“Restricted Zone!” shouted Jimmy. “We’re in it!”
“Restricted? From what?” cried George.
Geoff saw the black shadow of the
Longstreet
ahead. The canted bow looked as if it was sinking into the mud, the stern was crumbling, and the midships was gone—bombed, rusted, vaporized—from the deck plates to the waterline.
Why not? The Whaler drew so little and they were going so fast they just… might… make it. “We’re goin’ through.”
“Through what?” shouted Jimmy.
“The boat. No time to be timid,” answered Geoff. “Georgie, get in the bow!”
“The what?”
“The bow! Even out the keels and keep low.”
George slipped onto one of the bow seats. Geoff aimed at the middle of the shadow. “Hold
on!
”
“Holy shit!” George covered his head with his hands.
“This is craaazy!” shouted Jimmy.
The roar of the engine doubled, trebled, deafened, echoed madly off the rusted mountain around them. The wind rushing past was focused, blowing straight down the metal canyon in the middle of the wreck. The searchlight beam was broken by enormous shadows on either side of them.
From somewhere in his youth or beyond, Geoff heard the words of the old psalm, “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death…”
And they were out.
“All riiight!” George filled with bravery.
But the light was out right after them, still chasing… and getting closer.
“They followed us through!” Jimmy shouted.
“Let’s go again!” Geoff threw the helm to starboard. The Whaler spun so sharply that the water slopped in over the gunwales on the inside of the turn.
And the beam of light came straight at them.
“Who
are
those fuckin’ guys?” shouted Jimmy.
“Who knows?” cried Geoff.
“How many you figure aboard?” George asked.
“At least two! One to drive, one to use that light.”
They sped around the stern of the
Longstreet
, bumping hard over the waves from their own turning wake.
But the light kept coming.
“What we do know,” shouted George, “is that one of them has an allergy!”
Allergy? thought Geoff. A sneeze? He finished the circle and aimed into the midships hole again.
A sneeze… a new mattress to replace Clara’s old one… a piece of blue and white fabric caught in the bumper of a ruined car, familiar fabric with little white anchors… from an old mattress, a mattress tied to a bumper, to protect it… while it ran Rake Hilyard off the road….
Arnie Burr!
“That son of a bitch!” Geoff turned his head to check the light. It was chasing them into the break once more.
The Whaler sped through and broke out into open ocean.
Geoff shouted, “This time, we keep goin’.”
But this time, the light didn’t follow them.
Because Arnie Burr sneezed. His hand slipped from the wheel and he struck something in the water, one of the rusted ribs of the old ship, something sharp enough to poke a hole in the hull of Arnie’s boat.
Then there was a dull
thunk
. The shock of the collision set off the small charge in an ancient target bomb, which set off the charge in a misfired rocket, which set off the gasoline leaking from Arnie’s boat, which blew into the sky.
ii.
Emily’s cigarette flared in the darkness. She was standing on the dock at the sailing camp, waiting.
And Geoff could tell, just from her shadow, that she knew.
He jumped out of the Whaler. “We went back, but—”
She flipped her cigarette into the water.
The sound of the explosion had brought kids and counselors out of the camp barracks, but Emily had ordered them all back to bed. Competent Emily, keeping order.
“He chased us through the target ship,” said Jimmy.
“Crazy.” George’s voice was shaking.
Emily pulled out another cigarette and lit it with a Bic lighter. “Damn fool.”
Geoff showed her the fabric, told her where it came from.
She studied it in the glow from the lighter. “Ma always said he was a selfish bastard.”
“Who was on the boat with him?”
“Clarence Bigelow… Arnie liked the Humpster. They thought the same about this island. Tonight the Humpster said that he was going to settle this thing a lot faster than his father could. Just to show Blue who was the real stupid son of a bitch.”
“He’d been called that once too often,” said Geoff.
“Every boy has to prove something, even the Humpster.” Emily took a long drag. “He came here the night Rake died… with a bicycle in the back of his truck. I could never figure that one out.”
But Geoff could. A bike to make an old man swerve.
Far out on the bay, lights were flashing now. A Coast Guard cutter was probing the
Longstreet
.
Emily hacked against the back of her hand. “As far as I know, Arnie went chasin’ bluefish around the target ship. If he killed Rake, I’d rather not have it known.”
It was a deal worth taking, as long as Rake’s killers had been punished. Geoff wanted nothing to tie him to the house from Billingsgate… or to its owners.
Competent
. That was Emily. She walked to the edge of the dock and watched the Coast Guard searchlight sweeping the water.
iii.
The barrels of a shotgun pressed against the side of Geoff’s head.
“Hello, Massy,” said Jimmy through the open window on the passenger side.
“I thought Ma’s place was the
safe
house,” George said.
“It
is,
” said Jimmy, “because Massy and his friends are in the woods with guns. Nance’s thugs won’t get near us.”
Massy told the three of them to get out. “You guys go on inside. We’ll hide the car.”
Then one of Massy’s pals got behind the wheel and went pounding off into the woods with two wheels off the ground, then three, and sometimes four.
“Hey, watch the springs,” shouted Geoff.
“And the
trees,”
said Jimmy.
Samantha and Ma Little were were having tea at the kitchen table. The kids were bedded down.
“Nice surprise,” said Ma, “havin’ you all here tonight. Now, are we on for a little hell-raisin’ tomorrow or not?”
“Let’s see what’s in the box first,” said Jimmy.
“Where’s Janice?” asked Geoff.
“Wouldn’t come. Went to her grandmother’s instead,” said Samantha. “She said she wasn’t going to play a little boys’ game with a—here I quote—‘very stubborn little boy.’ I almost went with her.”
“But you stuck by your man.” Ma gave Samantha a pat on the back, which she hadn’t done too often, and told Geoff she had sent a couple of Massy’s pals to Agnes’s house, so that Nance wouldn’t get close.
That made Geoff feel a bit better. He opened the plastic bag he’d been carrying and pulled out the box. There was no ceremony. He was too exhausted, too shocked at the explosion of Arnie’s boat, too disappointed that his wife was not here.
His shorts had dried out after his wade through the water, but the salt on his skin made his ass sting and itch like a case of poison ivy. The hunt for this box had led him to the truth about Rake’s death. Its contents would vindicate him, and Janice didn’t even care. He wanted a shower. But that could wait.
It was time for the box. Geoff touched it. He felt the cold, smooth surface. He ran his fingers over the initials in the upper right corner. He was almost afraid to open it. They all were. Except Ma.
“Well, goddamn. I ain’t sittin’ here all night. I need my sleep.” And she attacked the wax seal with a table knife.
Then Jimmy grabbed a pair of pliers and bent off the little clasp. Then Geoff pushed at the lid, but it was rusted on.
George handed him a hammer. “Let’s see if Samuel Eliot Morison was right about the wrapping paper.”
“And whether we’re millionaires,” said Jimmy.
Geoff tapped the corners of the lid, lifting it a little, then a little more, and the excitement began to fill him, driving away his exhaustion, his disappointment, and his doubts over what he had done.
Be careful. Hurry up. The box is fragile. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t hit too hard. C’mon,
hit
the damn thing. They were all talking at once.
One more tap
. The top popped off and clanged onto the table.
Before them lay a thin brown notebook on which was written the name Lemuel Bellamy in several different scripts.
“That’s no log,” whispered Jimmy.
Geoff lifted the notebook out and gave it to George.
Beneath it was a thicker book, like a ledger.
“That
is.”
Geoff grabbed a dish towel from the refrigerator door and wiped his hands.
“But is it the right one?” asked George.
Without lifting it from the box, Geoff flipped it open and read, “Log of the
Dragon
. Southampton, June 21, 1814.”
“There’s another one beneath it.” Ma Little gently lifted the log of the
Dragon
from the box and revealed a third book.
It was bound in brown vellum and very old, much older than the others. The cover crackled with dryness when Geoff turned it back, but the binding was still solid after—he read the first entry: “
July 15, 1620
”
—
three hundred seventy years. The electricity traveled from his fingertips straight up his spine and jumped across every synapse in his head.
“ ‘At Berth in Thames. This day have been engaged by agents of the London Adventurers…’ ”
George whispered, “The book of history—”
“—will set us free from the evil that bricks us up.” Geoff leafed through the parchment pages, through the names of history—Brewster, Bradford, Standish—and the names of the families from which he and his wife and their children descended.
Then he put the book on the table, as though its energy was too much, or maybe it was the vision that passed before him—of himself, with his wife and family at his side, on the deck of the
Mayflower
, with the pristine continent spread before them.
Then the refrigerator kicked on and Ma clapped her hands together. “This deserves a toast.”
After the clinking of beer cans, Geoff began to read. And he read for an hour, soft and steady, stumbling a bit on the illegible words and strange seventeenth-century spellings, but hypnotized by the tale.
“ ‘Upon the buckling of the main beam, a sailor cried that we should turn back, causing several of the passengers to voice their fright. Bradford chided his people and told them to put faith in God. I told the sailor it was no place of his to make such remarks and ordered him to the deck.’ ”
“Decisive. I like it,” said Jimmy.
“This is a time machine,” whispered George.
“ ‘The elders then fetched an iron screw jack, brung to raise their houses, and supported the beam. This will hold, said I. Bradford added that God would see to it. Their faith is a thing to see. It calms their fears as if it could calm the storm. Yet the storm does blow and I must put my faith in my ship, cracked beam and all.’ ”
“An existentialist,” said George.
“Just a man, trying to get by,” said Geoff.
Ma Little yawned, and her false uppers dropped onto her tongue. “Let’s get ’em to America, guys. I’m sleepy.”
Geoff flipped to the entry for November 9, 1620, the landfall. “ ‘Before this joyful moment, there came promise of conflict, when the Stranger Jack Hilyard emptied a slop bucket during morning prayer—’ ”
“Sounds like something a Hilyard would do.” George laughed.
“ ‘—which incurred the wrath of Ezra Bigelow, who berated him for such a blaspheming act. The high-minded Bigelow takes it to himself to chide everyone when the spirit is upon him.’ ” Geoff glanced at his friends. “It’s genetic.”
“Keep reading,” said Jimmy.
“ ‘Thus giving proof to one truth—no matter where men are, there be contention.’ ”
At that, Ma began to cackle.
“What’s so funny?”
“The Hilyards and the Bigelows are
still
contendin’,” she said, “and still contendin’ over where to put the shit.”
“Not on Jack’s Island,” said Geoff, “no matter how good their septic system is.”
They read on through the scenes that had inspired Tom Hilyard’s paintings.
Reading the Compact, Finding the Corn
, and
Firebrand at First Encounter
all came to life.
Jimmy looked at Ma. “We sure missed our chance at the First Encounter.”
“We missed a lot of chances.” Ma got up to make coffee. “Even missed our chance for a good night’s sleep.”
Geoff didn’t hear the birdsong beginning or the gentle snoring of Samantha, who had put her head down on the table, or the ineffable sadness in Jimmy’s voice. He had been drawn completely into the tale, which now told of “terrible news awaiting William Bradford.”
“ ‘Terrible news,’ ” George whispered. “
Murder on the Mayflower
?”
And there it was, in a few words—the suspicion that had paralyzed the Bigelows from the time of Ezra to… when?
Geoff read of Bradford’s resolve at learning of his wife’s death, of Master Jones’s suspicion. “ ‘I called the elders together in the great cabin, for a master can shut his eyes to nothing aboard his ship.’ ”
“Who?” George came around the table to read over Geoff’s shoulder. “Who does he suspect?”
“Ezra Bigelow,” whispered Geoff. “My wife’s Pilgrim ancestor.”
“You make it sound as if
she
did it,” said Jimmy.
There were more birds singing now, though the sky was barely streaked with light. Ma got up and started banging the coffee pot around.
Geoff kept reading and paraphrasing and reading. “On the night of her death, Jones says he heard voices. ‘Sharp voices, they were, ’twixt Ezra and Dorothy, as though they had come to some terrible pass.’ ”
Then Bradford uttered his verdict: “suicide.” But was it? Elder Brewster said no. As if to comfort Bradford, protect Dorothy’s soul, or defend one of their own, he pronounced the death an accident.
And Christopher Jones didn’t believe it. Geoff felt the suspicion in every line. Jones thought Ezra Bigelow had killed Dorothy Bradford. “Guys, I think this book solves the first murder mystery in America.”