Envious Moon (3 page)

W
e rode straight out to sea and we did not talk. I pushed the skiff as hard as I could and when the island was no longer visible in the dark behind us, I cut the engine. The mainland was to our right now and we could see the dim lights from the villages of Galilee and Jerusalem. The boat rocked slightly in the wake. I turned to Victor and before I could say anything I saw in his eyes the fear and I knew it mirrored my own. I tried to tell him what happened but speaking was difficult and my words kept coming out mangled. Finally, I said, “There was a man.”

“Where?”

“On the stairs.”

“Shit,” said Victor. “They said it was going to be empty.”

“And there was a girl.”

“What? Where?”

“A beautiful girl,” I said. “I mean crazy beautiful.”

“Tony, I don't get it.”

I ran my hand through my hair and I looked toward the point and to where the lighthouse beam cut a swath across the water. I told Victor everything at once. I told him about going
into the house. About climbing the stairs. Knocking over the lamp and then finding the money. I told him how the light went on at the top of the stairs behind me and how I turned to see the girl standing there. How I could see all of her when the light passed through her gown. I told him how lovely she was. I tried to capture her shadow-draped face for Victor but words alone could never do her justice. There was nothing to do but to stare, I said, and this was why I did not see the man until he was on me.

“But she didn't see you?” Victor asked.

“No,” I said. “No, I don't think so. She couldn't have. It was too dark. I was in the shadows. Listen, light me a cigarette, will you? My hands are shaking too much.”

Victor lighted a cigarette and then lit another one off of it. He handed one to me and I drew on it and underneath the boat I felt the swell of the ocean, where it lifted us up and let us back down again. I looked deep into the distance, into the black horizon, and I saw where the sea became sky and where the stars touched the earth.

“But the man,” I said.

“What?” said Victor and in his voice I heard the alarm.

I sighed. “He fell. Fell a long way, I think. He tried to tackle me on the stairs. I shook him off. At least I think I did. He was gone. Over the railing.”

“Jesus, Tony,” Victor said. “How far?”

“A long way,” I said. “I heard him hit. On the wood floor. I heard him hit on the wood floor.”

“He's okay, though, right? He's okay?”

I shook my head. “Shit, I don't know. It was a long way.”

“It was an accident,” Victor said hopefully.

“I don't know,” I said.

“It was an accident,” Victor said again, and this time I didn't feel like consoling him. I was the one who had gone in the house, the one who had been there.

I said, “I don't know, Vic. We were robbing the fucking house.”

W
e rode the skiff toward the mainland and approached Galilee from the west, as if we had been fishing the shoals down coast. It was something we often did in the summer and maybe on any other night we would have looked only like two fishing buddies, throwing a line to pass the time.

The harbor was quiet when we crossed the breakwater. One trawler was heading out but it was late and there was little other activity.

I tied up the skiff and we walked along the darkened wharves and then past the cannery without speaking. In an alley between warehouses a drunk on his knees retched and when we went by he looked up at us. At Main Street we stopped for a moment before we split up. I thought there was something I needed to say but I did not know what. I knew I didn't have to mention the money because neither of us wanted to think about that now. I would put it away and try to forget about it.

“Call me tomorrow,” I said.

“Sure,” said Victor, and he held his hand out, palm up, and I smacked mine, knuckles down, against it. It was something we did all the time then, and it felt silly this night, it felt forced, as
if nothing had happened in the last couple of hours. Like it was any other night when we didn't have to work.

I watched Victor walk toward the studio apartment he rented above the restaurant. I didn't want to go home just yet so I lighted a cigarette and stood with the yellow from the street-light above me spreading across the black pavement at my feet. Now that I was alone, I was suddenly exhausted. I felt the tired in my arms and in my legs. I wanted my bed but I needed time to think. I walked the deserted streets for a half hour, thinking on the night. Finally, I turned down my narrow street, the small bungalows all in a row; mine the only one showing any light. My mother must have fallen asleep in front of the television.

Sure enough, when I opened the door she was in the reclining chair, a late-night show on in front of her. A blanket covered her stout legs and looking at her wide, pleasant face, her closed eyes, a strong feeling of love washed over me.

“Berta,” I whispered.

She slowly opened her eyes. She gave me a sleepy smile and she stretched. “Anthony,
bonito
,” she said, and then she frowned. “You were out late.”

“Fishing with Victor.”

“Fishing,” she said. “Always fishing.”

“It's something to do,” I said.

“Help me up,” she said.

I took her hands in mine and they were rough like a fisherman's hands and this always surprised me. I knew it was from all the work in the kitchens but I expected them to be smooth. I always thought a mother's hands should be smooth. I pulled her to her feet. When she stood her head only came to my rib cage and I hugged her.

“Work comes early tomorrow,” she said.

“I wish you didn't have to go,” I said, and I remembered the money in my pocket.

“No rest for the wicked,” she said, and she smiled and leaned up and kissed me.

“Good night, Mama,” I said.

In my bedroom I opened the window and I looked out to the other houses and the small sandy yards with their chain-link fences. I dangled one leg out in the air and I lighted a cigarette. Berta hated when I did this but she had stopped saying anything to me a while ago. The wind had picked up since we had left the water and I listened to it move through the stubby trees.

I looked back into the room and to the bureau where I had put the money when I came upstairs. When I took it out from under my shirt, there it was, all those bills. I had not intended to count it. But when I saw them spilling out, I couldn't help it. I took them out onto the bed and they were all thousand-dollar bills and I had never seen a thousand-dollar bill before. I picked one of them up and on front was Grover Cleveland. Fat with a thick mustache. I laid them out on the bed, one next to the other. There were sixteen of them. Sixteen thousand dollars. More than Berta made in a year. Enough for college, I thought, though I did not know that.

I tucked the bills in among my socks. Now my thoughts turned to the stairs inside that great house. If only I had not melted into the wall. If only I had been able to stop staring at the girl. If only I had run when the light came on. Then I would have made it outside before her father reached me. He wouldn't have been able to tackle me. I wouldn't have ridden him into the railing and he wouldn't have fallen. And I wouldn't have heard him hit below. There was nothing terribly human about it, the sound of him. It was like a sack of flour had dropped to the floor.

I
woke to rain, heavy, driving rain, coming down so hard that to look out the window was like looking into the back side of a waterfall. I was just staring at it blankly, and I had this strange feeling, like I had been awake for a while and I didn't know it. The phone was ringing. It had been ringing for a long time, I realized. The incessant peal of it. When I finally trotted downstairs in my underwear to answer it, Victor told me that the man had died. It was all over the papers and on the radio and the television. His name was Jacob Forbes, Victor said. His daughter, the newspaper said, was named Hannah Forbes and she was the lone witness to the robbery. They were from Boston. The house had belonged to his late mother. Victor went on about all the details. Police searching for two men in a boat and all that. Nothing appeared to be missing, etc. And to be honest with you, I stopped listening to him when I heard her name. Hannah Forbes. I said it a few times over and over in my mind. There is something that happens when something that had previously been unnamed becomes named. It becomes more important somehow. Or maybe just clearer. Either way, hearing her name did something to me. As Victor read the ar
ticle to me, I pictured the girl sitting in some cold police station, in a metal chair next to a metal desk. Perhaps she had a blanket slung over her shoulders since she had not had time to change yet. Her long hair hung down over the bars of the chair. She was crying. A police officer consoled her, and I wondered if it broke his heart to watch a pretty girl cry.

I met Victor for lunch at his apartment and he chain-smoked and paced back and forth and said we should turn ourselves in. He showed me a copy of the
Journal
with its front-page picture of the mansion in daytime, when it was even more impressive, rising up against an uneven sky.

I said, “We can't turn ourselves in.”

“What else we going to do, Tony?”

“Listen, I was the one who went in there. Not you. I'm the one who'd go to prison. That's not going to happen.”

“How many people, Tony, saw us leave the harbor last night?”

“Lots of people left the harbor,” I said. “And not only our harbor. They got to be looking at everything from Fire Island to the Vineyard. We do what we normally do and we have nothing to worry about.”

This seemed to relax him a little bit and when I left, he promised to call me if he heard anything else.

That afternoon the rain clouds moved off the coast and the sun that burned through was summer hot and as I walked to my skiff the puddles on the pavement steamed from its heat. I walked across the wharves and past men baiting lobster traps with baby skate and stacking them onto the flatbed of an old rustbucket. Other men stood in huddled groups smoking and I knew some of them and they'd call “Hey, Anthony,” to me or I'd shout out to them. When I reached my skiff, I spent a
few minutes just peering down into the black water, to where oil had collected around the pilings and shone a rainbow in the sunlight. Maybe it had something to do with the rainbow, this piece of beauty among the filthy oil, but standing there, I started to cry. I looked around to make sure no one saw me. And I cried good and hard, harder than I had since my father died. I saw men going out on their boats and I knew that there was one less man in the world and it was because of me. That I had killed somebody. It didn't matter that it was an accident. It didn't matter that the last thing I wanted to do was to kill a man. It had happened and it was my fault.

After a while, the tears slowed and I got them under control. I rubbed at my eyes. Then I climbed in my skiff and I maneuvered my way through the fishing boats and followed the buoys to the mouth of the harbor.

The bank of clouds loomed over the horizon to the south now but here it was so clear I could see the bluffs of Cross Island. I was suddenly tempted to follow our path from the night before, to ride under the turret of the house and see what I could see. But instead I turned down coast and I spent the rest of that summer day fishing the shoals. It was a halfhearted effort and I didn't even have live bait. But I found that the rhythmic tossing of the line over and over, and the gentle rocking of the small craft, soothed me. I did not cry again that day. You would think out there alone like that my mind would race, that I would have become overwhelmed with fear. But I gave in to the simple pleasure of casting the surf rod, watching the speckled lure tumble through the air before diving under the waves near the rocky shore. The reeling in when it danced like a mouse across the surface of the water. I would've probably stayed out until late if it were not for the fact that I had forgot
ten to eat. The hunger came on like a rush and I put my gear away and turned back toward town.

By the time I reached my street, I was so hungry that the only thing on my mind was what Berta might have on the stove. She usually cooked for two and left mine for me to reheat. She made a great peppery kale soup with lots of sausage. And sometimes they cleaned out the walk-in at the college and she brought home a chicken or some beef. I was so engrossed with the possibilities, that I almost didn't notice the red-and-white sheriff's car parked right in front of our house until I stood right next to it.

For a moment I considered just taking off. But then I remembered that there was nothing to tie us to the house and the island. Only people who had seen us leave the harbor. Unless the girl had actually gotten a good look at me, but I didn't think that was possible. Or if Victor had already caved, though I didn't think he would do that. Not without talking to me about it first.

Sheriff Riker was a tall, hawk-nosed man, close to sixty it looked liked, with slicked-back hair and the leathery skin of someone who spent far too much time in the sun. My first thought was that his was not an unfriendly face. He wasn't in uniform but wore a golf shirt and khakis, boat shoes. He was on my mother's couch and drinking my mother's coffee and I had no idea how long he had been there.

“Here he is,” Berta said, when I came in the door.

“You must be Anthony,” the sheriff said, and he introduced himself and took my hand and we all sat down.

“I don't know if you heard about what happened on the island last night,” the sheriff began.

I shook my head.

“It's been on the news,” he continued. “Anyway. There was a robbery. Well, attempted robbery at a mansion on the eastern side of the island. Nothing was missing. But there was a fight and a man was killed. We're trying to find out who was in the house.”

I looked right at the sheriff. I was trying not to blink. “What's this have to do with me?”

“Nothing, I'm sure,” he said. “It's just that a number of people saw you go out last night.”

“I went fishing.”

“Who were you with?”

“Victor,” I said. “My friend.”

“Last name?” the sheriff asked. From the pocket of his pants he took out a small notebook and one of those golf pencils.

“Perez,” I said, and he wrote this down and closed the book.

“Where were you going?”

“We went fishing.”

“He often fishes at night,” Berta offered.

“Where'd you fish?”

“The shoals,” I said. “Down coast.”

The sheriff nodded. “What were you after?”

“Stripers. They're running a little bit.”

“Good eating,” the sheriff said.

I shrugged and gave him a smile. “We didn't have any luck.”

He said, “You didn't go anywhere near Cross Island?”

“Have you seen my skiff?”

“No,” he said.

“It's small. I stay close to shore.”

“All right, Anthony,” the sheriff said. “You going to be around if I have other questions?”

“Until Monday.”

“Where you going then?”

“I crew on the
Lorrie Anne
. The Grand Banks.”

“Scalloper?” he asked.

“Swordboat.”

“Have a safe trip,” he said, and he rose. “Thanks for the coffee, Mrs. Lopes.”

My mother nodded and the sheriff left. Through the open door we watched his cruiser start up and then drive off. I wanted to call Victor but I knew I couldn't do that yet. Berta looked up at me. “Anthony,” she said, “you didn't have anything to do with this. What the man said.”

“No, Mama,” I said, and I saw her looking over at the one painting we had in the house. It was a Madonna with child and it was somewhat abstract, the Madonna with a big golden triangle over her head, the dark-skinned baby's face featureless. Berta crossed herself and this bothered me, and I said, “Don't cross yourself, Mama, I didn't do anything.”

“Old habits,” she said.

We ate dinner together that night, clams from the college that needed to be used that day with tomatoes and chorizo and toast. After, when my mother went upstairs, I tried desperately to get Victor on the phone but all it did was ring and ring. Eventually my nerves got to me and I crept out of the house and made my way through the darkened village to his apartment. His old Chevy sedan was gone and the lights were off upstairs. I decided to wait for him. I sat at the bottom of his staircase and smoked and watched the moon rise above the commercial buildings across the street. When he finally returned, I did not have a cigarette lit and he didn't see me until he was right on top of me. I scared the shit out of him and he jumped. I laughed.

“Asshole,” Victor said.

“Sorry, Vic,” I said.

As it turned out the sheriff had not been to see him, and Victor freaked when I told him the sheriff had come to my house. I told him the fact that he had not come to find Victor right away was a good sign.

“I was at work,” Victor said.

“You think they can't find you at work?”

I told Victor we just had to be ourselves, do what we would normally do, and we had nothing to worry about. “You think so?” Victor said.

“Yeah,” I told Victor. “I do.”

“Okay, Tony,” he said, and we sat in silence after that. We could hear the seagulls near the cannery and the occasional bleat of a boat's horn. The light from the point strafed the sky.