Death on a Vineyard Beach Read Free

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    There, ignoring Edgartown’s regulation forbidding overnight anchoring in the pond, Zee and I spent the first night of our married life on the cockpit floor, since the bunks in the cabin were singles, too narrow for two.
    Sometime during the night I drifted half awake, and found myself wondering who the man in the driveway had been. But then Zee sighed in her sleep and curled a long,sleek leg over mine, and the man went out of my mind. Until morning, when the explosions came down into my dreams, and I woke with Zee shaking me and saying, “Wake up! Wake up! What is it?”

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    I don’t often have the dream, and when I do it’s more surrealistic than real, but it’s real enough. There’s blood and noise and splintering trees and breaking earth, and I’m filled first with paralyzing fear, then the cold certainty that I’m going to die. I start dragging myself through the explosions and bodies toward the radio, but I never get there. I wake up making the kind of sound that frightened Zee that first morning of our married life.
    She had me in her arms, and her voice was gentle. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It was just a dream. It’s gone now.”
    My brow was cold and wet. I lay there until my breathing was normal again. Then I said, “Sorry. Just a nightmare. I have it sometimes.”
    â€œAre you all right?”
    â€œI’m fine.” I put a smile on my face and looked up at her. “Don’t worry.”
    She tightened her arms around me. “What’s the dream?”
    â€œIt’s nothing. The day I got hurt in the war. I almost never have it anymore.”
    â€œYou’ve never told me about that.”
    â€œThere isn’t much to tell, but I was pretty scared at the time.”
    She rocked me in her arms. “Poor baby. I’m sorry.”
    â€œDon’t be,” I said.
    The boat was wet with morning dew. We put the sleeping bags in the cabin, had breakfast, and motored out of the gut into the sound as the sun climbed out of the sea and the morning wind rose.
    I raised the sail and cut the engine, and we headed east around the tip of Cape Pogue.
    â€œOne interesting thing,” I said. “Remember me asking you about that guy I saw at our wedding? I think seeing him triggered the dream. I didn’t recognize him then, but I do now. He was my sergeant. A guy named Joe Begay. They called him Lucky Joe, although he wasn’t so lucky that day.”
    â€œLet’s not think about those days anymore,” said Zee. “Let’s think about now.”
    â€œGood idea.” But I wondered what Joe Begay was doing on Martha’s Vineyard. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years.
    Although the islands are within sight of each other, a lot of Nantucket people have never been to Martha’s Vineyard, and a lot of Vineyarders have never been to Nantucket. Zee and I were two of the latter, although we’d often seen the low outline of Muskeget on the horizon while we were fishing at Wasque Point. Muskeget is a tiny island at the west end of Nantucket, where, I’m told, seals gather in February to give birth to their young. Wasque, where I spend a lot of time, is the southeastern corner of Chappaquiddick, and is probably the best place on the east coast to surf cast for bluefish. I’d seen a few seals there as well.
    Once we’d cleared Cape Pogue light, we’d stripped and were now naked and sopping up the rays of the sun as we sailed slowly eastward. I was at the tiller, and Zee was stretched out on a sleeping pad on the cockpit deck. She looked like a bronze goddess, and her long black hair was spread like a dark halo around her head.
    â€œWell, how do you like being married?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s better than having a sharp stick up your nose.”
    â€œHow sweet. And they say that the language of lovers is a thing of the past.”
    â€œWhat would happen if