Deadly Nightshade (29 page)

“I'll be glad when the president's outta here.” Louie slapped a handful of receipts on the desk in front of Allison. “Here are some more.”

Allison shuffled through the receipts Louie had given her. “When are you going to learn how to write? I can't read any of this stuff, you know?”

“So what?” Louie slumped into the chair in front of the computer, entered something and moved the mouse around. “they forgot to take off the games when they installed the harbor stuff. I'll bet Mr. D. plays Minesweeper when no one's here.”

“Leave it alone,” Allison said sharply.

“Listen to you. Little Miss Lawsuit.”

The radio crackled, probably a boat needing a slip. Louie answered, gave the skipper a slip number, then hung up the mike.

An angular man wearing an earphone and a button in the lapel of his blazer came to the window. “I need to use your radio,” he said to Louie.

“I'm in charge here, not him,” Allison said.

“Sure,” Louie said. “Anything for the president.”

The man turned his back on Louie and Allison while he talked in semicode to a vessel. Then he hung up the mike and left.

“You could say thank you,” Allison shouted after him, but he was already off the catwalk.

An elderly woman came to the window. “Would you know, miss, when the president will be arriving?”

“No, ma'am. Today or tomorrow, I guess.”

“Will he come here to Oak Bluffs?”

“I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't know what his plans are. Maybe for the fireworks tomorrow.”

“Thank you so much, miss.”

“At least I been doing important stuff.” Louie wadded up a piece of paper and tossed it at the wastepaper basket. It missed and fell on the floor. Allison kicked it.

“Yeah? Like what?”

“I did stuff for Meatloaf. He paid me. A lot.”

“So what are you doing for Meatloaf now? Planting grass?”

“I don't know why I bother to talk to you.” Louie clicked the mouse on the game. “I been doing stuff for the selectmen.”

“My aunt, I suppose. Her errand boy.”

The phone rang. Allison answered, took a message for Domingo, and hung up.

A sailboat came in through the channel, and Allison went out on the deck with her clipboard. She called out a slip number and pointed; the skipper nodded thanks.

She stepped back inside the shack, finished sorting the receipts, and took them over to the computer. “Mind if I do some real work?”

Louie's face flushed. He exited from the games program, stood up, and stretched. Allison took the seat he'd vacated and opened up the reservations program.

“You're wasting your time. You know that, don't you?”

“So?” Allison continued to enter data.

“Mr. D. thinks he's so smart, computerizing everything.” Louie put his hands in his pockets and sauntered over to the window that overlooked the parking lot. “He's making a lot of enemies is what he's doing.”

“Why don't you shut up and let me do my work, you know?”

“You wouldn't talk so smart if you knew what I been doing.”

“What've you been doing? You're just dying to tell me, aren't you?”

A call came over the radio. The phone rang. Allison took the radio call while Louie answered the phone.

“You know that big tree limb that came down in Elizabeth's driveway?” Louie said when it was quiet again.

“Yeah?”

“I did that.”

“Well, whatever you were trying to do, it didn't work.”

“Yeah it did.”

“I'm not impressed.” Allison held up a receipt and stared at it. “What does this say? What's this boat name?”

Louie looked at it. “
Night Hawk
? I don't know.
Right Stuff
?”

“Is the boat still here?”

“Probably.”

“Go back and write the name so we can read it, will you?”

“Furthermore, you know that accident she had? On Barnes Road? I set that up.”

“Let me work, will you?” Allison pushed her hair away from her face with her shoulder. “I don't want to hear this stuff.”

“It scared her shitless. Scared her old lady, too.”

“Mrs. Trumbull scared? I don't think so.” Allison waved her hand in front of her face. “I suppose you left those notes, too?”

“That's right.”

“Whoever thought that up was stupid.”

“I thought that up.” Louie stood. “That was hardly stupid. Mr. D. was pretty worried about that, too. Still is.”

“Not really. You finished bragging? How about going away and doing your job, you know? Here are a couple more receipts no one can read.”

When Louie sauntered off, whistling, batting his receipt book against the railing as he went, Allison called Domingo and told him what Louie had said.

Dojan pulled his lobster boat up to the floating dock at the foot of the harbormaster's shack, where Victoria waited, sitting on a chair Elizabeth had put there for her.

Dojan's wooden boat was not large, maybe eighteen feet long, had a small cabin forward, a large cockpit aft, and an outboard motor patched with black vinyl tape and shiny aluminum duct tape. A long tiller led from a large red-painted rudder dotted with barnacles. The rudder had a cutout near the stern of the boat for the outboard motor. Most of the boat's paint had flaked off, and what remained was mostly green, with touches of black and red. The flat, broad gunwales were worn and splintery, as if over the seasons Dojan had pulled his lobster pots aboard there.

He shut off the motor, tied the lines to dock cleats, and leapt nimbly onto the dock. His bare feet splayed out.

“You came!” His grin showed his missing tooth.

“Did you think I wouldn't?” Victoria rose, holding on to the railing, and picked up a basket that was next to her. “I brought lunch, roast chicken and hard-boiled eggs.”

Dojan rolled his eyes.

“Napkins and orange juice.” She looked up at him and smiled. “I decided not to bring fudge for dessert.”

His mouth formed a pink O in the middle of his beard.

“You gonna be warm enough?”

“I'm layered.” Victoria showed him the windbreaker Howland had lent her. Under that was the heavy Canadian sweater from Fiona's parents, then the gray moth-eaten sweater of Elizabeth's, under that a down vest that didn't quite close, and then a stretched-out red turtleneck shirt. She started to lift that, and Dojan hurriedly held up his hand.

“If you get cold, I have jackets and blankets and hats.”

“I have leather work gloves so I can haul pots.” Victoria held up her gardening gloves, a hole in the thumb mended with masking tape.

Elizabeth came down the ramp to the dock. “For heaven's sake, Gram, you'd think it was February.”

“I expect to be outside working, not idling.”

“Don't fall overboard. With all those clothes, you'll sink like a stone.”

“They'll be full of air, buoy me up.”

“Bring home a lot of lobsters. I'll get your lines.”

Dojan helped the bulky Victoria aboard and leapt into the boat after her. She sat on a box he'd brought for her. He started the engine, Elizabeth tossed the lines aboard, and Dojan steered slowly out of the channel. Victoria, still seated, coiled his lines neatly.

When they were clear of the buoys at the mouth of the channel, Dojan opened up the throttle, and the boat lifted in the water, the engine humming. Victoria noticed him cock his head toward the sound of the motor, as if listening to it, watched him steer with the slightest movement of the long tiller. The wind ruffled his hair, blew his beard away from his face, and sent his skull scarf streaming behind him. His bare arms, tattooed with eagles and roses, were dark brown, sun and dirt combined.

Victoria shed some of her layers. First the windbreaker, which she rolled up and tossed into the cabin, then the heavy sweater. Soon she was down to the red turtleneck, and the cabin floor had a heap of clothing on it. Dojan nodded. His eyes were clear; his mouth was open in a wide smile.

They turned right toward Cape Poge, the same route the whale-watch boat had taken. Gulls trailed after them, mewing. The motor hummed quietly, and small waves slapped against the bow. Before they reached the cape, Dojan slowed. Victoria could see the line of low shore and the lighthouse on the tip. Dojan pointed, and she saw his lobster-pot buoys bobbing in the water, yellow, with two blue stripes around them. He steered next to the first buoy, reached into the water, and pulled it on board. He hauled up the line fastened to the buoy, and Victoria saw the trap rising through the clear green water.

“Couple of keepers there.” Dojan dumped the lobsters onto the deck and tossed the lobster pot overboard.

“Only a couple? It looks like a dozen to me, Dojan.”

“See those marks on the gunwale? They gotta be that long.”

Victoria moved her feet out of the way as lobsters scurried around the deck, claws clashing. Dojan grabbed the littlest ones by their backs and dropped them overboard. He reached into a coffee can for a handful of wide yellow rubber bands and fitted them over the claws of the two largest lobsters, then dropped them into a white plastic bucket of seawater. He shaded the bucket with a piece of dirty gray canvas.

The boat rocked gently. Dojan pulled his pots, dumped out lobsters, and dropped the pots overboard with a smooth rhythm. Victoria sorted out the smallest lobsters and tossed them overboard. Her work gloves were soon wet and coated with slimy green algae. The masking tape disintegrated, exposing her thumb.

Gulls cried and dived at schools of small fish; the sun wheeled overhead. Neither Victoria nor Dojan spoke.

Finally, Dojan stood erect, stretched his arms out to the side, and said, “That's all.”

Victoria counted the lobsters. “We have a nice mess, at least fifteen.”

Dojan grinned.

Victoria looked at him. “It's a nice picnic spot.”

They tossed their gnawed-on chicken bones into the Sound. Cracked eggs against the gunwale and flicked the shells overboard, where large fish rose to the surface to snap at the remains. Gulls fought and squabbled and cried over their picnic leftovers. Victoria dipped her hands into the water, washed off the chicken fat, reached into her pocket for a napkin, and dried her face. She grinned happily at Dojan, who grinned back. The boat rocked gently, waves lapping against its wooden sides.

“When does the tide change?” Victoria had been watching trees on the shore pass them as the boat drifted slowly toward the arc of Cape Poge.

“Full flood now.” Dojan's mouth was full of chicken, his beard full of crumbs and dripping fat. He tossed the bone he'd been gnawing overboard, and a fish snatched it and dived with a silver flash. “Slack tide in two hours. Change, a half hour after that.” He wiped his forearm across his mouth.

Victoria watched the shoreline drift past. The near trees seemed to move faster than the distant ones. Dim objects approached, became rocks or boats pulled up on the shore, or tree trunks washed in from far places. The objects faded behind them as they drifted slowly. When they neared Cape Poge, she could see what looked like an array of slender poles. At first, she thought they were fishing rods stuck in the sand, but as they came closer, she saw they were tall masts on the other side of the spit. They drifted toward the cape. There were six or seven large sailboats clustered together beyond the breaking surf along the straight east shore.

“Are they at anchor?”

Dojan turned and stood up. “They're big.”

“Are they rafted up? Seems like an out-of-the-way place for an overnight stay.”

Dojan ducked into the cabin and came out with a pair of binoculars. He held them to his eyes and adjusted the focus.

“They're not from here. Saint Croix, Saint Thomas, Grand Turk. I can't read them all.”

“That's unusual, isn't it? After making a long cruise, don't boats like that come into the harbor?”

Dojan scratched his stomach and burped.

“May I look?” She held out her hand for the binoculars, and Dojan passed them to her. They were greasy where he had held them. “There's only one anchor out. No, two. They're rafted together. They must know each other.”

“Not much room in the harbor. Full of law vessels.”

“If there's no room in the harbor, why wouldn't they anchor outside, where they can row their dinghies into shore? There's nothing here. No houses, no stores, no people, no nothing. Even the lighthouse is automated, no lighthouse keepers.” She handed the binoculars back to Dojan.

“My great-grandfather was the Gay Head lighthouse keeper,” Dojan said. “He lighted the kerosene lamp every night. He used to wind the clockwork that made the light go around. He lived in a house next to the light.”

“That would have been your father's grandfather, wouldn't it? I didn't know him, but my big sister did.”

“They didn't have electricity then. My grandmother remembered when the electricity came up-Island.”

“I remember, too, Dojan. That wasn't so long ago.”

Dojan gazed at her. “I wasn't born.”

He stood in the stern, next to the tiller. The wind had picked up and his hair blew back from his face.

“Dojan.” Victoria settled herself on her box seat with her back to the cabin. “I want you to do something for me.” She looked up at him soberly.

“Yes, ma'am. I'll move the sun and the moon for you.”

“As I recall, you're the Wind and the Rain.”

Dojan grinned. “Yes, ma'am.”

“What do you think of the tribal council?” Victoria put her hands beside her, her right hand resting on the coiled line.

“The tribal council.” Dojan scratched under his arm and thought. “Good people.”

“If you did something wrong, would you tell the council?”

Dojan stared at her, motionless. “Yes, ma'am.”

“Would you tell them even if you knew they would punish you and the punishment would be harsh?”

“I am a Wampanoag from Aquinnah.” Dojan stood up straight, his hand on the tiller. His eyes settled firmly on Victoria's somber face. “I can take what's due me.”

Victoria took a deep breath. “You know it was wrong to harpoon that man.”

Dojan swallowed. He looked over at the large boats anchored behind the curve of the spit. “Yes, ma'am.” He swallowed again and looked at Victoria. “There was nobody I could tell. I couldn't tell the police chief, after I saw what he'd done.”