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  OFF SEASON

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  To my sister, Martha Walker, and my brothers, Kenneth and Howard Craig, who stayed in the mountains when I went to live by the sea.

  “Perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart.”

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  — 1 —

  The evening that Mimi Bettencourt shot Ignacio Cortez started out as just another chilly but peaceful fall day on Martha’s Vineyard. I happened to be at the scene because Manny Fonseca, who, like Nash Cortez, was a shootist and a hunter of both birds and deer, had come by that morning and asked me to go to the meeting. I did a bit of hunting myself, because I like to eat goose and duck and venison, and Manny wanted hunters to be at the hearing because he was sure that Mimi and Phyllis Manwaring and a bunch of their pals would be there causing trouble.

  When pressed by people like Mimi, who considered hunters akin to murderers, I justified my shooting on the basis of the anthropologicaltheological argument that people have always eaten meat and fish and that you are allowed to kill animals as long as you eat them, because it’s all part of God’s master plan.

  Mimi, of course, was not persuaded by this reasoning, being a vegetarian for both ethical and medical reasons, and often warned me of the dire consequences of my barbarism. She was a vital, attractive woman, who lived alone in a large old farmhouse out by the state forest, surrounded by gardens of herbs, flowers and vegetables. She had grapevines and fruit trees, and milked goats from which she made excellent cheese. Her hair was long and beginning to gray, and she liked to wear long homespun skirts, loose sweaters, wraps of exotic design and heavy earrings. In mud time she exchanged her skirts and sandals for rubber boots and oversized jeans. She was nearsighted, walked with a slight stoop and looked, I thought, like a bohemian mother superior. She was a widow who had one daughter living on the island and another with children of her own living on the mainland. Mimi was both bright and emotional, and had always treated me well even though she disapproved of my shooting.

  I didn’t mind needling her. “I kill fish, too, Mimi,” I would tell her. “Lots of fish. I do it for a living.”

  “That’s just as bad,” she’d say, but you could tell that a dead fish didn’t arouse the passion that a dead bird or mammal did.

  “Maybe plants have feelings, too,” I’d say. “Who says it’s worse to kill an animal than a plant?”

  “I eat grains and fruits, mostly,” she’d say. “Nuts and flowers. I don’t kill things.”

  “How about mosquitoes?”

  “All right, all right, so I swat mosquitoes. I’m not a pacifist. If something attacks you, you can defend yourself. Get out of here, J.W.!”

  She put up with a lot from me, and had ever since I’d dated her youngest daughter, Angie, back in the days before I met Zee. “I only go out with your kid because I’m trying to get in good with you,” I’d tell her. We’d stayed friends even though Zee had long since gotten my mind off Angie and the other women I’d been with in the B.Z. days.

  A few days before Mimi shot Ignacio Cortez, I had finished replacing the floorboards of the rottenest part of her screen porch, and had gotten, in exchange, the Norwegian wood stove that Gus, her deceased husband, had used to warm his studio behind the house. Mimi didn’t use the studio anymore and therefore didn’t need the stove. I had had my eye on it for a long time.

  Gus Bettencourt’s family had enough money so that Gus hadn’t actually needed to work at his art or anything else, so I had admired him for not becoming another dilettante7 but a good and a productive painter. I felt the same way about Mimi, who had never ceased to labor just because she had married a wealthy young man. While she and Gus raised their family, she had planted and harvested her gardens and orchard, and sold their produce to the island grocery stores and, later, at the farmers’ market.

  Gus had not been an avid hunter, but I had seen him a few times in duck blinds, clutching his ancient 12 gauge, and sometimes encountered him on the beach trying for bluefish. Vegetarian Mimi and omnivorous Gus had struck some sort of compromise on the issue of food while he lived, but after his death she had increasingly protested the right of hunters, and to a lesser extent fishermen, to take animals’ lives. She wrote letters to the Vineyard Gazette, she spoke at meetings, she marched in the Fourth of July parade carrying signs opposing hunting, trapping and fishing, and she appeared at hearings.

  “She is a pain in the you-know-where,” said Manny. “Her and that Phyllis Manwaring and those other weirdos. They’ll be there tonight, you can bet on it, raising a stink about how awful us hunters are, and how dangerous it is to shoot on that land, and all the usual stuff they say. We need some of our guys there, J.W. Otherwise the goddamned Commission may stop us from using a hunk of land we’ve always hunted on! Here, lemme help you with that.”

  I was setting up the Norwegian stove on one side of my living room fireplace, and running the stovepipe up beside the fireplace chimney. The stove was heavy, so Manny’s help was welcome. We got it where I wanted it.

  “This thing will use less wood and throw out a lot more heat than the fireplace,” I said. “The price of oil these days, I hate to use the furnace if I don’t have to.”

  My house had some leaks that let the wind in, as had been the case ever since the house had been only an old hunting camp. Although I had sought the leaks, I could never find them all. I was looking forward to stoking up my new stove and sitting in front of it in the evening while I read a book. I wasn’t enthusiastic about going downtown to a Commission hearing.

  “You don’t need me down there,” I said to Manny. “There are plenty of guys on the island who’ll be there. I don’t like to get mixed up in these arguments.”

  “Look,” said Manny. “This island is getting smaller every day. People are buying up land and building houses where there never were houses before. Sometimes they just buy the land and close it off to the public. Pretty soon there won’t be any hunting land left at all. We’ve got to make sure that when the Commission buys a piece of property like this one we’ll still be able to use it like we always have. You’re a fisherman. You know how it is. A while back you could drive down to the beach somewhere, and now you can’t. Some goddamned developer or house owner from off island has closed off the road!”

  A point well taken. Still, I didn’t want to go. I had not moved to Martha’s Vineyard to get involved in the teapot tempests that occupied the islanders in the off season. During the summer, the local people were so busy making money that they didn’t have time to get their teeth into each other, but in the winter, when there was time on their hands, they scrapped with enthusiasm.

  “There are more of you than there are of them,” I said. “Besides, you’re the ones with the guns. You should be able to hold your own.”

  “Don’t give me that,” said Manny. “Nobody’s going to go that far. Jeez.” Then he had a thought and raised a brow. “Unless Nash Cortez tries to be funny, of course. He’s just liable to show up carrying a mounted deer head or some such fool thing. He loves to stick it to Mimi Bettencourt and her gang. ‘Vegetarian terrorists,’ he calls them. Sometimes I wish that guy would just stay home.”

  “Why, Nash is your main man,” I said. “He’s out there shooting off his mouth when the rest of you are home with your wives watching TV. Nash loves to natter at Mimi. Every time she writes a letter to the editor, he writes one back. He’s an actor, and this meeting is li
ke a stage. Nash isn’t going to stay home.”

  “No, he won’t. And that’s just the point. We don’t want the commissioners to think we’re all as crazy as Nash Cortez. We need some normal types, like you, to help us make our case. Hell, I doubt if Mimi Bettencourt could bring herself to cuss you out in public. She’d have to treat you nice.”

  “Mimi may be nice most of the time, but not when it comes to hunters. She’s a fanatic when it comes to them, and that includes me.”

  Manny shook his head. “Nah, she likes you. Come tonight. You’ll be a restraining influence.”

  I didn’t want to be an influence at all, but Manny seemed to be willing to argue all day if he had to, so I said, “Okay, okay, I’ll be there. For a little while at least.”

  Manny was happy. “Good.” He patted my new stove. “Fixing up the place for Zee, eh? I heard that you two decided to get hitched. Be the best thing that ever happened to you! Prettiest girl on the island. Congratulations!”

  “Thanks.”

  He wandered around and found the pile of old padlocks that I’d brought in from the shed out back. He also found the fruit of a summer yard sale.

  “What are these things?” He picked up the pack and looked at it.

  “it’s clear you’re no burglar. Those are lock picks. I got a little book to go with them and some skeleton keys from the widow of a locksmith up in West Tisbury. I’ve been saving those padlocks for years just in case I happened to find a key to fit one of them, and now I’m trying to open them with the picks.”

  Manny was pleased. “Never saw these things before. Always wanted to be able to open locks myself.”

  Every English teacher I ever knew wants to own a pub, with a dart board and maybe a skittles table. The rest of us all want to be able to open locks. So far, I’d gotten one of mine open. My career as locksmith did not seem bright. On the other hand, I had my locks and my picks, so future entertainment was free.

  Manny went away, and I started putting up the stovepipe. I could do that and think about Zee at the same time. I saw her in her white uniform at the hospital, then in her waders at Wasque Point hauling in bluefish, then in my yard, lying beside me in the summer sun, getting an all-over tan. I saw her dark hair spread like a black halo on my white pillow while she smiled and reached for me.

  At noon, I warmed up the rest of the kale soup I’d had for supper the night before, and ate it with the last thick slices of Monday’s bread, washing everything down with some jug burgundy. Homemade bread and soup do not last long at my house, so I decided to make more of each tomorrow. Security is having a container of kale soup in the freezer and a loaf of new bread in the fridge.

  By late afternoon, I had the stove installed, so I fired it up and watched to see what it would do. It did just fine. It was an airtight stove with a glass front so you could see the fire. Once it was going, you could adjust the flue so it would throw out just about as much heat as you wanted. I diddled with the control for a while until it seemed about right, then got a beer and sat down with the Gazette to find out what the Commission hearing was about.

  It was about fifty acres of land up near the state forest that the Commission was thinking of buying. The Commission was a well-funded private organization that had been around for years. It used its money to buy land for conservation purposes before developers could get their hands on it. The Commission held meetings to get public input about what lands it should buy and how the land should be used afterward. Some people who had always used the land in a certain way wanted to continue to use it that way. Other people didn’t want it used that way anymore.

  There seemed to be no limit on the restrictions some people wanted imposed upon those new land purchases. They wanted no trespassing signs, no walks, no bird-watching, no fishing, no picnicking, no anything. Those were the No People people. They wanted land to revert to its wilderness state, and they were very firm in their views.

  Other people wanted the land to be made available to human beings and their activities. The most extreme wanted no rules at all. Others wanted limited access: paths and walkways, benches installed at scenic spots, access for picnickers and bird-watchers, and such. Fishermen wanted to be able to get to customary angling spots; hunters wanted to keep using their traditional hunting grounds. These were the People people, and there were more of them than No People people. Alas, they, unlike the highly unified No People people, were often at odds about just which human beings should be allowed use of the land. A classic case was the hunternon-hunter conflict, with Mimi Bettencourt and Ignacio Cortez as representative zealots for their causes.

  Sometimes the No People people didn’t even argue their case, apparently believing that the People people had gone at each other so fiercely that the commissioners would have to decide to keep everybody off the land just so the fight would stop.

  I didn’t hunt deer much anymore, although I didn’t mind eating the venison if I could get hold of some. The last time I had killed a deer I hadn’t enjoyed the experience as much as I planned, so I hadn’t done it again. As fate would have it, my last deer had been killed along a game trail in the fifty acres the Commission was planning to buy.

  It was land owned by Carl Norton, a frugal New Englander and one of the numerous Martha’s Vineyard Nortons, whose families have been on the island for centuries. As a young man, Carl had done his own hunting. Later, suffering with failing vision, he made a deal with hunters using his land. They could hunt, but he got some venison. He had gotten a hunk of my last deer, in fact. Eventually, continued ill health had led him to leave the island to stay with his daughter on the Cape.

  His fifty acres had long been of interest to developers, but Carl had, instead, made it available to the Commission. For the right price, of course.

  I had never liked Carl Norton. He had a quick, lacerating tongue, which would have been all right had it been accompanied by any sense of humor. But it was not. It was a knife without a sheath, and, combined with a parsimony of both purse and spirit, made him a man I did not care for. His sole act of generosity was his willingness to let deer hunters walk his land, and even that, it was said, was because his father, a hunter, had forced him to swear that he would do it. Even for Carl Norton, an oath was an oath, and he had stuck to it.

  The oath his wife had taken when she married him was not, on the other hand, enough to keep her with him. A few years into the marriage, she had taken their boy and girl and fled across the Sound to America, where she had gotten a divorce. Thereafter, Carl had lived alone, his tightfisted lifestyle apparently sufficiently unattractive to prevent any other woman from permanently entering his household, although there were rumors of certain women coming and going from the farm. As the local sages observed, men cannot resist beauty and women cannot resist money.

  I had not been able to figure why Carl hadn’t just sold out to a developer. Developers had more money than the Commission, and Carl, being a man who loved a penny, could probably have made more money from one of them. But he had not. He had offered to sell to the Commission for admittedly a lot of money, but for a lot less than he could otherwise have gotten. Why?

  I could not imagine. But then I live in an old hunting camp and my checkbook has never been balanced in my life, so I obviously am not a guy who can hope to understand money or the people who actually believe it’s important enough to think about very much.

  I wondered if, now that I was going to get married, I should make a real effort to live a fiscally sound life. That would be a real challenge. Maybe I should let Zee take care of the money, if we ever got any.

  Zee would not be visiting me tonight, but would be going right home from the hospital to her house on the West Tisbury/Chilmark line to do some womanly things that could not be done at my place, so I ate supper alone, after a Tanqueray vodka martini: Tanqueray vodka (kept, of course, in the freezer) and nothing else, in a frosted glass.

  Supper was Oysters Rockefeller made from oysters from the Edgartown Great Pond and spina
ch from my own garden. I had considered making a rolled fillet of sole, but the idea of Oysters Rockefeller was so appealing that I made a whole meal of just that, and washed it down with a chilled St. Emelion. It was clear that life was good, and there was a God.

  By the time I finished washing the dishes and stacking them beside the sink, I was already late for the Commission hearing. I am never distressed at being late for meetings, however, so I did not speed to this one. The meeting was in the Edgartown town hall, but this being late October I had no trouble finding a parking place right on Main Street.

  As I walked in the front door I was met with a cacophony of human sound coming from the meeting room down the hall. Strident voices were raised in anger and dispute. I thought I recognized Mimi Bettencourt’s voice among other feminine shouts and cries. These were mixed with masculine bellows and yells. Unimaginative curses were pronounced, and voices shouted in vain for order. Someone identified himself as a policeman and called for quiet which he did not get. I walked down the hall and into the room just in time to see Ignacio Cortez, tall and lean, and wearing a moth-eaten coonskin hat and coat, bend toward Mimi Bettencourt, shake a bony fist in her face and call her the worst name he could think of.

  “Off islander! That’s what you are! A damned off islander! Trying to come down here and tell us how to live! Go back to where you came from, and take all of your kind with you! Get out!”

  “That does it!” shouted Mimi. “Here! This is what you and your sort deserve!” She reached into her huge purse and her hand came out with a pistol. A gasp of fear and astonishment rose from the throats of those citizens who saw the gun.

  Before Nash Cortez could react, she shot him in the head. He staggered back and slapped a hand to his forehead. The hand came away red. Someone in the crowd saw the red hand and screamed. One of the people at the table in front of the room was banging with a gavel. I was moving, but before I could get to the pistol and wrest it away, Mimi had shot Nash again, right in the heart.