores into the water, he began questioning Brother Thomas, as Jeff had known he would.

“Apple cores are biodegradable, so it's not like throwing garbage. Do you worry about garbage, are you an ecologist?”

“Isn't it because they're garbage that they're biodegradable?” Brother Thomas asked.

“Yeah, maybe. No, wait, that's not true, garbage means everything even tin cans and plastic. Who are you, anyway?”

“He teaches at the university with the Professor,” Jeff told James when Brother Thomas didn't answer. James was off, what did he teach, what did that mean, what kinds of books did he teach out of, what did they say, how did you get interested in teaching stuff like that, how did you learn about it, were his students smart? Brother Thomas answered all the questions, and at last his eyes met Jeff's — humorously — over James's head. Jeff just smiled back.

In between, they ran the line, culled through the haul, waited a few minutes then ran it again. Jeff drove the motor, because James got impatient at the slow, careful speed you needed to maintain.
Brother Thomas and James took turns netting the crabs. Brother Thomas tried to pick up an escaped crab with his fingers and got bitten for his trouble. That seemed to please him.

“You'll have to wash that out with antiseptic,” James told him. “Crab bites tend to get infected. We think they have some kind of mild natural poison on their shells for protection. Either that or it's because they're scavengers — they'll eat anything, you know.”

“Apparently,” Brother Thomas answered, sucking on his bleeding finger. James grinned. “What grade are you in, James?”

“Going into sixth. Why don't you take off your jacket, or is it one of the rules of your order that you can't? Aren't you hot?”

By then they had three bushels, more than enough to sell, as well as feed both families dinner. Jeff tried to ignore the stiffness in his back muscles, tightened by hours of sitting on the hard seat, leaning forward to watch where the trotline rose up out of the water, and now straining against the weight of anchor, boat, and line as he hauled the trot line in. He hoisted up the final cinderblock and set it gently down on the bottom of the boat. He stretched his arms out, trying to relieve his back. “You wouldn't like to run us in, would you?” he asked Brother Thomas.

In the round face, the brown eyes were awake again. “And I shall make you fishers of men,” he joked to Jeff. “It would have been, in those days, more like crabbing than the fishing industry is now. That's something I don't think I understood before.”