A Beautiful Place to Die (19 page)

“Step on it,” I said. “I think he's on to us!”

“Madre!” Zee
hit the gas and we scooted around the corner. Ahead were three choices of travel: left toward East Chop, straight ahead, or right into the emergency room parking lot. Zee turned off her headlights and went straight ahead. She took her next right and swept toward the lobster hatchery.

Zoom. Through the night. Trees whipped by, dimly lit by scattered streetlights. Scary but interesting. Behind us—nothing. Zee sped on, over a hill into a shallow hollow and up the other side and into another hollow. The stars reeled in the sky. I felt pretty good. Behind us I still saw no lights. Billy had guessed wrong about our flight plan. Zee made a hard right turn through a stop sign and flicked on the lights.

“Quo vadis?”
I inquired.

“My place. I'll call the cops from there. I think we've lost our tail, as they say in the movies.”

“You drive good,” I said.

“Shut up and concentrate on not bleeding.”

We came to the blinker on the Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road, crossed and went on. Then suddenly there were no more stars. Clouds had covered them, blowing in from the west. The trees flipped by on either side of the road, dark against a dark sky. Still no tail. Billy had definitely gone off somewhere else. I wondered where. I wondered how deep shotgun pellets went in. I wondered if they'd gotten them all out or whether I'd be carrying some of them around for the rest of my life, however long that might be. Not too long, at the rate I was going today. I asked Zee about the pellets.

“From what I could see, they went in a half inch to an inch. We got most of them out, but you'll probably get to keep the rest. Just like that shrapnel you carry around. As far as I know, none of the shot went deep enough to touch anything vital. You hurt, but you'll be okay.” She gave me a quick look. “Mostly he got you around the edges. The doctor found that curious.”

“Clams,” I said.

“What?”

I told her about the clam bucket taking the first blast. “Greater love hath no clam than he will lay down his life for his clammer.”

“Maybe you should lay off shellfish as a gesture of appreciation.”

We drove past the airport to West Tisbury and turned left toward Chilmark. Behind us headlights appeared. Zee stepped on the gas.

“Does he know where you live?” I asked.

“Not that I know of.”

The rain began as we passed the general store. Off toward Gay Head, lightning glittered. A bit later we could hear the thunder. A summer storm was walking down
Vineyard Sound from the west, filling the sky with glowing lights and jagged flashes. I don't like thunderstorms. They scare me. But I liked this one. It would make it harder for crazy Billy to find his way around. Red sky at night, Jackson's delight.

We found Zee's road and drove to the house. By then the rain was beating down and the thunder was crashing. A fine bolt of lightning lanced down to the north of us, and I counted. Eight seconds. A mile and a half or so. Close enough to be impressive, but not close enough to be dangerous. My kind of lightning.

“Stay here,” said Zee. She opened the door of the Jeep and ran, ducking, through the rain. Why do we duck when we run through the rain? We get just as wet. Zee reached her porch, went into the house, and turned on a light, then came back with an umbrella. She got me and we walked, ducking, to the house.

Zee walked me right into her bedroom.

“Get undressed and get into bed.”

“Try to control yourself,” I said. “I'm a wounded man.”

“Ha, ha,” she said. But then she smiled. “Get undressed. Remember, I've already seen your naked bod stretched out on the operating table at the hospital. You have no secrets from me.”

“But you have some from me.”

“I don't think you're up to discovery right now. I'll get you something hot to drink.”

She went out and came back after a bit with a teapot and two cups. I was still sitting there, thinking. As I raised my hand for the cup, the lights went out. I could see Zee outlined against the window where outside the sky glowed and thunder muttered. I heard her put down the teapot and cups, then she walked out of the room and I could
hear a drawer open and close. Then a light danced beyond the bedroom door and she came back in cupping a thick candle and carrying two others. She lit these and the bedroom brightened, soft, yellow, and glimmering in that lovely light that only candles can give. She served my tea.

“Romance.” She smiled.

It was herb tea laced with rum. I scalded a tonsil and the next time blew the surface cool before I drank.

“You're a good cook,” I said. “I'm glad I came.”

“You bring out the mother in me.”

“I do have a boyish charm, but behind this baby face and beneath this ivory skin lives a truly manly man, full of lust and mad passions I'm only able to control by dint of an iron will, which is another of my manly traits. I should warn you, however, that my superego is eaten alive by my id when I'm in the presence of a champion tea maker of your general configuration.”

“You must be feeling better,” she said. “Before you get so excited that you fall down on the floor, I think I'll make that phone call to the police. They can send someone out here to protect us from each other.”

“Good thinking.” I sipped my tea, feeling not really too great. Then I put the cup down and lay back on the bed. Zee came back.

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“The phone's out, too.”

I lay there and looked at her ceiling. The candles cast a wavy light that threw faint shadows everywhere. Quite lovely.

“I don't suppose you have a gun of some sort lying around.”

“I don't know anything about guns and I don't have any. I'm barely beginning to learn about fishing.”

“It probably doesn't make any difference. Billy's not the type to wander around in weather bad as this. Not at night, at least. It's hard to see your hand in front of your face.”

“Yes. Which means it's just as hard for the cops to see Billy.”

“They'll find him. There's more of them than of him.” I tried to sound confident.

“I'd think so, too, if he was driving his own car. But you saw that car he was in tonight. It wasn't that little yellow M.G. he usually drives. The police will be looking for the M.G., I imagine, not for the red car he's driving now.”

I sat up and carefully put my feet on the floor. Outside, thunder and lightning cracked together and the rain doubled its intensity. “I think we may have a problem,” I said. “Billy doesn't know where you live, but . . .”

“But it's not a secret. He could find out. . . .”

“How?”

She was quick. “If I were Billy, I'd phone the hospital claiming to be a police officer looking for Zee Madeiras's home. If I were a nurse, I'd probably give the information without thinking too much about it.”

I moved and winced and saw Zee wince when she saw me wince. I tried to think straight. “You didn't mention seeing Billy carrying a shotgun in the hospital, so he's probably got one of his daddy's target pistols or even my pistol from the Landcruiser where I was stupid enough to leave it. He likes that gun. He almost shot me with it earlier in the day.”

“I think we'd better get out of here,” said Zee. “We ought to find some cops and let them watch over you. I
don't think my fishing rod is a match for his six-shooter!”

I waved a finger in the air. “Peace, peace. Even if he finds out where you live, he still doesn't know I'm with you. Besides, finding a cop tonight might be hard. Most of them are probably out drug busting. Anyhow, if we go driving back down island looking for policemen, Billy might just spot us on the road. . . .”

“He knows my Jeep. He passed us, then turned around, remember?”

“He may suspect that I'm with you, but he doesn't know.”

“Great. A suspicious madman. That's very comforting, Jefferson. You're a real psychologist. Now I don't know what to do! Stay and get killed or leave and get killed? Some choice!”

I tried to put myself into Billy's head. What would I do? Where would I go? How would I act?

Zee was clearer in the brain than I was. “We're getting out of here. We'll hide out up at Lobsterville by Dogfish Bar till morning. They should have him by then.” She headed for the kitchen. “I'll fix a thermos of coffee and some sandwiches to see us through.”

“Good idea.” I was relieved by having a decision made by Zee, since I was too muddleheaded to make one myself.

When she'd fixed the food and coffee, she helped me through the rain to the Jeep and we went off. “I'm sorry about the discomfort you're going to be in, Jefferson,” she said, “but you'll survive it. We'll have food and drink and I'll keep the heater on as often as we need it. Maybe you can even get some sleep.” She sounded like a nurse—kind but firm. Realistic. Men like to think of themselves as the realists, but they're wrong. Women are the gender of reality. They live in a concrete world of men, children, and
feelings while men entertain themselves with great abstractions—money, power, fantasies of heroism.

I thought of a question. “Dogfish Bar? How do you know about Dogfish Bar? I thought you were just a neophyte fisherperson. Neophytes don't know about Dogfish Bar.”

“What do you know about what I know? I keep my ears open, mister. Dogfish Bar is where they catch the bass. Right up there beyond Lobsterville. Billy will never think of looking for us there.”

Who could tell where mad Billy might think of looking? “Have you been hanging around with
some up-island fisherman when I'm not around?”

“None of your business.”

True. I felt sulky nevertheless, and frowned into the darkness.

We passed through Chilmark and entered Gay Head, home of the lovely clay cliffs and the made-in-Japan Indian souvenirs sold to tourists by Gay Headers. I don't really like Gay Head because I can never find a free parking place up there and they charge for using the toilets. When I'm king of the world I'm going to ban pay toilets as an affront to civilization.

In the darkness the wind shook the trees, the rain began to thin, and the sky to the east flashed and glittered as the thunderstorm moved off toward Nantucket. Zee took the Lobsterville road.

“All right,” she said, slowing down, “where is it?”

“Where's what?”

“Where's the road to Dogfish Bar? You're the big fisherman around here. Tell me where to turn. I know I turn somewhere, but I don't know where.”

Gee whiz and gollee. Maybe she wasn't hanging out with some up-island fisherman after all! I smiled into the darkness and my sulk went away. I told her where to turn—first left toward Gay Head light, then right. Ahead, all was darkness. No electricity up island, yet. The road was sand and full of dips and rises and holes and ruts. When we got opposite Dogfish Bar, we pulled off and parked in the beach grass and bushes. Our headlights illuminated the thin trail leading north over the dunes.

“Follow that,” I said, “and when you feel the water over your knees you'll know you've gone too far. Come back onto the beach and make your cast and it'll land on Dogfish Bar.”

Zee punched out the headlights and turned off the engine. Lightning danced in the east and thunder was faint. She found a soft rock station and the music eased out of the speakers. Personally I only listen to folk, classical, and country, but I'm a broadminded guy so I'd listen to this without complaint because I was her guest. I explained this to Zee. She expressed great admiration for my character and gracious ways.

After a while we had some coffee and food and she asked me about bass fishing. I told her how I did it—fresh squid from Menemsha, night fishing only. You make your cast and then let the tide take the squid across the shallows. If a bass takes it, it feels nothing at all like a bluefish and you can tell the difference right away. You have to let the big ones run, and they'll head for the rocks if there are any, and you have to play them a long time sometimes before you begin to get them in close and then all the way in.

I told her how they were getting pretty scarce along the East Coast and that I didn't fish for them anymore, myself, except now and then, for a change, and only if I really
wanted to eat one, and then only a little illegal one because I wanted the big ones to go back home and lay eggs and build the bass population up again.

I asked Zee if she'd noticed my Hemingway imitation, but she said she hadn't. Then she asked me if I'd ever wondered why George's nitroglycerin pills hadn't worked better on our run from Cape Pogue to Edgartown and I said I hadn't because I'd forgotten George mentioning it. And after I thought about it now, I said that maybe it would be a good idea to have the pills checked out, just in case George needed them again sometime. She said she'd take care of it.

While I was thinking about the pills and how comfortable I was, I went to sleep. As I drifted away I remember seeing the horizon off to the east glow with distant lightning. The wind still blew strong around the Jeep, but the rain had stopped.

When I woke up, the storm was gone, the sky was clear, and the sun was shining. I blinked into its rays and saw a red M.G. sportscar swaying and splashing up the road toward us, moving fast.

“Wake up!” I shook Zee and she was instantly awake. “There!” I pointed. She saw and reached for the ignition key. As the motor roared, I slid out the door. I felt as if my skin was tearing away.

“What are you doing! Get in here!” She clawed after me.

“No. This road dead-ends, and he's between us and the highway. He wants me. I'll let him see me, and when he comes after me, you go for the police. Don't let him get too close to you because he might just shoot you in passing!”