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Stephen king
The Colorado Kid
1
After deciding he would get nothing of interest from the two old men who comprised the entire staff ofThe Weekly Islander , the feature writer from the BostonGlobe took a look at his watch, remarked that he could just make the one-thirty ferry back to the mainland if he hurried, thanked them for their time, dropped some money on the tablecloth, weighted it down with the salt shaker so the stiffish onshore breeze wouldn’t blow it away, and hurried down the stone steps from The Grey Gull’s patio dining area toward Bay Street and the little town below. Other than a few cursory gleeps at her breasts, he hardly noticed the young woman sitting between the two old men at all.
Once theGlobe writer was gone, Vince Teague reached across the table and removed the bills—two fifties—from beneath the salt shaker. He tucked them into a flap pocket of his old but serviceable tweed jacket with a look of unmistakable satisfaction.
“What are youdoing ?” Stephanie McCann asked, knowing how much Vince enjoyed shocking what he called “her young bones” (how much they both did, really), but in this instance not able to keep the shock out of her voice.
“What does it look like?” Vince looked more satisfied than ever. With the money gone he smoothed down the flap over the pocket and took the last bite of his lobster roll. Then he patted his mouth with his paper napkin and deftly caught the departedGlobe writer’s plastic lobster bib when another, fresher gust of salt-scented breeze tried to carry it away. His hand was almost grotesquely gnarled with arthritis, but mighty quick for all that.
“It looks like you just took the money Mr. Hanratty left to pay for our lunch,” Stephanie said.
“Ayuh, good eye there, Steff,” Vince agreed, and winked one of his own at the other man sitting at the table. This was Dave Bowie, who looked roughly Vince Teague’s age but was in fact twenty-five years younger. It was all a matter of the equipment you got in the lottery, was what Vince claimed; you ran it until fell apart, patching it up as needed along the way, and he was sure that even to folks who lived a hundred years—as he hoped to do—it seemed like not much more than a summer afternoon in the end.
“Butwhy ?”
“Are you afraid I’m gonna stiff the Gull for the tab and stick Helen with it?” he asked her.
“No…who’s Helen?”
“Helen Hafner, she who waited on us.” Vince nodded across the patio where a slightly overweight woman of about forty was picking up dishes. “Because it’s the policy of Jack Moody—who happens to own this fine eating establishment, and his father before him, if you care—”
“I do,” she said.
David Bowie,The Weekly Islander ’s managing editor for just shy of the years Helen Hafner had lived, leaned forward and put his pudgy hand over her young and pretty one. “I know you do,” he said. “Vince does, too. That’s why he’s taking the long way around Robin Hood’s barn to explain.”
“Because school is in,” she said, smiling.
“That’s right,” Dave said, “and what’s nice for old guys like us?”
“You only have to bother teaching people who want to learn.”
“That’s right,” Dave said, and leaned back. “That’s nice.” He wasn’t wearing a suit-coat or sport-coat but an old green sweater. It was August and to Stephanie it seemed quite warm on the Gull’s patio in spite of the onshore breeze, but she knew that both men felt the slightest chill. In Dave’s case, this surprised her a little; he was only sixty-five and carrying an extra thirty pounds, at least. But although Vince Teague might look no more than seventy (and an agile seventy at that, in spite of his twisted hands), he had turned ninety earlier that summer and was as skinny as a rail. “A stuffed string” was what Mrs. Pinder,The Islander ’s part-time secretary, called him. Usually with a disdainful sniff.
“The Grey Gull’s policy is that the waitresses are responsible for the tabs their tables run up until those tabs are paid,” Vince said. “Jack tells all the ladies that when they come in lookin for work, just so they can’t come whining to him later on, sayin they didn’t know that was part of the deal.”
Stephanie surveyed the patio, which was still half-full even at twenty past one, and then looked into the main dining room, which overlooked Moose Cove. There almost every table was still taken, and she knew that from Memorial Day until the end of July, there would be a line outside until nearly three o’clock. Controlled bedlam, in other words. To expect every waitress to keep track of every single customer when she was busting her ass, carrying trays of steaming boiled lobsters and clams—
“That hardly seems…” She trailed off, wondering if these two old fellows, who’d probably been putting out their paper before such a thing as the minimum wage even existed, would laugh at her if she finished.
“Fair might be the word you’re lookin for,” Dave said dryly, and picked up a roll. It was the last one in the basket.
Fair came outfay-yuh , which more or less rhymed withayuh , the Yankee word which seemed to mean bothyes andis that so . Stephanie was from Cincinnati, Ohio, and when she had first come to Moose-Lookit Island to do an internship onThe Weekly Islander , she had nearly despaired…which, in downeast lingo, also rhymed withayuh . How could she learn anything when she could only understand one word in every seven? And if she kept asking them to repeat themselves, how long would it be before they decided she was a congenital idiot (which on Moose-Look was pronouncedijit , of course)?
She had been on the verge of quitting four days into a four-month University of Ohio postgrad program when Dave took her aside one afternoon and said, “Don’t you quit on it, Steffi, it’ll come to ya.” And it had. Almost overnight, it seemed, the accent had clarified. It was as if she’d had a bubble in her ear which had suddenly, miraculously popped. She thought she could live here the rest of her life and never talk like them, but understand them? Ayuh, that much she could do, deah.
“Fair was the word,” she agreed.
“One that hasn’t ever been in Jack Moody’s vocabulary, except in how it applies to the weather,” Vince said, and then, with no change of tone, “Put that roll down, David Bowie, ain’t you gettin fat, I swan, soo-ee, pig-pig-pig.”
“Last time I looked, we wa’ant married,” Dave said, and took another bite of his roll. “Can’t you tell her what’s on what passes for your mind without scoldin me?”
“Ain’t he pert?” Vince said. “No one ever taught him not to talk with his mouth full, either.” He hooked an arm over the back of his chair, and the breeze from the bright ocean blew his fine white hair back from his brow. “Steffi, Helen’s got three kids from twelve to six and a husband that run off and left her. She don’t want to leave the island, and she can make a go of it—just—waitressin at The Grey Gull because summers are a little fatter than the winters are lean. Do you follow that?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Stephanie said, and just then the lady in question approached. Stephanie noticed that she was wearing heavy support hose that did not entirely conceal varicose veins, and that there were dark circles under her eyes.
“Vince, Dave,” she said, and contented herself with just a nod at the pretty third, whose name she did not know. “See your friend dashed off. For the ferry?”
“Yep,” Dave said. “Discovered he had to get back down-Boston.”
“Ayuh? All done here?”
“Oh, leave on a bit,” Vince said, “but bring us a check when you like, Helen. Kids okay?”
Helen Hafner grimaced. “Jude fell out of his treehouse and broke his arm last week. Didn’t he holler! Scared me bout to death!”
The two old men looked at each other…then laughed. They sobered quickly, looking ashamed, and Vince offered his sympathies, but it wouldn’t do for Helen.
“Men can laugh,” she told Stephanie with a tired, sardonic smile. “Theyall fell out of treehouses and broke their arms when they were boys, and they all remember what little pirates they were. What they don’t remember is Ma gettin up in the middle of the night to give em their aspirin tablets. I’ll bring you the check.” She shuffled off in a pair of sneakers with rundown backs.
“She’s a good soul,” Dave said, having the grace to look slightly shamefaced.
“Yes, she is,” Vince said, “and if we got the rough side of her tongue we probably deserved it. Meanwhile, here’s the deal on this lunch, Steffi. I dunno what three lobster rolls, one lobster dinner with steamers, and four iced teas cost down there in Boston, but that feature writer must have forgot that up here we’re livin at what an economist might call ‘the source of supply’ and so he dropped a hundred bucks on the table. If Helen brings us a check that says any more than fifty-five, I’ll smile and kiss a pig. With me so far?”
“Yes, sure,” Stephanie said.
“Now the way this works for that fella from theGlobe is that he scratchesLunch, Gray Gull, Moose-Lookit Island andUnexplained Mysteries Series in his little BostonGlobe expense book while he’s ridin back to the mainland on the ferry, and if he’s honest he writes one hundred bucks and if he’s got a smidge of larceny in his soul, he writes a hundred and twenty and takes his girl to the movies on the extra. Got that?”
“Yes,” Stephanie said, and looked at him with reproachful eyes as she drank the rest of her iced tea. “I think you’re very cynical.”
“No, if I was very cynical, I would have said a hundred andthirty , and for sure.” This made Dave snort laughter. “In any case, he left a hundred, and that’s at least thirty-five dollars too much, even with a twenty percent tip added in. So I took his money. When Helen brings the check, I’ll sign it, because theIslander runs a tab here.”
“And you’ll tip more than twenty percent, I hope,” Stephanie said, “given her situation at home.”
“That’s just where you’re wrong,” Vince said.
“I am?Why am I?”
He looked at her patiently. “Why do you think? Because I’m cheap? Yankee-tight?”
“No. I don’t believe that any more than I think black men are lazy or Frenchmen think about sex all day long.”
“Then put your brain to work. God gave you a good one.”
Stephanie tried, and the two men watched her do it, interested.
“She’d see it as charity,” Stephanie finally said.
Vince and Dave exchanged an amused glance.
“What?” Stephanie asked.
“Gettin a little close to lazy black men and sexy Frenchmen, ain’tcha, dear?” Dave asked, deliberately broadening his downeast accent into what was nearly a burlesque drawl. “Only now it’s the proud Yankee woman that won’t take charity.”
Feeling that she was straying ever deeper into the sociological thickets, Stephanie said, “You mean she would take it. For her kids, if not for herself.”
“The man who bought our lunch was from away,” Vince said. “As far as Helen Hafner’s concerned, folks from away just about got money fallin out of their…their wallets.”
Amused at his sudden detour into delicacy on her account, Stephanie looked around, first at the patio area where they were sitting, then through the glass at the indoor seating area. And she saw an interesting thing. Many—perhaps even most—of the patrons out here in the breeze were locals, and so were most of the waitresses serving them. Inside were the summer people, the so-called “off-islanders,” and the waitresses servingthem were younger. Prettier, too, and also from away. Summer help. And all at once she understood. She had been wrong to put on her sociologist’s hat. It was far simpler than that.
“The Grey Gull waitresses share tips, don’t they?” she asked. “That’s what it is.”
Vince pointed a finger at her like a gun and said, “Bingo.”
“So what do you do?”
“What I do,” he said, “is tip fifteen percent when I sign the check and put forty dollars of thatGlobe fella’s cash in Helen’s pocket. She gets all of that, the paper doesn’t get hurt, and what Uncle Sam don’t know don’t bother him.”
“It’s the way America does business,” Dave said solemnly.
“And do you know what I like?” Vince Teague said, turning his face up into the sun. When he squinted his eyes closed against its brilliance, what seemed like a thousand wrinkles sprang into existence on his skin. They did not make him look his age, but theydid make him look eighty.
“No, what?” Stephanie asked, amused.
“I like the way the money goes around and around, like clothes in a drier. I like watching it. And this time when the machine finally stops turning, the money finishes up here on Moosie where folks actually need it. Also, just to make it perfect, that city fellowdid pay for our lunch, and he walked away withnones .”
“Ran, actually,” Dave said. “Had to make that boat, don’tcha know. Made me think of that Edna St. Vincent Millay poem. ‘We were very tired, we were very merry, we went back and forth all night on the ferry.’ That’s not exactly it, but it’s close.”
“He wasn’t very merry, but he’ll be good and tired by the time he gets to his next stop,” Vince said. “I think he mentioned Madawaska. Maybe he’ll find some unexplained mysteries there. Why anyone’d want to live in such a place, for instance. Dave, help me out.”
Stephanie believed there was a kind of telepathy between the two old men, rough but real. She’d seen several examples of it since coming to Moose-Lookit Island almost three months ago, and she saw another example of it now. Their waitress was returning, check in hand. Dave’s back was to her, but Vince saw her coming and the younger man knew exactly what theIslander ’s editor wanted. Dave reached into his back pocket, removed his wallet, removed two bills, folded them between his fingers, and passed them across the table. Helen arrived a moment later. Vince took the check from her with one gnarled hand. With the other he slipped the bills into the skirt pocket of her uniform.
“Thank you, darlin,” he said.
“You sure you don’t want dessert?” she asked. “There’s Mac’s chocolate cherry cake. It’s not on the menu, but we’ve still got some.”
“I’ll pass. Steffi?”
She shook her head. So—with some regret—did Dave Bowie.
Helen favored (if that was the word) Vincent Teague with a look of dour judgment. “You could use fattening up, Vince.”
“Jack Sprat and his wife, that’s me n Dave,” Vince said brightly.
“Ayuh.” Helen glanced at Stephanie, and one of her tired eyes closed in a brief wink of surprising good humor. “You picked a pair, Missy,” she said.
“They’re all right,” Stephanie said.
“Sure, and after this you’ll probably go straight to theNew York Times ,” Helen said. She picked up the plates, added, “I’ll be back for the rest of the ridding-up,” and sailed away.
“When she finds that forty dollars in her pocket,” Stephanie said, “will she know who put it there?” She looked again at the patio, where perhaps two dozen customers were drinking coffee, iced tea, afternoon beers, or eating off-the-menu chocolate cherry cake. Not all looked capable of slipping forty dollars in cash into a waitress’s pocket, but some of them did.
“Probably she will,” Vince said, “but tell me something, Steffi.”
“I will if I can.”
“If she didn’t know, would that make it illegal tender?”
“I don’t know what you—”
“I think you do,” he said. “Come on, let’s get back to the paper. News won’t wait.”
Once theGlobe writer was gone, Vince Teague reached across the table and removed the bills—two fifties—from beneath the salt shaker. He tucked them into a flap pocket of his old but serviceable tweed jacket with a look of unmistakable satisfaction.
“What are youdoing ?” Stephanie McCann asked, knowing how much Vince enjoyed shocking what he called “her young bones” (how much they both did, really), but in this instance not able to keep the shock out of her voice.
“What does it look like?” Vince looked more satisfied than ever. With the money gone he smoothed down the flap over the pocket and took the last bite of his lobster roll. Then he patted his mouth with his paper napkin and deftly caught the departedGlobe writer’s plastic lobster bib when another, fresher gust of salt-scented breeze tried to carry it away. His hand was almost grotesquely gnarled with arthritis, but mighty quick for all that.
“It looks like you just took the money Mr. Hanratty left to pay for our lunch,” Stephanie said.
“Ayuh, good eye there, Steff,” Vince agreed, and winked one of his own at the other man sitting at the table. This was Dave Bowie, who looked roughly Vince Teague’s age but was in fact twenty-five years younger. It was all a matter of the equipment you got in the lottery, was what Vince claimed; you ran it until fell apart, patching it up as needed along the way, and he was sure that even to folks who lived a hundred years—as he hoped to do—it seemed like not much more than a summer afternoon in the end.
“Butwhy ?”
“Are you afraid I’m gonna stiff the Gull for the tab and stick Helen with it?” he asked her.
“No…who’s Helen?”
“Helen Hafner, she who waited on us.” Vince nodded across the patio where a slightly overweight woman of about forty was picking up dishes. “Because it’s the policy of Jack Moody—who happens to own this fine eating establishment, and his father before him, if you care—”
“I do,” she said.
David Bowie,The Weekly Islander ’s managing editor for just shy of the years Helen Hafner had lived, leaned forward and put his pudgy hand over her young and pretty one. “I know you do,” he said. “Vince does, too. That’s why he’s taking the long way around Robin Hood’s barn to explain.”
“Because school is in,” she said, smiling.
“That’s right,” Dave said, “and what’s nice for old guys like us?”
“You only have to bother teaching people who want to learn.”
“That’s right,” Dave said, and leaned back. “That’s nice.” He wasn’t wearing a suit-coat or sport-coat but an old green sweater. It was August and to Stephanie it seemed quite warm on the Gull’s patio in spite of the onshore breeze, but she knew that both men felt the slightest chill. In Dave’s case, this surprised her a little; he was only sixty-five and carrying an extra thirty pounds, at least. But although Vince Teague might look no more than seventy (and an agile seventy at that, in spite of his twisted hands), he had turned ninety earlier that summer and was as skinny as a rail. “A stuffed string” was what Mrs. Pinder,The Islander ’s part-time secretary, called him. Usually with a disdainful sniff.
“The Grey Gull’s policy is that the waitresses are responsible for the tabs their tables run up until those tabs are paid,” Vince said. “Jack tells all the ladies that when they come in lookin for work, just so they can’t come whining to him later on, sayin they didn’t know that was part of the deal.”
Stephanie surveyed the patio, which was still half-full even at twenty past one, and then looked into the main dining room, which overlooked Moose Cove. There almost every table was still taken, and she knew that from Memorial Day until the end of July, there would be a line outside until nearly three o’clock. Controlled bedlam, in other words. To expect every waitress to keep track of every single customer when she was busting her ass, carrying trays of steaming boiled lobsters and clams—
“That hardly seems…” She trailed off, wondering if these two old fellows, who’d probably been putting out their paper before such a thing as the minimum wage even existed, would laugh at her if she finished.
“Fair might be the word you’re lookin for,” Dave said dryly, and picked up a roll. It was the last one in the basket.
Fair came outfay-yuh , which more or less rhymed withayuh , the Yankee word which seemed to mean bothyes andis that so . Stephanie was from Cincinnati, Ohio, and when she had first come to Moose-Lookit Island to do an internship onThe Weekly Islander , she had nearly despaired…which, in downeast lingo, also rhymed withayuh . How could she learn anything when she could only understand one word in every seven? And if she kept asking them to repeat themselves, how long would it be before they decided she was a congenital idiot (which on Moose-Look was pronouncedijit , of course)?
She had been on the verge of quitting four days into a four-month University of Ohio postgrad program when Dave took her aside one afternoon and said, “Don’t you quit on it, Steffi, it’ll come to ya.” And it had. Almost overnight, it seemed, the accent had clarified. It was as if she’d had a bubble in her ear which had suddenly, miraculously popped. She thought she could live here the rest of her life and never talk like them, but understand them? Ayuh, that much she could do, deah.
“Fair was the word,” she agreed.
“One that hasn’t ever been in Jack Moody’s vocabulary, except in how it applies to the weather,” Vince said, and then, with no change of tone, “Put that roll down, David Bowie, ain’t you gettin fat, I swan, soo-ee, pig-pig-pig.”
“Last time I looked, we wa’ant married,” Dave said, and took another bite of his roll. “Can’t you tell her what’s on what passes for your mind without scoldin me?”
“Ain’t he pert?” Vince said. “No one ever taught him not to talk with his mouth full, either.” He hooked an arm over the back of his chair, and the breeze from the bright ocean blew his fine white hair back from his brow. “Steffi, Helen’s got three kids from twelve to six and a husband that run off and left her. She don’t want to leave the island, and she can make a go of it—just—waitressin at The Grey Gull because summers are a little fatter than the winters are lean. Do you follow that?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Stephanie said, and just then the lady in question approached. Stephanie noticed that she was wearing heavy support hose that did not entirely conceal varicose veins, and that there were dark circles under her eyes.
“Vince, Dave,” she said, and contented herself with just a nod at the pretty third, whose name she did not know. “See your friend dashed off. For the ferry?”
“Yep,” Dave said. “Discovered he had to get back down-Boston.”
“Ayuh? All done here?”
“Oh, leave on a bit,” Vince said, “but bring us a check when you like, Helen. Kids okay?”
Helen Hafner grimaced. “Jude fell out of his treehouse and broke his arm last week. Didn’t he holler! Scared me bout to death!”
The two old men looked at each other…then laughed. They sobered quickly, looking ashamed, and Vince offered his sympathies, but it wouldn’t do for Helen.
“Men can laugh,” she told Stephanie with a tired, sardonic smile. “Theyall fell out of treehouses and broke their arms when they were boys, and they all remember what little pirates they were. What they don’t remember is Ma gettin up in the middle of the night to give em their aspirin tablets. I’ll bring you the check.” She shuffled off in a pair of sneakers with rundown backs.
“She’s a good soul,” Dave said, having the grace to look slightly shamefaced.
“Yes, she is,” Vince said, “and if we got the rough side of her tongue we probably deserved it. Meanwhile, here’s the deal on this lunch, Steffi. I dunno what three lobster rolls, one lobster dinner with steamers, and four iced teas cost down there in Boston, but that feature writer must have forgot that up here we’re livin at what an economist might call ‘the source of supply’ and so he dropped a hundred bucks on the table. If Helen brings us a check that says any more than fifty-five, I’ll smile and kiss a pig. With me so far?”
“Yes, sure,” Stephanie said.
“Now the way this works for that fella from theGlobe is that he scratchesLunch, Gray Gull, Moose-Lookit Island andUnexplained Mysteries Series in his little BostonGlobe expense book while he’s ridin back to the mainland on the ferry, and if he’s honest he writes one hundred bucks and if he’s got a smidge of larceny in his soul, he writes a hundred and twenty and takes his girl to the movies on the extra. Got that?”
“Yes,” Stephanie said, and looked at him with reproachful eyes as she drank the rest of her iced tea. “I think you’re very cynical.”
“No, if I was very cynical, I would have said a hundred andthirty , and for sure.” This made Dave snort laughter. “In any case, he left a hundred, and that’s at least thirty-five dollars too much, even with a twenty percent tip added in. So I took his money. When Helen brings the check, I’ll sign it, because theIslander runs a tab here.”
“And you’ll tip more than twenty percent, I hope,” Stephanie said, “given her situation at home.”
“That’s just where you’re wrong,” Vince said.
“I am?Why am I?”
He looked at her patiently. “Why do you think? Because I’m cheap? Yankee-tight?”
“No. I don’t believe that any more than I think black men are lazy or Frenchmen think about sex all day long.”
“Then put your brain to work. God gave you a good one.”
Stephanie tried, and the two men watched her do it, interested.
“She’d see it as charity,” Stephanie finally said.
Vince and Dave exchanged an amused glance.
“What?” Stephanie asked.
“Gettin a little close to lazy black men and sexy Frenchmen, ain’tcha, dear?” Dave asked, deliberately broadening his downeast accent into what was nearly a burlesque drawl. “Only now it’s the proud Yankee woman that won’t take charity.”
Feeling that she was straying ever deeper into the sociological thickets, Stephanie said, “You mean she would take it. For her kids, if not for herself.”
“The man who bought our lunch was from away,” Vince said. “As far as Helen Hafner’s concerned, folks from away just about got money fallin out of their…their wallets.”
Amused at his sudden detour into delicacy on her account, Stephanie looked around, first at the patio area where they were sitting, then through the glass at the indoor seating area. And she saw an interesting thing. Many—perhaps even most—of the patrons out here in the breeze were locals, and so were most of the waitresses serving them. Inside were the summer people, the so-called “off-islanders,” and the waitresses servingthem were younger. Prettier, too, and also from away. Summer help. And all at once she understood. She had been wrong to put on her sociologist’s hat. It was far simpler than that.
“The Grey Gull waitresses share tips, don’t they?” she asked. “That’s what it is.”
Vince pointed a finger at her like a gun and said, “Bingo.”
“So what do you do?”
“What I do,” he said, “is tip fifteen percent when I sign the check and put forty dollars of thatGlobe fella’s cash in Helen’s pocket. She gets all of that, the paper doesn’t get hurt, and what Uncle Sam don’t know don’t bother him.”
“It’s the way America does business,” Dave said solemnly.
“And do you know what I like?” Vince Teague said, turning his face up into the sun. When he squinted his eyes closed against its brilliance, what seemed like a thousand wrinkles sprang into existence on his skin. They did not make him look his age, but theydid make him look eighty.
“No, what?” Stephanie asked, amused.
“I like the way the money goes around and around, like clothes in a drier. I like watching it. And this time when the machine finally stops turning, the money finishes up here on Moosie where folks actually need it. Also, just to make it perfect, that city fellowdid pay for our lunch, and he walked away withnones .”
“Ran, actually,” Dave said. “Had to make that boat, don’tcha know. Made me think of that Edna St. Vincent Millay poem. ‘We were very tired, we were very merry, we went back and forth all night on the ferry.’ That’s not exactly it, but it’s close.”
“He wasn’t very merry, but he’ll be good and tired by the time he gets to his next stop,” Vince said. “I think he mentioned Madawaska. Maybe he’ll find some unexplained mysteries there. Why anyone’d want to live in such a place, for instance. Dave, help me out.”
Stephanie believed there was a kind of telepathy between the two old men, rough but real. She’d seen several examples of it since coming to Moose-Lookit Island almost three months ago, and she saw another example of it now. Their waitress was returning, check in hand. Dave’s back was to her, but Vince saw her coming and the younger man knew exactly what theIslander ’s editor wanted. Dave reached into his back pocket, removed his wallet, removed two bills, folded them between his fingers, and passed them across the table. Helen arrived a moment later. Vince took the check from her with one gnarled hand. With the other he slipped the bills into the skirt pocket of her uniform.
“Thank you, darlin,” he said.
“You sure you don’t want dessert?” she asked. “There’s Mac’s chocolate cherry cake. It’s not on the menu, but we’ve still got some.”
“I’ll pass. Steffi?”
She shook her head. So—with some regret—did Dave Bowie.
Helen favored (if that was the word) Vincent Teague with a look of dour judgment. “You could use fattening up, Vince.”
“Jack Sprat and his wife, that’s me n Dave,” Vince said brightly.
“Ayuh.” Helen glanced at Stephanie, and one of her tired eyes closed in a brief wink of surprising good humor. “You picked a pair, Missy,” she said.
“They’re all right,” Stephanie said.
“Sure, and after this you’ll probably go straight to theNew York Times ,” Helen said. She picked up the plates, added, “I’ll be back for the rest of the ridding-up,” and sailed away.
“When she finds that forty dollars in her pocket,” Stephanie said, “will she know who put it there?” She looked again at the patio, where perhaps two dozen customers were drinking coffee, iced tea, afternoon beers, or eating off-the-menu chocolate cherry cake. Not all looked capable of slipping forty dollars in cash into a waitress’s pocket, but some of them did.
“Probably she will,” Vince said, “but tell me something, Steffi.”
“I will if I can.”
“If she didn’t know, would that make it illegal tender?”
“I don’t know what you—”
“I think you do,” he said. “Come on, let’s get back to the paper. News won’t wait.”
2
Here was the thing Stephanie loved best aboutThe Weekly Islander , the thing that still charmed her after three months spent mostly writing ads: on a clear afternoon you could walk six steps from your desk and have a gorgeous view of the Maine coast. All you had to do was walk onto the shaded deck that overlooked the reach and ran the length of the newspaper’s barnlike building. It was true that the air smelled of fish and seaweed, but everything on Moose-Look smelled that way. You got used to it, Stephanie had discovered, and then a beautiful thing happened—after your nose dismissed that smell, it went and found it all over again, and the second time around, you fell in love with it.
On clear afternoons (like this one near the end of August), every house and dock and fishing-boat over there on the Tinnock side of the reach stood out brilliantly; she could read the sunoco on the side of a diesel pump and theLeeLee Bett on the hull of some haddock-jockey’s breadwinner, beached for its turn-of-the-season scraping and painting. She could see a boy in shorts and a cut-off Patriots jersey fishing from the trash-littered shingle below Preston’s Bar, and a thousand winks of sun glittering off the tin flashing of a hundred village roofs. And, between Tinnock Village (which was actually a good-sized town) and Moose-Lookit Island, the sun shone on the bluest water she had ever seen. On days like this, she wondered how she would ever go back to the Midwest, or if she even could. And on days when the fog rolled in and the entire mainland world seemed to be cancelled and the rueful cry of the foghorn came and went like the voice of some ancient beast…why, then she wondered the same thing.
You want to be careful, Steffi , Dave had told her one day when he came on her, sitting out there on the deck with her yellow pad on her lap and a half-finished Arts ’N Things column scrawled there in her big backhand strokes.Island living has a way of creeping into your blood, and once it gets there it’s like malaria. It doesn’t leave easily.
Now, after turning on the lights (the sun had begun going the other way and the long room had begun to darken), she sat down at her desk and found her trusty legal pad with a new Arts ’N Things column on the top page. This one was pretty much interchangeable with any of half a dozen others she had so far turned in, but she looked at it with undeniable affection just the same. It was hers, after all, her work, writing she was getting paid for, and she had no doubt that people all over theIslander ’s circulation area—which was quite large—actually read it.
Vince sat down behind his own desk with a small but audible grunt. It was followed by a crackling sound as he twisted first to the left and then to the right. He called this “settling his spine.” Dave told him that he would someday paralyze himself from the neck down while “settling his spine,” but Vince seemed singularly unworried by the possibility. Now he turned on his computer while his managing editor sat on the corner of his desk, produced a toothpick, and began using it to rummage in his upper plate.
“What’s it going to be?” Dave asked while Vince waited for his computer to boot up. “Fire? Flood? Earthquake? Or the revolt of the multitudes?”
“I thought I’d start with Ellen Dunwoodie snapping off the fire hydrant on Beach Lane when the parking brake on her car let go. Then, once I’m properly warmed up, I thought I’d move on to a rewrite of my library editorial,” Vince said, and cracked his knuckles.
Dave glanced over at Stephanie from his perch on the corner of Vince’s desk. “First the back, then the knuckles,” he said. “If he could learn how to play ‘Dry Bones’ on his ribcage, we could get him onAmerican Idol .”
“Always a critic,” Vince said amiably, waiting for his machine to boot up. “You know, Steff, there’s something perverse about this. Here am I, ninety years old and ready for the cooling board, using a brand new Macintosh computer, and there you sit, twenty-two and gorgeous, fresh as a new peach, yet scrawling on a yellow legal pad like an old maid in a Victorian romance.”
“I don’t believe yellow legal pads had been invented in Victorian times,” Stephanie said. She shuffled through the papers on her desk. When she had come to Moose-Look andThe Weekly Islander in June, they had given her the smallest desk in the place—little more than a grade-schooler’s desk, really—away in the corner. In mid-July she had been promoted to a bigger one in the middle of the room. This pleased her, but the increased desk-space also afforded more area for things to get lost in. Now she hunted around until she found a bright pink circular. “Do either of you know what organization profits from the Annual End-Of-Summer Gernerd Farms Hayride, Picnic, and Dance, this year featuring Little Jonna Jaye and the Straw Hill Boys?”
“That organization would be Sam Gernerd, his wife, their five kids, and their various creditors,” Vince said, and his machine beeped. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Steff, you’ve done a swell job on that little column of yours.”
“Yes, you have,” Dave agreed. “We’ve gotten two dozen letters, I guess, and the only bad one was from Mrs. Edina Steen the Downeast Grammar Queen, and she’s completely mad.”
“Nuttier than a fruitcake,” Vince agreed.
Stephanie smiled, wondering at how rare it was once you graduated from childhood—this feeling of perfect and uncomplicated happiness. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you both.” And then: “Can I ask you something? Straight up?”
Vince swiveled his chair around and looked at her. “Anything under the sun, if it’ll keep me away from Mrs. Dunwoodie and the fire hydrant,” he said.
“And me away from doing invoices,” Dave said. “Although I can’t go home until they’re finished.”
“Don’t you make that paperwork your boss!” Vince said. “How many times have I told you?”
“Easy for you to say,” Dave returned. “You haven’t looked inside theIslander checkbook in ten years, I don’t think, let alone carried it around.”
Stephanie was determined not to let them be sidetracked—or to let them sidetrack her—into this old squabble. “Quit it, both of you.”
They looked at her, surprised into silence.
“Dave, you pretty much told that Mr. Hanratty from theGlobe that you and Vince have been working together on theIslander for forty years—”
“Ayuh—”
“—and you started it up in 1948, Vince.”
“That’s true,” he said. “’TwasThe Weekly Shopper and Trading Post until the summer of ’48, just a free handout in the various island markets and the bigger stores on the mainland. I was young and bullheaded and awful lucky. That was when they had the big fires over in Tinnock and Hancock. Those fires…they didn’tmake the paper, I won’t say that—although there were those who did at the time—but they give it a good runnin start, sure. It wasn’t until 1956 that I had as many ads as I did in the summer of ’48.”
“So you guys have been on the job for over fifty years, and in all that time you’venever come across a real unexplained mystery? Can that be true?”
Dave Bowie looked shocked. “We never said that!”
“Gorry, you werethere !” Vince declared, equally scandalized.
For a moment they managed to hold these expressions, but when Stephanie McCann only continued to look from one to the other, prim as the schoolmarm in a John Ford Western, they couldn’t go on. First Vince Teague’s mouth began to quiver at one corner, and then Dave Bowie’s eye began to twitch. They might still have been all right, but then they made the mistake of looking right at each other and a moment later they were laughing like the world’s oldest pair of kids.
On clear afternoons (like this one near the end of August), every house and dock and fishing-boat over there on the Tinnock side of the reach stood out brilliantly; she could read the sunoco on the side of a diesel pump and theLeeLee Bett on the hull of some haddock-jockey’s breadwinner, beached for its turn-of-the-season scraping and painting. She could see a boy in shorts and a cut-off Patriots jersey fishing from the trash-littered shingle below Preston’s Bar, and a thousand winks of sun glittering off the tin flashing of a hundred village roofs. And, between Tinnock Village (which was actually a good-sized town) and Moose-Lookit Island, the sun shone on the bluest water she had ever seen. On days like this, she wondered how she would ever go back to the Midwest, or if she even could. And on days when the fog rolled in and the entire mainland world seemed to be cancelled and the rueful cry of the foghorn came and went like the voice of some ancient beast…why, then she wondered the same thing.
You want to be careful, Steffi , Dave had told her one day when he came on her, sitting out there on the deck with her yellow pad on her lap and a half-finished Arts ’N Things column scrawled there in her big backhand strokes.Island living has a way of creeping into your blood, and once it gets there it’s like malaria. It doesn’t leave easily.
Now, after turning on the lights (the sun had begun going the other way and the long room had begun to darken), she sat down at her desk and found her trusty legal pad with a new Arts ’N Things column on the top page. This one was pretty much interchangeable with any of half a dozen others she had so far turned in, but she looked at it with undeniable affection just the same. It was hers, after all, her work, writing she was getting paid for, and she had no doubt that people all over theIslander ’s circulation area—which was quite large—actually read it.
Vince sat down behind his own desk with a small but audible grunt. It was followed by a crackling sound as he twisted first to the left and then to the right. He called this “settling his spine.” Dave told him that he would someday paralyze himself from the neck down while “settling his spine,” but Vince seemed singularly unworried by the possibility. Now he turned on his computer while his managing editor sat on the corner of his desk, produced a toothpick, and began using it to rummage in his upper plate.
“What’s it going to be?” Dave asked while Vince waited for his computer to boot up. “Fire? Flood? Earthquake? Or the revolt of the multitudes?”
“I thought I’d start with Ellen Dunwoodie snapping off the fire hydrant on Beach Lane when the parking brake on her car let go. Then, once I’m properly warmed up, I thought I’d move on to a rewrite of my library editorial,” Vince said, and cracked his knuckles.
Dave glanced over at Stephanie from his perch on the corner of Vince’s desk. “First the back, then the knuckles,” he said. “If he could learn how to play ‘Dry Bones’ on his ribcage, we could get him onAmerican Idol .”
“Always a critic,” Vince said amiably, waiting for his machine to boot up. “You know, Steff, there’s something perverse about this. Here am I, ninety years old and ready for the cooling board, using a brand new Macintosh computer, and there you sit, twenty-two and gorgeous, fresh as a new peach, yet scrawling on a yellow legal pad like an old maid in a Victorian romance.”
“I don’t believe yellow legal pads had been invented in Victorian times,” Stephanie said. She shuffled through the papers on her desk. When she had come to Moose-Look andThe Weekly Islander in June, they had given her the smallest desk in the place—little more than a grade-schooler’s desk, really—away in the corner. In mid-July she had been promoted to a bigger one in the middle of the room. This pleased her, but the increased desk-space also afforded more area for things to get lost in. Now she hunted around until she found a bright pink circular. “Do either of you know what organization profits from the Annual End-Of-Summer Gernerd Farms Hayride, Picnic, and Dance, this year featuring Little Jonna Jaye and the Straw Hill Boys?”
“That organization would be Sam Gernerd, his wife, their five kids, and their various creditors,” Vince said, and his machine beeped. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Steff, you’ve done a swell job on that little column of yours.”
“Yes, you have,” Dave agreed. “We’ve gotten two dozen letters, I guess, and the only bad one was from Mrs. Edina Steen the Downeast Grammar Queen, and she’s completely mad.”
“Nuttier than a fruitcake,” Vince agreed.
Stephanie smiled, wondering at how rare it was once you graduated from childhood—this feeling of perfect and uncomplicated happiness. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you both.” And then: “Can I ask you something? Straight up?”
Vince swiveled his chair around and looked at her. “Anything under the sun, if it’ll keep me away from Mrs. Dunwoodie and the fire hydrant,” he said.
“And me away from doing invoices,” Dave said. “Although I can’t go home until they’re finished.”
“Don’t you make that paperwork your boss!” Vince said. “How many times have I told you?”
“Easy for you to say,” Dave returned. “You haven’t looked inside theIslander checkbook in ten years, I don’t think, let alone carried it around.”
Stephanie was determined not to let them be sidetracked—or to let them sidetrack her—into this old squabble. “Quit it, both of you.”
They looked at her, surprised into silence.
“Dave, you pretty much told that Mr. Hanratty from theGlobe that you and Vince have been working together on theIslander for forty years—”
“Ayuh—”
“—and you started it up in 1948, Vince.”
“That’s true,” he said. “’TwasThe Weekly Shopper and Trading Post until the summer of ’48, just a free handout in the various island markets and the bigger stores on the mainland. I was young and bullheaded and awful lucky. That was when they had the big fires over in Tinnock and Hancock. Those fires…they didn’tmake the paper, I won’t say that—although there were those who did at the time—but they give it a good runnin start, sure. It wasn’t until 1956 that I had as many ads as I did in the summer of ’48.”
“So you guys have been on the job for over fifty years, and in all that time you’venever come across a real unexplained mystery? Can that be true?”
Dave Bowie looked shocked. “We never said that!”
“Gorry, you werethere !” Vince declared, equally scandalized.
For a moment they managed to hold these expressions, but when Stephanie McCann only continued to look from one to the other, prim as the schoolmarm in a John Ford Western, they couldn’t go on. First Vince Teague’s mouth began to quiver at one corner, and then Dave Bowie’s eye began to twitch. They might still have been all right, but then they made the mistake of looking right at each other and a moment later they were laughing like the world’s oldest pair of kids.
3
“You were the one who told him about thePretty Lisa ,” Dave said to Vince when he had gotten hold of himself again. ThePretty Lisa Cabot was a fishing boat that had washed up on the shore of neighboring Smack Island in the nineteen-twenties with one dead crewman sprawled over the forward hold and the other five men gone. “How many times do you think Hanratty heard that one, up n down this part of the coast?”
“Oh, I dunno, how many places do you judge he stopped before he got here, dear?” Vince countered, and a moment later the two men were off again, bellowing laughter, Vince slapping has bony knee while Dave whacked the side of one plump thigh.
Stephanie watched them, frowning—not angry, not amused herself (well…a little), just trying to understand the source of their howling good humor. She herself had thought the story of thePretty Lisa Cabot good enough for at least one in a series of eight articles on, ta-da, Unexplained Mysteries of New England, but she was neither stupid nor insensitive; she’d been perfectly aware that Mr.Hanratty hadn’t thought it was good enough. And yes, she’d known from his face that he’d heard it before in hisGlobe -funded wanderings up and down the coast between Boston and Moose-Look, and probably more than once.
Vince and Dave nodded when she advanced this idea. “Ayup,” Dave said. “Hanratty may be from away, but that doesn’t make him lazy or stupid. The mystery of thePretty Lisa —the solution to which almost certainly has to do with gun-happy bootleggers running hooch down from Canada, although no one will ever know for sure—has been around for years. It’s been written up in half a dozen books, not to mention bothYankee andDowneast magazines. And, say, Vince, didn’t theGlobe —?”
Vince was nodding. “Maybe. Seven, maybe nine years ago. Sunday supplement piece. Although it might have been the ProvidenceJournal . I’m sure it was the Portland SundayTelegram that did the piece on the Mormons that showed up over in Freeport and tried to sink a mine in the Desert of Maine…”
“And the 1951 Coast Lights get a big play in the newspapers almost every Halloween,” Dave added cheerfully. “Not to mention the UFO websites.”
“And a woman wrote a book last year on the poisonin’s at that church picnic in Tashmore,” Vince finished up. This was the last ‘unexplained mystery’ they had hauled out for theGlobe reporter over lunch. This was just before Hanratty had decided he could make the one-thirty ferry, and in a way Stephanie guessed she now didn’t blame him.
“So you were having him on,” she said. “Teasing him with old stories.”
“No, dear!” Vince said, this time sounding shocked for real. (Well, maybe, Stephanie thought.) “Every one of those is abona fide unsolved mystery of the New England coast—our part of it, even.”
“We couldn’t be sure he knew all those stories until we trotted em out,” Dave said reasonably. “Not that it surprised us any that he did.”
“Nope,” Vince agreed. His eyes were bright. “Pretty old chestnuts, I would have to agree. But we got a nice lunch out of it, didn’t we? And we got to watch the money go around and come out right where it should…partly in Helen Hafner’s pocket.”
“And those stories are really the only ones you know? Stories that have been chewed to a pulp in books and the big newspapers?”
Vince looked at Dave, his long-time cohort. “Did I say that?”
“Nope,” Dave said. “And I don’t believe I did, either.”
“Well, what other unexplained mysteriesdo you know about? And why didn’t you tell him?”
The two old men glanced at each other, and once again Stephanie McCann felt that telepathy at work. Vince gave a slight nod toward the door. Dave got up, crossed the brightly lit half of the long room (in the darker half hulked the big old-fashioned offset printing press that hadn’t run in over seven years), and turned the sign hanging in the door from open to closed. Then he came back.
“Closed? In the middle of the day?” Stephanie asked, with the slightest touch of unease in her mind, if not in her voice.
“If someone comes by with news, they’ll knock,” Vince said, reasonably enough. “If it’s big news, they’ll hammer.”
“And if downtown catches afire, we’ll hear the whistle,” Dave put in. “Come on out on the deck, Steffi. August sun’s not to be missed—it doesn’t last long.”
She looked at Dave, then at Vince Teague, who was as mentally quick at ninety as he’d been at forty-five. She was convinced of it. “School’s in?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Vince said, and although he was still smiling, she sensed he was serious. “And do you know what’s nice for old guys like us?”
“You only have to teach people who want to learn.”
“Ayuh. Doyou want to learn, Steffi?”
“Yes.” She spoke with no hesitation in spite of that odd inner unease.
“Then come out and sit,” he said. “Come out and sit a little.”
So she did.
“Oh, I dunno, how many places do you judge he stopped before he got here, dear?” Vince countered, and a moment later the two men were off again, bellowing laughter, Vince slapping has bony knee while Dave whacked the side of one plump thigh.
Stephanie watched them, frowning—not angry, not amused herself (well…a little), just trying to understand the source of their howling good humor. She herself had thought the story of thePretty Lisa Cabot good enough for at least one in a series of eight articles on, ta-da, Unexplained Mysteries of New England, but she was neither stupid nor insensitive; she’d been perfectly aware that Mr.Hanratty hadn’t thought it was good enough. And yes, she’d known from his face that he’d heard it before in hisGlobe -funded wanderings up and down the coast between Boston and Moose-Look, and probably more than once.
Vince and Dave nodded when she advanced this idea. “Ayup,” Dave said. “Hanratty may be from away, but that doesn’t make him lazy or stupid. The mystery of thePretty Lisa —the solution to which almost certainly has to do with gun-happy bootleggers running hooch down from Canada, although no one will ever know for sure—has been around for years. It’s been written up in half a dozen books, not to mention bothYankee andDowneast magazines. And, say, Vince, didn’t theGlobe —?”
Vince was nodding. “Maybe. Seven, maybe nine years ago. Sunday supplement piece. Although it might have been the ProvidenceJournal . I’m sure it was the Portland SundayTelegram that did the piece on the Mormons that showed up over in Freeport and tried to sink a mine in the Desert of Maine…”
“And the 1951 Coast Lights get a big play in the newspapers almost every Halloween,” Dave added cheerfully. “Not to mention the UFO websites.”
“And a woman wrote a book last year on the poisonin’s at that church picnic in Tashmore,” Vince finished up. This was the last ‘unexplained mystery’ they had hauled out for theGlobe reporter over lunch. This was just before Hanratty had decided he could make the one-thirty ferry, and in a way Stephanie guessed she now didn’t blame him.
“So you were having him on,” she said. “Teasing him with old stories.”
“No, dear!” Vince said, this time sounding shocked for real. (Well, maybe, Stephanie thought.) “Every one of those is abona fide unsolved mystery of the New England coast—our part of it, even.”
“We couldn’t be sure he knew all those stories until we trotted em out,” Dave said reasonably. “Not that it surprised us any that he did.”
“Nope,” Vince agreed. His eyes were bright. “Pretty old chestnuts, I would have to agree. But we got a nice lunch out of it, didn’t we? And we got to watch the money go around and come out right where it should…partly in Helen Hafner’s pocket.”
“And those stories are really the only ones you know? Stories that have been chewed to a pulp in books and the big newspapers?”
Vince looked at Dave, his long-time cohort. “Did I say that?”
“Nope,” Dave said. “And I don’t believe I did, either.”
“Well, what other unexplained mysteriesdo you know about? And why didn’t you tell him?”
The two old men glanced at each other, and once again Stephanie McCann felt that telepathy at work. Vince gave a slight nod toward the door. Dave got up, crossed the brightly lit half of the long room (in the darker half hulked the big old-fashioned offset printing press that hadn’t run in over seven years), and turned the sign hanging in the door from open to closed. Then he came back.
“Closed? In the middle of the day?” Stephanie asked, with the slightest touch of unease in her mind, if not in her voice.
“If someone comes by with news, they’ll knock,” Vince said, reasonably enough. “If it’s big news, they’ll hammer.”
“And if downtown catches afire, we’ll hear the whistle,” Dave put in. “Come on out on the deck, Steffi. August sun’s not to be missed—it doesn’t last long.”
She looked at Dave, then at Vince Teague, who was as mentally quick at ninety as he’d been at forty-five. She was convinced of it. “School’s in?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Vince said, and although he was still smiling, she sensed he was serious. “And do you know what’s nice for old guys like us?”
“You only have to teach people who want to learn.”
“Ayuh. Doyou want to learn, Steffi?”
“Yes.” She spoke with no hesitation in spite of that odd inner unease.
“Then come out and sit,” he said. “Come out and sit a little.”
So she did.
4
The sun was warm, the air was cool, the breeze was sweet with salt and rich with the sound of bells and horns and lapping water. These were sounds she had come to love in only a space of weeks. The two men sat on either side of her, and although she didn’t know it, both had more or less the same thought:Age flanks beauty . And there was nothing wrong with the thought, because both of them understood their intentions were perfectly solid. They understood how good she could be at the job, and how much she wanted to learn; all that pretty greed made youwant to teach.
“So,” Vince said when they were settled, “think about those stories we told Hanratty at lunch, Steffi—theLisa Cabot , the Coast Lights, the Wandering Mormons, the Tashmore church poisonings that were never solved—and tell me what they have in common.”
“They’reall unsolved.”
“Try doin a little better, dearheart,” Dave said. “You disappoint me.”
She glanced at him and saw he wasn’t kidding. Well, thatwas pretty obvious, considering why Hanratty had blown them to lunch in the first place: theGlobe ’s eight-installment series (maybe even ten installments, Hanratty had said, if he could find enough peculiar stories), which the editorial staff hoped to run between September and Halloween. “They’ve all been done to death?”
“That’s a little better,” Vince said, “but you’re still not breaking any new ground. Ask yourself this, youngster:why have they been done to death? Why does some New England paper drag up the Coast Lights at least once a year, along with a bunch of blurry photos taken over half a century ago? Why does some regional magazine likeYankee orCoast interview either Clayton Riggs or Ella Ferguson at least once a year, as if they were going to all at once jump up like Satan in silk britches and say something brand new?”
“I don’t know who those people are,” Stephanie said.
Vince clapped a hand to the back of his head. “Ayuh, more fool me. I keep forgettin you’re from away.”
“Should I take that as a compliment?”
“Could do; probablyshould do. Clayton Riggs and Ella Ferguson were the only two who drank the iced coffee that day at Tashmore Lake and didn’t die of it. The Ferguson woman’s all right, but Riggs is paralyzed all down the left side of his body.”
“That’s awful. And they keep interviewing them?”
“Ayuh. Fifteen years have rolled by, and I think everyone with half a brain knows that no one is ever going to be arrested for that crime—eight folks poisoned by the side of the lake, and six of em dead—but still Ferguson and Riggs show up in the press, lookin increasin’ly rickety: ‘What Happened That Day?’ and ‘The Lakeside Horror’ and…you get the idea. It’s just another story folks like to hear, like ‘Little Red Ridin Hood’ or ‘The Three Billy Goats’ Gruff.’ Question is…why ?”
But Stephanie had leaped ahead. “Thereis something, isn’t there?” she said. “Some story you didn’t tell him. What is it?”
Again that look passed between them, and this time she couldn’t come even close to reading the thought that went with it. They were sitting in identical lawn chairs, Stephanie with her hands on the arms of hers. Now Dave reached over and patted one of them. “We don’t mind tellin you…do we, Vince?”
“Nah, guess not,” Vince said, and once again all those wrinkles appeared as he smiled up into the sun.
“But if you want to ride the ferry, you have to bring tea for the tillerman. Have you ever heard that one?”
“Somewhere.” She thought on one of her mom’s old record albums, up in the attic.
“Okay,” Dave said, “then answer the question. Hanratty didn’t want those stories because they’ve been written to rags. Why have they been?”
She thought about it, and once again they let her. Once again took pleasure in watching her do it.
“Well,” Stephanie said, at last, “I suppose people like stories that are good for a shiver or two on a winter night, especially if the lights are on and the fire’s nice and warm. Stories about, you know, the unknown.”
“How many unknown things per story, dear?” Vince Teague asked. His voice was soft but his eyes were sharp.
She opened her mouth to sayAs many as six, anyway, thinking about the Church Picnic Poisoner, then closed it again. Six people had died that day on the shores of Tashmore Lake, but one whopper dose of poison had killed them all and she guessed that just one hand had administered it. She didn’t know how many Coast Lights there had been, but had no doubt that folks thought of it as a single phenomenon. So—
“One?” she said, feeling like a contestant in the Final Jeopardy round. “One unknown thing per story?”
Vince pointed his finger at her, smiling more widely than ever, and Stephanie relaxed. This wasn’t real school, and these two men wouldn’t like her any less if she flubbed an answer, but she had come to want to please them in a way she had only wanted to please the very best of her high school and college teachers. The ones who were fierce in their commitments.
“The other thing is that folks have to believe in their hearts that there’s amusta-been in there someplace, and they got a damn good idea what it is,” Dave said. “Here’s thePretty Lisa , washed up on the rocks just south of Dingle Nook on Smack Island in 1926—”
“’27,” Vince said.
“All right, ’27, smarty-britches, and Teodore Riponeaux is still on board, but dead as a hake, and the other five are gone, and even though there’s no sign of blood or a struggle, folks saymusta-been pirates, so now there’s stories about how they had a treasure map and found buried gold and the folks that were guarding it took the swag off them and who knows what-all else.”
“Or they got fighting among themselves,” Vince said. “That’s always been aPretty Lisa favorite. The point is, there are stories some folks tell and other folks like to hear, but Hanratty was wise enough to know his editor wouldn’t fall for such reheated hash.”
“In another ten years, maybe,” Dave said.
“Because sooner or later, everything old is new again. You might not believe that, Steffi, but it’s actually true.”
“Ido believe it,” she said, and thought:Tea for the Tillerman, was that Al Stewart or Cat Stevens?
“Then there’s the Coast Lights,” Vince said, “and I can tell you exactly what’s always made that such a favorite. There’s a picture of them—probably nothing but reflected lights from Ellsworth on the low clouds that hung together just right to make circles that looked like saucers—and below them you can see the whole Hancock Lumber Little League team looking up, all in their uniforms.”
“And one little boy pointin with his glove,” Dave said. “It’s the final touch. And people all look at it and say, ‘Why, thatmusta-been folks from outer space, droppin down for a little look-see at the Great American Pastime. But it’s still just one unknown thing, this time with interestin pictures to mull over, so people go back to it again and again.”
“But not the BostonGlobe ,” Vince said, “although I sense that one might do in a pinch.”
The two men laughed comfortably, as old friends will.
“So,” Vince said, “we might know of an unexplained mystery or two—”
“I won’t stick at that,” Dave said. “We know of at least one for sure, darlin, but there isn’t a singlemusta-been about it—”
“Well…the steak,” Vince said, but he sounded doubtful.
“Oh, ayuh, but eventhat’s a mystery, wouldn’t you say?” Dave asked.
“Yah,” Vince agreed, and now he didn’t sound comfortable. Nor did he look it.
“You’re confusing me,” Stephanie said.
“Ayuh, the story of the Colorado Kid is a confusing tale, all right,” Vince said, “which is why it wouldn’t do for the BostonGlobe , don’tcha know. Too many unknowns, to begin with. Not a singlemusta-been for another.” He leaned forward, fixing her with his clear blue Yankee gaze. “You want to be a newswoman, don’t you?”
“You know I do,” Stephanie said, surprised.
“Well then, I’m going to tell you a secret almost every newspaper man and woman who’s been at it awhile knows: in real life, the number of actual stories—those with beginnings, middles, and ends—are slim and none. But if you can give your readers just one unknown thing (two at the very outside), and then kick in what Dave Bowie there calls amusta-been , your reader will tellhimself a story. Amazin, ain’t it?
“Take the Church Picnic Poisonings. No one knows who killed those folks. Whatis known is that Rhoda Parks, the Tashmore Methodist Church secretary, and William Blakee, the Methodist Churchpastor , had a brief affair six months before the poisonings. Blakee was married, and he broke it off. Are you with me?”
“Yes,” Stephanie said.
“What’salso known is that Rhoda Parks was despondent over the breakup, at least for awhile. Her sister said as much. A third thing that’s known? Both Rhoda Parks and William Blakee drank that poisoned iced coffee at the picnic and died. So what’s themusta-been ? Quick as your life, Steffi.”
“Rhoda must have poisoned the coffee to kill her lover for jilting her and then drank it herself to commit suicide. The other four—plus the ones who only got sick—were what-do-you-call-it, collateral damage.”
Vince snapped his fingers. “Ayuh, that’s the story people tell themselves. The newspapers and magazines never come right out and print it because they don’t have to. They know that folks can connect the dots. What’s against it? Quick as your life again.”
But this time her life would have been forfeit, because Stephanie could come up with nothing against it. She was about to protest that she didn’t know the case well enough to say when Dave got up, approached the porch rail, looked out over the reach toward Tinnock, and remarked mildly: “Six months seems a long time to wait, doesn’t it?”
Stephanie said, “Didn’t someone once say revenge is a dish best eaten cold?”
“Ayuh,” Dave said, still perfectly mild, “but when you kill six people, that’s more than just revenge. Not sayin itcouldn’t have been that way, just that it might have been some other. Just like the Coast Lights might have been reflections on the clouds…or somethin secret the Air Force was testin that got sent up from the air base in Bangor…or who knows, maybe itwas little green men droppin in to see if the kids from Hancock Lumber could turn a double play against the ones from Tinnock Auto Body.”
“Mostly what happens is people make up a story and stick with it,” Vince said. “That’s easy enough to do as long as there’s only one unknown factor: one poisoner, one set of mystery lights, one boat run aground with most of her crew gone. But with the Colorado Kid there was nothingbut unknown factors, and hence there was no story.” He paused. “It was like a train running out of a fireplace or a bunch of horses’ heads showing up one morning in the middle of your driveway. Not that grand, but every bit as strange. And things like that…” He shook his head. “Steffi, people don’t like things like that. They don’twant things like that. A wave is a pretty thing to look at when it breaks on the beach, but too many only make you seasick.”
Stephanie looked out at the sparkling reach—plenty of waves there, but no big ones, not today—and considered this in silence.
“There’s something else,” Dave said, after a bit.
“What?” she asked.
“It’sours ,” he said, and with surprising force. She thought it was almost anger. “A guy from theGlobe , a guy from away—he’d only muck it up. He wouldn’t understand.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“No,” he said, sitting down again. “Nor do I have to, dear. On the subject of the Colorado Kid I’m a little like the Virgin Mary, after she gave birth to Jesus. The Bible says something like, ‘But Mary kept silent, and pondered these things in her heart.’ Sometimes, with mysteries, that’s best.”
“But you’ll tell me?”
“Why, yes, ma’am!” He looked at her as if surprised; also—a little—as if awakening from a near-doze. “Because you’re one of us. Isn’t she, Vince?”
“Ayuh,” Vince said. “You passed that test somewhere around midsummer.”
“Did I?” Again she felt absurdly happy. “How? What test?”
Vince shook his head. “Can’t say, dear. Only know that at some point it began to seem you were all right.” He glanced at Dave, who nodded. Then he looked back at Stephanie. “All right,” he said. “The story we didn’t tell at lunch. Our very own unexplained mystery. The story of the Colorado Kid.”
“So,” Vince said when they were settled, “think about those stories we told Hanratty at lunch, Steffi—theLisa Cabot , the Coast Lights, the Wandering Mormons, the Tashmore church poisonings that were never solved—and tell me what they have in common.”
“They’reall unsolved.”
“Try doin a little better, dearheart,” Dave said. “You disappoint me.”
She glanced at him and saw he wasn’t kidding. Well, thatwas pretty obvious, considering why Hanratty had blown them to lunch in the first place: theGlobe ’s eight-installment series (maybe even ten installments, Hanratty had said, if he could find enough peculiar stories), which the editorial staff hoped to run between September and Halloween. “They’ve all been done to death?”
“That’s a little better,” Vince said, “but you’re still not breaking any new ground. Ask yourself this, youngster:why have they been done to death? Why does some New England paper drag up the Coast Lights at least once a year, along with a bunch of blurry photos taken over half a century ago? Why does some regional magazine likeYankee orCoast interview either Clayton Riggs or Ella Ferguson at least once a year, as if they were going to all at once jump up like Satan in silk britches and say something brand new?”
“I don’t know who those people are,” Stephanie said.
Vince clapped a hand to the back of his head. “Ayuh, more fool me. I keep forgettin you’re from away.”
“Should I take that as a compliment?”
“Could do; probablyshould do. Clayton Riggs and Ella Ferguson were the only two who drank the iced coffee that day at Tashmore Lake and didn’t die of it. The Ferguson woman’s all right, but Riggs is paralyzed all down the left side of his body.”
“That’s awful. And they keep interviewing them?”
“Ayuh. Fifteen years have rolled by, and I think everyone with half a brain knows that no one is ever going to be arrested for that crime—eight folks poisoned by the side of the lake, and six of em dead—but still Ferguson and Riggs show up in the press, lookin increasin’ly rickety: ‘What Happened That Day?’ and ‘The Lakeside Horror’ and…you get the idea. It’s just another story folks like to hear, like ‘Little Red Ridin Hood’ or ‘The Three Billy Goats’ Gruff.’ Question is…why ?”
But Stephanie had leaped ahead. “Thereis something, isn’t there?” she said. “Some story you didn’t tell him. What is it?”
Again that look passed between them, and this time she couldn’t come even close to reading the thought that went with it. They were sitting in identical lawn chairs, Stephanie with her hands on the arms of hers. Now Dave reached over and patted one of them. “We don’t mind tellin you…do we, Vince?”
“Nah, guess not,” Vince said, and once again all those wrinkles appeared as he smiled up into the sun.
“But if you want to ride the ferry, you have to bring tea for the tillerman. Have you ever heard that one?”
“Somewhere.” She thought on one of her mom’s old record albums, up in the attic.
“Okay,” Dave said, “then answer the question. Hanratty didn’t want those stories because they’ve been written to rags. Why have they been?”
She thought about it, and once again they let her. Once again took pleasure in watching her do it.
“Well,” Stephanie said, at last, “I suppose people like stories that are good for a shiver or two on a winter night, especially if the lights are on and the fire’s nice and warm. Stories about, you know, the unknown.”
“How many unknown things per story, dear?” Vince Teague asked. His voice was soft but his eyes were sharp.
She opened her mouth to sayAs many as six, anyway, thinking about the Church Picnic Poisoner, then closed it again. Six people had died that day on the shores of Tashmore Lake, but one whopper dose of poison had killed them all and she guessed that just one hand had administered it. She didn’t know how many Coast Lights there had been, but had no doubt that folks thought of it as a single phenomenon. So—
“One?” she said, feeling like a contestant in the Final Jeopardy round. “One unknown thing per story?”
Vince pointed his finger at her, smiling more widely than ever, and Stephanie relaxed. This wasn’t real school, and these two men wouldn’t like her any less if she flubbed an answer, but she had come to want to please them in a way she had only wanted to please the very best of her high school and college teachers. The ones who were fierce in their commitments.
“The other thing is that folks have to believe in their hearts that there’s amusta-been in there someplace, and they got a damn good idea what it is,” Dave said. “Here’s thePretty Lisa , washed up on the rocks just south of Dingle Nook on Smack Island in 1926—”
“’27,” Vince said.
“All right, ’27, smarty-britches, and Teodore Riponeaux is still on board, but dead as a hake, and the other five are gone, and even though there’s no sign of blood or a struggle, folks saymusta-been pirates, so now there’s stories about how they had a treasure map and found buried gold and the folks that were guarding it took the swag off them and who knows what-all else.”
“Or they got fighting among themselves,” Vince said. “That’s always been aPretty Lisa favorite. The point is, there are stories some folks tell and other folks like to hear, but Hanratty was wise enough to know his editor wouldn’t fall for such reheated hash.”
“In another ten years, maybe,” Dave said.
“Because sooner or later, everything old is new again. You might not believe that, Steffi, but it’s actually true.”
“Ido believe it,” she said, and thought:Tea for the Tillerman, was that Al Stewart or Cat Stevens?
“Then there’s the Coast Lights,” Vince said, “and I can tell you exactly what’s always made that such a favorite. There’s a picture of them—probably nothing but reflected lights from Ellsworth on the low clouds that hung together just right to make circles that looked like saucers—and below them you can see the whole Hancock Lumber Little League team looking up, all in their uniforms.”
“And one little boy pointin with his glove,” Dave said. “It’s the final touch. And people all look at it and say, ‘Why, thatmusta-been folks from outer space, droppin down for a little look-see at the Great American Pastime. But it’s still just one unknown thing, this time with interestin pictures to mull over, so people go back to it again and again.”
“But not the BostonGlobe ,” Vince said, “although I sense that one might do in a pinch.”
The two men laughed comfortably, as old friends will.
“So,” Vince said, “we might know of an unexplained mystery or two—”
“I won’t stick at that,” Dave said. “We know of at least one for sure, darlin, but there isn’t a singlemusta-been about it—”
“Well…the steak,” Vince said, but he sounded doubtful.
“Oh, ayuh, but eventhat’s a mystery, wouldn’t you say?” Dave asked.
“Yah,” Vince agreed, and now he didn’t sound comfortable. Nor did he look it.
“You’re confusing me,” Stephanie said.
“Ayuh, the story of the Colorado Kid is a confusing tale, all right,” Vince said, “which is why it wouldn’t do for the BostonGlobe , don’tcha know. Too many unknowns, to begin with. Not a singlemusta-been for another.” He leaned forward, fixing her with his clear blue Yankee gaze. “You want to be a newswoman, don’t you?”
“You know I do,” Stephanie said, surprised.
“Well then, I’m going to tell you a secret almost every newspaper man and woman who’s been at it awhile knows: in real life, the number of actual stories—those with beginnings, middles, and ends—are slim and none. But if you can give your readers just one unknown thing (two at the very outside), and then kick in what Dave Bowie there calls amusta-been , your reader will tellhimself a story. Amazin, ain’t it?
“Take the Church Picnic Poisonings. No one knows who killed those folks. Whatis known is that Rhoda Parks, the Tashmore Methodist Church secretary, and William Blakee, the Methodist Churchpastor , had a brief affair six months before the poisonings. Blakee was married, and he broke it off. Are you with me?”
“Yes,” Stephanie said.
“What’salso known is that Rhoda Parks was despondent over the breakup, at least for awhile. Her sister said as much. A third thing that’s known? Both Rhoda Parks and William Blakee drank that poisoned iced coffee at the picnic and died. So what’s themusta-been ? Quick as your life, Steffi.”
“Rhoda must have poisoned the coffee to kill her lover for jilting her and then drank it herself to commit suicide. The other four—plus the ones who only got sick—were what-do-you-call-it, collateral damage.”
Vince snapped his fingers. “Ayuh, that’s the story people tell themselves. The newspapers and magazines never come right out and print it because they don’t have to. They know that folks can connect the dots. What’s against it? Quick as your life again.”
But this time her life would have been forfeit, because Stephanie could come up with nothing against it. She was about to protest that she didn’t know the case well enough to say when Dave got up, approached the porch rail, looked out over the reach toward Tinnock, and remarked mildly: “Six months seems a long time to wait, doesn’t it?”
Stephanie said, “Didn’t someone once say revenge is a dish best eaten cold?”
“Ayuh,” Dave said, still perfectly mild, “but when you kill six people, that’s more than just revenge. Not sayin itcouldn’t have been that way, just that it might have been some other. Just like the Coast Lights might have been reflections on the clouds…or somethin secret the Air Force was testin that got sent up from the air base in Bangor…or who knows, maybe itwas little green men droppin in to see if the kids from Hancock Lumber could turn a double play against the ones from Tinnock Auto Body.”
“Mostly what happens is people make up a story and stick with it,” Vince said. “That’s easy enough to do as long as there’s only one unknown factor: one poisoner, one set of mystery lights, one boat run aground with most of her crew gone. But with the Colorado Kid there was nothingbut unknown factors, and hence there was no story.” He paused. “It was like a train running out of a fireplace or a bunch of horses’ heads showing up one morning in the middle of your driveway. Not that grand, but every bit as strange. And things like that…” He shook his head. “Steffi, people don’t like things like that. They don’twant things like that. A wave is a pretty thing to look at when it breaks on the beach, but too many only make you seasick.”
Stephanie looked out at the sparkling reach—plenty of waves there, but no big ones, not today—and considered this in silence.
“There’s something else,” Dave said, after a bit.
“What?” she asked.
“It’sours ,” he said, and with surprising force. She thought it was almost anger. “A guy from theGlobe , a guy from away—he’d only muck it up. He wouldn’t understand.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“No,” he said, sitting down again. “Nor do I have to, dear. On the subject of the Colorado Kid I’m a little like the Virgin Mary, after she gave birth to Jesus. The Bible says something like, ‘But Mary kept silent, and pondered these things in her heart.’ Sometimes, with mysteries, that’s best.”
“But you’ll tell me?”
“Why, yes, ma’am!” He looked at her as if surprised; also—a little—as if awakening from a near-doze. “Because you’re one of us. Isn’t she, Vince?”
“Ayuh,” Vince said. “You passed that test somewhere around midsummer.”
“Did I?” Again she felt absurdly happy. “How? What test?”
Vince shook his head. “Can’t say, dear. Only know that at some point it began to seem you were all right.” He glanced at Dave, who nodded. Then he looked back at Stephanie. “All right,” he said. “The story we didn’t tell at lunch. Our very own unexplained mystery. The story of the Colorado Kid.”
5
But it was Dave who actually began.
“Twenty-five years ago,” he said, “back in ’80, there were two kids who took the six-thirty ferry to school instead of the seven-thirty. They were on the Bayview Consolidated High School Track Team, and they were also boy and girlfriend. Once winter was over—and it doesn’t ever last as long here on the coast as it does inland—they’d run cross-island, down along Hammock Beach to the main road, then on to Bay Street and the town dock. Do you see it, Steffi?”
She did. She saw the romance of it, as well. What she didn’t see was what the “boy and girlfriend” did when they got to the Tinnock side of the reach. She knew that Moose-Look’s dozen or so high-school-age kids almost always took the seven-thirty ferry, giving the ferryman—either Herbie Gosslin or Marcy Lagasse—their passes so they could be recorded with quick winks of the old laser-gun on the bar codes. Then, on the Tinnock side, a schoolbus would be waiting to take them the three miles to BCHS. She asked if the runners waited for the bus and Dave shook his head, smiling.
“Nawp, ran that side, too,” he said. “Not holdin hands, but might as well have been; always side by side, Johnny Gravlin and Nancy Arnault. For a couple of years they were all but inseparable.”
Stephanie sat up straighter in her chair. The John Gravlin she knew was Moose-Lookit Island’s mayor, a gregarious man with a good word for everyone and an eye on the state senate in Augusta. His hairline was receding, his belly expanding. She tried to imagine him doing the greyhound thing—two miles a day on the island side of the reach, three more on the mainland side—and couldn’t manage it.
“Ain’t makin much progress with it, are ya, dear?” Vince asked.
“No,” she admitted.
“Well, that’s because you see Johnny Gravlin the soccer player, miler, Friday night practical joker and Saturday lover asMayor John Gravlin, who happens to be the only political hop-toad in a small island pond. He goes up and down Bay Street shaking hands and grinning with that gold tooth flashing off to one side in his mouth, got a good word for everyone he meets, never forgets a name or which man drives a Ford pickup and which one is still getting along with his Dad’s old International Harvester. He’s a caricature right out of an old nineteen-forties movie about small-town hoop-de-doo politics and he’s such a hick he don’t even know it. He’s got one jump left in him—hop, toad, hop—and once he gets to that Augusta lilypad he’ll either be wise enough to stop or he’ll try another hop and end up getting squashed.”
“Twenty-five years ago,” he said, “back in ’80, there were two kids who took the six-thirty ferry to school instead of the seven-thirty. They were on the Bayview Consolidated High School Track Team, and they were also boy and girlfriend. Once winter was over—and it doesn’t ever last as long here on the coast as it does inland—they’d run cross-island, down along Hammock Beach to the main road, then on to Bay Street and the town dock. Do you see it, Steffi?”
She did. She saw the romance of it, as well. What she didn’t see was what the “boy and girlfriend” did when they got to the Tinnock side of the reach. She knew that Moose-Look’s dozen or so high-school-age kids almost always took the seven-thirty ferry, giving the ferryman—either Herbie Gosslin or Marcy Lagasse—their passes so they could be recorded with quick winks of the old laser-gun on the bar codes. Then, on the Tinnock side, a schoolbus would be waiting to take them the three miles to BCHS. She asked if the runners waited for the bus and Dave shook his head, smiling.
“Nawp, ran that side, too,” he said. “Not holdin hands, but might as well have been; always side by side, Johnny Gravlin and Nancy Arnault. For a couple of years they were all but inseparable.”
Stephanie sat up straighter in her chair. The John Gravlin she knew was Moose-Lookit Island’s mayor, a gregarious man with a good word for everyone and an eye on the state senate in Augusta. His hairline was receding, his belly expanding. She tried to imagine him doing the greyhound thing—two miles a day on the island side of the reach, three more on the mainland side—and couldn’t manage it.
“Ain’t makin much progress with it, are ya, dear?” Vince asked.
“No,” she admitted.
“Well, that’s because you see Johnny Gravlin the soccer player, miler, Friday night practical joker and Saturday lover asMayor John Gravlin, who happens to be the only political hop-toad in a small island pond. He goes up and down Bay Street shaking hands and grinning with that gold tooth flashing off to one side in his mouth, got a good word for everyone he meets, never forgets a name or which man drives a Ford pickup and which one is still getting along with his Dad’s old International Harvester. He’s a caricature right out of an old nineteen-forties movie about small-town hoop-de-doo politics and he’s such a hick he don’t even know it. He’s got one jump left in him—hop, toad, hop—and once he gets to that Augusta lilypad he’ll either be wise enough to stop or he’ll try another hop and end up getting squashed.”