Night Songs Page 6

  Harcourt belched again.

  "That's it," Nichols muttered. He took the unsteady man's arms and spun him around toward town. Another moment for consideration and he gave him a harsh shove. "Go! Go on, damn it, before I run you in and throw away the key."

  Harcourt lurched forward five or six feet, regained his balance, and walked a half dozen feet more. Then, abruptly, he turned and slipped his hands into his topcoat pockets. He was just beyond the reach of the patrol car's headlights, a shadow barely formed, and Nichols could have sworn he looked almost normal.

  His voice was deep, and perfectly steady. "He won't like it, you know. He won't like it at all."

  Nichols turned away, more spooked than before, and looked up to the stars. Damn, he thought, wouldn't you know it. Gone more than a week and now the damned fog is coming back.

  ***

  Matt had asked her again: "Mom, why don't you and Mr. Ross get married?"

  And again she'd answered truthfully: "Don't know, darlin'. Maybe because there's a time for things like that, and this isn't it."

  It had sounded weak when she said it and Matt had finished his chocolate pudding in silence, cleared the table and gone up to his room when she'd pardoned him from doing the dishes. He wanted to finish the picture of the gulls, he'd told her; he wanted it done by Monday so Mr. Ross could tell him what he'd done wrong and what he should practice on. And when she was alone she washed the plates and listened to the radio, humming when she recognized a melody, shutting the music out when she didn't. Afterward, she wandered into the study where she opened the store ledger and stared at the columns, the figures, the black and red ink.

  She held a ball-point pen in her right hand and tapped the retractor knob against her teeth.

  Ten minutes later nothing had changed-the store was still solvent, no hints of financial disaster, and she might even be able to give one of her two clerks, Frankie Adams, a slight raise for the winter. If, she amended, he kept his nose clean. She smiled. She might as well ask for a million tax-free dollars. Though the boy was ambitious, and a decently hard worker, he was also enthralled by the local godhood, Carter Naughton. As long as Cart suffered the younger boy's presence, Frankie was going to be a problem. Well, maybe the raise would turn him around. Her good deed for the year.

  She pushed away from the desk and stretched, groaned with pleasure, and toed off her shoes. Her hair, a rich and sullen auburn, was bunned at the nape for convenience, not preference. Her blouse and skirt were white and unfrilled. She rebelled against smocks, lab coats, and the like. Pharmacist or not, she didn't believe she lost a dime in sales just because she looked like a woman.

  A grin pulled at her classic bow lips.

  A woman, huh? The only time she ever considered herself something other than someone who owned a business these days was when Matt mentioned Colin. Or when she saw Colin on the street. Or when Colin took her to the movies, or to the mainland for dinner or a drive. Or when Colin took her sailing. Or…

  The grin turned to a broad smile, and she laughed aloud.

  "God," she said, rising and leaving the small room for the front parlor. "God, Pegeen, you've got it bad."

  There wasn't much furniture, but what she had was comfortably old, comfortably thick, solidly reassuring. For a while, after Jim had died, she'd wanted to clear the house of everything that reminded her of him-the fireplace armchair where he'd read his paper every night, the oriental carpet his mother had given them as a wedding present, the polished brass andirons he cleaned after every fire, the framed prints of thoroughbreds. The bed upstairs. His armoire.

  Then she'd changed her mind.

  One morning, no more special than any other, she woke up and decided that all of it was just as much hers as his, as was the house and the land around it, that he was gone and she was still alive. With Matthew.

  She'd cried all day.

  Matt had cried with her, as if he'd understood.

  Then Colin had arrived, and two years later her son's campaign had begun.

  She slumped into the armchair and drew her feet up under her. Directly opposite was the picture window, reflecting the floor lamp to her left, and her shadowed face. She could see the street, however, and the Adams' house on the other side. A puff of fog hung over the streetlamp near the corner. Though the house was warm she hugged herself for a moment and wished she'd been able to attend the funeral. Lilla, she suspected, would be angry with her now, but it was a shame just the same.

  She massaged her feet absently. "Mom?"

  She looked up, around toward the staircase by the front door. "You called?"

  "Can I watch TV?"

  "I don't know. You finish your homework?"

  "Sure."

  She shifted, lowering her feet to the carpet. A stupid question, she thought. If he'd had to read War and Peace by morning the answer would have been the same. She glanced at her watch and did some rapid subtraction. "All right," she called back. "But just till nine, got it? Nine o'clock and that thing is off."

  "Thanks!"

  "You're welcome," she said without raising her voice, then looked to the telephone on the table beside her. Talk. She needed talk, and with the funeral going on she might as well let her mother know she was still alive and unmarried. Then, thinking about the advice she didn't need but would get anyway, she rose, walked into the study again, and stared at the bookshelves and the cabinets beneath them where Jim had stored his files. She'd gone through them after he died, thinking she might be able to find his notes on the casinos and gamblers, thinking she'd be able to march into FBI headquarters and dump them on an agent's desk and demand justice be done. But she hadn't found them. No one had. And despite police efforts…

  Hell, she thought, and looked back to the phone. Maybe Mother wouldn't be so bad, after all. Maybe she wouldn't be up to her lecture on the virtues of having a husband, and a father for poor little Matthew. Like Jim, she would say with undisguised grief in her voice. Or that nice restaurant man, what's his name again? Something Campbell? Cameron?

  Peg's sudden smile was mirthless.

  What few people knew, and what fewer would have believed if they had known, was that if Jim had lived another year she would have divorced him. Ironic, even bitterly so, but against all accounts and his crusading to save the island, Jim Fletcher had been a goddamned bastard. Miserly, philandering, and ridiculing her attempts to continue running the store she'd inherited from her father. Once, he'd even attempted to force her to choose between the business and him, backing down only when she'd made it absolutely clear what the answer would have been.

  By the time of his death she had grown to hate him.

  By the time of his death he had lost his son's love.

  "Damn," she muttered, and decided to go upstairs and watch television with Matt. If she were lucky, the picture would be new and Matt would have seen it only a dozen or so times. By the end of the last commercial maybe the funeral would be over. Then she could call Colin and maybe he'd come over for a drink, something warm, some talk… maybe a little loving, which suddenly she felt she needed very badly.

  But when she reached the staircase she changed her mind and went back to the chair, picked a book up from the floor and opened it to the first page. Soon, she told herself; the funeral will be over soon and then I'll call Colin.

  ***

  Lilla met Colin at the threshold and faced him squarely. Her face was drawn, her hair tangled and damp. The black dress clung provocatively to her figure, and might have seemed blasphemous had it not been for the dirt and dust that faded parts of it to grey.

  "It's time," she said when he was close enough.

  He nodded.

  "I have no choice?"

  "Lilla…"

  She smiled weakly. "I just wanted to try one more time." Then she sagged, and he held her awkwardly, unable to shake the feeling that all her protests had been lies. He was startled, ashamed, stared over her shoulder into the dark of the shack. Gran was in there.

&n
bsp; He could sense the corpse and the shroud. And there was something else-perhaps the scent of her grieving-but whatever it was it wrinkled his nose and would have gagged him had she not pulled away and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  He gave her a weak grin. "Easy, lady, people will talk."

  "They do anyway."

  She was right. And only a handful understood the affinity binding the two, not as lovers but as friends, both of them outcasts in their own way and recognizing each other instantly.

  "You'll ride with me, Colin?"

  "Of course I will."

  She looked to the beach, the boats. "Colin?" She clasped her hands at her waist, scrubbed them dryly. "Colin, Gran wasn't the man people think he was."

  "I know."

  She frowned briefly. "No. I don't think so. He-"

  The indefinable stench from the shack increased, and he imagined it almost as visible as smoke. He held his breath, amazed it didn't bother Lilla. Incense, he decided then, some crap Gran had brought with him from the Caribbean.

  "He what?" he prompted gently.

  The stench on the wind now.

  She shook her head slowly. "It doesn't matter now," she whispered. Then she turned around.

  Stronger.

  "Lilla, wait. I'll get some of the others-"

  "No!" she said, the child-woman gone in the snap of the command. "He is mine, Colin. If this thing has to be done, I will take him myself.

  He opened his mouth to protest, but it was too late, and something about the darkness that seemed to shift just over the threshold kept him from following. He felt embarrassed. He wanted to look back at the others and lift his hands to say I tried. Lilla spared him the moment; she returned with the body cradled easily in her arms, and he fell in beside her, holding her elbow to prevent her from slipping. The stench was gone.

  ***

  Silently, swiftly, the boats were filled and pushed into the surf. They moved directly east toward the fog's boundary, stopping when they reached a point a mile beyond the jetties' tips.

  Colin's arms arched as he rowed the heavy craft, Lilla sitting at the stern, Gran lying between them. But he felt no compulsion to be first at the spot; after all, he thought with a barely stifled laugh, they sure as hell couldn't start without him. The levity shamed him, and he refused to meet Lilla's gaze. He ducked his head and pulled around the already circled boats until he could slip stern first into his place at the top.

  The oarlocks were silent, though the oars had been left half submerged in the water. No anchors were thrown, no lines were connected, yet each of the craft maintained the same spacing without needing adjustment. And the dark water in the center was calm, low, as if the ocean were a lake, windless at dusk.

  Reverend Graham Otter, standing at the circle's base with his back to the shore, glanced around him once before slipping off his jacket, his black cassock and white collar in startling contrast. He folded his hands at his waist in an attitude of waiting. A moment later he nodded. Lilla rose, turned to face him. Colin followed, watching as the rest of the congregation moved to its feet. There was no struggling for balance, no ripples, no splashes; the boats were still, as were the people in them.

  Colin was nervous. Though he assumed he had performed his part well thus far, he suddenly decided this wasn't fair at all. It was his first island funeral, and he should be in one of the other boats, observing, learning, trying to feel the solace that obviously affected the others. But somehow, without his knowing it, he'd been chosen pallbearer, Charon, and God only knew what else. It wasn't fair; he didn't like it; suddenly he turned his head away, blinking aside the flaring afterimage of a match the minister had struck against the shaft of a torch he'd taken from his boat. The cleric held up the flame until it nearly scorched his fingers before bringing it to the cloth soaked almost a day in treated oil. Blue fire, red, spiraled upward and twisted about itself as though it could be bound. Then he handed the torch to the man in the boat beside his, who lit his own torch and passed the first on around the circle until it reached Lilla. She held it close to her face, but Colin could only see the flames rising above her head. When her pause lengthened to a full minute, he thought she would douse it and he swallowed his relief when she finally passed it to her neighbor.

  Once it had reached full circle, all the torches were placed in gleaming brass brackets bolted to the sterns. They burned low, with an incessant crackling like dry wood, dark smoke in dark curls rising far above the dark surface.

  Blue fire, and red, and pale faces reflecting.

  The breakers were muted; no lights on the shore.

  The fog began crawling between the boats to the still water.

  "Gran," Reverend Otter said then. "Gran, it's time."

  Colin saw Lilla's back grow rigid, and he braced himself to grab her in case she changed her mind again. But when she only brought her hands up to take hold of her upper arms he relaxed and tried to listen to what the minister was saying. But he couldn't. He couldn't take his gaze away from the shrouded body, from Lilla's back, from the fingers of fog slipping over the sides.

  Reverend Otter droned on; there was a hymn softly sung; yet Colin couldn't help feeling that the others were just as uneasy as he. Garve had told him stories-as had Peg and Annalee, and even Bob Cameron-the highlights of which dealt with the joy of the songs that rose above the sea, the genuine belief there was a better world farther on. That feeling was absent now. And he saw signs of impatient shifting- knees bending and locking, arms swinging, heads nodding.

  They want to be gone, he thought, and not just because of Gran.

  Then he saw Lilla bend her head for a moment, and realized the reverend had stopped his preaching. Colin waited, wondering if there was something he was supposed to do and cursing Garve for not telling him, staring when Lilla suddenly knelt beside her grandfather and kissed the shroud where his mouth would have been. A slight gesture behind her to keep him where he was, and she slipped her hands under the body, her expression set and her mouth slightly parted. She lifted, shifted, held the dead man against her chest and whispered something to him. Colin strained but couldn't hear her. Then she turned to face the cleric and let the gray bundle slide from her hands into the water, effortlessly, soundlessly, as if it were little more than air.

  And despite the weight lashed about its feet, the body floated for several long seconds. Turning through the lacing of fog without disturbing it, sweeping in a complete circle like a compass seeking its direction… until it stopped in front of Lilla.

  Then nothing moved but the fog.

  Finally, the shroud began sinking, slipping smoothly into the black ocean without leaving a ripple behind. Instantly, it was over, and beginning with Otter the torches were thrown after the body until only Lilla's remained.

  And when she suddenly whirled around, he ducked instinctively as she hurled the torch as far as she could toward the horizon. He had no idea why, but he knew what she'd done was wrong. Yet she only turned around to wait for him to row her back to shore.

  ***

  Matt knew Mom was restless, and suspected she might come up to join him. She'd like the movie, too-

  James Bond again in The Man with the Golden Gun. It wasn't so much the shooting and the fights he liked in this one, but the co-star, Christopher Lee, who he knew in real life was Count Dracula. It made the dialogue silly, and sometimes had him giggling hard into his pillow.

  When it was obvious she wasn't coming, he slipped off the mattress and wandered around the small room for a minute or two before returning to the bed. There were papers scattered over the quilt from his sketch pad, a handful of felt-tip pens, and a notebook he used to keep track of his drawings. On the walls were a number of pastels he'd done this past summer, taped and tacked and pinned to the white plaster; in the far corner next to the curtained window was an easel that straddled a palette and a case of oils he hadn't yet had the nerve to use; on a single shelf over his bed were two wood carvings that were supposed to be seals but
he knew they looked like something no seal ever did; and on the desk were his schoolbooks, already belted together for grabbing in the morning.

  He pushed the papers aside and sat, ignoring the flickering from the portable television on the desk. His head shook in dismay. All night he'd been trying to capture the sand castle, and every one of his efforts was a dismal, amateurish failure.

  "Nuts, goddamn," he said, and swept the papers to the floor. It was something he hadn't learned yet that was keeping him from doing it right, something he would have to ask Colin about the next time he came to class.

  He stretched out, cupped his hands beneath his head, and wondered, not for the first time, if there was something wrong with him inside. Colin had said no, and so had his mother, but if that were true why wasn't his room like anyone else's? There were no pennants on the walls, no cowboy guns in the closet, no footballs or baseballs or an outfielder's mitt. Tommy Fox even had pictures of naked women hidden under his mattress, and he was Matt's age.

  But nobody, not anybody put the pictures they drew in school on display in their rooms.

  And they definitely hated going to museums-except of course, for the one in New York that had all the dinosaur bones in it, and the stuffed elephants and lions.

  No matter what his mother said, he knew he was different. He had to be. And he hated it, hated it a lot. Like when Gran had shown him how to carve things with a knife; he'd done it, done okay for someone who didn't know what he was doing, and it was neat to see how Gran smiled at him in a way he knew no one else got-except maybe Lilla. But the other kids thought it was silly, making things from dead wood. Hated it, like today when the other guys kept poking fun at him while they were building the castle. He didn't say anything to Mr. Ross, but they'd been doing it all afternoon, and even though he was nearly ten he'd almost cried-until Mr. Ross came along and made everything okay.