Hooligans

LURE

The fat old pelican sat on a corner post of the deck surrounding the fishing shack, looking bored. He

surveyed the broad expanse of bay which emptied into the Atlantic Ocean a mile away to the east at

Thunder Point. A warm breeze ruffled in from the sound and the old bird stared, half-asleep, across

the surface of the water, looking for the tell-tale signs of lunch. Then, spotting a school of mullet, he

flapped his broad wings and sod red off the post, climbing twenty feet or so above the water, wheeling

over and diving straight in, hitting with a splat and bobbing back up with a fish flopping helplessly in

his bucket of a beak.

The Irishman watched the pelican make his catch. He was making a fishing lure. He had set up a

.small vise on the edge of a table and was carefully twining and ret wining nylon, hook, and feathers,

weaving them into a shiny lure. He had stopped to watch the pelican, keeping the line taut so it would

not ravel.

He was a big man with one of those florid Irish faces that would look fifteen years old until he was

ninety. A few lines grooved its smooth surface, but not enough to mar his youthful, carefree

expression.

There was very little traffic along the bay. A few shrimp boats had gone out against the rising tide

arid a weekend sailor was trying, without much success, to get a lackluster wind in the sails of his

boat a couple of hundred yards away. Otherwise it was so quiet he could hear what little wind there

was rattling the marsh grass.

This was the Irishman‟s love, his escape from a business he neither liked nor understood. He felt like

a misfit, a Peter Principled gunman forced to act like a businessman. O‟Brian liked to settle disputes

his own way. Negotiating con fused him. But here he was king; he was alone and free, master of

himself and his tiny domain, for O‟Brian had mastered the secrets of fishing. It was one of the few

things he did well, and he loved the sport with a consummate passion

When the phone rang, he snapped, “Damn!” under his breath and weighed down the loose end of the

lure with a metal clamp before he went into the main room of the cabin to answer it.

“It‟s me, boss, Harry,” the gravelly voice on the other end of the line said. “He‟s through eating

breakfast. You sure you don‟t want I should follow him out, make sure he isn‟t bringin‟ company?”

“I said alone.”

“He could bring company.”

“Now, he won‟t do that.”

“You never know with these Feds.”

“He don‟t have nothin‟ on me,” the Irishman said.

“He‟s pretty quick, this guy.”

“Just camp out at Benny‟s down the road. I need ya, I holler.”

“Want I should ring once and hang u when he leaves?”

“Good idea.”

“Everything calm out there?”

“No problem. Coupla shrimp boats went by. Nobody‟s been down the road. There‟s some jerk out

here trying to get his sailboat back to the city marina, which is kinda funny.”

“What‟s so funny about it?”

“There ain‟t no wind.”

“Well, don‟t take no chances.”

“Don‟t worry. You just hang out there at Benny‟s, have a coupla beers, come on in when you see him

leave.

“Gotcha.”

They hung up and the Irishman switched on the radio and walked out onto the deck for a stretch. The

sailboat had drifted four hundred feet or so west of the shack, toward the city, and the sailor was

trying vainly to crank up his outboard, a typically sloppy weekend sailor in a floppy white hat, its

brim pulled down around his ears. The putz, he thought, was probably out of gas. But he had learned

one thing since discovering the sea—sailors helped each other.

He cupped his hands and yelled:

“See if you can get it over here, maybe I can help.”

The sailor waved back. He shoved the submachine gun under his Windbreaker near his feet, took an

oar from the cockpit of the sailboat, and began to paddle toward the Irish man. ...

38

FLASHBACK: NAM DIARY, THE FIRST SIX

The twelfth day: Today I killed a man for the first time. I have a hard time talking about this. What

happened, we‟re moving on this village, which was actually about a dozen hooches in this rice field

seven or eight kliks downriver. This village was at the bottom of some foothills. There were rice

paddies on both sides and a wide road lined with pepper trees anti bamboo kind of dead-ending at it.

Before we start down, Doe Ziegler, our medic, hands me a couple of buttons “What are these for?” I

ask “Dex,” he says. “Make you see better, hear better, move faster. lust do it.” So I popped the speed.

It took about twenty seconds o kick my ass. I‟ve never had speed before. I felt like taking on the

village all by myself I mean, I was ready‟

We go down toward it, two squads on each side in the rice paddies, because they make good cover,,

and we have the Three Squad backing us up in reserve. We go iii on the left and the One Squad on the

right. They take the first hit. The VC opens up with mortars and machine-gun fire and starts just

chewing them up. One guy, the whole top of his head wert off. The noise was horrendous; I couldn‟t

believe the racket.

The lieutenant runs straight toward the village with his head down just below the edge of the ditch

and I‟m right behind him. The radio man is having trouble calling up the reserve platoon because

we‟re in this little valley and the reception is for shit, so the lieutenant sends back a runner an4 then

he says, “Fuckin‟ gooks are eating One Squad up, we got to take them,” and he goes out of the paddy

and runs for this stretch of bamboo which is maybe twenty yards from the gooks and rue still right

behind him.

That tips Charlie and they start cutting away at us. They‟re shooting the bamboo down all around u,

just cutting it off. Then I see this VC in his black pajamas and he‟s got his head out just a little,

checking it out, and I sight him in and, ping! he goes down, just throws his hands up in the air and

goes over backward. Then another one comes running over and he‟s shooting as he comes, only he‟s

aiming about ten meters to my left and I drop him. Then I see the machine gun, which is in the dirt out

in front of the first hooch, and there‟s two of them and they‟re just cutting One Squad to shit, so I run

u through the bamboo and get in position and blitz them both, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow!

Next thing I know, the lieutenant and the rest of the squad are running past me and the One Squad

breaks loose and then it‟s all over. Five minutes, maybe. I was thinking, Jesus, I did more in the last

five minutes than I ever did in my whole life. I mean, it was such a high. And to still be in one piece!

There wasn‟t anybody left. Women, kids, old people, VC. The entire village was blitzed. Nobody

seemed to pay any attention to that; it was just business as usual. Then they brought in a

flamethrower and scorched the whole place. I didn‟t look at the civilians, I just looked the other way.

I figure, this is the way it‟s done, but it doesn‟t change how I feel about it.

Otherwise we were all feeling pretty good because none of our guys was hurt.

“You okay?” the lieutenant says after he makes the body count, and I says, “Yeah, I feel good.” And I

did.

“You looked okay in there,” he says.

I wasn‟t a virgin anymore and I was still alive. Jesus, I felt good.

It took me a long time to get used to it, that I had killed those people and it was okay, that it was what

they expected me to do. For a while I kept dreaming they would come at night and arrest me.

The 38th day: Doc Ziegler doesn‟t even believe in all this. He‟s a medic, doesn‟t carry any

weapons. He says he would have gone to Canada but his old man had a bad heart and Doc figured it

would kill him if Doc jumped the border. So he said, “Fuck it!” when he got his notice. “I can put up

with anything for a year,” he says. Among other things, Doc supplies the speed, He doesn‟t do it

himself, says he doesn‟t need it since he doesn‟t carry a weapon. But he smokes pot a lot. Morning,

noon, and night. Hell, I don‟t think I‟ve ever seen Doc unstoned. But when there‟s trouble he can

move with the best of them. What the hell, if it makes it easier. He‟s been on the line a month longer

than me and he acts like he was born here.

Carmody is the best officer I ever knew. All he thinks about is what‟s out there. He never talks about

home, his wife, nothing. Just business and his men. He was a green shavetail when he got to Nam ten

months ago. He has a funny sense of humor, like no matter what you ask him, he‟s got a one-liner for

you. I asked him once where he was from.

“My old man had the poorest farm in Oklahoma,” he says. “Our hog was so skinny, if you put a dime

on its nose, its back feet would rise up off the ground.”

Then there‟s Jesse Hatch, who used to drive a truck all over the country, one of those big semis; and

Donny Flagler, who‟s like me, just out of college. Both of them are black guys. And there‟s Jim

Jordan, who was in law school; his old man was a senator and still couldn‟t get him deferred. Jordan

is one pissed-off guy. He‟s a short-timer, has two months to go, a first-class pain in the ass. Hatch is

the M-60 man; he can really handle that mother. Flagler is our radio. None of us are regulars, but

after a month out here, I feel like one.

The 42nd day: We get orders to take this knob for an LZ. Charlie is all over the place. He won‟t

give it up. They have the high ground; they sit up there and lob mortars down on us all after-fuckin‟-

noon. Carmody gets on the radio and calls in the Hueys. He wants them to blitz the place so we can

rush it, only it‟s raining and a little foggy, and they‟re giving him some stand-down shit and he starts

yelling:

“1 want some air in here, now! Don „t gimme any of that fog shit. Nobody‟s told us to go home

because it‟s raining. Get me some goddamn air support fast!”

He slams the phone down.

Listen, kid, if you can‟t get a chopper in when you fuckin‟ need one, forget it. That‟s the edge. You

don‟t have the edge, you‟re in trouble. We can‟t beat these motherfuckers at this kind of game, for

Christ sake, they been doing it for fifteen fuckin‟ years. When you need air, get nasty.”

That‟s the way he was, always teaching me something.

About ten minutes later these two Hueys come over and really waste that knob. Carmody doesn‟t wait

for shit, we‟re off up the hill while the Hueys are still chewing it u - Six or eight 50-millimeter and 20-

millimeter cannons working. Good God, there were VC‟s flying all over the place in bits and pieces.

A boot with a foot in it hit me in the shoulder and splashed blood down my side. I was getting sick.

Then the gooks broke and ran and we took the knob and sat up there picking them off as they went

down the other side. We must‟ve shot ten, twelve of them in the back. After a while I stopped counting.

It didn‟t seem right. Maybe I‟ve seen too many cowboy movies, but shooting all those people in the

back seemed to be pushing it. But then, I‟ve only been on the line two months. I‟m still learning.

The 56th day: Last night a bunch of sappers jumped this airstrip eight or nine kliks north of here and

pillaged two cargo planes. They got ahold of some of our own Bouncing Bettys. What you got there is

a daisy cutter, a 60-millimeter mortar round, and it‟s rigged so it jumps u about waist high when you

trip it, and it goes off there, at groin level, cuts you in half

We‟re always real careful about mines, but the motherfuckers have these Bettys all over the fucking

place. A couple of places they rigged phony trip lines so you‟d see the line and move out of the way

and they‟d have another trip line next to it and you‟d nick that and it was all over.

I hear it go off. Nobody screams or anything, it just goes boomf! and shakes some leaves off the trees

where I am. I run back. It‟s maybe a hundred meters. Flagler‟s laying there and he‟s blown in half.

Two parts of him. I can‟t believe it. I start shaking. I sit down and shake all over. Then Doc comes up

and gives me a downer.

Carmody is taking it the worst. He just keeps swearing over and over. Later in the day we catch up

with a couple of VC. We don‟t know whether they rigged the Bouncing Bettys, but we tie the two of

them to these two trees, side by side, and we set one of the mines between the trees and rig it and then

we back off about a hundred feet and we keep shooting at the line and those two gooks are screaming

blood y-fucking-murder. It was Jesse finally tripped it. We left them hanging in the trees.

Psychological warfare, that‟s what we call it.

39

DEAD MAN’S FLOAT

It took me twenty minutes to make the drive to Skidaway Island. Three blocks on the far side of the

bridge I found Bayview, a deserted gravel lane, hardly two cars wide, that twisted through a living

arch of oak trees with Spanish m4ss. Here and there, ruts led to cabins hidden away among trees,

palmettos, and underbrush. I passed a roadhouse called Bennys Barbecue, which looked closed except

for a gray Olds parked at the side of the place that looked suspiciously like the car Harry Nesbitt was

driving when he followed me the night before. After that there was nothing but foliage for almost a

mile before I came to O‟Brian‟s shack.

It wasn‟t much more than that, although it seemed a sturdy enough place. It was built on stilts about

twenty yards off shore and was connected to land by a wooden bridge no more than three feet wide.

The tide was in and the cabin, which looked about two rooms large with deck surrounding it and

screened porch at one end, was perched barely three feet above the water. A small boat, tied to one

end of the platform, rocked gently on the calm surface of the bay.

Nesbitt was right—there wasn‟t a blade of grass within twenty yards of the cabin.

The place was as still as a church at dawn.

A slate-gray Continental was parked under the trees near the water‟s edge. It had been there awhile;

the hood was as cool as the rest of the car. I walked out to the edge of the clearing and held my hands

out, prayer style, palms up.

“O‟Brian? It‟s me, Kilmer.”

A mockingbird cried back at me arid darted off through the palmettos. Somewhere out near the shack

a fish jumped in the water. Then, not a sound.

I waited a moment or two.

“It‟s Jake Kilmer,” I yelled. “I‟m coming on out.”

Still nothing.

I tucked both sides of my jacket in the back of my belt to show him 1 wasn‟t wearing a gun and

started walking out onto the platform, holding on to both railings so he could see my hands.

“O‟Brian!”

A fish jumped underfoot and startled me. I could see why O‟Brian had built his shack on this spot. He

could drop a line out the window and fish without getting out of bed.

“O‟Brian, it‟s Kilmer. You around?”

Still no answer.

I reached the cabin. The front door was locked, so I went around to the porch, held my face up against

the screen, cupped my eyes, and peered inside. The place was as empty as a dead man‟s dream.

“O‟Brian?”

Still no sounds, except the tie line of the boat, grinding against the wooden railing.

Worms began to nibble at my stomach.

“Hey, O‟Brian, are you in there?” I yelled. I startled an old pelican setting on a corner of the deck and

he lumbered away, squawking as he went. There was no answer.

I tried the screen door and it was open. The cabin was empty; nobody was under the bed or stuffed in

the shower, But the radio was on with the volume turned all the way down, and the beginnings of a

fishing lure dangled from a vise on the porch table.

The worms stopped nibbling and started gnawing at my insides.

I went back outside and started around the deck. The boat was empty.

I might have missed the two bullet holes except for the blood. It was splattered around two small

nicks in the rear wall of the cabin; crimson, baked almost brown in the hot sunlight, yet still sticky to

the touch.

The worms in my stomach grew to coiled snakes.

“Oh, shit!” I heard myself whisper.

I knelt down on the deck and peered cautiously under the cabin. The first thing I saw was a foot in a

red sweat sock jammed in the juncture of two support posts. The foot belonged to Jigs O‟Brian. The

rest of him was floating face down, hands straight out at his sides, as if he were trying to embrace the

bay.

Fish were nibbling at the thin red strands that leaked from his head like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

I didn‟t need a medical degree to tell he was DOA.

40

SKEELER’S JOINT

Dutch almost swallowed the phone when I got him on the line. He was on his way before I hung up.

The coroner reacted in much the same way.

Dutch arrived fifteen minutes later with Salvatore at the wheel, followed by an ambulance with the

coroner and his forensics team close behind.

The big German lumbered out to the cabin with his hands in his pants pockets, an unlit Camel

dangling from the corner of his mouth, and stared ruefully down at me through his thick glasses.

Salvatore was behind him, glowering like a man looking for a fight.

“I take the full rap for this one,” I said. “If you hadn‟t called Salvatore off, O‟Brian might be alive

now.”

“1 should have left Salvatore on his tail,” Dutch said. “That was my mistake.”

“You just did what I asked,” I said. “I told O‟Brian I‟d be alone. Where are your pals from

homicide?”

“On the way,” he said with a roll of his eyes, adding, “What did it this time, a flamethrower?”

“Small caliber, very likely a submachine gun,” I said.

“How do you figure that?”

“He‟s got a row of. 22‟s from his forehead to his chin so perfect the line could‟ve been drawn with a

straightedge. My guess is, the first couple of shots knocked his head back. The gun was firing so fast

it just drew a line right down his face, zip, like that.”

I drew an invisible line from my forehead to my chin with a forefinger.

“Some gun,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “There‟s only one weapon I can think of that fits the bill.”

“Well, don‟t keep us in suspense,” said Dutch. Salvatore began to show signs of interest. He stopped

staring into space long enough to give rue the dead eye.

“The American 180. Fires thirty rounds a second. Sounds like a dentist‟s drill when it goes off.”

“Like on the tape of the Tagliani job,” Dutch said.

“Yeah, just like that. I figure whoever aced him came in by boat and whacked O‟Brian when he came

out of the cabin. Two of the slugs went through his head; they‟re in the back wall.”

“So what does all that mean to us?” Dutch said.

While the coroner was studying the bloodstained holes in the back wall of the cabin, his men were

shooting pictures of O‟Brian‟s body from everywhere but underwater.

“Chevos owns boats,” I said. “It‟s his thing. I‟ve heard he lives at the Thunder Point Marina. Where

would that be from here?”

Dutch pointed due east. Thunder Point was a mile away, a misty, low, white structure surrounded by

miniature boats.

“You really want to pin this one on Nance, don‟t you?” Dutch asked.

“Maybe.”

“Look, I got nothing against headhunting; sometimes it can get great results. You got something to

settle with that sheiss kopf it‟s okay with me.”

The coroner dug the two bullets out of the wall and went back across the bridge to shore.

“Maybe he‟s holed up on a boat,” I said.

“That‟s assuming he knows we‟re looking for him.”

“Well, hell, I make a lot of mistakes,” I said.

Dutch put a paw on my shoulder. “Aw, don‟t we all,” he said, puffing that discussion to bed. He

strolled up and down the deck of O‟Brian‟s shack, berating himself, like an orator grading his own

speech.

Salvatore stood in one place, staring back into space and grinding fist into palm, like a bomb looking

for someplace to go off.

“We should‟ve brought „em all in, the whole damn bunch,” Dutch said, “get it out in the open. I laid

off because it‟s homicide‟s baby. Well, it‟s our baby too. The Red Sea‟ll turn Kelly green before that

bunch of pfutzlukers get their heads out far enough to see daylight. Ain‟t it just wonderful!” He stared

off toward „Thunder Point. “I‟m gonna haul that bunch of ash lochers in and get some answers. If

nothing else, maybe we can throw these killers off their stride.”

His tirade brought only a grunt from Salvatore, who was glaring back into space.

Dutch sighed. “Okay, let‟s see who we got left.”

He started counting them off on his fingers. “There‟s the Bobbsey Twins, Costello and Cohen. Then

there‟s Stizano and the pasta king, Bronicata, and your pals, Chevos and Nance. I miss anybody?”

There wasn‟t anybody else. Like Christie‟s Ten Little Indians, the field was running out.

“One thing,” I said. “If you start hauling these people in, you better have a lot of help. They come

complete with pistoleros. And you‟ll also be dealing with Leo Costello. He‟s quick and a helluva lot

smarter than you‟d like him to be. The son of a bitch sleeps with a habeas corpus under his pillow.”

“I‟ll keep that in mind,” Dutch said.

Salvatore finally broke his silence. He looked at me and said, “What it is with me, see, I coulda

followed that ugly fuckin‟ Mick into his bedroom and held his nuts while he balled his old lady and he

still wouldn‟t know I was there. [got a talent for that kind of thing. Me and Zapata, we‟re the invisible

men.”

“I told him I‟d be alone,” I protested. “We took a chance, what can I tell you? Next time I‟ll know

better.”

He stared at me for a beat or two longer and suddenly said, “Ah, shit, let‟s forget it.”

“What do you think O‟Brian wanted?” Dutch asked.

“I don‟t know, but if anybody knows, Nesbitt does,” I said. “Let‟s put him on the radio, find out his

story.”

“Done,” said Dutch. “I‟ll add him to the list.”

We walked back across the narrow pier to solid land, where the coroner flagged us down.

“Stoney Titan‟s on his way out,” he said, and turned to me. “He says he wants a word or two with

you.”

“Looks like the old man‟s finally throwing his oar in,” Dutch said.

I didn‟t feel up to my first round with Titan; I had something else on my mind. “I‟ve got some things

to do,” I told Dutch. “You know as much about this mess as I do; you talk to the old man.”

“He‟s not gonna like that even a little bit,” the big man growled.

“Tough shit,” I said, and drove off toward Benny‟s Barbecue. I was anxious to see if the gray Olds

was still there. It wasn‟t, but as I turned into the place, Stonewall „Titan‟s black limo passed me,

going like he was late for the policemen‟s ball.

I pulled around to the back of Bennys, oyster shells crunching under my tires, and found a tallish,

deeply tanned man with dishwater-blond hair that had seen too much sun and surf loading soft-drink

crates through the back door of the place. He was wearing black denim shorts and dirty sneakers, no

shirt, and could have been thirty, fifty, or anything between.

“We don‟t open until five,” he said as I got out of the car.

“I‟m looking for a pal of mine,” I said, following him inside. The place was dark and there was the

leftover chill of last night‟s air conditioning lingering in the air, which smelled of stale beer and

shrimp He looked at me over his shoulder.

“1 don‟t know anybody,” he said flatly. “Half the time I can‟t remember my kids‟ names.”

“1 saw his car here a little earlier,” I said.

“No kidding. Maybe he had a flat.”

“He wasn‟t around.”

“Probably ran outta gas. Maybe he had to walk up to the boulevard, pick up a can.”

“Could be. I kind of felt he was in here.”

“Hmm,” he said, stacking the soft drinks in the corner. “You know how long I been here in this spot?”

“No, but I bet you‟re going to tell me.”

He drew two beers from the spigot behind the bar and slid one across the bar to me. It was colder than

Christmas in the Yukon.

“Thirty-three years. Be thirty-four in September.”

I sipped the beer and stared at him.

“You know why I been here this long?” he went on.

“You mind your own business,” I said.

“Right on the button.”

“This guy‟s name is Nesbitt. Little squirt with roving eyeballs.”

“You ain‟t been listening to me,” he said.

“Sure I have,” I said, sipping my beer. “If a fellow looks like that should come back by, tell him

Kilmer says we need to have a talk. Real bad.”

“That you? Kilmer?”

“Uh-huh.”

“A guy I knew once had a mark on him, thought he was safe in downtown Pittsburgh. Then a

wheelbarrow hill of cement fell off a six-story building right on his head.”

The metaphor seemed a little vague to me, but I took a stab at retorting.

“Tell him I won‟t drop any cement on his head.”

The bartender chuckled and held out a hand. “Ben Skeeler,” he said. “The place used to be called

Skeeler‟s but everybody kept sayin‟ „Let‟s go to Benny‟s so I finally changed the sign.”

He shook hands like he meant it.

“Long as we‟re being so formal, maybe I could see some ID,” the cautious man said.

“That‟s fair enough,” I said, and showed him my buzzer.

He looked at it and nodded. “I hope you‟re straight. The way I get it, you‟re straight, but this town

car‟ bend an evangelist faster than he can say amen.”

I waited for more.

“Tough, too. I heard you was tough”

“I talk a good game,” I said finally.

“These days, you know, you never can be too sure.”

“Uh-huh.”

“County ambulance just went by actin‟ real serious,” he said. “You wouldn‟t know anything about

that, would you?”

“Man named O‟Brian just got himself killed out on the bay,” I said.

His eyes got startled for a moment and then he looked down into his beer glass. “That so” was all he

said. He pulled on his ear, then took a folded-up paper napkin out of his pocket and handed it to me.

“Dab your lips,” he said. “I gotta get back to work.”

He went outside and I unfolded the napkin. The message was written hurriedly in ballpoint that had

torn through the napkin in a couple of places and left several inkblots at the end of words. It said:

“Uncle Jolly‟s Fillup, route 1-4 south about 18 miles. Tonight, 9 p.m. Come alone.”

No signature. Skeeler came back with another crate of soft drinks.

“You know a place called Jolly‟s Fillup, route 14 south of town?”

“Sounds like a filling station, don‟t it?” he said.

“Now that you mention it.”

“You‟ll know it when you get there” he said, and went back outside. I finished my beer and followed

him.

“Thanks for the beer. Maybe I‟ll come back and try the shrimp,” I said as I got into the car.

“You do that, hear?” he said. “Be sure to introduce yourself again. I‟m bad on names.” And he

vanished back inside.

41 RELICS

I started back toward Dunetown but when I got to the boulevard I went east instead of going back

toward town. I really didn‟t have anything to do after I left Skeeler‟s, but I had to put some distance

between me and Dunetown. I needed a little time to myself, away from Stick, Dutch, and the

hooligans. Away from Doe. Away from them all. I was tired of trying to make some sense out of a lot

of disparate jigsaw pieces, pieces like Harry Raines, Chief, and Stoney Titan. Like Donleavy and his

sweaty banking friend, Seaborn. Like Chevos and Nance, a badluck horse named Disaway, and a

black gangster I didn‟t even know whom everybody called Nose, but not to his face. I suddenly had

the feeling that using people had become a way of life for me and I didn‟t like the feeling and I

needed some room to deal with that. I needed to get back to my safe places again, at least for a little

while.

When I got to the Strip I headed south, putting the tall hotels that plundered the beach behind me. I

drove south with the ocean to my left, not sure where I was going. I just smelled the sea air and kept

driving. Finally I passed a decrepit old sign peering out from behind the weeds that told me I had

reached someplace called East Beach. It was desolate. Progress had yet to discover it.

I parked my car in a deserted public lot. Weeds grew up through the cracks in the macadam, and small

dunes of sand had been collected by the wind along its curbs. I sat looking out at the Atlantic for a

while. The sea here was calm, a mere ripple in the bright sunlight, and the beach was broad and clean.

It revived memories long buried, the good times of youth that age often taints with melancholy.

My mind was far from Dunetown. It was at a place called Beach Haven, a village on the Jersey coast

where I had spent several summers living on a houseboat with the family of my best friend in

grammar school. I couldn‟t remember his name but I did remember that his father was Norwegian and

spoke with a marvellous accent and wore very thick glasses and that the family was not in the least

modest and that he had a sister of high school age who thought nothing at all of taking a shower in

front of us. Sitting there in the hot sedan with sweat dripping off my chin, I also recalled that I had

spent a good part of that summer trying to hide a persistent erection.

After a while I got out and took off shoes, socks, jacket, and tie and put them in the trunk. I slammed

it shut, then opened it again, dropped my beeper in with them, and went down to the beach.

I rolled my pants legs to the knee and walked barefoot with the sand squeaking underfoot. I must have

walked at least a mile when I came upon a small settlement of summer cottages, protected by walls of

granite rock that were meant to hold back the ocean. It had been a futile gesture. The houses were

deserted. Several had already broken apart and lay lopsided and forlorn, awash with the debris of

tides.

One of them, a small two-bedroom house of cypress and oak, was still perched tentatively over the

rocks, its porch supported by six-by-sixes poised on the granite boulders. A faded sign, hanging

crookedly from the porch rail, told me the place was for sale, and under that someone had added, with

paint, the words “or rent.” There was a phone number.

I went up over the big gray rocks, climbed the deck railing, and looked through the place, a forlorn

and lonely house. The floor creaked and sagged uncertainly under each step and the wind, sighing

through its broken windows, sounded like the ghost of a child‟s summer laughter.

I stripped down to my undershorts, went down to the deserted beach, and ran into the water,

swimming hard and fast against the tide until arms and legs told me to turn back. I had to breaststroke

the last few yards and when I got out I was breathing heavily and my lungs hurt, but I felt clean and

my skin tingled from the saltwater. I went back up to the house and stretched out on the deck in the

sun.

I was dozing when the woman came around the corner of the house. She startled us both and as I so

rambled for my pants she laughed and said, “Don‟t bother. Most of the gigolos hanging around the

hotel pools wear far less than that.”

She was an islander, I could tell; a lovely woman, delicate in structure, with sculptured features

textured by wind and sun, tiny white squint-lines around her eyes, and amber hair coiffured by the

wind. I couldn‟t guess how old she was; it didn‟t matter. She was carrying a seine net—two five-foot

wooden poles with the net attached to each and topped by cork floats. The net was folded neatly

around the poles.

“I was halfway expecting my friend. He sometimes waits up here for me,” she said, peering inside

without making a show of it. Then she added, “Are you flopping here?”

I laughed.

“No, but it‟s a thought.”

She looked around the place.

“This was a very dear house once,” she said. She said it openly and without disguising her sadness.

“Do you know the owners?” I asked

“It once belonged to the Jackowitz family, but the bank has it now.”

Her sad commentary told rue all I needed to know of its history.

“What a shame. There‟s still some life left to it.”

“Yes, but no heart,” she said.

“Banks are like that. They have a blind appetite and no soul. They‟re the robots of our society.”

“Well, I see my friend down on the beach. I‟m glad you like the house.”

A skinny young man in cutoffs with long blond hair that flirted with his shoulders was coming up the

beach carrying a bucket. She went down over the boulders to the sand.

“Hey?” I said.

She turned and raised her eyebrows.

“Is your name Jackowitz?”

“It used to be,” she said, and went on to join her friend.

I got dressed and walked back through the surf to the parking lot. I found a phone booth that still

worked and called the number that was on the sign at the house, It turned out to be the Island Trust

and Savings Bank. I managed, by being annoyingly persistent, to get hold of a disagreeable little

moron named Ratcher who, I was told, was “in beach property”

“I‟m interested in a piece of land on East Beach,” I said. “It might have belonged to a family called

Jackowitz.”

I could hear papers rustling in the background.

“Oh, yes,” he said, probably after turning up the foreclosure liens. “I know the place.” I could tell he

knew as much about that cottage as I know about Saudi Arabian oil leases.

“Are you in real estate?” he asked curtly.

“No, I thought I might just rent it for the rest of the summer,” I told him.

“The place is condemned,” he said nastily. “And this establishment prosecutes trespassers.” He hung

up. I stood there for a minute or two, then invested another quarter and got Ratchet back on the phone.

“Ratcher?”

“Yes!”

“You‟re a despicable little asshole,” I said, and hung up.

I drove back down toward the beach and, by trial and error, found a neglected road that led to the

house and sat there, watching the woman whose name was once Jackowitz and her young man with

the long hair, dragging their seine nets slowly along the water‟s edge, picking the shrimp arid mullet

out after each drag and putting them in the bucket. After a while it started to rain and they quit. I

waved to them as they walked off down the beach. I‟m not sure they saw me but it would be nice to

think they did and that they knew the house still meant something to someone. Finally I drove back

toward town in the rain, feeling beach-tired but recharged.

I thought about that place a lot in the days that followed, but I never went back. I didn‟t have to.

Driving back to Dunetown, I realized I had left the safe places behind forever.

42