Dark Nantucket Noon (16 page)

“Bring the gas can, will you?” said Alden. “We'd better take both cars.”

Homer followed the pickup to Straight Wharf, parked beside it in the parking lot, and then carried the gas can along the pier to the place where Alden's boat was moored. “So that's what you go scalloping in,” he said nervously, looking down at it. “What do you call that kind of a craft? Not much to it, is there?”

“Bristol power boat.” Alden stepped down heavily into
the
bottom of his boat, which was the simplest kind of rough seagoing vessel, with a winch made of rusted pipe, a wooden platform across the bow, and a wheel like the steering wheel of a car. There were two piles of heavy netted dredges stacked in the stern.

Homer put out a gingerly foot, pulled it back, tried the other foot, and finally managed to get down into the boat without making a fool of himself.

The man in the next boat was revving his engine, hollering at Alden cheerfully. Alden hollered back.

“How come he's got a cabin on his boat?” shouted Homer. “Jesus, don't you give a damn about the comfort of your passengers?”

“You're not a passenger. I'm going to put you to work. Here, give me the can.” Alden poured gasoline through a plastic funnel into the six-gallon tank of his outboard motor, his red face bent over the task, his breath coming in steam from his nose. Then he jerked on the rope with a practiced tug. The motor turned over half-heartedly, emitting blue smoke, then settled down to a solid grinding shudder. Alden unwound the yellow nylon painter from the piling and dropped it in the bottom of the boat, where it lay in a clutter of gear, burlap bags, a can of paint, a collection of miscellaneous tools, drifts of eelgrass and broken shells. Then he waited politely for his neighbor to get out into the channel, waved his orange glove at him, put his engine into reverse and backed out of the mooring. Once in the channel, he shifted gears and then stood with one hand on the outboard and the other on the wheel, adjusting the speed of the engine, steering out into the harbor.

Homer stood beside him, hanging on to the gunwale. He hoped he wouldn't be seasick. Terra firma was his domain. The outboard made a terrible racket. “Say,” he said, shouting above the din, “why don't you go scalloping in that kind of thing? That's more like it.” He pointed at an enormous snow-white craft tied up on the other side of the slip, an expensive-looking vessel with a cabin as big as a ballroom and a vast superstructure crowned by a sporty outflung fishing platform high above the water. The name
MIN
was painted in gold letters a foot high on the stern.

Alden snorted. “Cresswell's,” he said, steering carefully around it. “It's too damn big.” He pointed dead ahead. “There goes Bob.”

“Bob Fern?” said Homer. “So he does.” Sergeant Fern's boat was more or less like Alden's, except that it had a small open cabin. It was painted a tidy white from stem to stern. “Where's he heading?”

“Don't know,” said Alden. “But we're going to try over there Off First Point.”

“Scalloping still bad?”

Alden nodded, his eyes on the long low line of Coatue. “Too many of us this year,” he said, his voice hoarse above the noise of the engine, his words blowing back into his mouth. “Too many scallopers. Kids, a lot of them, like Fern. Oh, I don't mind 'em. They work hard. But then of course we all thought it would be a good year, because last year was bad, and there's usually two or three good years for every bad year. But what happened was, in my opinion, some people got so desperate last year they even took the little ones, so there wasn't enough seed scallop for this year. And then there's the Japanese moss.” Alden frowned at Homer, his curly black hair blowing out under his knitted cap in the northwesterly breeze.

Homer leaned back jauntily against the gunwale and put his hands in his pockets, preening himself on his sea legs. He'd decided he was not going to be seasick, after all. The boat felt like a diesel truck on a paved highway. “You mean that Japanese moss you were talking about the other day?”

“Right. It smothers the scallops. There was a bounty on it, until the money ran out.” Alden reached back and fiddled with his outboard. “I'm going to start dredging now.”

“Let me help,” said Homer. “You want me to throw one of these things over the side?” He stepped carefully over the clutter in the bottom of the boat and fumbled with the rope netting of the topmost dredge on the port side.

“Wait till I head up into the wind,” said Alden. “Here, let me do it. It's kind of tricky.” He abandoned the wheel, cut the speed of the outboard and began throwing the dredges over the stern one at a time. “Now we'll just go back and forth here for a while. Move over. I'll bring her around.”

Back and forth, back and forth. And back again. “Now we'll see what we've got,” said Alden. He reversed the engine to slacken his towlines, unhooked one of the ropes from the stern, made it fast to the winch, and then started the little donkey engine that worked the winch. The donkey engine putted noisily, and soon the dredge was up out of the water, scraping against the stern. Alden let the water stream out of it, then he guided it over the boat and dumped its contents on the culling board. He shoveled and shoveled with his orange glove, then, shook his head with disappointment. “Too small. They're most of them too small. Gotta throw most of 'em back. See this one? It's got a growth ring. You keep the ones with the growth ring. Put 'em in the basket here, empty the basket into the burlap bag. Our limit is supposed to be six bags a day, but heck, I've hardly ever got my limit since last fall.”

Obediently Homer fumbled with the cold wet mess on the culling board, and began tossing scallops left and right. There were other small craft out now, heading up the harbor, and he could tell which ones were scallopers by the culling boards across their bows and the stacked dredges in the stern. “Say, Alden,” he shouted, “aren't those guys late? Do you come out early to get ahead of everybody?”

“No, not that so much. Early morning's just the best time. Funny thing, the way the scallops like to frolic around at night. Early in the morning they're still up and dancing. Easier to scrape up. During the day they settle back down. Another good time is right after a storm when the tide is running. Maybe because it's dark during a storm.”

“Well, say, how about during the eclipse?” said Homer brightly. “When it got so dark? The scallops must have tumbled out of bed wondering why they were still so exhausted. You were out that day, weren't you, Alden? Didn't even take the day off for the end of the world?”

“Yes, I was. A lot of scallopers were out. Business as usual.”

“No soul,” hollered Homer. “You Nantucketers got no soul. And say, Alden, speaking of soul, isn't it about time for lunch?”

Alden's watch said eight-thirty. Homer groaned. All at once he had lost his appetite for shipboard life. Manfully, however, he lent a hand, steering and sorting, until at last Alden took pity on him and called a halt. They headed back across-the harbor and nosed into Alden's mooring.

Someone was waiting for them, a small man in a duckbilled hat. “That's Charley Piper, the shellfish warden,” said Alden, emptying what was left in the gas can into the tank. “Toss him the line, will you?”

“The line? Oh, sure.” Homer scrabbled in the bottom of the boat for the yellow rope, struggled with it, couldn't find the free end because he was stepping on it, untangled it at last, hurled it up in the air at Charley Piper, missed, threw it again, missed again, threw it again and realized as it fell back down that since he was six and a half feet tall he was almost face to face with the small man on the wharf. He picked up the end of the rope in his fingers and handed it to the shellfish warden daintily. “Sorry,” said Homer. “Drugstore sailor.”

Charley Piper shook his head in disbelief, and ran the line around the piling. “Well, Alden,” he said, “you don't look in any danger of going over the limit this morning. What have you got there—a couple of bags?”

“That's all so far. But I'm going back out. I was just showing this off-islander around.”

Homer stepped gratefully up onto the solid wooden floor of the wharf and introduced himself to Charley Piper. Alden hopped out too, with his empty gas can. The midday sun of the last day of March shone down on the dock, and Homer took off his heavy sweater. He had his notebook out. Charley Piper's name was in there somewhere. Yes, here it was. Dick Roper had told him about Charley Piper. Charley would know who went in and out of the harbor on the day of the eclipse if anybody would. Homer wasted no time.

“Were you right here on the day of the eclipse, Mr. Piper?” he said. “What was it like in the harbor that day? Were there many boats out?”

“Oh, sure,” said Charley Piper. Charley's nasal voice was high and thin, with an authoritative whine in it. “The small-craft warnings were called off at dawn, as I recall. So most of the regular scallopers were out that day, just as usual. Now, let's see—didn't see Fern go out. Oh, yes, he did. He was late, that was all. Henry and John Irving, they didn't go. Neither did a couple of them hippies. Jack Smith, he was sick. Alden was out, weren't you, Alden, working your head off. Got a good catch for this time of year, not like some of those kids, don't want to work that hard. Lazy, some of 'em.”

“Can you tell me exactly what craft might have gone right out of the harbor into Nantucket Sound on that day, Mr. Piper?” said Homer, licking his pencil, flipping the pages of his little notebook. “Do you have any idea how many boats came to the island just for the occasion of the total eclipse of the sun? And could you tell me who their owners were?”

Mr. Piper looked at Homer from under his duckbilled hat with a sober eye. “What do you want to know for?” he said.

“Charley, this is Homer Kelly,” said Alden. “He's the lawyer for Kitty Clark—you know, that girl who …”

“The one that murdered Helen Green?” Charley Piper glowered at Homer. “He ought to be ashamed of himself.”

Homer made a horrible face at Alden. Alden reasoned with Charley. Charley relented and then began reeling off a list of boats and owners and lengths in feet and tonnages and home ports and previous owners and present owners and what he thought of their churchgoing habits and drinking problems and the ups and downs of their domestic lives. He knew everything. He had forgotten nothing. Homer scribbled as fast as he could, then gave up in despair.

“I should have warned you, Homer,” said Alden. “Charley's a phenomenon. How he can sort out one day from another beats me. Hut there it is.”

Homer told himself he was going to have to come back with a tape recorder, but he flipped over another page in his notebook and tried again. “What about boats from the mainland, Mr. Piper? I suppose there were some people who came over for the day just to see the eclipse? And then never came into the harbor at all?”

“Oh, yes, you bet. It was awful early in the year, but the place was crawling with 'em. I recognized some of 'em. Junior Jacobson was out there, with that big old cabin cruiser of his, comes here during the summer. And that big schooner of Harold Galsworthy's, he had it out already. Fine sight. Then there was that one fella, I told you about him, Alden, he's still trying to get that little ketch of his home to New Jersey. Had it as far as Block Island yesterday, somebody told me. Of course our island boats were out too. Cresswell, well, naturally, he was out there, came back bumping into the wharf on both sides, it's a mercy his boat wasn't stove in. Drunk he was, dead drunk. Mrs. Magee, his girl friend, she was screaming at him like a banshee. Guests all whooping it up, they had to carry some of them off, they were out cold.”

“Must have made all sorts of interesting solar observations on that expedition,” murmured Homer, writing as fast as he could. Then he whipped the pages of his notebook back again to the notes he had taken in Richard Roper's office. “Mr. Roper said he saw a small sailboat of the Rainbow class off Great Point in Nantucket Sound that morning, and a red cabin cruiser, and Cresswell's boat, and a large commercial fishing boat a long way out. Do you know about any of those?”

“Well, there were five Rainbows went out of the harbor that day. I can tell you whose they were: Tillinghast's, he's the new president of the Nantucket Protection Society, his son's gone to the bad on the mainland. Young Flakeley, he's the realtor's nephew, he had a floozy with him. Three girls, cousins, all Rus-sells, they race against each other in the summer, call themselves the Cormorants, nice young ladies. I don't recognize the cabin cruiser. That's not an island craft.”

Homer stopped writing again, unable to keep up. The empty place in his stomach was gnawing at him. He felt faint with hunger. “Just one more thing, Mr. Piper. There's only one entrance to the harbor, right? If you didn't see 'em go out of the jetties here, they didn't go out from the harbor, is that right?”

“One entrance to the harbor?” Mr. Piper looked at Alden as if to ask him what kind of nitwit he had for a friend. “Of course there's only one entrance to the harbor. Wouldn't be much of a harbor, would it now, if it was full of holes?”

20

But ropes now, and let us ascend. Yet soft, this is not so easy.

MELVILLE
,
The Encantadas

After a couple of lunches at Cy's on South Water Street, Homer felt a lot better. He called up Kitty, who now had an unlisted phone, and told her to get ready for a trip to Great Point. “You don't mind going back there, do you?” he asked a little anxiously.

“You mean right now? Well, no, I don't mind. Of course not.”

She was waiting for him at the end of her driveway, wearing her parka. The rips had been mended but the parka looked terrible. “You certainly don't look voluptuous in
that,”
said Homer.