Reprisal (19 page)

"Do you miss fighting?" she said to him. "... I'll bet you do."

Joanna drove up her driveway, and around back--and saw Mr. Moffit's face, dark with dirt, at the kitchen door window. She got out of the Volvo, went up the kitchen steps, and he opened the door for her.

"I'm puttied, an' I'm gettin' ready to fit her in." Moffit smelled of urine.

"You didn't come this morning." Joanna put her purse on the kitchen table.

"Couldn' do it; couldn' come up. Constable wanted me ... and then I had two drinks despite real good intentions." He bent and picked up the door window to show.

"Looks nice. ..."

"Damn right. Good as new ... except I can't tack her in as neat as original. I don't claim I can do that."

"Good enough will be good enough, Mr. Moffit."

"Bobby's okay. You can call me Bobby."

"And if Mrs. Evanson wants me to get a new window, Bobby, I'll just do that."

"No, no. No way. If Nancy Evanson wants a whole brand-new window, I'll buy it because I was the one broke it. ... But I'll have to owe you."

"That won't be necessary." Joanna sat at the kitchen table. "Bobby, do you know the Wainwrights? They're over in Willis."

"Wainwrights? Oh, yeah, you bet." Bobby turned the completed window in his hands, peering along the sashes and muntins. "Set straight as a string."

"They leased the Bo-Peep to my husband--"

"Yep. Thousand bucks for the summer."

"That's right. How did you know that, Bobby?"

"Everybody at the docks knows what people lease for.--Could have got that Bo-Peep boat for six, seven hundred. That wasn't a fancy sailer."

"I was talking to Beverly Wainwright--"

"Bev's real rough. All them Wainwrights is rough." He tried the glazed repair in the window's empty frame.

"They have a rough dog, too. But a nice dog."

"You talkin' about that pit bull?"

"Yes. ... Percy."

"Made a lot of money with that red dog.--Still do make money, stu.in' him out."

"They have dogfights on the island, Bobby?"

"No, not out here. Fought that dog over at Post Port. Fought him all the way down in Boston, once. Made a lot of money with that dog. ... But don't say I was the one told you."

"I won't. ... You know, Bobby, I was talking to Beverly Wainwright, and she said they had only five thousand dollars insurance on the boat. And I was wondering if that was true--that they'd have so little insurance."

"Oh, sure. That's a lot of insurance on that old boat." He tried the window again, thumping its sashes for a fit in the frame. "--Plenty of people out here don't pay insurance at all, unless the bank makes 'em. Figure those insurance men just take advantage." More thumping on the window. "She's goin'

in, fits just right--an' them jambs wasn' real square, neither!"

Joanna got up to examine the work. "It does fit. Thank you, Bobby. Looks as good as new."

"Well, I got to tack it in ... an' caulk it, an' it needs some touch-up paintin'. I got paint I'm usin' on a dory; I'll bring a little of that up.

White oil paint, an' it'll do just fine."

"I appreciate this, Bobby. You broke it--and you fixed it."

"Damn right." Bobby stooped, slightly unsteady, to collect his tools and glue

... put them away in his shopping bag.

"I'd like to ask you about the boy you saw out sailing with my husband."

"Yep?"

"It was a boy--you're sure of that?"

"Kid. That's right."

"Could it have been an older person? A young man?"

Bobby stood thinking about it. "Pretty skinny if he was. Didn' look as big as your old man, out there on that boat. But, you know, Mrs. Reed--"

"Joanna."

"You know, they was pretty far out. Out there in the offin'."

"A boy--maybe a young man--out there with Frank. And wearing what, besides a baseball cap?"

"What was he wearin'?"

"Yes."

"Mrs. Reed--"

"Joanna."

"... Joanna, I just couldn' tell you what that kid was wearin'. I'm sorry. I never noticed, exceptin' the cap." Bobby picked up his shopping bag, and went to the door.

"And this boy, or this young man, he was just sitting in the boat--wasn't helping sail her?"

"Just sittin' in the cockpit on his ass. Not doin' nothin'. Your man was doin'

the work, takin' her out. ... Holdin' her a tad close to the wind too, fat little boat like that." Bobby swayed slightly, leaned against the doorjamb.

"You know, Bobby, when I spoke to Beverly Wainwright, she said something about fishermen doing "stuff" out there. "Stuff.""

"Right about that. Some of them captains'll do anything for a buck."

"Do what, Bobby?"

"Ask me no questions, an' I'll tell you no lies."

"Okay.--Do I owe you any money for the window supplies?"

"Nope, you already gave me a lot of money." Bobby shifted like a restless child, anxious to go.

"Well ... then maybe you'd like to stay to dinner."

"Thanks, Mrs. Reed, but I'm not much for eatin'. Drinkin' is my style, sad to say."

"Well ... then I could offer you a drink, but I don't want to do that if it would harm you. Do you think one drink would harm you?" That had been said to Joanna's surprise--as if by another person, remote, ruthless, and determined.

"... I guess one ... just one wouldn't hurt too bad. I can handle one okay.

Second one is what does the harm. Then the rest of those drinks after that--they do some harm, you better believe it."

"Okay, then we'll only have one drink, Bobby, just to thank you for fixing the window." Joanna looked into the cabinet over the refrigerator. There was a half-empty bottle of vodka and an unopened bottle of Gordon's gin. Almost a full bottle of Chivas Regal. "--ally sure you don't want something to eat?"

"No, thanks. I'm a light eater. Food don't taste like anything to me."

"Well, why don't you sit down and relax, Bobby, and I'll get you that drink."

"One. One drink."

"One it is. You can have vodka, gin, or scotch." Joanna felt the oddest sureness, as if some carnivorous part of her had been waiting for a sacrifice.

Criminals, she supposed, felt the same--setting caring aside.

"... Don't like scotch." Bobby settled gingerly at the kitchen table, as if uneasy sitting up off the floor.

"You know, Bobby," she took down the gin bottle, "--x occurred to me that both my husband and my father went out on the Bo-Peep. They went sailing together almost a month ago, when we first came out. My father was fishing."

"Fishin'? Fishin' off a little sloop?"

"My father would fish off anything--particularly if it annoyed Frank ... my husband." Joanna took two tumblers from the cabinet over the sink.

"Fishin' off that boat." Bobby Moffit shook his head at the picture. "Summer people. ..."

"You want tonic, or ginger ale?"

"Don't need neither one."

Joanna twisted the cap off the gin bottle, and poured a tumbler half full ...

then much less into the other glass. "You said something, Bobby, when you were up here before--said the island captains were "pretend fishing." What did you mean by that?" She put the fuller tumbler on the table in front of him, and sat down opposite. She'd never drunk straight gin in her life, not without vermouth ... an olive. Had never drunk hard liquor in a kitchen in daylight, either.

"Didn' mean nothin'." Bobby sat looking down at the glass of gin, looking into it as if to see his reflection. "--I didn' mean nothin'. They want to do that, that's their business."

"Do what?"

"... What they do." Bobby picked up his glass and drank like a child, with attention, holding the tumbler's rim so firmly to his mouth that his cheeks were dented by it.

Joanna sat and sipped her drink. She felt the oddest tenderness for Bobby--as if by damaging him so contemptibly, she was making him her responsibility. A stranger, and being broken for her purpose, he was becoming something more by it--as, just as surely and in perfect balance, she was becoming less.

Bobby, having swallowed several times, put his glass down, and Joanna could see that was difficult for him. She sat watching, watching over him, and sipped her drink. The gin, unmixed, tasted like a complex garden in which nettles, roses, and herbs grew together, pungent, vigorous, sweet-scented, and harsh.

Bobby left his glass on the table for several breaths, then looked up at Joanna as if for permission to lift it.

... The second drink she poured seemed to break a cord within him. Later, the third made additional difference.

"Smuggling?" Joanna had had one more minor drink. She appreciated Hogarth's ruined subjects of Gin Lane. For those sad, buckle-shoe'd brutes of slum warrens and cold weather ... what a splendid floral fountain gin must have brought to warm them, make them jolly. "--Smuggling? Like running cigarettes down from Canada?"

"You got ..." Bobby seemed to lose his words, then recovered them. "You got to be ki.in'. Canada. Nobody runs nothin' out of Canada since Pro ...

Prohibition."

"Then what?"

"... Nothin'. I don't have no boat; don't ask me." He looked across the room as if someone else had come in--stared with such attention that Joanna glanced over. There was nothing to be seen in that corner of the kitchen, except the last slanting light of day.

"What if you did have a boat, Bobby?"

"Shit. Mrs. Reed ... I'm an alcoholic." He took a deep proving swallow. "--I can't get insurance even if I had a boat. An' I can't get a boat anyway, because I don't have the money." He cupped the tumbler in both hands, cradled it. "--An' if I could get insurance ... an' I did have a boat, I couldn' run it anyway. You got to be real responsible, or you can't run a boat. Now, that's pretty ... pretty much how things go." He closed his eyes, sat holding his drink, keeping his eyes closed.

"But if you could run a boat?"

"I don't give a shit--pardon my French. I don't give a shit; I don't trust a Russian far as I can throw him. An' I sure as shit don't trust those Russians

... out there. Not even Russians--people used to be Russians."

A ghost's cool breath seemed to drift up Joanna's arms ... "What people, Bobby?"

"Ask ... ask me no questions, an' I'll tell you no lies." He opened his eyes, and took a drink like necessary medicine.

"What do Asconsett fishing captains have to do with those people--with Russians, Bobby? What do they do out there?"

"None of my business."

"Is it my business? Did my husband see something--did my husband and my father see something?"

"Damn if I know. Don't ask me. ..." Bobby drank again, then set his glass down too hard.

Joanna sipped more of her gin. There was a comforting rhythm to serious drinking with someone, a rhythm the alcohol accompanied like a melodic line.

"--If the captains aren't fishing out there, then what are they doing?"

"They're fishin', fishin' for trash. Cat food is all that's out there now."

"Then how are they making a living, Bobby?"

"What ...?" Bobby Moffit was collapsing as he sat, the gin slowly breaking him to pieces. Sections of his face and body seemed ready to slide away, as slabs of ice toppled from glaciers and fell into the sea.

Joanna started to reach across the table, pour more gin into his glass.--And she intended to do it, was willing to do it, but her hand wouldn't. Her hand felt pity, and wouldn't pour. It put the gin bottle down. "How do the captains and processing people, the people on the island ... how do they make a living now, Bobby?"

"Captains an' processin' people. ... You ask Mannin' how he's makin' a livin'

... processin'."

"Manning?"

"Right. You just ... ask him. You ask him what he's holdin' down there, makin'

a real good livin'--an' he pays me shit for doin' all that moppin'. Goin'

around with that mop an' bucket like a damn woman." Bobby emptied his tumbler as if he were terribly thirsty, as if the gin were cold water, and saving his life.

"Bobby, did my husband get into some kind of trouble when he and my father were sailing out there?"

"Hey. ..." Bobby sagged in his chair, and yawned. "Askin' the wrong guy.

Askin' the wrong guy. ..." He took a sudden gasping breath, then put his hands on the tabletop and pushed himself up to his feet. His face was flushed scarlet. "I better go ... outside."

Joanna stood up. "Can I help you?"

"No ... you can't," Bobby said. Then said, "Oh, dear," and staggered away from the table toward the kitchen door. "Oh, dear," he said, and stumbled as Joanna got to him to help. He was heavy and she couldn't hold him--he fell against the stove ... then swayed, stepped across to the door, and began to vomit as he groped for the knob.

The vomit, gritty and dark with blood, spattered and drained out of him down his clothes, splashed on the floor, and Bobby made an odd shoving motion with both hands, slowly sat down on the linoleum, then slumped over onto his left side, his knees drawn up like a baby's.

"Oh, God ... oh, Bobby ... please forgive me. Oh, Christ." Joanna bent over, wrestled awkwardly with Bobby as if that might help. She was in the vomit. It was all over the floor, stinking spoiled blood and gin. "--Bobby ... Bobby!"

His face remained dull maroon--but printed pale around his mouth. He was breathing bubbles of vomit.

"Oh, God ..." Joanna pulled and tugged him away, out of the worst of the mess; his clothes were soaked with it. She unbuttoned his shirt, turned and heaved him from side to side to peel it off. The blue cotton was black with dirt, soaked down the front with vomit. She got him out of that, out of the shirt, and stood up to get a dish towel to wipe the floor around him.

"Oh, God. Please ..." The "please" was for the gift of Bobby's living and being well--the gift of her not having killed him.

She took his arms and hauled, dragging him after her along the floor. There was a trail of bloody vomit. She tugged him past the kitchen table, then stopped, and bent over him to be sure he was still breathing.--And he was, but very strangely, a liquid sort of breathing. She was able to lift his shoulders a little, turn his head to the side ... and that seemed to help. He still breathed, but not as badly.