Vineyard Stalker (2 page)

“Do you tell this to a lot of people?” I asked.

“Not many. The only other person who knows about it is Jed Mullins. He was with Roland in Vietnam and now he lives in Vineyard Haven. They were pals over there. I think Roland saved his life once. He won't be telling anybody anything that would hurt Roland.”

“Don't you think you're taking a chance telling me? You don't even know me.”

“I know Zee and I've talked with people. And now I've seen you and I think I can trust you.” She gave me a thin smile. “Besides, if you go to work for me, we need to be honest with one another.”

“If the army can't account for him, how come they haven't come here looking for him?”

“Because he apparently disappeared in combat and then he stayed away for almost ten years before he came home. By the time he got here the army had decided he was probably dead and had other things to do than look for him. If anybody asked him, Roland told people he'd never been missing at all; that there'd been one of those paperwork mix-ups and that he'd been honorably discharged. The people he told believed him and the people they told believed them. After a while, it was common knowledge.” She smiled again. “Like George Washington and the cherry tree.”

“You'd better not enlighten your cousin Sally or those other people who want his land,” I said. “I doubt if his secret will be safe with them.”

“I agree. Sally doesn't know anything about it. The thing is that both Ford and Carter offered clemency to deserters in the mid-seventies and since then, until lately, the army just filed its old cases. But now they've got this new war and soldiers are heading for Canada every day, so some of the old cases are being activated to discourage more desertions. I'd like to settle this matter before anybody starts digging around in Roland's past, looking for leverage to make him sell. Well, what do you say? Can I hire you? I figure it shouldn't take more than a few days to catch this guy in the act and ID him. After that you'll be out of a job again.”

Zee and the children would be gone for another week, and I was bored. Very bored.

“All right,” I said, making yet another of the many mistakes in my life.

Roland Nunes lived in West Tisbury, in a tiny one-room house in a meadow reached by a narrow path. I parked my old Land Cruiser on the side of the paved road behind Carole Cohen's Volvo, and we walked to the house together.

“Where's your brother now?” I asked.

“He works as a carpenter. He needs money, but not much.”

“If he's working days, the prowler must know it. Why doesn't he come by when your brother's away?”

“As I told you, I'm afraid he may do just that, but so far he hasn't. Maybe because I stop by now and then and he's afraid I'll see him. Or maybe he's afraid someone else will see him. Up till now he's only come at night after Roland's gone to sleep.”

A night visitor, but not one of Amahl's.

“This trail isn't wide enough for a car,” I said.

“You could probably get one of those old VW bugs in here if you didn't mind scratching it up a bit. My brother rides a moped. He used to use a bike, but he's modernized.”

Roland Nunes, the modernized Monk.

The path, she said, was part of the ancient way she'd mentioned. It led across her brother's meadow, past his house and shed and garden, across a lovely little stream, and on into the state forest. On either side of his land were the private holdings owned by people who had offered to buy out him and his cousin. There were fences not of Nunes's making marking the boundaries.

When we reached the meadow, she gave me a tour. Roland Nunes's one-room cabin was made of mud and wattle and was roofed with thatch, and when I saw it I thought of Innisfree, although there was no lake near, only the stream on the far side of the meadow, flowing south as most streams do on Martha's Vineyard. As far as I knew, it was the only cabin of its kind on the island. It had a packed dirt floor covered with woven rushes and sporting a large, much worn, oriental rug, along with other possessions Nunes had probably salvaged from the Dumptique, the tiny “store” at the West Tisbury dump.

I was also fond of the Dumptique, where good, usable stuff was saved instead of being buried in the West Tisbury landfill by the ardent environmentalists who believed that dump picking was unhealthy and immoral. Once, every island village had a dump like Edgartown's Big D, a store where everything was free and you could return your purchases, no questions asked, if not satisfied, and where a lot of people got materials to build and furnish their houses. Then the antilandfill people had put an end to that golden age, and dump picking had stopped everywhere but in West Tisbury where a few hearty women had created and still maintained the Dumptique, one of the island's glories.

There was a double cot against one wall of Nunes's little house, from which I thought I detected the faint scent of lavender. Hmmmm. On another wall, above a small table and a single wooden chair there was a shelf with a half dozen books, and there was a counter on a third wall that held a small propane stove, a washbasin, and a bucket. On the wall above the counter were shelves holding mouse-proof containers, a few pieces of china, some silverware and ceramic cups, a few pots and pans, and some glass jars of food. On the fourth wall were pegs holding a winter coat and shirts and a shelf holding other clothing, towels, and a pair of heavy boots. Against the wall was a small wooden chest. In one corner of the room was a coal- and wood-burning heater, the only defense against the cold of winter.

The one window and the door of the cabin had no doubt also been salvaged from the West Tisbury dump.

There was no electricity or telephone. There were no kerosene lamps, only a half dozen thick candles for light.

Pretty austere. No wonder they called him the Monk.

Behind the house was a fire-blackened mud and wattle shed that held his ax, a shovel, and a rake, and also served as a garage for his moped. On a shelf were mouse-and-squirrel-proof plastic containers of seeds and a small collection of hand and garden tools. Beyond the shed was an outhouse.

Nunes got his water from an outside hand pump attached to a pipe driven down to the water table, and he stored a supply in a barrel where the dead skunk had been deposited.

According to his sister, he had hand-dug his well down through the sandy soil almost to the water table using a borrowed rotary posthole digger with a handle that could be lengthened by attaching additional lengths of pipe to it. When the sides of the hole began to collapse as fast as he dug, he put a well point on the end of a pipe and drove the pipe on down to the water table using a pipe driver borrowed from the same man who'd loaned him the posthole digger, an aging ex-employee of the Edgartown Water Company, who had taken the tools with him when he retired. It pays to know oldtimers.

Nunes's garden was neat but showed the damage of which his sister had spoken, since some rows of vegetables held only a few plants where clearly there had been many others. Nunes had replanted the rows, but not much was coming up yet.

“How does he keep the deer away?” I asked.

Carole Cohen pointed as the answer came around a corner of the house in the form of a large, black cat. “Mr. Mephistopheles gets credit for that. Deer don't seem to like the smell of a cat, and Mr. Mephistopheles marks his territory every day.”

“Our cats do the same, and we don't have deer problems either.”

Mr. Mephistopheles yawned hello and lay down in a sunny spot.

Beside the garden, mounted on a short pole, was what looked something like a large birdhouse. I recognized it immediately.

“I saw these in 'Nam,” I said. “I haven't seen one since.”

“Yes,” she said. “A spirit house. Roland told me he liked them when he saw them there and in Thailand, and he thought it would be good to have one here.” She walked with me to the miniature house and indicated its contents. Inside the single room were a tiny stone Buddha and another small stone carving of a god I didn't recognize.

“Vishnu in the form of an elephant,” she said. “He told me he got the Buddha in Vietnam and the Vishnu in India. And because it couldn't hurt, I put my mother's rosary in there, too. See it?”

“Yes.”

In front of the little house was a narrow porch upon which were a small vase of wildflowers and a burner holding smoking incense.

“I don't know much about these houses,” I said.

She shrugged. “I think the idea is to give a home to the spirits. Roland says he's not very religious, but he likes the notion of spirits and brings them flowers and incense for their pleasure. In return, he says, they keep an eye on his garden.”

“They didn't stop the guy from tearing it up.”

“No, but Roland says that may be his fault because he's lived a very imperfect life.”

“Most of us have.”

I looked around and could understand why someone would like to buy the place. The meadow was gently rolling, the trees around it moved gently in the wind. The sound of the stream dancing over rocks was like the distant laughter of women.

At the foot of the meadow where the stream passed beyond Nunes's land and flowed on into the forest there was a small pond that had once powered a mill of some kind. A hundred and fifty years before, there had been small mills on many of the island's streams, but none I knew of remained operational, although the West Tisbury mill, across the road from its millpond, looked like it could be put back into working order if you wanted to spend a bit of money.

On the far side of Nunes's millpond was a low hillside consisting of a deposit of clay that Nunes had mined for the walls of his house and shed.

I studied the house.

“Where'd he learn to build like this?” I asked.

“He says anyone can do it,” she said with a small smile.

I doubted that, but many people who can do things well wrongly think that everybody could do it, if only they decided to. They seem to feel that it's only a matter of desire and the learning of the craft, when in fact it's also a matter of talent. As my professorial friend John Skye says, “You can teach someone how to paint, but you can't teach him how to be Rembrandt.” I suggested this to Carole Cohen and she made a small acquiescent gesture.

“I think your friend is probably right. When Roland left Vietnam he traveled west through Asia and Europe, and he saw houses made like this. He talked with people who built them and then, when he got here and was living in a pup tent, he found this clay deposit and realized that he had the materials available to build one for himself for almost nothing.

“He told me he went to the library and read more about mud and wattle, then went over to Plymouth and found a man—an old Scot—who taught him how to thatch, then came back here and found grasses and reeds he could use for that. He knew he had to have a good, overhanging roof, because mud and wattle walls won't stand up to rain. Have you ever seen the ruins of the abbeys in England?”

“I've never been to England.”

“You'll go someday. When you get there, visit Glastonbury or Tintern or any of the other ruins and you'll see that there are only broken walls left. When Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church, the abbeys were rich and powerful institutions and he wanted them under his control, so he removed the lead roofs of those that resisted him, and without the roofs, the buildings very rapidly became ruins.” She gestured at her brother's house. “A mud and wattle building is susceptible to the same forces, only more so; Roland worked hard to become a good thatcher.”

“And he succeeded.”

“He said there was a lot of trial and error at first, but he had time and he still had the pup tent to live in and he liked the work. He built the shed first and moved in there while he worked on the house. When he got a wall built he'd cover it with sheets of plastic or canvas that he got from the sites where he worked before it got toted off to the dump. Then he'd build another wall and do the same again until the place was ready to roof. He cut and dried straight young trees for beams and trimmed them with a broad ax, and when he had them in place he thatched the roof. He says that a good thatched roof should last fifty or sixty years, and that's longer than he'll need one.”

“He did everything by hand. Why?”

“He says he wanted to simplify his life. But he's not a purist and he didn't try to go back to the Stone Age. He uses metal tools and he has a propane stove, and he had that bicycle for transportation before he got his moped.” She made a gesture that took in the whole of his land. “He says this is almost all he wants or needs.”

I thought of the double cot, but only said, “He must not have a lot of guests. There's only one chair in the cabin.”

“No, he likes being alone. He says he listens a lot.”

I became aware of the wind's sigh and the faint laughter of the stream. “Modern house building can be a noisy business,” I said. “I can understand how he'd like these sounds when he comes home.”

She looked at me. “I don't think he minds the sounds of work. I think he's still escaping the sound of war. Does that make any sense? He left Vietnam over thirty years ago.”

I still sometimes dream of the mortar attack on my first and only patrol. The incredible noise of it and the flying dirt and leaves and broken branches and body parts shock me out of sleep and I wake sweating and making some sort of sound and find Zee holding me and saying, “It's all right, it's only a dream, we're here in our bed and I have you in my arms.”

“It's possible,” I said. “He must confide in you quite a bit.”

“I'm his sister. I make him talk to me. I'm a bully.” She smiled and her whole face became younger.

“Does he have any friends?”

“He's a very friendly person.”

“That's not quite the same thing.”

“I don't know much about his friends, but he must have them.”

“Tell me about his life.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“What does he do when he's not working or gardening? Does he go to places where there's music? Does he have a beer now and then? I didn't see a radio in the cabin, so I don't think he listens to the Sox games. What does he do? Tell me about that.”

“I guess I don't know much about his life. I always think of him as being right here, living very quietly. Why do you ask?”

“Because this person who's bothering him may be from that life and have nothing to do with your cousin or the people who want his land.”

She frowned. “I didn't think of that. I suppose it's possible. But I'm willing to bet that Sally or some would-be buyer is behind the trouble.”

“You don't care for Sally, I take it.”

There was iron in her voice. “Would you care for someone who was working hard to take away your brother's home?”

“Probably not. How does Roland feel about her?”

She sighed. “Roland doesn't criticize anybody. Never. That's one reason they call him the Monk. He's too gentle for his own good. Did you ever hear the story about the angel who had his eyes put out by an evil creature, then later risked his life to save the creature from some horrible fate? When he was asked why he did that, he replied that angels have no memories. Roland is like that. It's as though he can't imagine evil intent.”