Old School Bones (16 page)

“HAVE you no shame, Dr. Patterson? I hear you’ve got that child living with you now.”

She’s in Bumbledork’s butternut-paneled office again. Still wearing her camel hair overcoat, maroon scarf. Winter has returned to New England. The oak log crackles, hisses, beneath the flames this morning in the immense hearth.

Her: sitting in one of the three armchairs circling the baronial fireplace.

Him: pacing back and forth across the room behind her, his black academic gown fluttering off his shoulders. Hands raking his thin hair.

The office with its shelves of books, its granite gothic arches makes her feel like she’s in a Harry Potter movie. Again.

“I say, have you no shame?”

“Excuse me, but what are you insinuating?”

“Don’t be coy with me, Doctor. You know very well.” His posh English lilt falters.

“Are you talking about Gracie Liu?”

“Of course … Of course, I am. Who bloody else would I be talking about?”

“Just exactly what do you think is shameful, Dr. Sufridge, about a student staying at my apartment while she waits for school to open in a few days?”

“My god!”

“She’s here from Hong Kong. We always ask faculty to provide rooms in their quarters if they can for overseas students who cannot totally fit their travel plans to the school schedule. What’s so different about—”

“I have it from reliable sources that … that child was not overseas. She was in southern California for her spring break, cavorting with those friends of hers who left us back in February … and Jack Singleton’s boys.”

“Really?”

“Do you take me for a fool?”

She rubs her cheeks with her hands, tries to picture the blue seas south of Aquinnah, tries to hear the calls of the gulls.

“I came to you a couple of weeks ago with Dean Pasteur, and asked you to exercise dignity, a little decorum, a bit of restraint. All but asked you to keep your sexual proclivities to yourself and not flaunt them in front of the students. Lord, they are just impressionable children! And the school, don’t you see, has been through so much already this year with that dreadful death and—”

“You’re saying I’m a lesbian?”

“Well aren’t you?”

“What does it matter?”

“Or are you what Americans call a switch hitter? I’ve heard something about a fisherman who—”

“I don’t believe … What I do behind close doors is none of your business.”

“You’re wrong there, Doctor. So very wrong. You are a teacher. This is a school. You are living in school-rented housing … And now you’re keeping a teenage girl, one of our students, in your apartment. A girl who half the school knows was found with you by the police in the sauna of the women’s locker room. Naked!”

She takes a deep breath and stands up, faces him. “Are you or are you not accusing me of sexual misconduct, Dr. Sufridge? Because if you are, I want my lawyer present to hear this.”

He stops pacing, puts his hands on his hips, drills her with his eyes.

“If you are not accusing me, I will consider any further conversation along these lines as harassment and report it to the Board of Trustees, file a complaint with the District Attorney’s Office, and alert the media. Do you understand me?”

He lowers his voice, tries to speak in fatherly tones. “Why don’t you just sit down, take a deep breath and collect yourself. Have a bit of a think there, my dear, before you try to threaten me again.”

She throws her hands in the air, feels her brain screaming. “NO! I won’t sit down. You know what? You’re unbelievable! I don’t have to listen to this anymore. You are so far out of line, I can’t even … I … I’m at a loss for words!”

He picks up the fire poker, shoots her a squint-eyed look, turns away. Stirs the burning logs on the hearth. When he faces her again, his face is pale, teeth clinched, cheeks shaking.

“I am going to send someone over to your apartment this evening. If that child Grace Liu is still cohabiting with you, I will have no other choice but to—”

“Let me make this easy. I’ll move out. Gracie can stay at the apartment until you find an
en loco parentis
situation that meets with your approval. Fair enough?”

He rolls his tongue beneath his lips to wet his teeth. “Don’t think by any means that just because you have the privilege of being the only Native American in this academy, a woman, and an administrator, you can dictate policy in my school! This attitude of yours is most abrasive. And … and I have not finished with you yet.”

She tosses her long maroon scarf around her neck and starts for the door. Drums thundering in her head, her mind pictures looped snares for catching rabbits, fox. She stops in the doorway, turns back on the headmaster.

“Maybe you can put Gracie up with Jack Singleton. Then you and the Singleton boys can tell her all about the joys of tearing out each other’s twelve-year molars. How about that?”

No sooner are the words free of her mouth than flames arc, twist, in her stomach. She hears her brother’s voice in her head saying she’s as screwed as a herring on a low-tide beach. Lost like one of Maushop’s missing Children of the First Light … when the giant’s wife Squant begins keening. A howling hurricane of wind and memory.

The Iraqi woman stares up at him from the hospital bed, her eyelids heavy from sedation and buckets of antibiotics. A week after her surgery, she is still fighting infections. But she returns his smile, faintly.

“They tell me you saved my life. Is it true?”

The soldier shrugs.
“
I did what anyone would do.”

“I don’t think so. This city, this country, has become a slaughterhouse. Your people killed my husband.”

He purses his lips.
“
I’m soooooooo sorry.”

“You do not look like the other
ajaneb,
the Americans. Is your family from the Middle East?”

“No. We are from Aquinnah.”

Her brows wrinkle.
“
Aquinnah. I do not know this place. It is in America?”

“Sort of … It is on an island off the coast of …”

“So is it a colony of the white men?”

“You could say that. My family is Indian.”

She furrows her brows again.
“
Muslim, Seik or Hindu?”

“No, no. We are Native Americans. Wampanoag.”

“Wamp a …?”

“Wampanoag. The People of the First Light.”

He tells her where he was born. The tribal lands of Aquinnah. His people are from the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, the south coast of Massachusetts. All of this was Wampanoag land before the English came. Before America was America.

“So you serve in the army of the occupation?”

He shrugs.
“
Sometimes that’s how it feels. But in America today, we believe that every person no matter what race or color or creed has the right to …”

Something catches in his throat.

“What’s wrong?”

He dry heaves into his hand. Doubles over, hugs his belly. Maybe he has a stomach ulcer. The bootlegged vodka and the hash he smoked last night burn his blood.

She reaches out, takes his hand, the skin suddenly clammy.
“
What’s your name, Wampanoag?”

He feels the dry leathery touch of her fingers, her palm. They are like his mother’s. A hand so small, but so strong, so seasoned by manual labor.

“Ron,” he says.
“
Folks call me Ron or Ronnie. But my people, the Wampanoags, call me Nippe Maske, Water Bear.”

She squeezes his hand.
“
My people call me Aaserah. Thank you for giving me back my life. The divine spirit must work through you, Nippe Maske.
Allah akbar.
God is great. He needs me still.”

HE’S hiding from everybody, everything—especially death. He’s sleeping in his berth in the fo’castle of the
Rosa Lee
tied at the state pier in Nu Bej, when his phone chirps, wakes him. Even before he speaks into the mike, Gracie’s voice erupts in his ear.

“Michael, everything’s turning to shit.”

“Cristo,
Gracie. What time is it?”

“One fifty-seven.”

He pulls the sleeping bag over his head, burrows into the pillow. “Oh god, why …? I’m exhausted. Can you call me back tomor …?” He clicks off the phone, sinks back into a raucous dream about
salsa
dancing with a dark stranger in a Brazilian club.

The phone chirps again.

“Come on, Michael. Wake up! Listen to me. Clyfe Singleton wants his key back, and he asked Kevin to come and get it. I told him I’d trade him the key for some information.”

“In the middle of the night? What’s Awasha say about all of this?”

“I don’t know. She’s not here.”

He stirs, gets one foot out of the berth onto the cabin sole. “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? I thought she was with you.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at her apartment, remember? You guys picked me up at South Station and brought me here, before you caught the bus back to New Bedford.”

“She’s not there?”

“And Kevin is really hassling me about the key.”

“Hey, just hold on! When did you last see Awasha?”

“Bumbledork called her into his office this afternoon about three. It was the second time she had to see him today. She never came back.”

He has both feet on the floor now, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as the tiers of other berths come into focus in the red nightlight of the cabin. The wind is up.
Rosa Lee
tugs at her lines, groans as she rubs against the trawler tied outboard of her. No one will be going back out fishing for days. All the crews have gone home. There’s a nor’easter moving up the coast. By morning there will be twenty-foot seas offshore.
What next?

“She just left you there … to fend for yourself?”

“I thought she wanted to hook back up with you, you know? She seemed pretty distracted when you guys picked me up. I can tell you two have got something …”

“Leave it, Gracie, OK? She’s not here. Not been here.”

He looks around the fo’castle, wonders how she’d deal with this place. The tangled mounds of bedding in the berths, the half-empty coffee cups on the table. Ashtrays full of butts. A Cape radio station playing Dire Straits “Roller Girl” softly over the speakers. Everything stinking of fish and sweat. Would the
Rosa Lee
disgust her, or could she dig the rawness? Like the bait shack in Aquinnah?

Are you missing her, Mo? Damn right!

“I’ve called her a bunch, but she doesn’t answer. I really need some advice about what I should do about Clyfe’s key.”

“Maybe she went to see her brother, the twin. What’s his name?”

“Ronnie. I tried him. He doesn’t answer his phone either.”

He takes a gulp of cold coffee, tastes the bitter grains as he swallows, tries to think.
Shit! “
First things first, do you feel safe staying where you are?”

Well sort of, she says. Dean Pasteur is there. She brought over some Chinese take-out around seven o’clock, saying Awasha had to go out of town suddenly. Now the dean of the Academy is sleeping on the couch. But what about Kevin Singleton and the key?

He feels the cold coffee gurgling in his belly, struggles to focus his mind on the Singleton kid for a second, not Awasha. “He really wants the key back tonight?”

“He just called me for the fourth time. Right before I called you.”

“Can you put him off ‘til tomorrow? I don’t want you meeting him alone.”

“Yeah, sure. I guess. Like it’s my move, right?”

“Right.”

“Do you think Kevin knows who killed Lib?”

“How about you and I meet him someplace tomorrow around noon. A really public place.”

“How do you feel about the bowling alley? You ever roll?”

He pictures his days as a kid on Saturday mornings at Wonder Bowl in Nu Bej. “You have no idea.”

“What about Doc P? Should I be freaking out?”

“You should try to get some sleep. Her phone’s probably just out of juice. I’m sure she’s OK.”

“No you aren’t. I can hear it in your voice. You’re worried.”

“Gracie. Why do I always have to keep telling you to take care of yourself? Please! I’ll find Awasha, OK? I think I know where she went.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he says. If only it were true.

AN hour after sunrise. She wakes, turns on her phone, sees the long log of messages. Realizes that she better let Michael know she has been sitting in the West Barnstable state police barracks all night.

And she has to check in on Gracie to see how she’s getting along. Thank god, Danny could step in to look after Gracie while all of this other shit was going down. It was a gift. At least she has peace in the Danny corner of her life right now.

She better make her calls.

But first she needs to see if Lou Votolatto is still here. If he will finally talk to her.

She’s just come out of the women’s room, her face still wet from the dousing of cold water she gave it, when Lou slides up from behind her and takes her elbow in his hand.

“Here’s the word, young lady.” He guides her to a chair at a small table. “The arresting officers, we’re talking DEA as well as the guys from this barracks, have your brother cold, found enough pure cocaine stashed in his boat to charge him with possession and transport—a Federal offense. They could put him away for at least five years.”

“You were in on this?”

It was the Feds’ call. But he heard this could be coming. He tried to warn her when they talked in Osterville. Remember? He offered to help her find Ronnie a rehab program?

“You’re saying he’s an addict? He’s dealing?” Her voice rising. Frustration, anger. With everyone.

“Does it surprise you?”

She almost shouts,
No. Fuck no!
But she bites her lower lip instead, turns away to hide her shame. “Can I ask you how the DEA and your pals came to be looking in his boat?”

“You can ask … I can’t answer. Not now.”

She drops onto a bench in the lobby. “How long until we sort things out? I’ve never done this before, get someone out of jail.”

“You better count on spending today and part of tomorrow. He’ll be arraigned in Boston at the Federal Court, bail set. The paperwork takes time. How about I buy you some breakfast?”

“I have to return some calls first.”

“Tell Rambo for me, he sure as hell better be staying clean as a whistle. I’m not kidding!” He gives her a look, steady, unblinking iron eyes. A clear warning.

She feels her stomach tense. “Is my brother really in bad trouble?”

“It’s not a bed of roses.”

Nippe Maske, the water bear, is not in his battle gear when he knocks on her apartment door, just his desert camies. His sunburnt face smiling as he holds the pink roses in his hands.

When she answers the door, she seems taller than he remembered, her black
abaya
catching the curve of her shoulders, a breast, her hip as she steps forward to greet him. A crimson
hijab
covers her head. But when he looks into her brown eyes, sees them smile, he can picture her long, braided, brown hair. He thinks she has the lips of an Indian princess. His sister’s maybe. Ripe, always in bloom. Not that he thinks of Awasha in that way, but you know …

“Allah akbar,
Wampanoag.”

“Asalaam alaikum.”

She smiles again at his awkward use of the Arabic greeting.

“I thought you could use some flowers to brighten up your day. Things must be hard for you here on Haifa Street.”