Just a Corpse at Twilight

Chapter 19

The party came about naturally, after the sinking ofKathy Three, a few days later. Flash Farnsworth claimed Hairy Harry had used a bazooka borrowed from friends in the National Guard. Bad George thought the sheriff might just as easily have tapped the boat with a hammer.

The company was eating lobsters at Beth's Diner- Grijpstra's treat-properly, in the Maine tourist manner, with plastic bibs tied around their necks by Aki. Each bib showed ajolly lobster, waving happily, elated by the prospect of being boiled alive.

"Lobbah Lobstah, by Walt Disnah," Bad George said, drinking beer. He wanted Grijpstra and de Gier to drink too, for this was a farewell party ofdespair, as he didn't know what he and Flash would do without their vessel. He himself had not tasted alcohol since his car was hit by a drunk and his wife had died and he himselfgot this face that would look the same forever "aftah."

"Why bothah?" Bad George asked.

Flash Farnsworth-between tearing his lobster apart and going through the motions of tipping his bottle to keep Bad George company-presented his Bunny dream to amuse hosts and guests. "The Walt Disnah Bunnah." The Disney Bunny hopped through Flash's dream, being ever so cute wearing a red ribbon, singing away, until Kathy Two picked it up quietly and shook the bunny until it was dead.

"Don't need no more bullshit bunny," Flash said.

"No bullshit about Mr. Bear," Grijpstra said. "I met Mr. Bear on Jeremy Island, eating a lady."

Bad George wasn't listening. He told the tale "Bears at the Dump," which had to do with a younger, less bad George, whose then-still-living wife bought him a camera for his birthday. Next day George was going to get himself some bears on film. The bears, at daybreak, were sorting garbage, and Bad George was focusing his Kodak, not noticing that the bears were between Bad George and Bad George's vehicle, and were closing in.

Flash Farnsworth had heard Grijpstra.

"So what did you do, Krip, when you saw Mr. Bear eating the lady on Jeremy Island??"

"I sat down," Grijpstra said.

"What else did you do?"

"I gave up on everything."

"Got to be respectful," Bad George said, listening now.

"Always talk nicely to Mr. Bear. From the heart. Like me, at the dump." He pounded his own heart. "Krip?"

Grijpstra looked up, lobster claw in hand. "Yes, Bad George?"

"Krip, you weren't trying to take that dead lady away from Mr. Bear, were you?"

Grijpstra cracked the claw, pulled out white meat, dipped it in butter, filled up most of his mouth, chewed, swallowed, looked pleased. "Aaaaah."

"Were you, Krip? To see what she looked like? Her hair and feet and all?"

A silence kept stretching. Everybody ate lobster, cracking, sucking, digging, dipping, chewing.

Grijpstra looked at de Gier. He half-dropped an eyelid.

"A bazooka?" de Gier asked on cue. "Kathy Three really was hit by a bazooka?"

Bad George looked at Flash. His head bent forward briefly.

"Hairy Harry don't like us much," Flash Farnsworth said, "on account of what we know, taking Kathy Three out all the time, seeing things at sea. He don't know we don't tell nuthin'. No use telling when nobody don't do nuthin' nohow." Flash nodded solemnly. "But the sheriff keeps seeing us watching those salt bags hitting the sea near Rogue Island and he worries. So he sinks our tub." Flash shrugged. "No boat, can't see nuthin', don't tell nuthin'."

"Scarirf us like that," Bad George said. "Sinking the Kathy Three"

Aki brought more sour-dough biscuits to go with the lobsters. Kathy Two pushed a wet nose into Grijpstra's hand. Grijpstra dropped a biscuit on the floor. The dog pushed it around for a bit. "Got to sop it in butter first," Aki said, giving it back to Grijpstra. Grijpstra dunked the biscuit, apologized to Kathy Two, handed it down again. Kathy Two wagged her tail once, accepted the biscuit by gently holding on to it, front teeth only, before backing away, sitting down, dropping the treat, sniffing it in a careful and appreciative manner, picking it up again. She ate delicately.

Grijpstra commented on the dog's dignity.

"Been working on her some." Flash looked fierce.

"She's learned a bit this time around, hasn't she?"

"You don't beat her, do you?" de Gier asked.

Flash hid his hands in his beard. "Can't expect a man to beat bis mother nohow."

"So," de Gier said, in between sucking meat out of a spindly lobster leg, "Hairy Harry or Billy Boy put a missile through the Kathy Three?"

"Them fellers will do anything," Flash said. "Them fellers got the weapons."

"Who knows what they did exactly?"

Bad George explained that he and Flash had left the boat on a mooring in Jameson Harbor with the tide going out. He himself caught the bus to visit family, and Flash was doing town things, getting supplies, stopping off everywhere, socializing, "fixin' up the world." But you can't fix the world, Bad George explained. You could, maybe, try to survive a while. "Like them dinosaurs when they heard the meteor was comin'."

"Ain't easy survivin' without the Kathy Three," Flash Farnsworth said.

Grijpstra, wanting to hear Aki's song again-the waitress's chant, as de Gier called it: "Buddah… Mikkekh… Heineka"-ordered more beer. He asked Bad George to elaborate on the loss of the Kathy Three.

"Like with the Macho Bandido" Bad George said.

De Gier knew about that. Released from his guilt now that Lorraine sat next to him, her thigh touching his, de Gier reported on work done in his new capacity, that of assistant to Private Investigator Grijpstra. De Gier had rowed out to where the yacht was anchored, fished up the anchor with a dragline, ascertained that the anchor cable had been cut. "Snipped, probably with wire cutters. That cable never broke from natural causes."

"Sheriff saw you fishin' for that cable?" Flash asked.

"Billy Boy was driving by," de Gier said.

"Might be getting in the bazooka's sights yerself," Flash said.

"Sheriff just used a regular hammer," Bad George replied to Grijpstra's query. "Kathy Three was so rotten, all she needed was a tap on a waterline board. The cracked board would sink her once the current sucked her out of the harbor."

There was a moment ofsilence, a wake, to thank the old cabin cruiser for having been around so long, so usefully, and pleasurably. The company sent sympathy toward DeLorean Ledge, where Kathy Three was a wreck now, being slowly crushed by easy flowing waves, three miles out of Jameson, where Ishmael had located the dying vessel, looking down from his plane, radioing the message into Bern's Diner, adding that he would be joining the party shortly.

"What to do?" Flash asked.

"Buy a new boat," Grijpstra said. "What else?"

How could Mr. Moneybags Eurodollar, asked Bad George, sit there and make such an exaggerated statement? A new boat the size of the former Kathy Three, a pleasure cruiser built as sturdily as a work boat, a new boat made out of new-fangled fiberglass (for no one used wood now, there wasn't any left), a new comparable vessel would cost over a hundred thousand dollars.

"Here's what you do, Bad George," Grijpstra said. "You get yourself one hundred thousand dollars, say a hundred and twenty thousand dollars' worth of new vessel, complete with radar and loran and radio and depth finders and whatnot, rafts and dories, cabin heater, a refrigerator full of Buddah… Mikkelah… Heineka," Grijpstra sang, "a water heater for the shower…"

"Flash Farnsworth don't shower much," Bad George said.

"Don't you agree, Bad George?" de Gier asked reasonably. "Isn't poverty just a state of mind, an attitude, if you will?"

Bad George, exhilarated by another beer, agreed that he and Flash would welcome an elevated state of mind producing the right attitude providing creative thinking that would have him and Flash boating about in Kathy Four. But just say, for argument's sake, that a fairy godmother granted the wish you were thinking of-this is America, ifyou don't have it, you import it…

Flash wanted to know if Catherine Deneuve could come along.

De Gier smiled. "That's better."

They were all cruising nicely at fifteen knots an hour, at five gallons of fuel an hour, to Eggemoggin Reach, Merchant's Row, and other magic thoroughfares south of the Twilight Zone, remote waterways the Kathy Three could never quite get to, when Flash pointed out that they hadn't done away with the sheriff's bazooka.

"POW!" shouted Flash.

Ishmael came in. Aki pulled up a chair. "How're you doin', Ishmael?"

Ishmael was doing just fine. He'd been flying up till a few hours ago. Until his plane got shot down. He'd almost got shot down himself. Ishmael held up a leg to show a graze mark on his boot.

"Bullet," Flash said.

"Terminated the Tailorcraft," Ishmael said. He smiled bravely. It had been an adventure. Of course, he never thought he could land a disabled airplane against a hillside, at a forty-five-degree angle. Who had done the shooting? Ishmael wasn't too sure but later, after he scrambled down the hill's slope and reached the highway, there was friendly Hairy Harry offering a lift, and there was a scoped rifle in the Bronco, the nine-millimeter Mauser the sheriff was so fond of. Hairy Harry had been target practicing that afternoon. He told Ishmael he particularly liked hitting flying targets.

"Warning shots," said Beth, who had cooked up another lobster for Ishmael, even though the kitchen was closed.

Lorraine thought so too.

"Warning who?" Grijpstra asked.

"Warning you?" Aki asked.

Ishmael wondered what to do without an airplane.

"You get a new plane," Flash Farnsworth said. "Poverty is a state of mind."

Ishmael agreed that a spic-and-span, spanking-new Cessna, feather light, fast even at impulse speed, was what was needed here. But say, for argument's sake, that he actualized himself an aircraft, wouldn't he still be a flying target?

"POW!" shouted Bad George.

They were still laughing when Billy Boy stopped his jeep in the twilight outside the diner, raised his wrist, studied his watch.

"Can't serve beer after closing time," said Beth.

"My place?" Ishmael asked.

Loaded in de Gier's Ford product and Beth's bus, the party drove to Ishmael's old canning factory at the Point. Kathy Two sat on Grijpstra's lap, sticking out her braid-ears, looking out the Ford's side window, her twenty muscular toes massaging Grijpstra's thighs pleasurably. Grijpstra wondered how he could get Nellie and de Gier's cat Tabriz to agree to have a Kathy Two look-alike share their castle.

"Just ask them," de Gier said.

Grijpstra never liked it when de Gier was telepathic.