The captain curled around the shank, as though it gave him comfort.
“Did you kill her?” Rube realized he was screaming.
No answer. Maybe a slight grin at the corner of the old man’s mouth? The captain died curled tightly around the shank of the harpoon.
Rube stood and tottered toward the pilothouse. There was some kind of automatic pilot, and Rube didn’t want to mess with it. He found the radio and got that working easily enough. A shoreside operator mumbled from the receiver.
“Get me Sheriff Boggert,” Rube said. “It’s an emergency. Wake him up if you have to. And I need to know how to drive this boat.”
They sat in the stinky, newly painted room. Alone finally. There had been many people buzzing about and many questions. But not enough answers, Rube thought. Though what he had would have to do.
Boggert looked as fierce as a bulldog who’d lost his last fight. “If you’d a just waited,” Boggert said, “I was gettin’ on out to talk to the man. But I didn’t have the damned report yet.”
“If I’d waited, the dog would be dead.”
Boggert just stared. “Oh for Christ’s sake.” He paused. “Then again, you can’t be sure of even that.”
Rube was too tired to hear it. But he knew he would.
“Maybe if you hadn’t let that dog up to the cemetery, well — maybe he’d a gone on home. Or to someone’s home. Or...”
Rube stood up. “Are you through with me?”
Boggert scratched at his leg. “Just about, yeah. Come sign this affidavit.”
The sun was up, hard and bright, as Boggert drove Rube home. “You get some sleep, Rube. It’s been a hard day and night.”
“For a tourist?” Rube said.
“For anyone,” Boggert said.
They drove up Main, trying not to hit the new day’s tourists.
“It was self-defense, Rube. We matched the harpoon wound with one from the rack.”
Rube was horrified for just a moment. “Not the one I killed the captain with?”
“No,” Boggert said. “A different one. The captain was from a long line of oldtime whalers. Guess he kept them as — memories.”
“Memories,” Rube muttered, knowing he now had too many.
“Well, the old man was bonkers. No doubt about that. Betty had broken up with Jesse — some big fight over money — and Jesse, he just couldn’t handle it. The old man found him hanging in a cheap hotel room.”
“Memories,” Rube muttered.
“And then she must have braced the old man for money. Probably said Jesse had promised her half the business. It fits, Rube.”
“I guess,” Rube said.
They stopped at a crosswalk, the closest thing in town to a real stoplight.
“And he was gonna kill the dog and you and drop you over the side.”
“Dropping me over the side would have been enough,” Rube said. “I can’t swim.”
Boggert shook his head. “Maybe you are a tourist, after all.”
They pulled up in front of Rube’s driveway, a winding stretch of asphalt that led to the house in back.
Rube got out. Opened the car’s back door and called.
“Come on, Buddy.”
The big old dog had a bandage on his head, but he stuck out a giant tongue and licked at Rube’s hand, then jumped down from the back of the Jeep and started to follow Rube to the house.
Rube had a garden to start, things to plant. Maybe something good and green would grow. Maybe something green and alive.
Postscript
by Michelle Knowlden
Dear Mom,
That was rotten — sending me to the Brewster family reunion, knowing Tom and Emily would be there. You promised me a pleasant June in Kansas, and a journey back to a childhood of Gramps’ drugstore and fireflies at dusk.
I bet you thought it would do me good, getting over Tom once and for all, right? Well, the joke’s on you, Mom. Tom died two days after arriving. His ulcer acted up, and he bled to death. Satisfied?
And then I had to put up with the relatives, giving me sympathetic looks. Honestly, Mom, I haven’t thought of Tom Killian in years. That broken engagement gave me time to finish my MBA and start a business. If I’d married Tom, would I have a string of Adventure Unlimited stores? Would I have traveled four continents, sailed the Black Sea — following an egret from dawn to dusk? No — I’d be a widow, with photo albums and recipe books.
And Tom got what he deserved with Emily. She was a secretive one, with a streak of malice. Since we were kids, she’s lied about her Brewster blood — let everyone believe she was my first cousin when she was an adopted child of a third. I felt more kinship with your poodles. She played the angelic child with adults, but she flushed my guppies down the toilet when her mother wouldn’t let her have one. She poured bleach on Kate’s begonias when her own died. She poisoned the principal’s cat when I made the dean’s list.
When I was in college, she gave Tom, my fiancé, that look of hers. You know, the one we called her Emily Dickinson smile? Obscure but full of sly meaning. She followed Tom around his dad’s furniture store. She tossed her mousy hair and gave him slavish looks. She flattered him beyond his worth. She made him brownies from scratch, and sent him a homemade birthday card.
Okay, so I can’t make butterscotch chocolate chip brownies. If there was a mix for it, I’d give it a try. Okay, so I forgot his birthday. Big deal. But Emily took advantage of his hurt feelings and manipulated him into breaking our engagement. You know the rest. They married six months later.
Oh, maybe it did hurt at first. More ego than heartache, I suspect. Still, he was the boyfriend of college days, when dreams ran true, and always smelled of spring. Whenever I think of hand holding, and cloud watching, and sharing a banana shake at Gramps’ drugstore, I think of Tom. Whenever a parade marches down a small village street or when they hang up the first Christmas banner, I remember the way I looked reflected in his sunglasses. And I think of him standing near the holly at the old house on Stetler Street. And how I could smell late blooming jasmine when he said he was marrying Emily, not me.
But let’s be honest. Marrying Tom would have been worse than Purgatory — it would have been hell. He liked that whole business of the little woman at home, meeting him at the door with the evening newspaper and slippers. Can you imagine me in an apron? Spending my time in dress shops and salons, trying to look good for my man? Please. Emily’s the one who got the short deal.
I wondered that first night of the reunion if she regretted it in the end. Fifteen years later, Tom had put on weight, and his eyes — those lovely blue eyes — were puffy with fatigue and failure. I can’t tell you how happy I was to see how dreadful he looked.
He was drunk at the cocktail party, him with an ulcer, and wouldn’t leave me alone. Kept saying how sorry he was. Wished things had turned out different. Wished he hadn’t given me up. Good for the ego, but sickening under the circumstances. Emily retrieved him, giving me black looks. Remembering her awful temper, I hoped there wouldn’t be a scene.
While she chatted, her face remained rigidly pleasant the whole evening. She was as socially disciplined as her oft touched up hair. Knowing her as we do, don’t you wonder at the fury that whirred beneath the forced charm?
Reflecting on the guppies and begonias, I had a curious thought. Perhaps she murdered him with salsa or slipped lemon into his tea. Something acidic to tear that ulcer open. That night, alone in their hotel room, he died.
I wonder if he suffered.
They buried him yesterday. It was a sunny day, almost too warm to wear black. Emily looked smarter than a boutique mannequin. While we were praying, something made me look up. Emily was staring at the casket, smiling her Emily Dickinson smile.