Shooting at Loons Read online

“God! What bastards they can be,” she said at last when we had finally gained control again. “Come on over to the Ritchie House and let me get us another bottle of champagne.”

  “I’m sorely tempted,” I told her truthfully, “but I probably shouldn’t show up in court tomorrow with a champagne hangover.”

  • • •

  On the long drive back to Harkers Island, though, I almost wished I’d accepted Linville’s invitation. I still didn’t have a handle on her, but I was starting to like the cut of her jib.

  Lots of people came to her party, but Barbara Jean thought she was manipulative and coercive. Chet seemed to find her amusing except when she threatened Barbara Jean’s equanimity. Even Lev, damn him to holy hell, thought she was beautiful and smart but “maybe just a little too cute about the way she acquired property.” There had been that angry scene in the Ritchie House, something about the fraudulent sale of a boat? And I had a feeling that Mahlon Davis’s “bitch over to Beaufort” was going to turn out to be Linville Pope, too.

  But anybody who could see the absurdity of the situation tonight and laugh that hard surely couldn’t be all bad.

  It was well past midnight when I drove up to the cottage. Except for scattered security lights on tall utility poles, all the nearby houses were dark. No light out at Mahlon’s, but I saw the shape of Mickey Mantle’s pickup parked behind the boat shelter and wondered if his triumph in court had him driving without a license again.

  The only thing I could hear was wind in the live oaks and low waves splashing against the shore. I got out of the car, walked up onto the porch, unlocked the door and set my garment bag inside without switching on a light. At that moment, the telephone began to ring—an intrusively mechanical, almost alien sound amid the island’s natural quiet. When I picked up the receiver, Lev’s voice said, “Red, I—”

  I broke the connection, then laid the receiver under the pillow and walked away from its insistent beeping.

  The wind was blowing in smartly off the water and it was chilly, but I slipped on Sue’s old windbreaker again and went back out to one of the porch rockers, hoping the rhythmic flash of the lighthouse and the sound of the surf would lull me into drowsiness. Seeing Lev again after all these years had roiled up so many old memories and conflicting emotions that if I tried to go sensibly to bed, I knew I’d only toss and turn till morning.

  When we met, I was still running from a really stupid marriage, living on part-time jobs and money Aunt Zell sent. It was a bitter cold winter and the New York Public Library was a good place to stay warm. For some reason, I’d gotten it into my head that I needed to read Proust, and that winter, I did. From Swann’s Way straight through The Past Recaptured, though to this day I couldn’t describe a single scene or say what those seven books added up to. Yet while I read, I was totally addicted and it seemed to ease my homesickness.

  And then one day I lifted up my head and there was Lev across the wide musty room and I realized that he’d been there all winter, too, in the late afternoon, in almost the same chair. Wiry hair in a perpetual tousle, close-knit frame, dark eyes set so far under the ridge of his brow that they were like two secretive intelligent creatures peering out of a cave.

  He hadn’t noticed me, but once I’d focused on him, I couldn’t seem to quit. I circled to see what he was reading. Two of my cousins back in Dobbs were lawyers and I recognized that those were law books and landmark cases and that he was probably a law student somewhere in the city.

  No ring on his finger and no study dates that winter.

  Oh what the hell, I thought. I left Proust lying on the table and followed Lev out of the library that evening and when we were almost to the bottom step, I let myself fall against him so that we both went down in a tangle of books and scarves and laughing apology.

  I must have slipped on the ice, I told him, and no, nothing seemed broken, but it wouldn’t be, would it, not with all the heavy coats and gloves y’all wear up here? He heard my accent (how could he not, the way I was laying it on?) and asked how long I’d been in New York and all I could think was that I’d never seen eyes so dark and piercing and the smell of his aftershave—I could almost smell it now, could almost—

  I stopped rocking abruptly.

  It wasn’t Lev’s aftershave I smelled, but a fragrance sweetish and equally well known. I stood up, sniffing now, quartering the wind like one of my daddy’s hounds.

  Nothing.

  Yet, seated in the rocking chair, I smelled it again, an elusively familiar aroma.

  Insect repellent?

  I walked over to the near end of the porch. In the dim light, did the grass there looked scuffed? If I hadn’t been looking straight down at it—a dark shape that I’d thought was a rock or a piece of scrap wood—I might not have noticed when it drew back very, very slowly and disappeared under the edge of the porch.

  A booted foot.

  I sat back down in the rocker and thought about that foot a minute and then went out to the trunk of my car and got the loaded .38 Daddy gave me a few years back when I made it clear I wasn’t going to quit driving alone at night or stop looking for witnesses in rough places.

  Back up on the porch, I rocked for another couple of minutes, then slid the safety off and said in a low conversational tone, “I don’t know why you’re under my porch, but if you don’t come out now, I’m going to start shooting right through these planks.”

  I heard a muffled “Oh shit!” and scraping sounds, then a man hauled himself out feet first. As he reached for his pocket, I said, “Keep your hands in the air, mister!” and tugged at the front door.

  “No! No lights, okay?” His urgent voice was barely a whisper. “Please, lady.”

  He was a tall and lanky silhouette against the faint light coming from the store a quarter-mile away. “If you’d just let me—”

  “Officer...” I had to fumble for his name. “Chapin, is it?”

  It was the same game warden who’d been in court that afternoon. He peered at me closely.

  “Oh shit!” he swore again. “Judge? Excuse me asking, ma’am, but what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” I answered. “At least, I’m staying here this week. More to the point, what the hell are you doing here?”

  He stepped up onto the porch and pressed himself against the wall where the shadows were deepest. “Trying to save a few loons and swans. Mind pointing that thing somewhere else?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” I put the safety back on and laid the gun on the floor beside my chair.

  “We got a tip that somebody down on this part of the island’s been getting away with shooting loons for a few years now. Just stands on his porch and bangs away. If he bags one, it’s just a few steps out and back in again before we can get a fix on where the gunshot came from. I decided that this year, by damn, I was gonna bag him.”

  “You’re talking about Mahlon Davis, aren’t you?”

  “Well, that’s the way our suspicions have been running. Don’t suppose you’ve seen him at it?”

  “No-o, but—”

  “But what, ma’am?”

  “I was just remembering that both yesterday and today, I did hear gunshots when I first woke up. Didn’t think anything about it, though.”

  “Not many people do, down here,” he said bitterly. “It’s the sound of springtime—spring peepers, migrating loons, shotgun blasts.”

  “Were you really going to spend the night under this porch?”

  “I didn’t know anybody was staying here, although I should have realized, the way your phone’s been going crazy the last hour. I thought it belonged to somebody upstate that only comes down weekends. Stalking some of these boogers is like stalking wild turkeys. Except they’re smarter and edgier than any turkey and they can spot a game warden a mile off. Only chance you have is to get in a place they can’t see you and then grab ‘em while the bird’s still warm in their hands.”

  “Spoken like a man who enjoys his job,” I laughed.
<
br />   “We might not go in it for the sport,” he said, “but most of us do like to hunt. And this surely is a hunt.”

  “Yeah, I used to hear tell of a revenuer like that. He’d lay out in the woods for a week at the time to catch somebody.”

  “It’s not too bad. I’ve got a sleeping bag under there.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Parked up at the Shell Point ranger station. One of my buddies dropped me off up the road about ten minutes before you pulled in. Only thing I could think to do was dive under there before you saw me. I thought you’d go on to bed and I could just sneak out. How’d you spot me?”

  “You were a little too liberal with your Off,” I told him.

  All this time, we’d been speaking in low tones. The wind was stiffening now and I was getting cold and suddenly quite tired.

  I stood and pulled the windbreaker close around me. “Well, have fun. If I don’t get to bed I won’t be able to keep my eyes open in court tomorrow.”

  “Say, Judge?” Chapin’s voice was diffident, but I knew that wheedling tone. God knows I’d heard it often enough from my brothers and nephews.

  “No,” I said.

  “But we’re both officers of the court, on the same side, aren’t we?”

  “Up to a point,” I said. “If they were shooting loons for the hell of it, I’d say sure you could spend the night inside on the couch, but these people eat what they shoot and—”

  “Most robbers spend what they steal,” he said reasonably.

  I sighed. “They’re going to hate me.”

  “They won’t even know it was you,” he promised. “I’ll slip out the back door. They won’t know where I came from.”

  “You better not snore and I get first dibs on the bathroom,” I told him.

  He pulled his sleeping bag out from under the porch, shook it good, and we went inside, still not turning on any lights.

  8

  Our life is like a stormy sea

  Swept by the gales of sin and grief,

  While on the windward and the lee

  Hang heavy clouds of unbelief;

  But o’er the deep a call we hear,

  Like harbor bell’s inviting voice;

  It tells the lost that hope is near,

  And bids the trembling soul rejoice.

  “This way, this way, O heart oppress’d,

  So long by storm and tempest driv’n;

  This way, this way, lo, here is rest,”

  Rings out the Harbor Bell of heaven.

  —John H. Yates

  When I awoke the next morning, it wasn’t the sound of shotguns blasting across the water that floated through my window, but those very loud bantam gamecocks that Mickey Mantle keeps caged among the bushes at the edge of Mahlon’s lot.

  I’m sure he fights them somewhere on the island, but it was no concern of my mine. The clock said it was only six-ten, so I pulled the quilt over my head and tried to ignore their strident crows.

  Less easy to ignore an hour later was the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee that worked its way under my closed door and down under the quilt till I was roused to pull a sweatshirt over my gown and go follow it out to the kitchen. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a phantom aroma for by the time I got there, the pot was empty, a cup was draining in the dish rack on the sink, and there was a note on the table:

  6:45

  Thanks for the loan of your couch. All quiet this a.m., so I’ll try to sneak out without ruining your reputation.

  Kidd Chapin

  There were enough trees and bushes between the back door and the mobile home fifty feet away. With Clarence and his son away all week, Chapin had a pretty good chance of succeeding unless someone happened to be looking right at the door the minute he opened it. Once outside and through the bushes, there was enough foot traffic back and forth between the road and the water, that no one would know if he were coming or going.

  Reputation intact for one day more. My brothers would be pleased.

  I showered while a fresh pot of coffee brewed, then slipped on jeans and sneakers and walked down to the water with that first hot cup cradled in my hands. The air was chilly and the wind was still off the water and stronger than last night, but the sun was burning off a light haze and it was going to be a beautiful day.

  A door banged and I looked back to see young Guthrie standing there with books under his arm, his blond thatch brushed, dressed for school. He hesitated a moment, as if uncertain whether or not to acknowledge my presence. It was the first time I’d seen him since Sunday, but I greeted him casually and he joined me at the water’s edge with some of his usual self-assurance.

  “You laying out today?” he asked.

  I smiled. “Wish I could.”

  “Me, too. I hate school.”

  “Yeah, I did, too.”

  He glanced over at me quickly before his eyes darted away again. “How’d you get to be a judge then?”

  “I didn’t say I hated learning. I said I hated school. Especially days like this. They made me want to be outdoors, not shut up inside.”

  “Yeah,” he said, gazing wistfully out at the banks.

  I found myself covertly examining his face and as much of his neck as was visible beneath the long-sleeved shirt, but I saw no fresh bruises. Just because Mahlon might use corporal punishment didn’t make him a child abuser. My own daddy’d switched every one of us at one time or another for doing things not much worse than taking a boat without permission; but we never questioned his love for us. Unfortunately, there was no way to ask Guthrie if he felt loved and secure.

  “Sometimes I have to say a courtroom feels like being back in school,” I told him.

  As if my words had given him the opening he’d needed, he said, “Want to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “My daddy told me he saw you yesterday and you let him off.”

  “I didn’t let him off, son. The prosecution didn’t prove its case.”

  He looked dubious but didn’t comment.

  More doors banged further up the path, near the road. Mark Lewis waved, then hopped in the car where his mother was waiting to drive him to school off-island. Another house over, Makely’s mother, too, was already backing the car out of their garage. I’ve sat in too many juvenile courts to think that every woman who bears a child is ipso facto a loving mother out of a Hallmark commercial; nevertheless, seeing those two boys with their mothers made my heart ache for Guthrie, raised by a reclusive grandmother and a short-tempered grandfather.

  If it bothered Guthrie, he didn’t show it. Somewhere, not too far away, we heard a school bus horn.

  “Reckon I better go.” As he started up the path toward the road, he paused and said, “You ever get any clams? I told Mark and Makely to get you some.”

  “Another lie,” sighed the preacher disapprovingly.

  “But think why,” urged the pragmatist.

  “That was real thoughtful of you,” I told Guthrie. “Thank you.”

  He nodded and hurried on. A moment later the big orange school bus gathered him up and rumbled on down the road.

  As I lingered, Mahlon came out, cast a weather eye toward sky and water, then walked on down to where I stood.

  “Getting ready to turn,” he said. “Be raining by nightfall.”

  “With the sun this bright?”

  “She can change quicker’n a woman’s mind.” He gave a sly, gap-toothed grin, but it was too early in the morning to annoy me.

  “Well, looky yonder!” he said abruptly, pointing to a pair of waterfowl heading up the shoreline. “Loons!”

  They passed us almost at eye level and less than fifty feet out. I’d never seen any up close and I was delighted by their beauty: soot-black heads, crisp black-and-white checkered backs. But there was something about their awkward silhouette—head lower than the humpbacked body, legs trailing along behind—that reminded me of a mourning dove’s not-quite-got-it-together flight. They didn’t seem to fly m
uch faster than a dove either.

  “Wisht I had my gun,” said Mahlon.

  “You’d shoot a loon in front of a judge?” I asked.

  Again that sideways grin. “Ain’t against the law to shoot at ‘em. Only if you hit.”

  As the two loons disappeared into the distance, Mahlon followed their flight with a wistful yearning. “Lord, but they’re a pretty sight.”

  “Then how come you shoot them?”

  “Been doing it all my life,” he said. “Mostly they come along the shoreline like them two, only a little farther out, right at the edge of your gun range, just teasing you. And it’s sorta like they harden their feathers or something so the bird shot just slides off. I tell you, first time a youngun brings one home, he thinks he’s a man sure enough.”

  Rites of passage may be important, “But they’re an endangered species,” I argued.

  He gave an exasperated snort. “They ain’t no more endangered than turtles and I wish to hell turtles ate people, then maybe some folks’d get some sense about it. Turtles and loons ain’t endangered—we’re the ones in danger.”

  With that, he stomped off toward the boat shed and a moment later I heard the steady pounding of his hammer.

  • • •

  The shoreline in front of the cottage is too narrow and too cluttered with rocks or piers to make walking any distance very pleasant, so I walked back up the path, left my cup on the porch, then cut through the Willises’ side yard and hiked on up to Cab’s, my favorite store on the island. In addition to Seven-Eleven type groceries and housewares, one side room of the store is devoted to heavy-duty fishing gear: rubber boots and waders, ropes and nets of all gauges, floats and sinkers of every size, clam rakes and flounder gigs; the other side room holds every kind of rod, reel, and lure known to man or fish, as well as electronic fish finders and other boat-related gadgets.

  It’s an education just to walk up and down the aisles and look at the six or eight different kinds of cotton, leather, nylon or rubber gloves—some thick for handling oysters, others heavy and rough-textured for dealing with slippery fish and eels.

  It’s also a place where an upstater can hear Down East locals gossiping with each other, once your ear ratchets up a notch to translate the rapid flow of that wonderful accent.