Off Season (17 page)

“Oh.” She turned and waved, and Just Ted came over to the table.

I had finished my beer. I got up and waved at my chair. “Take over. I have places to go, things to do and people to see.”

“What a busy fellow you are,” said Angie.

“Thanks, J.W.,” said Just Ted. “Sorry I'm late, sweets.” He and Angie kissed, and he sat down.

Sweets? Shades of Chug Lovell!

Angie leaned across the table and took his hands in hers. “J.W. has just been telling me the best stuff! Wait till you hear this!”

I didn't mind having the gossip getting around. Maybe somebody would hear it and add more to it and I would eventually learn more than I now knew. But I had learned something: I could scratch Mike Yancy and Helene off my list of suspects. Unless Helene was lying about having gone to the movies, of course.

I went outside. Somewhere a radio or CD machine was playing Christmas carols. “It Came upon a Midnight Clear.” There was a nip in the air, and the sky was getting gray as the short winter day began to fade. Red and green lights were shining from storefront windows.

I walked up Main Street past the four corners, past Tashtego, past the hardware store, the only useful
store left on Main Street, the other once practical stores all having long since been replaced by tee shirt shops, gift shops and stores catering to the tourists, whose money was the grease that lubricated the island's wheels.

There were some people strolling the street in winter coats, hands in pockets, cheeks a bit red, looking in windows. They looked quite happy. They liked being in lovely Edgartown for the holidays. I didn't blame them. I liked being there, too. I wondered if Chug's poor ghost was spending the holidays somewhere, and whether his killer was humming a carol, or wrapping a present or otherwise enjoying the season.

Then I thought a bit about Heather confiding with Helene about her affair with Chug, and Helene confiding with Angie about Chug's romance with her, but nobody confiding in Heather. The circle didn't seem complete, but then it's an imperfect world.

I got into the Land Cruiser and went home.

The next morning I awoke to the hush of falling snow. Great, soft flakes were falling silently out of a gray-white, windless sky. The ground was covered, and the leafless limbs of the trees and oak brush were powdered white. I got up, wrapped myself in the woolen robe Zee had given me last Christmas, and fed wood into my new stove, where the embers of last night's fire were still banked red and glowing.

The silent snow blocked my view of the sea, shut me
off from the world beyond my yard and created an undefiled white fairyland out of the dark woods around my house. Pure, cool, cleansing, the snow fell gently and steadily, covering the hard and barren land of winter.

I made coffee and put together blueberry pancakes as the house warmed. I got out the maple syrup, then devoted myself to a large and leisurely breakfast while I looked through the kitchen window at the lovely, secret snow. I felt incredibly Christmasy.

Surrounded by water pushed north by the Gulf Stream, rarely does the Vineyard get a harsh winter. Rather, its infrequent snows tend to melt and disappear in short order. Occasionally, of course, a really cold spell does set in, and the harbors freeze, and the ferries must break through ice to get to their docks. In years past, for reasons known only to the gods of storms, the weather was apparently much more harsh. There are photographs of square-rigged ships lying offshore, being unloaded onto horse-drawn wagons and sleds which had traveled out to them over ice. And someone once told me that the news of Lincoln's inauguration reached the island via a messenger who traveled over ice.

When I was a boy of five or so, my father brought me to the island on an unfortunately timed winter visit. We arrived with a major-league snowstorm which marooned us for a few enjoyable days. During that time the highway departments of the towns were kept busy shoveling snow and the sea froze so solidly that when my father put me on his shoulders at the beach at the bend in the road, I could see only ice all the way to the horizon. It occurred to me that maybe we wouldn't ever be able to leave, and that seemed like a fine stroke of luck. In not too many days, of course,
the ice broke up and melted, and my father and I were obliged to go home. There hadn't been an island winter like that since.

I wished that Zee were with me, but if she was looking at the snow, it was from somewhere else. Her house or the hospital, depending on when she was working. When
was
she working? I couldn't remember. Not a good sign for a guy who was scheduled to be her husband. I thought that maybe we should get married on my birthday, which is one of the few dates I can remember, so I would never forget our anniversary. Why take chances when you don't need to?

I went to the phone and dialed her number. She was there. “I love you,” I said, and hung up.

A minute later the phone rang. “Not so fast, Jefferson! I love you, too.”

“What do you think about getting married on July 13?”

“July 13? That's your birthday.”

“I'm a romantic guy. Don't you think that would be romantic, to get married on my birthday?”

“I'm looking out at this beautiful snow and you're planning a July wedding date. You are indeed a romantic chap. July 13 sounds good to me. Now that that's settled, have you bought me my Christmas present yet?”

“None of your business, but I'm going to get my tree today. Do you want to help me decorate it?”

“You bet. I'll be by after work. I'll see you then. I gotta go. I go on duty at eight. Bye!”

I got dressed and got my axe from the shed and walked into my winter woods toward Felix Neck. I'd been watching the growth of a little fir tree back toward my property line (or maybe a little over it, if you insist on being strictly honest, which I don't), and this was its year to be my Christmas tree. The
woods were hushed and white with the falling snow, and I came across the slowly filling tracks of deer, rabbit, skunk and other little critters whose footprints I did not recognize.

I felt like a woodman in a Grimm fairy tale, and would not have been surprised if Hansel or Gretel or maybe a gingerbread house or an elf in a red hat had suddenly appeared.

My tree looked very fine with its mantle of soft snow, and I knelt beside it and lifted the axe. The ring of my blade biting home seemed the only sound in the forest. Clear as the sound was, the silent snowflakes seemed so muffling that I had the impression only I could hear it.

Axe in one hand, dragging the tree with the other, I followed my filling tracks back home. Another deer had crossed my trail since I'd come out. Dasher? Dancer? Rudolph? Bambi?

I leaned the tree against the house and brought my Christmas stuff from the shed to the house: the tree stand, the boxes of decorations, some of which I'd had since I was a little kid, and some of which my father and mother had had when they were little kids, the lights, the candles for the windows, the old sheet that I put under the tree, the wooden Santa Clauses that my father had carved when he wasn't carving duck decoys, the crèche that went on one side of the tree, and the little ceramic town that went on the other.

I brought in the tree and set it up in its stand and put on the star and the lights. That was it for now. Nothing else would happen until Zee got here to help with the real decorating.

Zee would have been pleased to know that it was now Christmas shopping time. I got into my red down vest, put on my green wool watch cap and
drove down to the animal shelter, where I went in to check out the kittens. The shelter always has more cats and kittens than it has homes for, so there was a nice selection. Just what Zee wanted, although she probably didn't know it: two little kittens, who could keep each other entertained while they grew up. I knew what kind they should be: a black half-Siamese and a short-haired tiger kitten. No fat, long-haired, flat-faced, potential lap cats, but real, part alley, kittens, tough enough to catch mice when they got big enough, and to keep the rabbits out of my garden after Zee and I tied the knot and her kittens became our cats.

There wasn't a black half-Siamese kitten on hand, but there was a gray tiger kitten with big feet, a kink at the very end of his tail, a scraggly meow and a bad need for a human in his life. He was obviously a very sentimental guy, so I started looking for another kitten who might toughen him up a bit before he turned into the softy he obviously would otherwise become. There were a lot of kittens who deserved Zee as their human, but I could only take one more, so I was picky, and finally found one that fit the bill: a whacked-out little white female about half the tiger's size, but full of piss and vinegar. I paid the adoption fees for the kittens and took them next door to the vet for checkups and shots.

When the vet had done her thing and I had made arrangements to bring the kittens back for follow-up exams and more shots, I put them in their boxes and the boxes in the Land Cruiser, and went shopping: litter, a litter box, a couple of little balls with bells inside them, some wide-bottomed dishes that kittens couldn't spill and some kitten food. The kittens were rapidly becoming expensive propositions. I didn't
even have them home yet, and already they had set me back a pocketful of cash.

No matter. ‘Twas the season, after all. Now where could I keep them until Christmas Eve?

At Angie's place? I didn't think that Zee would go for that. At Heather's house? Maybe. She owed me a favor. At Mimi's? No, she already had Phyllis on her hands. Then I knew. I drove to Nash Cortez's house.

“What do you have there, J.W.?” he asked, looking at me standing on his porch with a cat box in each hand.

“I have a couple of kittens here that I'm going to give to Zee for Christmas. I need a place to keep them until Christmas Eve. I remember you said your cat ran off and never came back, so I know you're a cat man. What do you say? I've got a litter box and food and everything else you'll need, out in the Land Cruiser.”

“Well, don't just stand out there in the cold. Come on in.” I put the boxes on the living room floor and he shut the door. He leaned over the boxes. “Let's have a look at ‘em.”

I opened one of the boxes and the white kitten jumped out. “There is one thing,” I said. “You can't let them get together until I find out for sure that neither one of them has feline leukemia. The vet says that we should know by tomorrow, at the latest.”

“Tomorrow, eh?” He rubbed a gnarled hand on his hard, bony chin. A little smile floated across his face, and his eyes were soft. “I guess I can manage that. I'll put one of them in the extra bedroom, and keep the other one out here.”

“I've only got one litter box. I can go get another one.”

He knelt and touched the kitten, who immediately
galloped off. “Independent little cuss, aren't you? No, I still have Horatio Hornblower's old box. I can use it in one room. By tomorrow, they can be together, so I won't even need that.”

“it's only for a few days, Nash. I really appreciate this.”

He was watching the white kitten start to play with the fringe on the couch cover. “No problem, J.W.” He leaned forward, and the kitten scampered away. “Cute little character, ain't you. Got a lot of zip.”

I went out and brought in all my kitten gear. By the time I got inside, Nash had the other box open and the gray tiger cat out on the floor of the bedroom. He was rubbing against Nash's leg and meowing pretty well for a little kitten.

“This one is going to be a shoulder cat,” said Nash, picking him up. The kitten immediately produced a cat-sized purr. “Feller likes to be held. There, there, little guy. There's plenty of attention in the world. You don't need to try to get it all right now.”

The kitten buzzed and Nash's big, rough hands stroked it gently.

“They're going to call me as soon as the results of the leukemia tests are in,” I said. “I'll let you know as soon as I do.”

“That'll be fine,” said Nash. “Just fine. Come on, Stripe, and I'll get you something to eat and drink, then go feed your pal in the other room. You're a friendly little guy, you are.”

I went out into the snow, feeling happy, and soon discovered that I was whistling carols as I drove home.

Zee arrived just before five, and I had a hot toddy waiting for her: cinnamon and rum and a bit of honey in hot cider.

“Sweet, but just the thing for a winter evening,” I said. “Just like you.”

She kissed me. “I love this snow. We must have six or seven inches on the ground. It just keeps falling.”

Indeed it did. Great, soft flakes that piled on tree limbs and would blow into gentle drifts when the wind came up. It was a dry snow that would pack down to almost nothing, and would melt as soon as the sun hit it. I hoped it would stay around until Christmas, because I love and rarely get the white Christmases I remember (or imagine) from my youth.

Zee went into the spare bedroom where she kept her stay-over clothes, and changed out of her white uniform into dungarees and a checkered shirt.

“There,” she said. “Tree decorating clothes. Shall we get at it?”

I put the high stuff on the tree—tiny balls, small ornaments, little things for the highest, smallest limbs—and Zee worked her way around the lower branches. I had a lot of decorations because I never threw anything away and over the years had, like Mimi Bettencourt, liked to buy doodads that I thought would look good on next year's tree: a miniature lobster pot, a little fishing boat, a tiny fire engine like my father used to ride, a little carved figure I'd gotten in Vietnam, a miniature policeman from my days in the Boston P.D. I'd collected a lot of stuff, and I always put it all on the tree.

“If we keep adding decorations after we get married,” said Zee, “you're going to have to cut a hole in the ceiling so we can set up a tree big enough to hold everything.”