Vineyard Fear Read Free Page A

Weststock, where he taught things medieval at the college. When she had died, too young, he had missed a season and gone instead back to southwest Colorado, where his people still lived. The next summer he was back on the island where, a year or so later, he and I had met on the beach and, in time, I became his caretaker, charged with closing his house in the fall, keeping an eye on it over the winter, opening it in the early summer, and caring for the Mattie.
    The Mattie wasn’t the Mattie when I went to work for John. She was the Seawind. She became the Mattie when John married Mattie, whose young husband had left her a widow with twin daughters when he drove his motorcycle into a tree at a high rate of speed.
    And now Mattie and the girls had fallen in love with Colorado and John had a dilemma: where to spend the summer? Out by Durango, near the mountains they all loved, or on the island they all loved?
    â€œIf Colorado had an ocean, it would be no problem,” John had said on the phone. “If they could just flood everything east of the divide, or maybe all of Texas, I could live out there for the rest of my life, but . . .”
    â€œEverybody’s got problems,” I’d said.
    â€œExcept you. You’ve got it made, J.W.”
    â€œWho’s this guy you’re sending down, and when will he be here?”
    â€œJack Scarlotti. He’ll be down May 25. He’s our current hotshot junior faculty member. Sociology, Poli-Sci, or some combination of both, I think. Anyway, he’s very dashing, very intense, very bright. The ladies all love him. Not a bad guy, actually. Teaches a grad seminar. Wants to take the whole class down to the island for a week so they can do field research among the locals, before the summer people really get there.”
    â€œThe island as a laboratory. Natives living in isolation from the mainstream. That sort of thing?”
    â€œI think that’s it. Something like the deafness bit, maybe.”
    Presumably because of inbreeding, a lot of up-island people once suffered from a type of deafness. Some medical or academic type had studied the phenomenon and his conclusions had been written up and had attracted a good deal of comment.
    â€œThe politics of isolation,” I said. “Professor Scarlotti’s students do the legwork and write papers and he puts it all in a book with his name on it and uses it as a required text in all of his courses.”
    Skye laughed. “Spoken like a true scholastic, J.W. Where’d you learn about that trick?”
    â€œFrom listening to you and your academic buddies at those cocktail parties you throw.”
    â€œI’ll have to advise my colleagues to talk less about our trade. They’ll give away all of our secrets. I’m going to have Jack come by your house for the keys. Then you cantake him over to the farm. Is that okay? I’ll let you know what boat they’ll be coming on.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œI think you’ll like him. He’s a good guy even if he is a whiz kid. I understand there’ll be about ten grad students with him, both sexes. They should all fit in the house if they don’t mind sleeping double. I want nothing to do with deciding who sleeps where, by the way.”
    â€œI’ll make sure the place is clean, that there are sheets and blankets and water and lights, and that the fridge has bacon and eggs and bread waiting for them. I’ll show him where the A & P is, too. Can this guy sail?”
    â€œHe says he can. If he wants to go sailing, you can show him the Mattie and where the dinghy is on Collins Beach and where the oars and oarlocks are in the barn.”
    â€œNo problem.”
    â€œI’ll have him leave the keys with you when he leaves. I’ll be down in the middle of June.”
    â€œThat’ll give me time to clean the place up again. What do you mean, you’ll be down? What about Mattie and the