A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard (6 page)

Gay Head has some of the finest bass and bluefish grounds on the island. Squibnocket, Lobsterville, Dogfish Bar, and other sites are famous among East Coast surf casters. The town lies on the western tip of the Vineyard, famous for the multicolored cliffs whose bright-hued clays give those cliffs and the town their name. Gay Head is a lovely place of rolling hills, fine beaches, and ancient Wampanoag traditions, but I consider it to be an unfriendly town because of its politics. I mean, you not only can't park beside its roads to go fishing or lie on the beach, there are signs that forbid even pausing to unload passengers. Worse yet, the town parking lot charges two arms and a leg to park there, and the only public toilets are pay toilets. Any place with pay toilets is a place to avoid, such facilities being an affront to God herself.

But Zee and I didn't completely bypass that end of the island. The fishing was too good, and we had friends who lived up there and who let us park in their yards when we wanted to fish under the cliffs, thus allowing us to avoid the clutches of the ever avaricious Gay Head distributors of parking tickets.

Two of these friends were Toni and Joe Begay. Joe, whose folks still lived out in Arizona, near Oraibi, had, long ago, been my sergeant in an Oriental war, but now, after a long and little-discussed career in odd parts of the world, he had settled down with island-born Toni in a house not far from the famous cliffs. They and their new girl-child Hanna lived a quiet life while Joe and Toni, like
Zee and I, tried to figure out how to play the parenting game. Toni and Zee had grown close even before both had become pregnant, and now that they were the mothers of actual living and breathing children about whose care they knew not too much, they were even closer, and inclined, as new mothers often are, to participate in long mom talks about their babies and the trials and pleasures of motherhood. The failure of males to be enthralled by such conversations was, as Zee observed with tart sympathy, another liability of the Y chromosome.

I took Drew Mondry first to Squibnocket Beach, where, after the daytime sun seekers have gone home, the bass fishermen love to prowl, then on to Lobsterville Beach, where there's more good fishing (if you can find a parking place), then up to the cliffs themselves. There, after making three circles before I could find a free place to park, I led Mondry up between the fast-food joints and the shops selling Taiwan-made Gay Head souvenirs, past Toni Begay's shop, which actually sold American Indian crafts, to the lookout at clifftop. From there, looking to our right, we could see the bright clay precipice, see across the sound to Cuttyhunk and, far away, the edges of America itself.

To the south lay No Mans Land, that curious island which at one time had been a combination of bird sanctuary and navy bombing range. What a mixture of uses. Now the navy had gone away, but even before that the birds had thrived there in spite of the bombs. Recalling this, I immediately thought of wretched Lawrence Ingalls, who had closed Norton's Point because of his misplaced conviction that ORVs were responsible for the dearth of piping plovers on those sands. Loathsome Lawrence.

“You're clouding,” said Zee, looking up at me when I stopped talking. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” I said, pushing the cloud off my face and putting on an artificial smile.

She frowned, not fooled. “It's something.”

“I'm thinking about Immanuel Kant,” I said. Immanuel
had once observed that the possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason. Maybe that was what had happened to Lawrence Ingalls. Maybe he'd been fine before he'd gotten to be a state biologist. If so, he wasn't the first person whose brain shrank as his power grew. Old Immanuel's generalization was a good one.

Zee decided to let it go. She put a finger under Joshua's chin and smiled down at him. “Immanuel Kant, eh? Well, if Immanuel can't, who can?”

Joshua laughed and drooled. Apparently he'd not heard that old one before.

“We'll go there next,” I said to Mondry, pointing down to the narrow beach at the foot of the cliffs. “On the way I'll introduce you to a couple of people who live up this way.”

“That might make a good setting,” he said. “I would like to get closer to it.”

“You can negotiate with the Gay Headers,” I said. “I don't know if they want anybody making movies down there.”

“I'm just an idea man,” he said, with a smile. “Some-body else can do the negotiating if it needs to be done.”

As we passed Toni Begay's shop, I put my head inside and saw her little sister Maggie. “Toni at home with the family?”

“Oh, hi,” she said. “Yes, everybody's there. Since Hanna showed up, it's hard to get my sister out of the house. I think she's afraid that Hanna will break if she takes her outside.”

It was a now familiar fear that I hadn't known existed before Joshua was born. I was working hard to overcome it, but wasn't out of the woods yet. I suspected that I might never be, that as a parent I was doomed to worry about my children forever.

“And speaking of babies,” Maggie went on, “how is Wyatt Urp?”

“Wyatt is right outside,” I said. “See for yourself.”

She did that, and I made introductions.

“Maggie, this is Drew Mondry of the Hollywood Mondrys. Drew, this is Maggie Vanderbeck of the Gay Head Vanderbecks.”

Maggie and Mondry exchanged hellos. “Hollywood,” said Maggie. “Are you with that movie outfit I've been reading about?”

“I'm afraid so.”

Maggie was cute. “Are you looking for genuine Native American extras to give your film a touch of authenticity? I can use some fame and fortune.”

He laughed. “I don't think authenticity has a lot to do with movies these days, but I'll keep you in mind.”

Then Maggie and Zee cooed over Joshua until a customer came by and Maggie had to go back to work.

“Maggie and I work together at the hospital,” said Zee to Mondry. “She's studying to be a nurse.”

“A noble profession,” said Drew Mondry.

Zee nodded. “It is. Once I thought I'd go to medical school and become a doctor, but I decided that being a nurse was more important. I think I made the right choice.”

“Indeed.” He nodded.

It was beginning to take effort to dislike him. After all, his only problems were that he looked like a leading man, acted like a gentleman, and was fascinated by Zee; and who could blame him for any of those things?

We drove toward Lobsterville and turned off into Joe and Toni Begay's yard. Joe's truck and Toni's car were parked there, and there was a pretty new Ford Bronco there, too.

Toni Begay came to the door and, seeing Zee and me, came right out and gave us hugs. “What a nice surprise!”

I introduced Drew Mondry to Toni and Toni to Drew Mondry. “I'm giving the twenty-five-cent tour of the island,” I said, “and I want Drew to see the cliffs from the bottom looking up.”

Toni waved toward the path that led to the beach. “You two go look at the cliffs. Zee and I will stay here and make plans for Joshua and Hanna's wedding.”

“But Hanna is an older woman,” I said. Hanna had been born ten weeks before Joshua.

“Women should always get their men young and raise 'em the way they want them,” said Zee. “Everybody's happier that way.”

“You didn't do it that way.”

“I made a mistake, myself, but it's not too late to save my son.” Zee put her nose against Joshua's. “Is it, you little sweetie?”

“You'll probably meet Joe and his friend Larry and Larry's assistant on your walk,” said Toni. “They're out strolling the beach. Come on in, Zee.”

Drew Mondry looked appreciatively after them. “Now, there are two women who make you think there's hope for America. You and your friend Joe are two lucky guys.”

True.

We walked west along the sandy trail until we came to the beach. To our left the cliffs began to rise. We went that way, with the waves slapping at the sand beside us.

“A lot of bass have been caught under these cliffs,” I said. “And a lot of people like to take mud baths in the clay that washes down onto the beach. For years nobody thought much about it, but now it's very politically incorrect, and they've got people with badges patrolling the beach to protect the cliffs.”

“You sound like you aren't too sympathetic with the badge wearers.”

“I'm getting crotchety in my old age. I don't like people telling other people that they can't do harmless things they've always done.”

“Maybe the mud baths aren't harmless. I imagine the police are just trying to protect the cliffs.”

Sweet reason.

“It'll take more than a few mud bathers to tear down
the Gay Head cliffs,” I said. “I'm not a mud bather myself, but I'm on their side.”

From the direction of the cliffs, two men and a woman were walking toward us. I recognized the taller one as Joe Begay. His companions were shorter and slighter and were strangers to me. They seemed deep in conversation.

“I think the argument is that there have to be rules that keep people from wrecking the environment,” Drew Mondry was saying.

I wasn't opposed to that thought, but felt a surge of familiar stubbornness. “Yeah, but who's going to decide what the rules are and who's going to be the enforcer? Those are the questions. Personally, I don't think I need anybody else telling me how to save the planet.”

“I think that I'll just ease out of this subject,” said Mondry with a grin.

The grin was infectious and I found a smile on my own face. “Both of us will ease out of it.”

Ahead of us Joe Begay and his companions seemed to notice us for the first time. Actually, I suspected that Joe had taken note of us before I had seen them. There was little that escaped Joe's eye. Now I saw him raise a hand, and raised my own in reply.

“Joe Begay,” I said to Mondry. “We met in Vietnam.”

“Quite a while back.”

“Yeah. It's in the history books these days, the way World War Two was when I was a kid.”

The five of us came together and paused. Begay raised an eyebrow.

“Are you alone, or are our ladies at the house admiring their children?”

“They're there. Joe, this is Drew Mondry. He's scouting locations for that movie outfit that's coming here in the fall. Drew, this is Joe Begay, Toni's husband.”

They shook hands. Then Mondry shook hands with one of Begay's companions.

“Call me Drew,” he said.

“Larry,” said the other man. “This is my assistant, Beth.”

He was slim, clean-cut, and wearing pressed jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had thinning brown hair above intelligent blue eyes. Everything about him was clean and neat.

“Hi,” said Beth. She was young and outdoorsy looking.

There was a little smile lurking somewhere in Joe Begay's scarred bronze face.

“And this is a friend of mine, J.W.,” he said. “I don't think you've met. Larry, this is J. W. Jackson.”

Larry put out his hand and I took it. It was sinewy and brown. A working hand.

“And, J.W., this is Larry Ingalls,” Begay's amused voice continued. “Larry works for the state. He's down here to give a talk.”

Larry Ingalls. Works for the state.

Lawrence Ingalls, state biologist. Plover lover. Eco-terrorist. Beach closer.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Loathsome Lawrence.

“Larry's down from Boston,” said Begay.

“That makes you a stranger in a strange land,” I said, looking at Ingalls.

Ingalls shook his head. “Not really. I'm based in the city, but I have a place here. I get down whenever I can.”

“Larry works for the Department of Environmental Protection,” Begay said to Mondry, enjoying the situation. He then turned to Ingalls. 'J.W. is one of our local surf casters.”

“When I can get to the surf to cast,” I said.

Ingalls, apparently used to being warmly received by his audiences, gave me a second look.

“Well,” he said, “there's certainly plenty of surf on the Vineyard.”

“Not as much as there used to be,” I said. “Some idiot up in Boston has closed down Norton's Point Beach for the past several summers because of his asinine notion that ORVs were killing off piping plovers. There's a lot of local sentiment to the effect that whoever made that decision should either be shot to put him out of his misery, or institutionalized because he's delusionary.”

Beth looked startled, and Ingalls's eyes got hard. “The law is the law. And the plan worked. The plovers are thriving and the beach is open again.”

From the corner of my vision I could see the smile on Begay's face, but I kept my own eyes cold.

“Everybody but this seven-letter word from. Boston knows the plovers are thriving because the beach patrol built predator fences around the plover nests, not because
there weren't any ORVs going down the beach. But this fanatic, whoever he is, is one of those eco-terrorists you read about: he's got himself a list of commandments straight from God, and one of them is that ORVs are plover killers. He reminds me of that bastard Oliver Cromwell.”

Was Ingalls running seven-letter words through his mind? I couldn't tell.

“I'm the guy in Boston,” he said coldly. “This island is a fragile place, and we protect its ecology, including its wildlife. Irreparable harm can be done! And a lot of studies show that ORVs have been a principal cause of destroying the natural habitat of plovers and other shorebirds!”

I put my face a little closer to his. “There's no evidence at all that the plovers on Norton's Point are any better off because you banned ORVs, you know.”

“I do not know!”

“You probably don't know a lot of things,” I said. I was on a roll. “Before you closed it, the county cleared about forty thousand dollars a year selling ORV stickers to that beach! Since you closed it down, they've had to spend more than that just to hire people to enforce your worthless regulations! It works out to about two thousand dollars a plover, and by the ounce that's more than the price of gold!”