Reading Up a Storm (4 page)

“I'll get it,” Grace said.

She was soon back, followed by Connor McNeil and two people I didn't know. I got to my feet, followed by Butch and Theodore.

“Sorry we're late,” Connor said. He was dressed for book club in jeans and a black leather jacket. His dark hair, curling slightly in the damp, was wind-tossed. “I brought a couple of guests. Hope that's okay, Lucy.” He gave me his soft grin. The one I thought of as his private smile. Or maybe that was just my imagination, and he smiled at everyone like that. I smiled back, thinking that
the room had gotten very warm all of a sudden. “Of course it is. All are welcome.”

The man who'd come with Connor was in his late fifties, early sixties maybe, on the short side, but fit and handsome with large gray eyes and a mane of silver-and-black hair. He wore a brown sport coat, ironed Dockers, and hand-sewn Italian loafers without socks. A thick gold band circled his wrist, keeping his gold Rolex in place. The woman was around my age, early thirties, with glowing skin and shiny blond hair pulled back into a tight, high ponytail. Her long legs and bare arms were well tanned, and she wore white capris, a white-and-blue-striped T-shirt, and flat sandals. She was pretty, but not beautiful, and her broad smile looked genuine.

“I'm Marlene,” she said to the room. “This is so great! A book club in a lighthouse! When Connor told Will about it, I said we absolutely had to come! I'm afraid I haven't read the book though. Not yet, anyway, but I saw the movie
Kidnapped
when I was a kid. Is the book the same?”

“There have been several movie versions,” Mrs. Fitzgerald sniffed. “To which one might you be referring?” Mrs. Fitzgerald took books, and book club, seriously.

“Gee,” Marlene said, “I don't know. A bunch of English guys were in it.”

“And this,” Connor said, gesturing to the man with him, “is William Williamson.”

“Call me Will.”

Butch and I couldn't help exchanging a glance, before we looked quickly away as if caught plotting to raid the cookie jar.

“Are you here on vacation, Mr. Williamson?” Mrs. Fitzgerald asked.

“No, ma'am. I've been away for a long time, but now I've come home. I'm renting a place over on Sea Spray Court while lookin' for the right house to buy.”

“Will's a Nags Head boy,” Connor said. “He was friends with my dad, back in the day.”

“Yup. I went into the oil business. Not a lot of oil in North Carolina so I lived in Alaska all these years. Couldn't wait to get back to where the water's warm, and here I am at last.”

“And with your daughter,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said. “Isn't that nice?”

Marlene let out a peal of laughter. The rest of us shifted uncomfortably in our seats.

“We seem to be out of chairs,” Butch said. “Why don't you take mine, sir? I don't mind standing. Why, I might stand right here by the buffet table.” Marlene gave him a huge smile. Butch did look pretty good, dressed super casual in faded jeans, a white T-shirt under a University of North Carolina Tar Heels sweatshirt. His hair was too short to ever get mussed, but the dark stubble on his strong jaw was growing in thick and fast.

“That's mighty kind of you,” Will said. He sat beside Stephanie, and they exchanged greetings. I looked at them together and blinked. Same gray eyes, same bump in the center of the nose, same slightly pointed chin. But her hair was red, like her mother's, and she had pale skin and lots of freckles, whereas his hair still had traces of black running through the gray. I thought no more about it. Outer Banks family lines twisted all over themselves and went back a long, long way.

“You're our guest,” Josie said to Marlene. “Please, take my chair.”

She laughed again and said, “I just love these Southern manners.” Marlene might laugh too often and too loudly, and seemed to speak every sentence with an exclamation mark, but I liked her already. Her enthusiasm was infectious. I glanced around the room. Everyone was smiling.

Not quite everyone. Louise Jane ostentatiously checked her watch. “If we could continue . . .”

“Sure, sure,” Will said. “Don't let us interrupt. I'm sorry to say I haven't read the book either. Not much cause for reading old books in the oil business. You'd think that we'd have time, out on those rigs all winter, but let me tell you . . .”

“Be quiet, honey,” Marlene said. “You can talk about your days on the rigs later.”

Connor caught my eye and shrugged, as if to say “I couldn't stop them from coming, now could I?”

I borrowed Mrs. Fitzgerald's copy of the book and held it up. The cover illustration was of the
Covenant
floundering in the storm. I opened my mouth to make an opening statement.

“Will you look at that, honey?” Marlene said. “That could've been us last night!”

“A shipwreck?” Butch asked, playing the innocent. He'd recognized the name William Williamson right away, as had I.

“Sure was. We went out last night in Will's boat. It was just awful! Wasn't it, honey?”

“You were out in that storm?” Josie said. “Was that . . . uh . . . wise?”

“Oh, Will's an excellent sailor. He kinda forgot about differences between the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic. No harm done, was there?”

“Forgot about the differences between common sense and a darned fool, sounds like,” Josie whispered to me. I kept my face impassive. That they could have been killed, and that the coast guard rescuing them were putting themselves in danger, seemed not to matter to Marlene.

“We don't need to talk about that,” Will said.

“But these nice people are interested. There we were, out at sea, in the wind, the rain! I was starting to get worried, I can tell you. Although I have total trust in Will, of course.”

“Of course,” Josie said.

As I listened to Marlene dally on, I chewed my lip to keep myself from glancing at Butch. I was so totally trying not to look at him it was becoming difficult. I suspected he was in the same situation.

“We'd gone down toward Cape Hatteras, but I guess we sorta lost track of the time—didn't we, honey? Well, then it got real dark and the storm hit us, just like that. Wham!” She clapped her hands together, and I jumped. “We knew we were almost at Nags Head, 'cause we could see this lighthouse.”

“It was those blasted lights on the shore,” Will muttered. “Led me astray.”

I straightened.

“Will said we were passing the mouth of a small harbor,” Marlene continued. “We could get refuge there. He must have just seen some cars though, 'cause when
we got closer we hit the bottom right hard. Wham! And those lights Will saw just up and disappeared. Poof!”

“There are no small boat harbors along this stretch,” Butch said. “Didn't you know that?”

Will wasn't looking all too comfortable as Marlene told the story. She might be an innocent, but he was nothing but an idiot. And he knew it. “We forgot the map,” Marlene said. “And then we couldn't figure out how to read that satellite thingy, could we, honey?”

“Navigation was supposed to be your job,” he mumbled.

She let out another peal of laughter, unconcerned. “Oopsie.”

“How's the boat?” CeeCee asked.

“A total wreck!” Marlene said. “We were lucky, weren't we, honey? The boat was going down fast. I've never seen so much water. I was starting to get worried, 'cause I'm not a good swimmer, but then the coast guard arrived and saved us.”

Will huffed. “We were perfectly safe at all times, Marlene. You're making something out of nothing. Although those lights I saw were mighty strange.”

Louise Jane had moved to the edge of her seat, paying rapt attention. Rather than encouraging us to get on with the meeting, her interest had intensified as Will and Marlene told the story. “These lights. Were they moving?”

“Yes, they were. As if they were on the water and bobbing up and down. Like this.” Will illustrated with a motion of his hands.

“That's incredible,” Louise Jane said. “You know what I'm getting at, don't you, Mrs. Fitzgerald?”

“Of course I do. But I can't credit it.”

“What?” Stephanie asked.

“Y'all know how Nags Head got its name?”

Most of us nodded.

“I don't,” Marlene said. “It's a mighty strange name for a town. 'Course all the towns round here have strange names. Like Duck.” She laughed. No one else joined in.

Louise Jane cleared her throat. She was a born storyteller and loved nothing more than relating the history and legends of the Outer Banks. “In the old days, before the lighthouse was built and electricity came to town, folks would try to lure ships onto the shore. Cause them to wreck deliberately.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Marlene asked.

“To salvage the remains. Grab whatever washed up on shore. Those people were known as wreckers. They tied lanterns around horses' necks—old horses are called
nags
—and walked them along the roughest part of the shoreline or where the currents are the worst. From out at sea, at night, the lights looked like boats moored peacefully in harbor. The unlucky ships would sail straight into the trap.”

“Did that actually work?” Stephanie asked. “You didn't get to be a captain or pilot of a ship in those days by being a fool.”

“They'd have charts and know these waters,” Grace said.

“Not well enough,” Louise Jane said. “Remember—this is the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

“You're not suggesting that Monday night someone was trying to play at luring boats to their doom,” CeeCee said. “No one is so dumb as to fall for that.”

I broke into a coughing fit. The situation Will and Marlene had been in that night wasn't funny, truly it wasn't, but this conversation was almost surreal. Will, apparently,
was
dumb enough to fall for it.

Butch grabbed a cookie and stuffed it into his mouth. What had he said to me on the phone the morning after the storm?
More money than brains
.

Connor gave us both a curious glance.

“Playing,” Louise Jane said softly, drawing her audience in. “No one was playing. There are stories, plenty of them, in this part of the world. Lost sailors crying out, trying to reach shore through all eternity. Men, women, and children swimming without ceasing. Even ships themselves sailing on regardless of broken masts and tattered sails, constantly re-creating the moment of their doom.”

Silence hung over the room. Outside the light flashed.

“Did anyone else just feel a chill?” CeeCee said, wrapping her arms around herself. Marlene's mouth hung open. Will eyed the dark spaces in the corners. Dallas Peterson, age ten, edged slightly closer to her mother. Charity, her fourteen-year-old sister, dropped the look of total boredom and stared wide-eyed at Louise Jane.

“If you mean ghost ships,” Stephanie said, breaking the quiet, “I don't believe in ghosts.”

Mrs. Peterson tried to interrupt. “I don't believe this conversation is suitable . . .”

“Believe what you may,” Louise Jane said. “It's a known fact that severe weather increases supernatural activity. Monday night would have been perfect. As Lucy knows, even this lighthouse, perhaps this very room, is full of unexplained phenomena.”

“Cool,” said Charity.

“Wow,” said Dallas.

“I don't know anything of the sort,” I protested. “I've never experienced anything here.”

“So you say.” Louise Jane smiled at me. I almost expected to her reach out, pat my hand, and say, “There, there.”

“I've never heard of ghostly wreckers,” she went on. “But it would be fitting, wouldn't it, if they were trapped here on Earth in punishment for their crimes. I'll call my grandmother. If anyone knows, she will.”

“You mean we were lured astray by a ghost?” Marlene said.

“No,” Connor said.

“I mean we have to consider the possibility,” Louise Jane said. “Will, what do you think?”

“That's quite a story. I'm not going to dismiss it outright.” Clearly, Will wanted to believe. It made his stupidity seem less foolish. “I saw some mighty strange things in Alaska in my time on the rigs. I can tell you stories that would make your hair turn color. Like when—”

“
Kidnapped
was written a hundred years after the events it describes,” I said. “Does anyone want to comment on how that might have affected the story?”

The evening was not a success. I struggled mightily to keep the conversation on track, but it was an impossible task. I should have realized that any tale of doomed eighteenth-century ships and pitch-dark nights would cause Louise Jane to continually interrupt with Outer Banks stories. She was an amazing source of knowledge about the history of this coast, but it was impossible to
tell what was true and what she was making up on the spur of the moment. I suspect that to Louise Jane it didn't matter, but it was one reason (among many) that Bertie didn't want her working in our library. Who knows what she would tell patrons, be they gullible tourists or serious historical researchers.

Marlene exclaimed in delight at every twist and turn of the book's plot, and Will kept remembering that it reminded him of the days of his youth on the rigs. Mrs. Peterson left early, dragging two (for once) reluctant girls behind her, when Louise Jane began to speculate what sort of death David and Alan would have faced were they captured.

At last I felt that we'd been here long enough, and I decided to wrap up the meeting. “So,” I said. “What shall we read next?”

“Something American?” Grace asked. “We've read a lot of English stuff. I've loved them all, but it's time for a change.”

“That's a good idea,” I said.

“Moby-Dick,”
Louise Jane said.

I tried to cut her off, but I wasn't fast enough.