Death in Vineyard Waters (20 page)

“Get up,” he said.

But I just sat there. I had learned what I needed to know about him and was soon to learn something about myself. I had a split lip, and I spit some blood onto the lawn. I don't think that I was really mad at Ian, and perhaps never would have been, had he not then looked across toward where I'd last seen Zee.

“You stupid whore,” he said. “How did I ever get mixed up with a slut like you and an asshole like this guy?” He looked down at me, shook his head in contempt, and walked past me toward his car.

I had heard of people seeing red, but had not previously
seen it myself. But when he, in his anger, called Zee by those names, a thin crimson curtain fell across my eyes. His words apparently triggered some primeval fury suppressed within my genetic codes—none too well, it turned out—by generations of civilized living by my more recent ancestors.

I don't know if I made some noise (a snarl, perhaps?), but he turned as I rose and even had time to put a small smile on his face as he prepared to meet me. But he was not facing the same person he had apparently downed so easily in the previous minutes. I was someone or something else, something too fast, too strong and feral for him. He raised his gloved hands, but I struck them aside as though they were of straw and hit him a terrible backhanded blow that knocked him flat on the ground. I was on him in a flash, like a leopard on a rat. Dazed, he tried to roll away but only succeeded in landing me on his back rather than his chest. I drove a knee into his kidney and then had a handful of his hair in my fist and was jerking his head back and driving it into the ground, once, twice, three times, four.

There was a roaring in my ears like the sound of some great waterfall, and faintly through it I heard Zee's voice telling me to stop, stop! Then I felt her hands on my arms words telling me to stop before I killed him, and slowly the red curtain dimmed and faded and I found myself atop a bloody, moaning Ian McGregor, my hand still tangled in his hair, my other hand bloody knuckled.

“Stop,” said Zee's voice. A great trembling overtook me, and I realized that my teeth were clenched and my lips curled back. The fist that held Ian's hair did not want to release its grip, but I forced it open. His head fell face down into the ground.

“Get up,” said Zee's voice. I looked at the voice and saw her face, tanned, beautiful, framed with her long, black hair. “Get off him,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, and did so. She immediately knelt and rolled him over onto his back with that brisk strength that nurses use to manhandle large patients.

Ian's bloody face did not look too good. His eyes were dull and confused.

“Get me some water,” said Zee.

“Yes.” I turned my body and walked it into the house. At the kitchen sink I splashed cold water on my face, then put my head under the faucet. It seemed to help. I felt more sane. I found a pan and filled it with warm water and took a cloth and towel from a rack and went back outside.

Zee took the water and cloth and began to clean Ian's face. Slowly his eyes became clearer. They looked at me with something close to horror.

I went and knelt beside him.

“Go away,” said Zee.

“No.” I looked down into McGregor's frightened eyes. “There's something about fighting that you should know. There are people like me who don't fight fair or for fun. Until now you just never met one. The next time you do, you may end up dead or walking crooked for the rest of your life or brain dead or castrated. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Keep that in mind the next time you decide to punch somebody out. This time you and I were both lucky. Zee was here to break up our dance.” I looked at Zee. “Thank you, Zee.” I looked back at McGregor. “Say ‘Thank you, Zee.' ”

“Thank you, Zee,” he said.

“Now apologize to Zee for the names you called her.”

“I apologize,” he said. “I'm sorry. Jesus.” He was a big, handsome guy, but he wasn't feeling that way just then.

“I have more advice for you,” I said. “Don't use women so lightly in the future, be careful about the names you call people, and stay away from me. In fact, I suggest that you stay away from Martha's Vineyard altogether.” I looked at Zee. “How is he?”

“He'll live, no thanks to you. Superficial damage, I think.”

I stood and stepped back. “Get up,” I said to McGregor. “Get in your car and drive away.”

He got unsteadily to his feet, limped to his pretty little car, and drove away without another word. I watched him, then looked at Zee. She didn't look too well.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She put a hand to her mouth, then took it away. “I don't know,” she said. “I thought I knew you.”

“You do know me,” I said, and immediately wondered if that was only wishful talk. I was more than a little shaken myself by what had happened.

She gave me a troubled glance. “I don't know,” she said. “You scared me. I've never been scared of you before.”

“I'm sorry you decided to watch it. But it wasn't as bad as it looked.”

“You were going to kill him.”

“No, I think that if I'd wanted to kill him I would have done it. Maybe this incident will lead him to change his ways. Maybe it will be for the best.”

“You hurt him. He hurt you. He knocked you down.”

“McGregor is a vain man, and he was angry and worried. He was mad because you left him and came back to me, and he was worried because I've been trying to tie him to Marjorie's death and might be getting close to something. He wanted me to suffer and you to know that you were no good and had made a bad choice when you left him. He thought of himself as a macho guy and was going to prove it the way he has in the past, by punching me out.”

“And he almost did.”

“Not really. I fell down to find out what he'd do then. If he had a really savage streak in him, a murderous one, he'd have tried to kick my head in when I hit the ground. But he just stepped back and let me get up. I let him do it three times, just to be sure.”

“But then you . . . I don't know how to describe it. You knocked him down and . . . It was as though he was a toy. . . .”

“Adrenalin rush, I think they'd say nowadays.” I put a
smile on my face. “He said something that he shouldn't have said.”

She shivered. “I'm cold. I need some dry clothes.”

After we had showered and changed, we had a quiet trip back to her house. On her porch I held her in my arms and kissed her. Her body pressed against mine and we stood there for a long time. Later, at home in bed, I lay awake and wondered and worried about the fight with Ian. Had I been accumulating anger for so long that a casual insult to Zee had triggered that red rage? Was I, deep down, mad at the warrior who had filled my legs with shrapnel in that faraway war, long ago? With the petty criminal whose bullet even now lodged near my spine? With the wife who had left me because she could no longer bear wondering if her policeman husband would be coming home in a box? With a father and mother who had died too soon? With who knew what other insults and injuries, imagined or otherwise, I had encountered in half an alloted lifetime?

I had long since decided that outrage and anger were destructive passions and had about convinced myself that I had rid myself of them. I knew that, modern war being the impersonal, faceless thing it often is, the soldier who had wounded me had not even known I was there, that the bullet I carried in my back was deposited there by chance (since the Boston shootist was firing wildly rather than with skill), that my ex-wife had twice seen her husband brought home in bandages and merited a happier life than I was giving her, that my parents had not died on purpose. I knew all that, but now it seemed that perhaps such knowledge was not enough; that my will to lead a peaceful and rational life could not be depended upon to achieve that end; that there was a beast within me waiting to be loosed.

I didn't like that notion and swore a private oath never to be so angry again. But I was a long time getting asleep.

13

The next morning I phoned Sanctuary and got Hans Van Dam himself. He ran my name through his memory and like any good salesman or front man dug me out of his mental files. Of course, of course, Mr. Jackson, he would be delighted to welcome me and give me a tour. He told me where to find the driveway and said he would inform the gateman and gave me a hearty goodbye. The flash of his teeth glowed from the receiver as I hung up. Then I phoned Tristan Cooper but got no answer. No matter. I got into the Landcruiser and drove to Chilmark.

Two mailboxes stood beside the driveway entrance, and the dirt driveway led through one of the old stone walls that adorn Chilmark, relics of the days when the township was composed of working farms. A hundred yards farther along, out of view from the road, I came to a new metal gate. To one side was a neat little gatehouse just big enough for one or two people. Stepping from it were a small young woman and a large young man. Both were well scrubbed, tanned, and wearing T-shirts that said “Sanctuary” and bore a discreet emblem made, as near as I could tell, of some sort of conglomeration of traditional religious symbols. The couple smiled noncommittally.

I gestured toward the gate. “This is new, isn't it?”

The young man stepped forward. He looked like an iron pumper. His muscles were large and his T-shirt was tight. He had a pleasant, vague face. “Yes sir, it is. Our clients were beginning to complain about people driving in without invitations. You know how people are, sir. They'll follow a
new road just to see where it goes and they don't pay much attention to signs.” His voice was a pleasant brogue. He showed me his even white teeth. Were there muscles in them, too?

“My name is Jackson. I'm expected.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Jackson, Doc told us you'd be coming. Cindy, let the gentleman through.”

He stepped aside and Cindy swung the gate open.

“Have a good day, sir.” They were both all smiles and freckled skin.

I drove on up the road, remembering it from years ago when my father had brought me duck hunting on Cooper's Pond. Things had been fancied up a good deal. The trees had been trimmed, and there was grass where before there had been scrub brush. When I came to the buildings, the difference was even more marked. The houses and outbuildings that I remembered as shabby and old were newly painted, and the once-weary lawns and fences were well kept. There were flower beds and benches and paths leading off in various directions. A few well-dressed, mostly elderly people could be seen walking or sitting or otherwise apparently enjoying themselves. Here and there were young people in the mold and uniform of the two I'd met at the gate.

As I stopped the Landcruiser and got out, Hans Van Dam came out of the main house, his dazzling smile lighting up an already bright day, his hand outstretched, his body clothed in casual white linen. Somewhere off to my left, out of sight, I heard laughter, shouts, and the sounds of tennis balls being served and returned. I looked that way and saw white clothes and a flash of light on red hair.

“Welcome, Mr. Jackson.” Van Dam's soft paw shook my hand. “How nice of you to visit us on this lovely day. It's an excellent time for a visit, since many of our guests are at church and the rest of us are generally relaxing. I have a whole hour, ha, ha, to myself with which to give you a tour. Come this way, we'll start with the main house.”

The main house contained offices, the Van Dams' quarters, and two suites of rooms for counseling. A second house (“built, you know, in the days when families stayed together”) contained the communal kitchen, dining room, and recreation room. “Our largest room,” explained Van Dam with a generous sweep of his hand. “We have our group meetings here, and our dances. Folk dances, waltzes, whatever will give our guests pleasure. At other times there are card and game tables. Our female staff is quartered upstairs. Rather spartan rooms, I confess, but their compensation is that they're near the kitchen and cook has a kind heart, ha, ha!”