Spartina (39 page)

Dick said, “What about your firewood business?”

“I’m way ahead. Way ahead. When I cut up the trees I’m hauling now, I’ll be two years ahead. There’s only so much firewood to be sold around here. I’m branching out.”

“Well, May’s right. I got to look at the house before anything else.” Dick got up, pulled out his truck key.

Charlie and Tom asked to go. Dick said, “I want to get a look by myself first.” He feared he was being a little hard again. “We’ll all go tomorrow. I’ll be right back after I get a look. I remember building it. I’d like to just get a look by myself.”

But when he came to his driveway, he lost his nerve. He decided
to look at the cottages on Sawtooth Point, a benchmark, so he could say about his own house, “It’s not so bad, could be worse.”

The cottages just off the road inside the entrance were all right. Someone had covered the windows, left openings to equalize the air pressure so nothing popped. Some water had got to them but not really in them. Dick circled around to the Bigelow and Buttrick houses. The Bigelows’ was banged up but okay. It was a bit higher than the Buttrick house. The Buttrick house was in trouble. A corner had been undercut and lurched a foot toward the pond. The house was still up, but half the window frames had popped out. A lot of planking had sprung loose. The corner post itself was standing but skewed.

It could be worse. Maybe they could jack up the corner, replace the post and … Probably not.

Dick went on to the Wedding Cake, walked around it. He realized how smart his great-uncle had been about one thing. The Wedding Cake was near the end of the point but was up on a knob. The water had reached it, but hadn’t even got up on the high seaward porch. Just left debris and seaweed on the steps and the huge granite blocks of the above-ground foundation. The wind had done what it could, but the fretwork and windows and shutters were all it harmed. Dick felt a rise in his mood—good for Uncle Arthur. Good for the Pierces.

By the seaward corner of the house there was a tanker truck with the Salviatti Company emblem on it. Dick was puzzled for a minute, then saw the hose. They’d been spraying a truckful of fresh water down the lawn to get the salt off. They could have used that water on the potato field behind the Matunuck beach, maybe saved a crop instead of a lawn. It was their money, they could do what they pleased. It was their house now. But they should still be grateful to Uncle Arthur.

Dick started back up the point. In front of the Van der Hoevels’
cottage he saw Parker’s VW station wagon. Dick parked alongside and started down the path. From
Spartina
he’d seen that the porch had been knocked into the creek, but the main part of the cottage was standing, although the doors and windows had popped. Dick was about to shout to Parker when he heard voices. The low sun was in his eyes. He took a step forward into the shadow of the house. His foot crunched on a piece of glass. He looked down at it, and then up when he heard a woman moaning. He saw Marie’s head appear in profile in the side of the bay window. There was no glass in it, though the network of lozenge mullions was half intact, sagging outward.

Dick thought she was crying over her house. Her head moved backward and disappeared. Her arms and hands reappeared. She picked up the long cushion of the window seat, shook it, flipped it over, and ran one hand over it. Her head reappeared, her cheek drowned in her loose hair. Her hands slid along the cushion and braced against the windowsill. Her shoulders were moving as though she was sobbing. She lowered her forehead onto the cushion.

Dick began to back away. He hadn’t thought she’d have cared so much about the cottage. But maybe they were wiped out. Uninsured …

Her head and shoulders were suddenly covered. It was so abrupt Dick jumped sideways. She made another noise. It took him a moment to realize she was laughing. What was covering her head was her long skirt, flipped up.

Dick’s right ribs hurt from having jerked so suddenly. He tucked his elbow over them and kept crabbing away, off the path now, in between the ornamental bushes.

Well, that’s another way to take it, he thought, when your house is coming down around your ears. Now he was into the raspberry bushes. He ripped his pants leg free from a tendril. He looked back, ashamed but prickled and heated up in spite of himself.
Schuyler’s head came forward, his chin on her back. It wasn’t Schuyler. It was Parker.

Jesus, Parker. Of course. It was Parker’s car. You son of a bitch, Parker. You’ll do anything.

Dick turned away, tucked his chin down. He clambered over a skinny uprooted pine. He got his hand gummy pushing away a branch. He was surprised at how churned he felt, how nasty he felt himself. He was angry that he was stuck with seeing it. Angry at the sharp sticky impression he carried away. Angry that he looked back once more.

They were just rearranging themselves. Dick backed away. They got up lengthwise on the window seat, face to face, their feet toward him. He almost laughed when he saw they both had their sneakers on. Two pairs of sneakers. All four sneakers allemande left, and do-si-do. Bow to your partner.

Dick got back to the road and climbed into his truck. He hesitated to start it. He heard Marie’s voice, a faint high note. He turned the key.

He said out loud, “Goddamn,” but he carried away the sight of her hair on her cheek, her hands sliding on the window seat. She’d turned the goddamn cushion while it was going on! Against the sound of the motor running and the wheels crunching, he imagined noises from her thin-lipped mouth, blown open like the fancy windows of the cottage.

“You son of a bitch, Parker,” he said, but he couldn’t shake it, he was talking to himself. “Go back to sea, get out of this.”

H
e was about to go by the turn to his house. He thought, They’ll ask what I saw.

He parked the truck at the head of the driveway. So far so good. The boys had done a good job with the front windows, boarded them up good but left some room to breathe. The chimney was toppled. The silt line was above the windowsills. It could be worse.

When he got to the back he took one look and sagged. He looked again and sat down on the end of the driveway. He picked up a handful of gravel and let it trickle out.

It was his own goddamn fault. It wasn’t the boys’ fault, he hadn’t told them.
He
hadn’t thought of it, no reason for them to have thought of it.

There was a piece of
Spartina
’s old cradle sticking through the wall, half inside the house. Through the hole around it, he saw a flap of black paper, broken studs. The broken clapboard had been plucked away. Must have happened early—a lot of wind had worked it over.

Another piece of cradle had cracked into the southeast corner post. It wasn’t as obvious as the hole in the wall, but the post was probably broke. He didn’t get up to go look.

He couldn’t have put the shed and cradle in a worse place if he’d meant to. Due southeast. Might as well have aimed a cannon at the house.

He made a right angle of his thumb and forefinger and held it up toward the corner of the house. No question about it, the roof was off line, the corner was sagging.

He sat there. The longer he sat, the better it got. The house was insured, the bank holding the mortgage had seen to that. The boat hadn’t been, so if something had to get hurt, this was the place.

The boat was okay, May and the boys were okay, he was okay. He owed something to the storm. He might as well pay here.

The kitchen door was gone, the screen door too. There was a last bit of light coming from the sky shining on the wet slime on the kitchen floor.

His butt was getting cold. He was tired. He’d only been up a couple of hours and he was ready to climb back in bed.

May would take it hard. First thing she would take in—well, maybe second thing after the hole in the wall—would be what was all over her nice kitchen floor.

He got up to go look at his wharf. He’d better go look now, May wouldn’t take it right if he wandered off to see it tomorrow.

The wharf was fine. He couldn’t believe it. It had mud, weeds, and sticks all over it, but all four posts were solid. Why shouldn’t it be, dummy? It let the water through, nothing to push against. The flat part was flat, nothing sticking up, the water just flowed flat across the top.

Of course that was what got
Spartina
through too. There wasn’t anything solid sticking up on her but the wheelhouse. And what there was of her to push against was curved—her hull was as curved as a pumpkin seed. He thought, We did okay, Uncle Arthur and me.

He stood on the wharf and looked across Pierce Creek. A few big trees were down, and the smaller stuff was stripped. He could see clear across his bit of land, across Sawtooth Creek, and onto the salt marsh, rustling and silver in the last light.

He began to cry in gratitude. He stopped and washed his face in
the creek. He laughed at himself. He said, “I could have had lots more swept away. I could have been swept away along with them fornicating ants in tennis shoes.”

He started for the truck. He’d tell May it wasn’t so bad, could be worse. Get her to have a drink with him. Get her tipsy on a drink or two. Get in his lawful bed.

D
ick heard an engine. It was just dark enough to see headlight beams swing through the trees. He went back up the path and recognized the close-set squint of jeep lights.

Elsie got out the passenger side and asked Dick if he could give her a ride home. He said yes and Elsie sent her partner away with the jeep.

By the time Elsie walked to him, the jeep was in third gear on Route l. She took his hand and said she was sorry his house was so hard hit.

Dick said, “It could be worse. How’d your house do?”

“The greenhouse roof has a hole in it. Mary and I got the big window covered. It’s okay.” Elsie let his hand go and said, “I’m bushed. I’ve been chasing folks out of their wrecked houses all afternoon. Some people wanted to spend the night in houses that would cave in if someone sneezed.”

It took Dick by surprise that she leaned in to him just then, pulled herself in with her arms around him. He’d forgotten how short she was, how compact and strong. She put a hand on his
chest and tilted her head back. “I’m glad to see you. I’m glad I saw your truck just now.” She touched his cheek. “Come on, Dick. You can be a little glad to see me. A little gladness isn’t going to kill you.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “Okay,” she said, “I don’t mind a more chaste tone, just so long as you’re glad to see me.”

Dick said, “Yeah, I’m glad to see you.”

Elsie said, “In spite of yourself,” and shook his upper arm. He’d forgotten she had tomboy gestures like that, especially when she was in uniform. They were as surprisingly off center as when she got dolled up in lipstick and her backless dress.

“Oh,” she said, “Captain Texeira’s back. He stopped by to see Miss Perry.”

“Did he leave flowers?”

Elsie laughed. “Yes. I don’t know where he found any, but he did.” Elsie added, “Oh, hey, could you do me a favor? While it’s still light enough?”

What Elsie wanted was to go into the salt marsh with his truck. She said, “I know you know where the old causeway is.” She laughed. “I want to get something I saw from the beach.”

They drove into the bird sanctuary and then out onto the marsh, slithering a little in the debris that had caught on the slight rise made by the submerged slabs and boulders of the old causeway. They got to the little plateau of marsh where the
Spartina patens
gave way to
Spartina alterniflora
, a little salt meadow between the salt marsh and the back of the dunes.

Dick turned the truck so the beams shone where Elsie pointed.

“Do you see it?” Elsie said. “There it is. The blue canoe.”

Dick shut off the light and they walked out to it, their feet squeezing up water through the matted stalks. Dick called to Elsie, who was ahead of him, to slow down. “There may be some funny holes in here.” She waited for him and took his hand. They walked
another fifty yards, steadying each other hand in hand, but when they got close, Elsie hurried ahead.