Dark Nantucket Noon (18 page)

21

“… Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.…”

Moby Dick

They were late. They crept in the door of the selectmen's room, all tiptoe gentility, and sat down in the back row. Heads turned to look at them, turned front, turned back a second time, then reluctantly faced front again in the direction of Mr. Tillinghast, the new president of the Nantucket Protection Society, who was trying to forward the business of the evening. Alden Dove got up from the front row and joined Homer and Kitty in the back. So did somebody else, a skinny young man in his Sunday suit, his face flaming: Bob Fern. Alden sat down beside Homer. Bob sat down beside; Kitty. Kitty smiled at Bob.

“We are gathered here this evening,” said Mr. Tillinghast, a mild-looking man in a tweed jacket, “as I said, in tribute to the memory of Helen Green. Now that the business part of the evening is over, I believe we have a final motion from our secretary, Anna Vickers. Anna?”

The president sat down and the secretary, a plump middle-aged woman, stood up and began reading. “Moved, that the name of this organization, the Nantucket Protection Society, Inc., be changed to the Helen Green Society, Inc., in recognition of the inspiration and leadership provided by our beloved friend and former president, Mrs. Helen Boatwright Green. Whereas she was a lifelong member of this organization from the age of sixteen to her early tragic death in the flower of her youth; whereas she was devoted to the history of the island of Nantucket, and through her family was an honored participant in its whaling tradition; whereas she was a leader in the crusade for the new Nantucket bylaw preserving much of the island from further development and consequent destruction; whereas the depth of her commitment to the preservation of our beloved island was demonstrated by her sacrifice of untold financial gain in the formation of the Boatwright Land Trust, which will preserve as open land the greater portion of her ancestral holdings; whereas she was a human being whose radiant youth and spiritual beauty were an inspiration to all who knew her: we, the members of this society, in loving memory of Helen Green, do hereby change the name of this organization from the Nantucket Protection Society to the Helen Green Society.”

The secretary sat down amid applause, tears and murmurs of “Second the motion.” Love for Helen Green flowed forward. Hate for her murderer flowed back. Kitty felt it buffeting her, and stubbornly she tried to compose her face to look pure as the driven snow.

The president was on his feet again. “All in favor, say aye. Opposed, no. The motion is passed unanimously. Now I think it will be obvious to every member of the Helen Green Society that a new name for this organization is not enough. The only true memorial we can make to Helen will be to carry on her work. On that score I'm afraid I have some bad news. I have just been informed that the realtor Mrs. Wilhelmina Magee and Mr. James Holworthy of Madaket have filed an appeal with the superior court in Barnstable declaring our new bylaw unconstitutional.”

Breaths were sucked in all over the room, and the members of the Helen Green Society looked at one another in dismay.

“Well, we've been expecting something of the sort,” continued Mr. Tillinghast. “My only comfort is that Helen herself never knew of this threat to her great work. Without her, of course, we have lost our most eloquent spokesman. But we must carry on. Each of us must feel responsible for fighting this appeal, for carrying the matter all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. At the end of the evening I shall call a special subcommittee meeting of the governing board to determine ways of raising money for what will undoubtedly be an extremely expensive campaign. Now at this time, we will carry on with our program for the evening. Alden, are you ready? Alden Dove has prepared a slide lecture on the Bay Scallop Fishery of Nantucket. Alden?”

Alden Dove got up and fiddled with a slide projector in the middle aisle of the rows of chairs. Alice Dove stepped out from the front row and pulled down a screen. Then she stood beside the light switch waiting for a signal. Her face was set and grim as usual, but when Alden nodded at her she flashed one brilliant look at Kitty, then snapped off the light.

Blue postcard sky, blue water lapping against pilings. “This is Nantucket Harbor, of course,” said Alden Dove; “And this is Coskata Pond. And here's the harbor at Madaket, with Eel Point off to the left. All of these places provide the commercial scallop fisherman of Nantucket with a harvest in the winter months. This is a close-up of the bay scallop as we find it in these waters,
Aquipecten inadians.
It does not reach sexual maturity until its second year.…”

Kitty had never been able to keep her eyes open in the dark. To her horror she could feel drowsiness stealing over her.
I
will not go to sleep again in a public place
, she told herself firmly. But she couldn't help herself. Darkness meant bedtime. Her head fell forward. She pulled it up again sharply and folded her arms. It fell forward again. She took the Helen Green Society with her into her dream. They were on the beach, dozens of them, walking along the sandy shore, all dressed up in hats and gloves and long loose flapping dark-gray clothes, their faces hostile, glowering. The president was there, marching in the lead, and there was the secretary, her long floppy gray dress slapping against her heavy calves. And there were all the rest of. them, hordes of them, an army. They were marching along the beach in one direction, toward somebody lying on the sand. It was Kitty, naturally, lying there, and she was gray too, but the gray was not clothing but naked flesh. She was lying naked on a gray-white beach, her flesh a pearly luminous gray, chill and flaccid like gray-white bacon fat. The people were coming closer, and pointing at her, and making sounds of horror and disgust. And then. Kitty lifted her head and looked down at herself and saw to her shame that she was marked with a birth stain, the rich blue-red color of blood, the color of port wine, suffusing one breast, running down into the hollow belly between the crests of her pelvis. She sat up, trying to cover the stain, but the people were retreating, pointing still, making exclamations of revulsion. The light turned on and Kitty woke up, returning promptly to the meeting of the Helen Green Society, jerking her head up from the shoulder of Bob Fern, where it had fallen. Bob made noises in his throat.

“What do you make of that?” whispered Mr. Tillinghast, the president of the Helen Green Society, to the secretary, Mrs. Vickers, and Mrs. Vickers told him what she thought of it in a furious whisper, using language that had never crossed her lips in her entire life before.

22

Could this be the Lamb's Bride, who had departed from this Spirit, and was in the Pollutions of the World through Lust …?

JOHN RICHARDSON,
Quaker evangelist in Nantucket, 1701

“Look at that,” said Alice Dove at breakfast the next morning. She was holding the
Inquirer and Mirror
under Homer's nose.

“Look at what? You mean this article right here?” Homer read it, while Alice fed the dogs, thumping their dishes angrily down on the floor.

CONSTITUTIONALITY OF BYLAW QUESTIONED

Mrs. Wilhelmina Magee and Mr. James Holworthy announced yesterday that they have filed an appeal with the Superior Court in Barnstable declaring the new Nantucket Zoning Bylaw unconstitutional.

“We are forming a new group,” said Mrs. Magee, interviewed at her home in Monomoy, “which will work in cooperation with our attorney in preparing our case. The first meeting of our new Nantucket Property Owners Rights Association will be held Friday evening, April 3, at 8
P.M.
, in the home of Mrs. Donald Wilkinson of Siasconset. All interested Nantucket property owners are invited to attend.”

“That's tonight,” said Homer. “You people are property owners. Why don't you and Alden go, Alice, and come back and tell me all about it?”

Alice glared at Homer. “That woman hates our guts. She'd throw us out.”

“A pity,” said Homer. “I'll see if I can get somebody else to go. But first I want to talk to Mrs. Magee myself. She lives in Monomoy? Where's that again?”

“This side of town. It's that little resort development of hers. She lives in one of those honeymoon cottages.” Alice watched the dogs wolf down their food. “Do you know what she's got there? Plastic starfish.”

“No!” said Homer. “To what depths of depravity will some people sink! Do you think she'd believe me if I said I wanted to rent something? Would she know who I am?”

“She'd know,” said Alice darkly. “She knows everything that happens on this island.”

“Well, then, I'll try something bizarre. I'll call her up and tell her the truth. Sometimes an effective ploy when all else fails.”

Mrs. Magee proved agreeable. She said Homer could come on over. He would find her walking her dog. At five minutes to ten Homer parked his car next to a sign that claimed the soil for Herman Melville Estates and Cottages. He got out and found himself face to face with Mrs. Magee's collection of plastic starfish, which were stuck here and there in a pink fishnet draped behind a couple of mannikins in purple pajamas in the window of her dress shop, the Moby Dick Boutique. Below the dress shop the cottages ran prettily down to the harbor. All of them were crowned with miniature roof walks from which honeymooners could observe the luxury craft parked at the marina, that is if the cottages had any ladders to go up scuttle with, but Homer doubted they had any ladders. He winced as he walked downhill past the cottages, trying not to see the blasphemous names affixed to their front doors—
The Ishmael, The Pequod, The White Whale
—and wondered which one Arthur Bird was living in. Perfect place for a fool like Bird.

A woman was walking a dog at the bottom of the slope. Mrs. Magee had said she would be walking her dog. Homer raised his hand in a limp salute and wished her politely in hell. The dog barked and towed his owner up the hill. He was a huge lanky Afghan hound with a fall of blond hair parted in the middle.

“I'll bet I know what your dog's name is,” volunteered Homer cheerfully, looking sympathetically at the dog, which was obviously a genetic mistake. “Captain Ahab.”

“Why, someone must have told you.”

“Just instinct.” The dog was looking at Homer furtively with one sad golden eye. They walked back up the hill.

Wilhelmina Magee was an attractive woman with only the tiniest of hairline wrinkles around her delicate features. Her hair was pale spun glass, her eyes were the color of swimming pools, her pants matched her eyes, the shutters of her cottages matched her pants.

“Did you see the film they made of
Moby Dick?”
she said.

“No,” said Homer. “Did you read the book?”

“The book? Why, of course.”

She lied. Homer studied the rear view of Mrs. Magee carefully as her dog pulled her in front of him along the walk. She lied in her teeth. Because if there was one conclusion a person would jump to at first sight of Wilhelmina Magee, it was, alas, there goes a wretched human soul who has never read Herman Melville.
Because if you had read it, Mrs. Magee, if you had ever read
Moby Dick,
if you had ever followed from day to day the insane pursuit of Ahab after the White Whale, if you had ever beheld the fires of Saint Elmo towering from the yardarms of Ahab's ship, if you had ever heard the crewmen praying for mercy from the blessed saints, if Melville's colossal waves had ever washed over you
, then, Mrs. Magee,
the stickum in your hair would have been dissolved from everlasting to everlasting and your girdle would have lost its grip and the padding would have pulverized in your brassiere and that chilly eye of yours would gleam with holy dread forever after! You're a liar, Mrs. Magee!

Captain Ahab lifted one hind leg and dribbled on a yew beside the entrance to the Moby Dick Boutique. Mrs. Magee jerked on his leash and tied him to a decorative object resting on the grass, a large anchor painted turquoise blue. She opened the turquoise door. She introduced Homer to Harper J. Cresswell, who was sitting in one of the captain's chairs in a cozy nook next to the window. Harper Cresswell reached out his hand. His jacket of turquoise tweed was so thick and bristly Homer was afraid he'd get a sliver.

Cresswell was drinking Scotch. “Join me?” he said in a rich genial amiable voice, gesturing at a well-stocked cupboard in the wall. Mrs. Magee's ladylike glass of sherry was waiting for her on the coffee table, which was a round piece of plate glass supported by a ship's wheel, the kind with handles all the way around.

Homer thought it over quickly. Much as he liked drink, it was apt to make him sleepy at this time of day, but then on the other hand he didn't want to look too hoity-toity. “Sure,” he said.

Fresh from his morning shower, Harper J. Cresswell smelled of shaving lotion and perfumed soap. “Whatsis Min tells me about you?” he said affably, handing Homer his drink. “Goddamned policeman.”

“Not anymore,” said Homer. “Strictly private now. I'm trying to help out Katharine Clark. She's been indicted for the murder of Helen Green.”

“Oh, izzatit? Well, cheers.”

They sat down. “What can we do for you, Mr. Kelly?” said Mrs. Magee, crisp and businesslike, folding one turquoise thigh over the other.

“Well, perhaps you could tell me about the day of the eclipse. Were you on the island that day? Did you see it?”

“We were just offshore,” said Mrs. Magee. “We were in Mr. Cresswell's boat, cruising around the island. We saw the eclipse from the deck. We were on the move all during that interval, weren't we, Harper?”

“Well, yes, I guess so,” said Mr. Cresswell.

“Were you off Great Point at all?” said Homer.