Mark Mills - Amagansett

That wasn’t the end of it, though. They had lost sight of the whaleship on the long pull back. Then the wind breezed up from the sou’west. They were six men in a cockleshell boat tossed on an angry sea, many hundreds of miles from land, rowing blind in a fading light, dragging a dead whale. When the last vestiges of day dipped below the western horizon, hope went with them. Some among them began to pray, not for succor, but final prayers, beseeching forgiveness for sins committed.

And then they saw it, a beacon in the night—the distant fires of the try-works burning on the deck of their mother ship—and the strength returned to their backs and arms. Safe alongside at last, one of the oarsmen, a Scotsman, cursed then kicked the whale that had almost cost them their lives. Too exhausted for further labor, others were assigned to undertake the cutting-in while they recovered on the deck, smoking their pipes. When the first blanket piece was hoisted aboard from the carcass, the block made fast to the main masthead came free, and two tons of suspended blubber felt the fierce grip of gravity.

The scene was enacted in somber silence, the whaleboat’s lugsail doubling as the blanket piece, Billy playing the unfortunate Scotsman on whom it landed. The message was clear, though Cap’n Josh spelled it out for the younger ears. Even in death the whale had sought satisfaction for the disrespect shown it by one of its hunters. It was a lesson they would all be wise to remember.

These expeditions to far-flung corners of the globe were played out almost every weekend for a year. Then Cap’n Josh suffered a seizure, and after a brief, humiliating struggle turned up his toes. That he died well after his time was poor consolation to Rollo, who withdrew into himself. The whaleboat house fell dormant once more, until given new life on Napeague almost twenty years later, taking its place between Conrad’s house and the barn. It was pleasing to Conrad that all three buildings had experienced previous lives. It somehow made them one with the landscape, the ever-changing sands on which they were perched.

None of this he had any intention of revealing to Lillian, but she drew it from him in the way that only a stranger can, fueling him with questions. At a certain point, though, she grew silent, pensive.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘The stories.’

‘What about them?’

‘I don’t have any to tell. Nothing that comes close, at least.’

‘I doubt that’s true.’

‘It is. But it doesn’t matter.’

‘They’re just stories,’ he shrugged. ‘Maybe I made them up.’

‘Now you’re just trying to make me feel better.’

‘If I am, it’s not working.’

His words brought a smile to her lips. She lit a cigarette and looked at him intently.

‘What are you doing here, Conrad?’

‘What?’

‘Why not over there with everyone else? Why out here on your own?’

‘It’s my home.’

‘You made it your home.’

He felt himself coming to, like waking from a dream, the cold wash of reality bringing him to his senses, suddenly aware of the shattered lobsters on their plates.

‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘I should drive you back.’

She asked if she could borrow a book and he told her to take her pick.

‘Is this any good?’ she asked, plucking one off the shelf.

‘Not bad.’

She turned to him. ‘I thought you hadn’t read them.’

‘That one I’ve read.’

‘I hear it’s tough going, but worth it.’

He didn’t take the bait, but he did reach for a pen and write in the fly-leaf: To Lillian, on her…

‘How old are you?’

‘Never ask a lady her age,’ she said, but told him anyway.

… 28th birthday, he wrote.

‘Aren’t you going to say who it’s from?’

‘You’ll know,’ said Conrad.

They barely spoke on the drive back.

‘Thanks for the book,’ she said as they pulled up in front of her house.

She reached for the handle, but hesitated. Turning back, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

‘That’s the best birthday I’ve had in years.’

And the last she would ever have.

Sunday was a better day.

He rose early, venturing outdoors for the first time in two days. There was an ominous ground swell running, with waves breaking over the bar and banking up in their eagerness to strike the shore, the outer ripples of some distant Caribbean storm.

He stripped off and fought his way through the break, struggling against the pain in his ribs. It had diminished little in the past week, though the bruising had lost some of its lividity, dulling to a grayish purple tinged with yellow. He still welcomed the injury inflicted by Ellis Hulse’s boot. It had offered him the perfect excuse to lay off the fishing for a while, to be alone, no need to keep up appearances of normality.

That changed a few hours later, when Rollo showed up fresh from church in his ill-fitting suit and clutching a Bible. He had brought some aspirins with him to speed along Conrad’s recovery.

Rollo had spent the past week crewing for his father on the Ariadne, a 110-foot subchaser from the Great War, the fastest rig in the Smith Meal bunker fleet. The fishing had been good—Conrad had seen pods of menhaden darkening the waters off the back side all week—but Rollo seemed unwilling to talk about it. This meant only one thing: a spell on the ocean in the company of his father and brothers had undermined his confidence.

No doubt they’d had him working the winch, or below decks in the engine room manning the old Fairbanks-Morse, awaiting instructions from the pilothouse. Nothing too challenging. Never anything too challenging.

Conrad announced that he’d be ready for action by Wednesday, and Rollo visibly came to life, rolling a smoke and demanding a coffee.

‘We’ll be into them Wednesday, get us a bunch, you’ll see,’ he said when he finally left, taking off towards the beach.

Conrad watched him all the way.

Rollo turned as he crested the frontal dune, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Looks fishy to me!’ he yelled.

Conrad waved, and he was gone.

Wednesday was pushing it, but it would force him to dig himself out of the irremediable gloom into which he had sunk. Something needed to change, and fast. He’d taken to muttering to himself as he shuffled around the house like a soul in limbo.

Maybe things would be different once he’d visited her. He felt ready to. That in itself was something. He checked his watch. Still too early. The cemetery would be milling with people paying tribute to their dead.

By midday they should all be gone, driven indoors by the building heat.

He parked on Three Mile Harbor Road and walked the last couple of hundred yards. He was wearing fawn twill pants and the white shirt reserved for special occasions. He had even dug out some lace-up shoes.

He felt foolish in the clothes, and no doubt he looked it too. He knew Lillian would have laughed at him, but somehow he didn’t care. In fact it brought a smile to his lips, picturing the glint of playful mockery in her eyes.

The cemetery was deserted except for a scrappy-looking dog loping about, forlornly nosing the ground as if aware that all those bones were down there but far beyond its reach. Bouquets of fresh flowers laid that morning studded the ground like colorful pins in a green felt board. The sun was high, intense, and it cast his shadow black on the ground at his feet.

Her grave was buried beneath a deep blanket of wreaths and other flowers, and it struck him that even now they were shielded from each other. He clamped his eyes shut in the hope of blotting out the scene. But dim shapes took form in the darkness, coalescing to produce her features, set in repose, a low, gloomy light cutting across them. Her wide-spaced eyes doomed to collapse in on themselves, her lips to draw back into a hideous rictus grin, her tongue to protrude, the flesh of her barely freckled cheeks predestined to blacken, blister then liquefy, consumed from within by the very organisms that had struggled so hard to ensure the body’s survival.