Vineyard Chill (7 page)

The January thaw arrived a week after Clay moved to his new quarters. The winter sun seemed warmer, the snow sank into itself, and little streams flowed down the shallow ditches beside our driveway. Within three days the only snow left was a bit here and there under the boughs of evergreen trees, and some of us were in our shirtsleeves.

That week and afterward, Clay came by most evenings after supper, so we could tell yarns and exchange tales of the lives we'd led since he and I had last spent time together. The house seemed warmed by his presence, so when his visits began to slow, we felt his absence before we lapsed back into our traditional, comfortable, all–Jackson family evenings. We wondered for a while what was keeping him away, but at the hospital, one of the island's major gossip centers, the explanation was soon being bruited: Clay and Eleanor Araujo had been seen together in public places.

Zee brought home the news. She, like many women I know when word of a romance reaches their ears, was fascinated and enthusiastic about the prospects for a serious relationship. I was more cautious.

“She's on the rebound and he's been married at least three times,” I said. “I don't think you should get your hopes up.”

“Piff!” she said. “You and I were both married before and look how great things have worked out for us!”

I looked at my fingernails. “Yeah, but most women aren't as lucky as you were.”

She reached up and grabbed my ears and gave them a small yank while she stood on her tiptoes and stuck her nose up toward mine. “You're the lucky one, meat!”

I quieted her with a kiss. “The point is,” I said, “that she's just divorced and he's never been able to resist a woman.”

“She's good-looking and she's smart, and so is he. Her ex, Mike, is such a bore that I never understood what she saw in him. Clay must seem like a ray of sunshine. Someone who can actually hold an adult conversation. No wonder they like being together.”

“Having talks in restaurants isn't the same as being married.”

“They're not just having talks, they're dancing and going to the movies.”

“You and I go to the movies. You and I dance, as long as I don't have to move my feet.”

“You're making my point,” said Zee. “They're going places together and they're happy. And Ted Overhill approves. He thinks Clay is terrific.”

True enough. Ted had kept an eagle eye on Clay's work on the schooner and had soon realized that Clay was a master craftsman. He had been flawless using Ted's tools, but seemed to get even better after his own had arrived from the West Coast. When Ted heard that his sister and Clay had started socializing, he'd been very pleased.

“She needs a good man in her life for a change,” Ted said to me a couple of weeks after the hospital gossip had reached my ears. “Mike is a nice enough guy, but a little too short of gray cells to keep her interested. I understand that the girl he's going with now is so dumb she thinks he's smart, so they're both happy. More power to them, but Clay can give Eleanor a better life than Mike could even imagine.”

Who was I to roil the waters of romance? “Sounds good,” I said.

We'd had a streak of harder-than-average winters, so I was pleased when this one seemed to be a fairly normal one. We got some small snows in February, but they melted fast so that we had a mostly open winter, which was nice for the grown-ups but not so nice for the kids, who didn't get to do much sledding or skating.

I kept to my usual winter jobs, tending to houses I'd been hired to open in the spring and close in the fall, doing some scalloping while there were still some around and the price made it worthwhile, and occasionally driving Ted Overhill's second snowplow.

March arrived, bringing the promise of spring but not the reality. It was Zee's least favorite month because of the false hopes it raised, and she often said that if we ever got enough money to travel somewhere, we weren't going to do it in February because then we'd come back in March; instead, we'd do it in March so we could come back in April, when winter was actually gone even though it might still pretend to reassert itself.

On a bitterly cold day, after checking several houses, I stopped to warm up in the Dock Street Coffee Shop in Edgartown and was surprised to find Eleanor sipping coffee with her brother. I sat down beside them at the counter, accepted a cup of coffee from the waitress, and said, “What are you two doing here? I thought you were both gainfully employed, making America great by earning honest dollars so you can pay your taxes.”

“Even normal people get some time off,” said Eleanor.

“What's new with the Steamship Authority?”

“Well, we brought over a yellow Mercedes convertible from California,” she said. “That's pretty unusual for this time of year.”

“Top up or down?”

“Definitely up.”

“Some movie star looking to escape his or her fans?”

“No. Two guys wearing summer clothes.”

“California clothes?”

“Not New England clothes, for sure. If they plan to stick around, they'll have to get themselves some heavier duds or they're going to freeze their bippies.”

“There are worse things than frozen Californians.” I looked at Ted. “How's the wing and how's the boatbuilding?”

He waved his bad arm at me. “Cast is off. Almost as good as new. I can do some of the work myself now, so between me and Clay, things'll go even faster. Boat'll be ready to launch in June.”

“Then what?”

“Then we'll do some shakedown cruises, and in the fall we'll head for the Caribbean.”

“Who are
we
?”

“Why, me and Clay and Eleanor. We've been talking about it. I want to get some blue water under me while I'm still young enough to enjoy it, and Clay and Eleanor here are ready to go with me. We'll winter down south and then decide what to do next.”

Many a friendship has broken up after the friends spend time on a sailboat, but I didn't say that. What I said was, “You'll have the tall ship. All you'll need is a star to steer her by.”

“I don't need a star. I'll have global positioning.”

“A GPS isn't as romantic as a sextant.”

“We won't need a sextant for romance,” said Ted. He glanced at Eleanor, who actually blushed.

“Well, it sounds like a plan,” I said. My own blue-water sailing days were long since over, but I still remembered the voyages with Clay down the coast and out to the Bahamas. Nowadays, though, I was quite satisfied to sail our eighteen-foot Herreshoff America catboat in local waters.

Someone left the café, and before the door closed behind him, a wave of chilly air wafted past us. “Not a good time to be driving a convertible,” I said.

“Spring is coming,” said Eleanor optimistically. “You'll wish you had a convertible when it gets here.” Maybe love was affecting her brain.

“Could be,” I said. “Be nice for the ospreys if they had some good weather when they come back.”

March was usually when we saw the first of the ospreys nesting after their long flights north from their winter quarters in Central America and points farther south. They had once almost been extinct on the island but with the help of conservationists, who erected many tall poles with crossbeams to entice the few remaining birds to nest and reproduce, they were now abundant once more and generally loved, except by the rare old-timer who blamed them for catching all the fish he often no longer could catch but remembered as being abundant in earlier, osprey-less days.

“Danged birds! They should shoot them all!”

It was a minority sentiment. Personally, I loved ospreys and blamed whatever party was in power in Washington for my failures to land fish.

 

Only days after I'd chatted with Ted and Eleanor, the weather took a New England twist and suddenly summer seemed to arrive. The wind sank to nearly nothing, the sun was bright, temperatures soared; people appeared in T-shirts and even shorts; gardeners cleaned vegetable and flower beds and planted their peas; fishermen, still in waders but no longer wearing jackets, contentedly threw their lines into the empty waters even though they knew the blues wouldn't be arriving for two more months.

It was a most unusual experience for us all, and when I stopped by the Fireside for an early afternoon beer, I found Bonzo with mikes and recorder in his backpack, preparing to go forth to capture birdsong along the edges of a meadow deep within a favorite forest.

“Say, J.W.,” he said, his face aglow in anticipation, his innocent eyes wide, “you want to come with me? I know a good place where there's lots of birds. They won't be nesting till May or June, but there's some out there right now.”

I was tempted, but had promises to keep. “Another time, Bonzo. I've got to go home and get the garden ready. If you get some good sounds, though, I'd like to hear them. You can tell me which birds are making which sounds. I'm not very good at that.”

“Okay, J.W. I been working all morning, but now I got a whole afternoon off and I got to get going so I don't waste my chance. We don't get much weather like this in March, you know.”

“I know.”

He went out, all elbows and knees and happiness, and I wondered, not for the first time, if he was really worse off for having taken the bad acid that changed him from a promising young man into an eternal child. His life was simple, his emotions fresh and innocent, and his innate goodness was never altered by the random evils of life. He remembered the good things and, for the most part, forgot the bad. He was like the blinded angel who, when asked why he'd saved the man who'd put out his eyes, replied, “Angels have no memories.”

Good old Bonzo.

The next morning, just after the kids had left for school, I got a call from his mother, a schoolteacher who had only minutes before she had to go to work. Bonzo was her heart's all.

“My son found something. I want you to see it and tell us what to do with it. I have to leave for work, but can you come by the house? He'll be here waiting, and he'll show you what he found.”

There was a strained quality in her voice, the sort produced by worry.

“Of course,” I said. “I'll come right up. Are you both all right?”

“Yes, yes. We're both fine. But do come and look at this nest. It disturbs me and it's made Bonzo unhappy. Let me know what you think we should do.”

Nest?

“I'll be right there,” I said.

Zee paused on her way out the door. “Who was that?”

I told her what I'd heard.

“Nest?” asked Zee. “Are you sure you heard right?”

“I'll soon know,” I said, finishing my coffee.

I got into a light jacket and followed her in the Land Cruiser as she drove up our long driveway and headed for the hospital. At the intersection of County Road and Wing Road we parted ways, as she drove on toward the hospital and I turned to the right and drove to Bonzo's small, neatly kept house.

Bonzo met me at the door. “Gee, J.W., I'm glad to see you. My mom and me aren't sure what to do, but you're my friend and you'll know.”

The house was as neat within as without. The furniture was old and comfortable and there were doilies on the end tables. Knickknacks—souvenirs of travels and memorable events—were the principal decorations. On the small piano in the corner of the sitting room was a photo of proud parents and their little boy: Bonzo's family in the happiness of youth, before the smiling wife became first a widow and then the mother of an eternal child.

“What is it that you found, Bonzo?”

“A robin's nest. You know how I was going out yesterday to see if I could get some songs? Well, I went up there in the woods where I like to go. There's a meadow there and an old foundation. I think it must have been a farm once. You know the place I mean?”

“I'm not sure.”

He seemed a bit uneasy. “I don't remember if I ever took you there, but I go there sometimes because the birds sing there and I can get their music on my tape.” He looked at me with his huge, half-empty eyes. “Yesterday there wasn't any singing, but I found this nest on the ground. I think it must have been blowed down by the wind. I got it in my room. Come on.”

I followed him into his bedroom. The bed was made and there was no clutter. His mother had taught him how to be neat and he had learned well. Along one wall was a bookshelf mostly holding tapes, bird books, and recording devices. He went to a bureau and brought me a round plastic container that had once held something from a local deli.

I took off the lid and looked inside.

There I saw a medium-sized cup nest. It was battered but mostly intact. At first I didn't see anything unusual about it, but then I saw the hairs that had been incorporated into the nest by the bird that had built it. They were long, strawberry-colored hairs, too fine to be from a horse's tail or mane, too long to have been from any animal but a human being. My mind leaped back to the previous March.