Graham Masterton: Revenge of the Manitou

He walked over to the fence and examined the ground. It was hard clay, too rough to show any footprints. He believed that Mrs. Novato hadn’t seen anybody, but he also believed that Toby was telling the truth. Tough little boys didn’t go fainting for no reason at all-and come to that, unimpressionable fathers didn’t go imagining old men’s spectral faces for no reason at all, either.

He went slowly back to Ms pickup truck, and sat behind the wheel for a while, thinking. He had a feeling that something wasn’t right-the same feeling you get on a warm day, when a storm’s beginning to build. He looked in his rearview mirror a couple of times, half-expecting to see the man in the white duster standing by the fence, but nothing appeared. After a few minutes, he turned the key in the ignition and drove off toward the bay, and another day’s work.

Although it was warm and clear in the valleys, there was a foggy chill out on Bodega Bay, and Neil wore his windbreaker while he finished off varnishing the White Dove’s afterdeck and cabin doors. Old Doughty wasn’t far off, smoking his pipe and watching the coast-guard cutters from under his peaked nautical cap, and over by the gift shop a party of Japanese tourists were proudly having their picture taken in front of Bodega Bay’s well-worn collection of whales’ jaws and sharks’ teeth. As Neil put the last licks of varnish on the doors, Doughty got up off his perch and came strolling along the jetty. He paused by the White Dove’s berth, and stood watching Neil for a while, puffing and gurgling at his pipe.

“I reckon you’ve got yourself a few good hours’ work in that beaten-up tub,” he remarked. “I never saw anyone handle a craft so badly, the way that Mr. Collings knocked her about. I was damned surprised he never drowned himself.”

Neil shrugged. “It’s his funeral,” he said, noncommittally.

Doughty grunted. He was nearly eighty, with a big, wrinkled face that was weatherbeaten to a dull red color. He wore the same navy-blue reefer jacket that he had worn the first time Neil’s father had brought him down to the jetty twenty years ago and hefty fisherman’s rubbers. There was a time when he had operated a fishing fleet of his own, but that was long before most people could remember.

“I don’t know why you bother fancying that boat up so nice,” Doughty said. “You know that he’s going to knock her about just as bad next summer.”

“I do it because he pays me,” replied Neil.

Doughty sighed. “You’re not like your father. Nor your grandfather, for that matter.”

“I never said I was. And from what I’ve been told about my grandfather, he drank a bottle of rum a day, and smoked five cigars before breakfast.”

“What’s wrong in that?” Doughty wanted to know.

Neil laughed. He slicked varnish across the bottom of the cabin door and set down his brush.

“They always used to tell stories about the Fenner family on the wharf here,” said Doughty. “I remember when I was round about ten years old, my pa pointed out your great-grandfather Jack Fenner to me, and told me not to displease him, on account of he’d thrown three fishermen into the bay for offering him undersize lobsters.”

“I’ve heard all the stories,” said Neil, tidying up his paint cans. “I freely admit that I’m the most colorless Fenner that ever lived.”

“You’re not the worst, though,” said Doughty, tapping out the dottle of his pipe against a wooden upright.

“So I suppose you’ve got something to be thankful for.” “Oh, yes? And who do you reckon was the worst?” Doughty fumbled in his pocket and brought out two pieces of saltwater taffy. He tossed one to Neil, and unwrapped the other one himself. He said,

“I have to suck these slow, you know, otherwise they get themselves snarled up in my dentures.”

Neil came forward and clambered up onto the jetty. “You still haven’t told me who was the worst Fenner of all. I bet he wasn’t as bad as the worst Doughty of all.” “Oh, he sure was,” said Doughty, shaking his head. “The Doughtys was clergy originally, from Plymouth, England. Highly peaceable folk. But the Fenners were tough farmers, tough settlers, and vigilantes. The Fenners did more to settle Napa Valley than George Yount, and most folks say that George Yount was the father of Napa Valley.”

Neil and Doughty walked side by side to the parking lot, where Neil let down the back of his pickup and heaved out three coils of fresh rope.

“The worst Fenner of all was called Bloody Fenner, and I’m surprised your pa never told you about him,” said Doughty.

“I think he did, when I was younger. An Indian fighter, wasn’t he, back in the 1830s?

They called him ‘Bloody’ Fenner because he collected ears and scalps.”

Doughty nodded. “That’s right. But the story goes that he did worse than that. Back when the white men were fighting the Wappos up in the mountains, he used to fight on one side or another, according to how it took his fancy. If the Wappos offered him a couple of square miles of good farming ground, he’d set traps for the white men; and if the white men were ready to pay him enough, he’d bushwhack the Wappos.

Nobody never proved nothing, of course, so he never came to trial, but the stories went around for years that Bloody Fenner was responsible for some of the worst of the Indian massacres, and it took a good few years before the Fenner family wasn’t shunned no more.”

Neil hefted the ropes back to the White Dove, and heaved them onto the deck.

“That’s something I wasn’t told,” he said to Doughty. “I guess Bloody Fenner was someone my family preferred to forget.”

Doughty stuck his pinkie up inside his palate to dislodge a sticky lump of taffy. “If you really want to. know about the old days, you ought to take a trip across to Calistoga and talk to Billy Ritchie-that’s if he’s still alive, but I haven’t heard different. Billy Ritchie’s grandpa was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, and a lot of folks say he was the model for Israel Hands in Treasure Island. They were a tough lot, in those days, but they say that Bloody Fenner was the toughest of all.”

Neil climbed down onto the White Dove and started to uncoil one of the ropes. The day was warming up now, out here on the bay, but the gray fog was even denser, and he couldn’t even see as far as the harbor’s inlet. A fishing boat chugged past like a gray ghost.

“Here,” said Neil. He reached in his pocket and handed Doughty a five-dollar bill.

“Why don’t you go set them up in the bar? As soon as I’m through here, I’ll come join you.”

It was a gentle way of buying Doughty a free drink. The unwritten code of behavior on Bodega wharf was that you let Doughty bend your ear for a while, and then you slipped him a little money to make life a little easier for him.

Doughty said, “Don’t forget to come along, mind. I’ll set you up an old-fashioned.”

Then he tipped his nautical cap, and swayed off along the boardwalk as if he were on the deck of an old-time clipper.

Neil grinned to himself and went back to his painting and tidying up. Although the White Dove was superficially battered, it wouldn’t take much to bring back her glamour, and she wasn’t going to need a major overhaul this year. Neil reckoned to have finished her off by the end of the week. Then he could get back to his small yard across the other side of the wharf and complete work on a fishing boat he was refitting.

It was almost eleven o’clock in the morning,and the fog was at its densest. The sun was a pale yellow disk, and the wind had stilled. Neil found that he was sweating as he sorted and tied the new ropes, and he felt for a moment as if he could scarcely breathe.