Vineyard Blues Read Free

me.

—  2  —
    We were right on time the next morning, and Corrie was waiting for us. He climbed into the backseat with Diana and Joshua and we headed for Daggett Street and got in the ferry line.
    â€œTimes have changed,” observed Corrie as we inched ahead, waiting for the little On Time ferry to cart cars three at a time across the channel to Chappaquiddick. “Used to be we drove along South Beach to get to Chappy.”
    â€œA sore point,” said Zee. “Don’t get J.W. too wound up on that issue.”
    Too late. I was quick to be annoyed. “Dad-blasted environmentalists keep the beach closed all summer these days. No ORV’s allowed, the theory being that the beach is being ruined and the plovers and terns are going to be killed by people driving by. Bunch of hogwash! The ocean wears the beach away, like always, natural predators kill the birds, like always, and now everybody has to go to Chappy by this ferry, so in the middle of the summer the waiting lines reach halfway back through town and we have to hire extra cops just to tend traffic!”
    â€œHe gets testy about this subject,” explained Zee in her best wifely voice.
    â€œDamned right!” I said.
    â€œYou can tell he feels very virtuous,” said Zee. “He thinks most environmentalists are idiots.”
    â€œNot most,” I said, “some. The sanctimonious ones, especially.”
    â€œThe ones who get between him and what he likes to do,” said Zee, smiling back at Corrie. “He’s not very good at having other people tell him how to behave.”
    True. The ferry took three more cars and the line moved ahead. I put my hand on Zee’s thigh.
    â€œI’m getting to be one of those guys who always talks about the old days,” I said, looking at Corrie in the rearview mirror. “You know the type. Why, when I was a boy everything was better than it is now.”
    â€œI don’t want to hurt your feelings,” said Corrie, “but as far as I’m concerned, you can have the good old days. I remember them pretty well, and I don’t think I want them coming back again. Besides, in another few years these will be the good old days.”
    â€œBy then I’ll probably remember this as a golden age,” I said.
    We laughed. What nuts people are. Me in particular.
    The On Time pulled in and we drove aboard. To our right, Edgartown harbor opened to the west and south; to our left was the lighthouse, the outer harbor, and the channel leading out to Nantucket Sound. There were moored boats both east and west of Chappy, and the falling tide was running strong. A southwest wind rippled the water, and the blue summer sky arched overhead like the inside of a Chinese bowl. We pulled away from the dock and crabbed across to the other side.
    Years before, according to accounts I’d read, a fire truck on its way to fight a blaze on Chappy had tried to disembark from the ferry with such urgency that it had succeeded in spinning the boat right out from under it and standing itself on its rear end right in the ferry slip. We, being of more cautious bent, got off without incident and headed for Wasque Point on the far southeast corner of the island.
    Wasque, like all coastal points, comes and goes according to the whims of the sea gods and goddesses. It gets bigger one year and smaller the next. Over the decades it has grown or shrunk as much as a quarter of a mile. A century or so before I was born, according to old charts, it was much farther out to sea than it is now, but the bluffs inland from the present point show that at some time it was a lot smaller. Whatever its size and shape, it is one of the best bluefishing spots on the East Coast, thanks to the Wasque rip that snakes out from the point, tossing bait around and attracting the voracious blues.
    We fetched the point in time to catch the west tide, pulled up out of the reach of the slapping waves, and