The Cove Read online

  As time passed, the conversations devolved. People started telling stories that Ben had heard a hundred times before. Some of the stories were still damned funny while others were downright pathetic, but all of them made him keenly aware how much he was a part of this place, no matter how much he might want to get the hell out of The Cove.

  It wasn’t just “home.”

  The Cove was a living, breathing community filled with saints and sinners who shared all of their secrets … perhaps a bit too openly. And he was as much a part of the town as the rockbound coast.

  “ … so then Rockfish … he starts … he’s flicking his porch light on and off, on and off, trying to warn the numbnuts on the boat that the feds were on to ’em and waitin’ down on the beach,” Danny “Preacher” Clayborn was saying. He had gotten the nickname because of the time years ago in high school when he took a hit of acid for the first and only time and started spouting Bible verses non-stop. The name — like most coastal nicknames — didn’t make sense out of context, but it had stuck nonetheless.

  “Right … right …” Ben said, nodding drunkenly. He already knew the punch line … as did everyone else gathered around the table. But it was going to be delivered as if it was brand new, and they’d all laugh as if they were hearing it for the first time. Ben gripped his beer glass, his shoulders jerking with laughter as if he had a bout of hiccups.

  “So then … so then …” Preacher said, but he was laughing so hard he could hardly catch his breath. A bloodshot, half-crazed look filled his eyes as he leaned back and gasped for air. Tears were streaming down both sides of his face. “Then … then once them feds come up to his place, they ask him what the fuck he’s doing, ’n he says — he says he’s …” Preacher struggle to get the words out. “He says he’s hailing his cats for ’em to come in for the night … Hailing his goddamned cats!”

  The people gathered around the table erupted with laughter that momentarily drowned out the jukebox and everything else. Ben laughed right along with them, but not for long. Leaning back, he pressed his shoulders against the wall as a sudden, inexplicable feeling of emptiness … of utter weariness and of not belonging filled him. The sudden sense of sadness cut deep as he looked around at the smiling, laughing faces surrounding him. He tensed, wondering why he felt so suddenly disconnected from them and everything else. He thought it might be because he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Julia Meadows, but he sensed that it was more than that.

  It was odd, though, how Julia was never far from his thoughts.

  Remembering her smile … and the way her face crinkled when she smiled … and how her bright, brown eyes lit up … and her long, dark hair floating in the wind when they were out on the water … and her body —

  Jesus … Sweet Lord have mercy … Her body!

  Everything about her filled him with an urgency that surprised him.

  The sudden feeling of dissociation soon passed, and — thankfully — no one noticed, but Ben wanted — he needed to talk to someone about what he was thinking and feeling. He’d been hoping he and Pete could have a few words, but his brother was never all that talkative, and since Ben had come home, Pete had been acting downright resentful. Ben had no idea why.

  He looked around the bar until he saw Pete. He was sitting in a darkened corner with Rachel “Bunny” Dawkins. His shaggy hair was hanging down over his eyes, and they were almost touching heads as they leaned close and talked. Locked in their private conversation, they were isolated … like there was no one else around.

  There was no mystery how Bunny got her nickname. Back in high school — she was a few years behind Ben — she’d earned another nickname: “The Organ Grinder” or sometimes simply “Grinder.” Pete had mentioned to Ben last night that he’d hit a bit of a rough patch with his steady girlfriend, Mona Jenkins. He didn’t go into details. He seldom did about his personal life, but apparently he was dead set on getting even with Mona by shacking up with Bunny tonight … like it would be a problem getting Bunny into the sack.

  “’Nother one for yah, there?” Phil “Cunna” Lippincott asked as he drained the last of a pitcher into his glass and smacked it onto the table hard enough to dent the wood.

  “I dunno,” Ben said, shaking his head. “’S getting kinda late.”

  “You can’t refuse a drink with me,” Cunna said. Ben didn’t want to point out that Cunna had already had … he couldn’t remember how many beers with him.

  “Lemme drain the dragon first,” Ben said as he heaved himself up from the table.

  When he stood up, he noticed that either something was wrong with his left leg, or else the floor had a serious pitch to one side. When he steadied himself by leaning on someone else’s table, his knee banged against the table leg hard enough to hurt. There was a loud clink as a glass fell over and broke, spilling beer across the table.

  “What the fuck?” someone said in a tone that usually meant trouble in The Local. But then Ben saw that it was Jerry Hansen, and when they made eye contact, Jerry’s scowl instantly transformed into a grin. He clapped Ben on the back and said, “Yo, Gunna, my man. Make sure you lemme buy you a drink ’fore the night’s over.”

  Ben nodded, telling himself he wouldn‘t mind drinking at Wal-Mart’s expense, and then forged his way to the restroom. When he got to Pete’s table, he noticed that his brother was sitting alone. Ben looked around in time to see Bunny, leaving by the front door. She had her purse slung over her shoulder, and her hair bobbed with every step she took.

  “Fuck it, man.” Ben stifled a belch behind his fist. “’S pretty bad when you get shut down by Bunny Dawkins.”

  Pete glared up at his brother but said nothing.

  “You sure you even got a dick, little bro’?”

  “Up yours,” Pete said.

  At least that’s what Ben thought he said. He couldn’t hear him over the constant din. The knuckles of Pete’s hand gripping his nearly empty beer glass went white. Shaking his head, his mouth so tight it looked like a stitched wound, he pushed back, got up from the table, fished his wallet out and dropped a twenty next to his empty glass. He bumped against Ben’s shoulder, knocking him back as he walked past him.

  “Hey!” Ben called after him. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by that.”

  But Pete was out the door without a backward glance.

  His mood somewhat deflated, Ben continued on to the restroom, passing his father who was holding forth at the bar. When he entered the restroom, his nose wrinkled at the all too familiar stench of urine and pine disinfectant. One of the surest signs he was home was the smell of the restroom at The Local. Chuckling to himself, he relieved himself at the yellow-stained urinal and then zipped up. Somehow, he navigated back to his table where there was a freshly poured beer waiting for him.

  For the next hour or two, he nursed that single beer until his head gradually began to clear … at least a little. After several more stories — none of them, thankfully, at his expense — Ben looked at his wristwatch and declared that he had to leave.

  Everyone at the table disagreed, insisting that he stay a little while longer. To them, that meant until last call at one o’clock. But Ben begged off, claiming that he was still jet-lagged from the flight from Germany on his last leg home from Iraq.

  “Hell, yeah,” Preacher said. He rolled his eyes ceiling-ward and did a bit of rough mental calculation. “It’s gotta be mornin’ over there in I-rack, wouldn’t’cha say? You’d ’bout be waking up right now.”

  “Good morning, Baghdad!” Stan “Diesel” Payne shouted, doing a piss-poor imitation of Robin Williams. “Time to get up ’n go out inta’ the desert ’n kick some sand-nigger ass, mutha-fuckas!”

  A few people at the table laughed, but most of them stared into their beers. Diesel could be such an asshole sometimes. Earlier this evening, though, some people had been talking about how with all the Somalis living in Lewiston, the city was turning into “Little Mogadishu.” Ben had heard more than enough of that Hadji
crap from other soldiers in Iraq, but he realized he’d been foolish to think people back home wouldn’t be just as prejudiced. People like Preacher and Diesel — hell, some if not half of the people in The Local right now — probably shared racial and religious stereotypes that were so ingrained in them nothing was ever going to change them.

  Especially when they were drunk.

  And as drunk as he was, he knew enough to let it slide … at least on his first night home.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m beat to shit.”

  He ran the flats of his hands across his face as if he had splashed himself with cold water. It took some effort to focus, but at least he wasn’t as buzzed as he had been earlier.

  He glanced over to the bar where Capt’n Wally was still holding court, regaling people with his stories, probably bragging about his new boat. His face was flushed bright red, and his shining eyes twitched back and forth. By the look of things, the Capt’n was just getting started tying one on. He was knocking back shots of dark rum. Ben was sure that — like so many times while he was growing up — sometime later that night, probably not until two or three in the morning, he’d hear his old man stumbling into the house, muttering curses as he tried to negotiate the stairs. And more than likely, he’d be passed out on the couch in the living room when Ben got up in the morning.

  Ben drained what was left of his beer and placed the pint glass down carefully on the table.

  “That’s it for me.”

  “Com’on, Gunna,” Mike “The Veg” Tomlinson said with a pleading look in his eyes. He leaned close to Ben and blew near-toxic alcohol and halitosis fumes into Ben’s face. “I ain’t bought you a drink yet.”

  His eyes were so rimmed with red there was no white showing. The unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth bobbed up and down when he talked.

  Don’t you dare light that up now, Ben thought, or we’ll all go up in flames.

  “Sorry, man. I gots to get me some sleep,” Ben said in a slur. Before anyone else interfered, he pushed away from the table and stood up. The floor tilted like the deck of a wave-tossed boat, and he placed one hand on Preacher’s shoulder to steady himself.

  “You aw’right there, bud?” The Veg asked with a hint of concern in his expression. Ben knew that not a damned one of them was in any better condition.

  “Yeah … Sure. No worries,” Ben said. He smiled and nodded, then took a deep breath, hitched up his jeans, and started toward the back door. He nodded a few goodnights to people as he passed, but it was with immense relief that he stepped out onto the landing. The screen door slammed shut behind him, sounding like a gunshot in the night. He jumped, ready to hit the dirt, but then realized where he was and, leaning his head back, took a deep breath of fresh ocean air. The air was cool enough to make him shiver, and he caught the fresh smell of rain in the air. Off to the west, clouds were gathering on the horizon, blotting out the stars.

  Sliding his right hand lightly along the weathered railing, he made his way down the steps to the narrow alley that ran between The Local and a small restaurant that changed owners and names about every year or two. The alley was dark, the buildings cutting out the night sky like stencils. It took a while for Ben’s eyes to adjust, and for a while, the darkness flickered as if fireworks were going off in the distance. At the foot of the stairs were three or four overflowing trash cans. The stench of rotting garbage was thick enough to make him gag.

  He started up the alley, heading toward Main Street. He was drunk enough not to trust his eyesight and coordination on a winding path in the dark. Much safer to walk home under the streetlights. But staying on the street was the long way home. An extra mile, at least. After a brief mental debate, he opted to take the shortcut home like he usually did when coming home drunk from The Local.

  The path skirted the edge of the harbor and wound over Miller’s Hill and through some neighbors’ backyards. Ben was drunker than he cared to admit, so he took a moment or two to look around and get his bearings. The gentle slapping of the waves against the dock pilings and wharf was soothing, and once he was past the garbage cans, he paused and looked around, savoring the night.

  No dry, desert heat.

  No wind-blown grit that got into everything — your nose, your eyes, your mouth, even the crack of your ass.

  No smell of unwashed men and gasoline … of burning rubber and gun oil.

  Just clean, fresh ocean air.

  Even with the tide out and the smell of rotting seaweed and clam-flats wafting over him, he felt an inexpressible measure of peace and contentment. The moon, looking like a curved sliver of old bone on the horizon, sparkled faintly on the ocean. Overhead, a dusting of stars sprinkled the sky like sugar on black velvet. The party was still going on in The Local at full-bore.

  Damn, it’s good to be alive, Ben thought, and once again — as they had all night — thoughts of Julia Meadows popped into his head.

  “God damn,” he whispered.

  She was the reason he was feeling so good. He squared his shoulders and scanned the narrow strip of trail leading down to and then around the harbor. Out of the shadows, the dirt path glowed dull silver in the faint wash of moonlight. If he wasn’t quite so drunk, he thought, when he got home, he should get his car and drive over to Julia’s place to see if she was still awake and if she felt like doing something.

  “Doing something …” Ben said, chuckling as he shook his head. There was no doubt what he meant by “doing something.”

  He walked a little further down the alley, but before he stepped out of its shadows, a sudden urgency in his bladder made him stop. Stepping off the path onto some rough ground, he unzipped his pants and started to piss against one of the barnacle-encrusted wooden pilings that supported the harbor-side end of The Local. His urine steamed in the cool night air as it splattered against the wood and ran in a foamy current onto the ground. By the time he realized he was pissing uphill, it was too late. Urine ran down the slope and onto his sneakers. He tried to sidestep the stream but lost his balance and almost fell.

  When he was finished, he shook himself off and zipped his pants up. As he was turning around, he sensed more than saw a blur of motion in the shadows behind him.

  “Hey, wha’zup — ” he said once he realized a person was coming down the alleyway toward him.

  With the glow of streetlights behind him, the figure was indistinct. All Ben was sure of was that it was a man. Before he could react, the figure, instead of walking past him, lunged at him. Strong hands reached out of the darkness and grabbed him by the shoulders. Ben grunted with surprise as he was spun around. Drunk as he was, the motion felt like it kept going even after he had stopped.

  “What the fuck —?” Ben said, his voice slurred. A bubble of gas rose from his stomach into his throat, leaving behind a terrible taste.

  The person didn’t say a word. He shoved Ben face-first against one of the pilings. His nose banged against the wood hard enough to stagger him, and tiny white stars splashed across his vision. Pain shot through his head like a sudden jolt of electricity.

  “Leave her the fuck alone,” the man said, his voice a low, animal-like growl. “You understand?”

  Too dazed to react, Ben locked his knees, hoping they wouldn’t buckle underneath him. He had the sense that — whoever this was — he was purposely disguising his voice so he wouldn’t recognize it. All Ben saw was a silhouette, cut out sharply against the night sky.

  Ben clenched his hands into fists and was preparing to wheel around and take a swing at his assailant, but before he could do that, something hard — a fist or something even harder, maybe a baseball bat — slammed into the back of his head.

  Darkness spread across Ben’s vision like a black wave crashing against the shore and shooting high into the sky. His knees went rubbery, and he would have dropped if he hadn’t grabbed onto one of the pilings in front of him. When he started to slide down, his legs giving out, barnacles sliced into the palms of his hands, making him yowl. />
  He sucked in a breath and tried to speak, but the only sound he made sounded like he had thrown up into his mouth and was gargling with it.

  “Julia Meadows!” the voice said, rolling like a rumble of thunder in the darkness. “You stay the fuck away from her, or next time — I’ll...I’ll fucking kill you!”

  Ben was still too dazed to react. A high-pitched ringing sound filled his head. When he started to turn around again, something hard rocketed out of the darkness and caught him on the left cheek, snapping his head back. The vertebrae in his neck crackled and snapped like a string of exploding firecrackers. Swirling flashes of white light filled his vision like a flurry of fireflies. Then the sky and earth were swallowed up by darkness. A loud whooshing sound filled his ears. He didn’t recognize his own heartbeat.

  “You got it?” the voice said from somewhere far, far away.

  Ben tried to nod, but his neck was too stiff to move.

  “Yeah … yeah,” he said. “I got it.”

  His voice was little more than a croak. He sagged forward and spread his hands out to clasp the cool, rough surface of the wood, hugging the piling like a lover. He was grateful for its support. It was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

  “You fuckin’-A better get it,” the voice snarled, and then something sledge hammer hard slammed into his back above his left kidney.

  Ben’s breath gushed out in an explosive gasp that ended with a high wheezing sound as the night collapsed around him. His knees stiffened, and he took a few jolting sideways steps, but finally his legs gave out, and he crumpled to the ground in a slow pirouette.

  He never even noticed the pain when the back of his head hit the sandy patch of gravel and crushed seashells.

  Chapter Four