“How old is he?” asked Geoff.
“Eleven.”
It looked like the work of a five-year-old. Another setup? he wondered.
But Carolyn called to Robby, who came shuffling in from the living room.
He seemed small for his age, a little round-shouldered, maybe, and he carried his head at a strange, crooked angle. As he approached, Geoff first saw the sandy hair, the friendly smile, then the unaccountably old face and sad eyes of Down’s syndrome.
Carolyn introduced Geoff as Mr. Hilyard, and the boy took Geoff’s hand with a practiced politeness that was all the more touching for the pride he took in it.
“Nice to meet you, Robby.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Hilyard. Do you… do you like to fish?”
“I love to.” Geoff told the boy about his fishing boat and promised to take him out someday.
After the boy had gone back to the television, Carolyn pulled out a chair. “Get the surprise off your feet.”
“Nice boy,” said Geoff.
“You’re a nice guy. When I meet a man, I always gauge him on how he’ll do with Robby. I pegged you for a good one. But you’re taken. End of another story.”
They talked a bit about the boy and his drawings, and that led naturally back to Tom Hilyard’s paintings.
“He had the log, he painted from it, he lost it.” She took two beers from the refrigerator. Then she jumped to the stove and flipped the hamburgers before they burned. Not nearly as cool in the kitchen as in the office.
He went to the counter to open the beers for her. That was when he noticed the black wig and sunglasses. Strange. And something stranger lay beneath them: a set of proofs for an Old Comers promotional brochure, with head shots of the directors, including John M. Nance.
Geoff took a moment, took a sip of beer, swallowed his anger at his own ignorance. Then he softly said Nance’s name. “You told me you didn’t know anything about him.”
Carolyn took a tomato out of the refrigerator. “I told you I didn’t know anything about his entry on the
list.
”
“I never mentioned a list.”
She put the tomato on the cutting board and sliced into it, as though it were a prop. “Your friends, Geoff… choose them more carefully. One of them talks a lot.”
“And one of them was beaten up last night, by your boss’s Bigelow friends. Did they do that to get information?”
“I don’t know a thing about that. But I sent people into Rake Hilyard’s barn last night, because I knew about the list and could deduce a bit more, thanks to one of your friends. Now it’s over, so it doesn’t matter which friend. I see no reason why Agnes Bigelow would tell you anything but the truth.”
Another setup, after all? He stood there, hating the smell of hamburger fat in a kitchen. “You’ve been lying to me since I laid eyes on you, Carolyn. Why should I believe you now?”
“Listen”—she slammed the knife on the cutting board and sent tomato seeds splattering—“I have two loyalties: to that boy in there and to the job that lets me give him the best life I can. Nance gave me the job. Guess the rest of the syllogism.”
Life was full of surprises. A lot of them were bad. Some were sad. More than anything, he wanted to see his kids.
iii.
As he drove over the causeway, he imagined the lives Jack’s Island had lived. Those lives had been full of surprises, too, a lot of them bad. And some sad.
He saw it as Jack Hilyard must have seen it, covered with tall hardwoods, dense and primeval. Then it was treeless, with corn growing and windmills pumping water into salt vats. Then the great white hotel rose on Nauseiput Creek. Then the red cedars began to fill in the meadows, making way for the pitch pine forest that now was giving way to oak and that might someday become beech and maple again.
He drove by the house that Elwood had built on the hotel foundation. Nothing else remained of the Hilyard House. Nature covered her scars, if given time. But bulldozers gouged deep….
And damned if he didn’t hear one when he got out of the car in front of Rake’s house. Then he saw the Voyager. A bad surprise, then a good one. From somewhere, his kids came scampering and falling over each other, covering him with kisses and questions. Where had he been? Why wasn’t he staying in Truro? When was he going to make up his mind so they could all be back together again? What had she been telling them?
She had her arms folded across her chest, which meant she was ready for a fight, but her words were the neutral color of sand. “I thought you’d stay here tonight, to be ready for the Conservation Commission walk tomorrow.”
A snappy answer would have been good, but that bulldozer…
Janice told the kids to go down and play with Jimmy and Jason.
“Jimmy’s kids?” Geoff asked. “Are Jimmy and Samantha here, too? Is this, like, a party?” More like a wake, he was thinking, and from the way she was standing in the doorway, she could be the guest of honor.
“I asked them to come. To help us.”
Crack!
The sound of a tree snapping at the trunk. “What’s that bulldozer doing?”
“Geoff, do I have to worry about this Carolyn Hallissey?”
“You have to worry about
us
… and that bulldozer.” If she wanted to make him feel squeezed, she couldn’t have done a better job. The bulldozer, the kids, the questions—bring it all to a point right now, right in the open.
Somewhere off on the west side of the island, another tree trunk split, then snapped. The crown sweeping through the surrounding branches sounded like the wind.
“Forget the bulldozer,” said Janice, still frozen in the doorway. “The log burned. My family’s in trouble. We’re in trouble—”
“Because you ran away.”
“
You
ran away.”
“And your family’s in trouble, Janice, because your brother’s on the hook to John M. Nance.”
She didn’t move, didn’t even seem shocked, which surprised him. “I heard. Jimmy went to the registry. There’s a mortgage on file, between Bigelow and Iron Axe.”
“Yeah”—Jimmy came out of the house and distributed beers to Geoff and Janice—“but I couldn’t get any further than the catalog, because in the summer they close at four o’clock on Mondays around here. Librarian called me a typical Indian. Day late and a dollar short.”
“Nobody’s called him a
typical
Indian in a long time,” Samantha followed her husband. “I’m not sure I like it.”
Jimmy took a swallow of beer. “Ma laughed like hell when I told her.”
“Did she laugh about Nance? Strip-the-Plants, stomp the foe, run him off the road.” Geoff pulled from his pocket the piece of fabric, blue with a little white anchor woven into it. “I found this on the bumper of Rake’s car.”
Just then George’s Bronco came banging down the road and into the driveway. He had his new friend with him, and he didn’t look too bad for all that had happened to him. He even got out of the car with a little spring in his step, though his friend stayed inside.
Geoff went over to him and lifted his sunglasses and he looked a lot worse. “Hiya, George.”
George tried to smile, but it looked as if it hurt too much. “It got uglier, Geoff.”
“The Humpster?” asked Geoff.
George just shrugged.
Now Samantha came over to him and pinned a purple paper heart to his shirt. “The kids made this.”
“Cute,” said George.
“Are you sure the Humpster did this to you?” asked Janice.
“They wrote his favorite line on the front door.”
In the woods, the bulldozer growled, shifted gears.
“Now he’s cuttin’ new scars in Mother Earth,” said Jimmy.
“What would Ma Little do about that?” asked Geoff.
“As long as they’re a hundred feet from the wetlands,” answered Jimmy, “not a thing. Legally, that is.”
Geoff picked up a garden spade leaning against a fence post. “Ma would kick a little ass. And old Rake would say, ‘Fuck ’em, let’s fight about it.’ You guys with me?”
George fitted the glasses back on his nose gingerly. “Hey, guys, I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“So bring your friend along.” Geoff looked into the car, at George’s friend. “What about—
David?
The secretary?”
The young man from Provincetown who served coffee and fetched files for Carolyn Hallissey. He gave Geoff a little wave with his fingertips and then looked straight through the windshield.
“Secretary?” George looked in at David from the other side of the car. “Of what?”
“Old Comers Plantation. He’s been passing everything you know to Carolyn Hallissey, Georgie.”
George looked at David, and David just shrugged. No big deal. Nice knowin’ ya. See ya around. He got out of the car and started down the road.
And for a moment, the others stood there listening to the growling of the Humpster’s bulldozer in the woods, while George hid whatever he was feeling behind his sunglasses.
Finally George shouted, “Thanks for bein’ there last night, David. And thanks for nothin’.” Then he smoothed the little purple heart on his chest. “Helluva life, isn’t it, kids?”
The thunderous echo of an empty scoop striking a boulder made them all jump. Geoff grabbed his shovel and said the Humpster should pay for what he had done to Georgie.
“This is stupid,” said Janice.
Jimmy patted her arm. “I’m still a lawyer. I still know how to talk. We’ll let the Humpster know he shouldn’t do what he’s doing. We’re not that stupid.”
Geoff was already halfway down the road. Jimmy gave his wife a little kiss and went hurrying after him.
George said, “I can’t be a lover, so I guess I’ll be a fighter.”
And Janice went in to call her brother.
A chain saw was baying after the bulldozer. And as Geoff approached the edge of the woods near Doug’s house, he smelled diesel exhaust.
The baloney roll hanging over the Humpster’s belt jiggled. At first he didn’t see them. Running a rig like this was demanding work, and the Humpster was no amateur. Give him that much. He drove the yellow monster the way most men drove a car.
The trees fell, and the rocks rolled, and the scanty topsoil came scraping up like sunburned skin under a fingernail. And three other guys went about the business of cleaning up after him, one with a chain saw, two with shovels.
“Hey, fat ass,” shouted Geoff.
“What the fuck do
you
want?” screamed the Humpster.
“What are you doin’?” demanded Geoff.
“I’m fuckin’ a snake. What does it look like?”
The guy with the chain saw gunned his little monster into the air, just for show. The others raised their shovels.
“You need Conservation Commission approval to cut these trees,” said Jimmy.
The Humpster pointed across the road, to a red stake about thirty feet from Doug’s driveway. “There’s the hundred-foot wetlands marker. Beyond it, we can do anything we want outside of buildin’ a house. So fuck off, Hiawatha.”
Jimmy took a few steps. “I’ll have the C.C. here in twenty minutes. Cutting these trees threatens the watershed.”
“In twenty minutes, they’ll all be down. One acre.”
“Then you’ll be fined,” said Jimmy.
The Humpster gave them the finger and leaned on the throttle. The earthmover scraped into another clump of trees. The earth beneath it was a strange yellow color. Then he backed up, crunching and grinding over broken branches and rocks, straight at Geoff Hilyard, without even looking.
Geoff raised his shovel. Jimmy stood at his shoulder.
Fat jiggled, wood chips flew, and somebody finally saw that the Humpster wasn’t going to stop. George grabbed Jimmy, Jimmy grabbed Geoff, and the three of them went sprawling sideways into the sand as the treads crawled past, like a Japanese tank in a war movie.
“You guys remember
Back to Bataan?”
George picked up a rock. “If this was a hand grenade—”
Now the guy with the chain saw decided to get into it, but he didn’t get far. Geoff swung his shovel like a baseball bat and caught the saw right under the blade. It flew up, spun backwards, and nearly cut the guy’s nose off. He jumped back so fast that he tripped on one of the fallen trees, and before he was on his feet, Jimmy had the saw in his hands, holding it like a spear to keep the others off.
“Better odds today, fatso,” shouted George.
“What are you talkin’ about?” The Humpster threw the shift into neutral so he could trade a few more insults.
“ ‘Faggots, Mo-nigs, and fools’?” said George.
“You said it, not me.” The Humpster was probably an inveterate liar, but he was no actor. Geoff could see that he was puzzled by George’s remark. Then the Humpster revved his engine like a challenge.
And Geoff smashed his shovel against the blade of the bulldozer. It was like taking a hammer to a battleship, but he didn’t care. After a week and a half of frustration, it was better than sex. If these were the odds, he’d take them.
And now Blue Bigelow and Douglas came skidding down the road in Blue’s Lincoln Continental. Blue leaped out, shouting, “What’s goin’ on here?”
“Clearin’ the woods.” The Humpster backed halfway to the road for some running room, then he shifted again.
However stupid it might have been, Geoff kept himself in the way. And his friends decided to act as stupid.
The Humpster gunned the engine. The little cap on the exhaust tube popped open. The fat jiggled. The Humpster looked like some kind of heavy-haul Buddha in a John Deere temple. The sand and rolling rocks in front of the blade built like a wave.
“Stand your ground,” said Geoff.
“That’s what they told us when the white men fired their guns,” said Jimmy.
Brmmmm
. He fired the saw.
“Scissors cut paper, bulldozer breaks chain saw”—George seized a rock and wound up like Roger Clemens—“and rock breaks Humpster.” But George had no control. The Humpster just laughed at a wild pitch.
Closer and higher the wave came. Blue shouted something at his son. Closer, higher, louder…
Geoff stopped thinking. Thought retreated behind the barrier of instinct. He knew he would know just when to jump, or whether to jump at all.
Closer, higher, louder…
Blue Bigelow moved fast for a big man. By the time he leaped onto the bulldozer and grabbed the brake, the blade was so close that Geoff could see no more than two heads above it.