Mark Mills - Amagansett

Guests tended to stay no more than a few days, time enough to recover from the crossing while Valentin arranged their railroad tickets for the onward journey. And it would have been no different for them if their father hadn’t struck up conversation in the barroom with a fellow by the name of Eusebio Landaluce. He was tall, with a stooping gait and a feral expression that belied his good nature. He laughed heartily at the slightest inducement and he was immensely proud of his black Borsalino hat, which, he swore blind, was made from the hairs of wild Argentinian rabbits. He plucked coins from behind the boys’ ears, stuffed his silk kerchief into his fist only for it to vanish before their disbelieving eyes. He made his ears dance, his nose wiggle, and he could break wind on command.

After they had been dispatched upstairs to bed, Eusebio regaled their father with tales of woe out West. He told of Basques reduced to little more than slavery by the owners of the big sheep companies, pitchforking hay and mucking out lambing sheds from dawn till dusk. The winter camps of the sheepherders were a sight to behold, he said. He had seen families dumped in the mountains with no more than a patched tent, some bedrolls, a pot-bellied stove and a 30/30 rifle for fending off the bears, wolves, coyotes and cougars. And when you weren’t defending yourself or the flock against wild animals, there were the cowboys to contend with. Fierce feuds raged between the ranchers and the sheepherders over the best pastureland. Then there were the kids in the street, the ones who’d spit on you and call you ‘black bascos’ or ‘dirty Catholic’. And so he went on, misery heaped upon hardship and suffering, a grim catalog of wretchedness.

When their father woke them the next morning and announced that they would be staying in New York, that Eusebio was going to find a place for them to live, they greeted the news with enthusiasm. Of course they did. They hadn’t laughed so much in over a year, not since their mother died. Even when they set eyes on the pitiful little apartment that was to be their home, their opinion of Eusebio never faltered. It later emerged that he had vacated the place that very morning, that the sums he took off their father by way of rent were excessive, to say the least, and no doubt more than covered the cost of the improved accommodation to which he’d decamped. All this they forgave him, and more besides, for he was true to his word.

He found a woman, Irena, to care for the boys during the day, to cook for them and teach them English. She was a spry little Lithuanian with a fierce temper and a questionable grasp of the language, but she quickly grew fond of them and let them know it. Obsessed with personal hygiene, she was always dragging them off to the public showerbath on 11th Street between A and B Avenues. It was Irena who introduced them to the neighborhood, pointing out the whores and the hustlers, the crazies and the pickpockets as she scuttled along, her bag clutched tightly to her breast.

On her days off, the boys would roam further afield, heading for South Street, the East River waterfront, with its forest of masts, the windjammers and clippers gathered cheek-by-jowl, their bowsprits sticking out over the street, sailors and longshoremen scuttling to and fro, offloading cargo or filling their bellies with chowder at the small eating places across from the pierhouses. They didn’t know what drew them here, not at the time. Only later did they realize that the sea was already in them.

Irena’s presence lent a much-needed order to their lives, as well as freeing their father to pursue his ‘business’ with Eusebio. It was an improbable partnership, almost comical—their father grave and thoughtful, Eusebio a babbling bundle of nerves—and for several months there was little to show for it. Then suddenly the apartment started to fill with furniture, and meat appeared on the table with increasing regularity.

The source of their new-found wealth was one of the many harebrained schemes Eusebio was always hatching. Most of them foundered, the triumph of wild optimism over common sense. This one was no different, except that it worked. They bought show programs from theater doormen, selling them on at a profit to errant husbands or wives in need of an alibi for their whereabouts that evening, something to drop in front of their unsuspecting spouses. As the business grew, they extended the service to include used ticket-stubs from senior ushers. Clients were sourced through a spreading network of saloon barmen, and runners were employed to handle the distribution.

Reduced, as they became, to the position of overseers, Eusebio and their father spent more time around the apartment. Dinner was always a riotous affair—laughter in the home was more precious than gold plate, Eusebio used to say—and it was generally followed by several hands of mus. Conrad was always paired with Eusebio against his father and brother, which stung a little but invariably resulted in victory, mus being a game of bluff and deception, Eusebio being a master of both.

The business continued to prosper, the money kept rolling in, and before long they moved to a much larger three-room apartment on the second floor. This was a matter of grave concern for Irena, who believed that to relocate downwards in the same building brought bad luck.

She was wrong.

At midnight on 16 January 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution came into effect.

Prohibition, thought Conrad, without Prohibition I wouldn’t be standing here on the ocean beach, casting into the surf. Not with much success, as it happened. The prospect of landing a fish for his supper was fading fast.

He reeled in, cut a fresh length of squid and fastened it to the hook. Five more casts, he told himself, then he’d throw in the towel.

On the fourth cast he felt a bite and struck. The line thumped taut; the rod craned its slender neck. Big enough for supper, and then some. But what was it? Was he right? Could they be here already, so early in the season?

‘Damn. Hell. Damn. Damn…’

He glanced left. Twenty yards down the beach a woman was hopping around at the water’s edge, straining to examine the sole of her bare foot. She lost her balance and tumbled backwards on to the sand. She looked over at him helplessly, and as she did so, the tension went out of the rod.

The fish was making a play for freedom, running at the shore. She hadn’t slipped the hook, there was still life in the line, he could feel the tremor in it. He reeled in as fast as he could, just fast enough as the fish broke to the westward. Any more slack and the ploy would have worked. But he had her now, she was tiring, resigned to the inevitable. No. She broke again, running eastward this time, stripping twenty yards of line from the reel. A fighter.

Experienced.

‘Excuse me.’

Not the first time she’s felt the sharp taste of steel in her mouth. He felt bad that it wasn’t going to work this time, that her bag of tricks wouldn’t save her.

‘Excuse me.’

Did the fish have as strong a sense of who he was, connected as they were by the line?

‘Excuse me.’ The indignation of the delivery struck home this time. He couldn’t afford to turn away, but answered nevertheless.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve cut myself. I’m bleeding.’

He was drawing the fish into the surf now. It leaped briefly and he smiled. ‘Ha!’

‘Is that all you can say? Ha!?’

‘Give me a minute.’

‘A minute?’

‘Less.’

He hauled the fish up on to the sand beyond the wash, pinned it there then struck it behind the head with the handle of his knife. Hard. Only then did he turn.

‘Let’s take a look,’ he said.

Beneath the blood he could see that the cut was long but not deep, running from the ball to the heel of her foot. It would mend itself without assistance, no need for stitches.

The offending spear of metal was poking from the packed sand just nearby.

‘Flotsam,’ said Conrad.

‘Oh really? Not jetsam?’

‘Wreckage from a boat, probably a merchant ship. We still get a lot of stuff cast up. From the war, you know, the U-boats.’

‘That’s very interesting. And what about my foot?’

Conrad prized the object from the sand. It was a small lump of wood pierced by a jagged shard of metal—shrapnel embedded there by some mighty explosion, a fossilized moment of devastation.

‘You’ll live,’ he said.

She used him as support until they reached the steepest part of the frontal dune, where she grew too weak to hop further. Conrad abandoned the rod by a clump of beach grass and took her up in his arms.

She carried the fish.

‘You live here?’

‘Yes.’

‘By yourself?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Don’t you get lonely?’

‘No.’

She looked around the room. ‘I didn’t know there was a place here.’

‘Not many people do. You can’t see it from the beach.’

‘Are those your books?’

‘No.’

‘You stole them?’

‘They’re my stepmother’s. She was a teacher.’

‘Was? She’s dead?’

‘Moved away. California.’

Her eyes scanned the shelves. ‘Have you read them?’

‘No.’ He opened the tin and removed a bottle of iodine. ‘This is going to sting.’

He was right. It did. He held her ankle tightly as he dabbed at the wound, carefully removing the sand, dropping the bloodied swabs into a bowl.

‘You have long toes.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘But then you’re tall.’

‘Do you mind not talking about my feet? I don’t think I’ve ever discussed my feet with anyone, and I can’t see that I should start now.’

‘Not another word.’

He placed a sterile pad over the cut and began binding it in place with gauze.

‘I hate them,’ she said.

‘Huh?’

‘My feet. They’re too big.’

‘You think?’

‘How many women you know take a size nine?’

‘Not a whole load.’

‘Exactly.’

‘They don’t look big, maybe because they’re narrow. Any wider and they could look big.’

‘You’re doing it again.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He secured the gauze with a safety pin.

‘Where are your shoes?’

‘At home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘East Hampton.’

‘I’ll run you back.’

‘Could I possibly have a drink of water? You do have water, don’t you?’

‘Sure.’

He poured a glass from the pitcher on the table and handed it to her.

‘You seemed very intent on catching that fish.’

The fish lay on the table, slick and metallic, its armored rainbow sides speckled with black dots, its fins and tail yellow, almost as if they belonged to another species altogether.

‘It’s a special fish—a weakfish.’

‘Really? It looked like it was putting up quite a fight.’

He smiled politely at her joke.

‘What makes it so special?’ she asked.

‘It shouldn’t be here yet, not till May. But then everything’s early this year, the shad bushes, dogwoods, birchwood violets, even the oaks. Now the fish.’

For the past few days he had seen gannets circling off the ocean beach, gulls doing the same in the bay: unseasonable indicators that the fish had already started their annual run up the coast and would soon be hitting the beach.

‘What will you do with it?’

‘Fry it in beer batter.’

‘Is it good?’

‘You’ve never had weakfish?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘You should try it some time.’

‘I’ll be sure to,’ she said a little curtly.

He took a filleting knife from the drawer in the table and began sharpening the blade on a stone. ‘You can share it with me if you like.’

‘I wouldn’t want to put you to any more trouble.’

There was a hint of annoyance in her voice that the offer hadn’t been immediately forthcoming.

‘As you like,’ he said, enjoying the game. ‘I have to do this now or the flesh will spoil.’

He sliced open the fish’s belly and pulled out the guts. He cut down to the backbone just behind the head, turned the blade and worked it towards the tail. The first fillet came free. Flipping the fish over, he repeated the process, aware that she was watching him with a look that hovered somewhere between intrigue and revulsion.

‘Beer batter, you say?’

‘Deep-fried cubes. We call them frigates.’

‘And they’re good?’

‘The best.’

‘That’s quite a claim.’

‘I tell you what,’ he said, turning to look her in the eye, ‘if you don’t agree, you’re allowed to say so.’

‘Deal.’

He sliced the skin from the fillets.

‘If I’m going to stay for supper, shouldn’t I know your name?’

‘Conrad.’

‘Lillian,’ she said. ‘Lillian Wallace.’

Eleven

The Model A bumped along the road to the beach landing, its chassis groaning, the beam from the headlight dancing up ahead.

Conrad pulled the vehicle to a halt. He knew what to expect as he rounded the bend: the sandy lot, fringed with trees and bushes, rising up to the shallow breach in the dune, the ocean out of sight beyond. But he needed to try and see it with fresh eyes. The eyes of a man looking to dispose of a body.

She hadn’t been put in the ocean in front of the Wallaces’ house, of that he was certain. The strength of the longshore set at the time she was supposed to have drowned would have carried her further eastward overnight, beyond the spot where they’d pulled her from the water the next morning. He knew from experience that the ocean could do strange things with a drowned body, taking it on an improbable journey that seemed to defy all natural laws. But that was rare.

It was some distance from the house to the beach, down the bluff and across the dunes, an exposed walk, moonlit on the night in question. Too far to carry a dead weight, and too risky. That was probably the reasoning. Maybe there had been kids on the beach. It was a popular stretch for clambakes at this time of year, the deep sand at the base of the frontal dune pockmarked with the blackened remnants of the nocturnal feasts.

Whatever, he was fairly sure she had been taken elsewhere in a car and then dumped in the ocean. Fortunately, there were a limited number of spots nearby where this might have happened.

Two Mile Hollow landing seemed unlikely. Although closest to the Wallaces’ house, it became a rendezvous for lovers once night fell, a place of furtive exchanges and steamed-up car windows. Likewise, he had dismissed Egypt landing. Right next to the Maidstone Club, there would have been too many other cars coming and going, and there was the added risk that club members often strolled down on to the beach at night.

The small landing at Wiborg’s Beach, on the other hand, a little further along, would have been ideal—remote, squeezed in beside the wasteland of the club’s west course. The village tryworks for rendering whale oil had once stood there, and since much of the big house just back from the dunes had been torn down, local people had started using the track again to gain access to the beach.