“FOR GOD’S SAKE, CAN’T SHE WAIT UNTIL morning?” I heard my father bellow in the front hall. It was past ten o’clock. My parents had already gone to bed. He was downstairs in his pajamas. Dr. Washburn was at the door.
She couldn’t wait, the doctor said. She’d sent word by his office. Her nerves would fray to pieces if she didn’t get her tonic.
“Hell’s bells!” my father shouted. Mrs. LeWitt lived far out on the Point. Her prescription had come in late to Riley’s store from Providence that afternoon. Dad had brought it home with him and forgotten all about it.
“Carl!” My mother hushed him over the hall rail upstairs.
“Somebody must go tonight,” Dr. Washburn insisted. “I’d take it myself, but Mrs. Clancy’s come into labor. I’m late there already. Just stopped here on my way.”
I was hanging out the door of my room, ready with a solution I thought my mother would never agree to, when:
“Send Ruben,” I heard her tell my father. “He’s wide awake. He can ride his bicycle down there and be back in no time. It’s a beautiful night. He’ll come to no harm.”
“Ruben!” my father yelled up in desperation. “Would you mind making a trip to the Point at this hour?”
I was out in a flash looking over the rail. I said I wouldn’t mind. No, I wouldn’t mind at all.
It was the sort of spring night that makes you want to leap like a wild animal. Outside, barreling down the Point road through the crisp salt air, a furious energy rose in my bones. I wanted to ride on forever. I’d been cooped up for years, or so it seemed, following directions and doing what was right, living up to expectations that were somebody else’s. You can only take orders for so long, I decided, then you’ve got to break free and make your own rules.
The more I thought about this, and about where I was headed at present in life, which was working for my father at the store until the end of time, the faster I pedaled. I was in a state of high mutiny by the time I got out to Mrs. LeWitt’s. It took an act of pure will to put on a delivery boy’s polite smile as I came up on her cabin.
I needn’t have bothered.
Mrs. LeWitt, in a terrifying flannel nightdress and hair net, was in a far worse mood.
“Well, it’s about time!” she shrieked. “Thought you’d never get here!” She snatched the package out of my hand and shut the door so fast she nearly took off my nose.
I laughed bleakly at myself and set off for home, going slower. The bulb in my bicycle lamp had burned out. I pedaled nearly blind at first. Then my eyes began to adjust. Pale fields floated toward me out of the blackness. Stone walls hulked and spun past. Stealthy, scuttling creatures crossed in front of me, shadows come and gone. About midway home, I glanced toward the bay rising to view on my left and there, with my new night vision, caught sight of something I might otherwise have missed.
Tiny lights were winking out on the water. Red, then white. Red, white.
I knew what they were. A boat was on its way up the east passage, sending out a code. After a bit, the lights went dark and I couldn’t see anything.
I coasted to a halt to listen. A chorus of spring peepers rose from a nearby marsh. Then, as the wind shifted a bit, I heard clearly, coming up over the fields, the dull, repetitive thud-thud-thud of powerful engines driving through water. The boat’s lights flashed on again. It was signaling its position every minute or so. I couldn’t see, but suspected that someone on land was signaling back. In those days, houses on shore were few and far between and there was little to give direction to a boat traveling without lights under cover of dark.
I watched until I was sure where the craft was going to put in, then leapt on my bike. A few minutes later, I turned down Tyler’s Lane, pedaling for all I was worth. Jeddy and I often came down this road to fish, or in our endless quest for lost pots. There was a rumor about town that the rocky beach at the end was a favored drop for smugglers. The Coast Guard must have heard this, too, because it wasn’t unusual to see a patrol boat bobbing offshore during the day, binoculars trained on the decrepit wooden dock that ran out from the beach. Now, on this perfect moonless night, I hoped the rumors were true. I wanted more than anything to see a bootleg landing close up.
I was riding down the middle of the road, where it was less chewed up, when headlights flashed in back of me. The sound of shifting gears sent me over to one side and, seconds later, a car bore down. I swerved and rode full speed into a field of tall grass, flung myself off the bike and lay still. The outline of a huge Packard raced past, going headlong for the beach. I stayed low, breathing hard, and a good thing, too, because after a minute another machine went by, a fancy touring car of some kind, followed closely by what looked like a Pierce-Arrow. I raised up for a second look and saw the big, arrogant taillights flash red. All three vehicles were out-of-towners. No one I knew owned wheels of this caliber. Peering over the grass, I saw other lights down on the beach.
The time had come to ditch my bicycle. I wheeled it to the field’s edge, laid it down in some weeds and began to walk toward the water, using a low hedge along the road for cover. The closer I went, the more I could see that those three cars weren’t by any means the all of it. The beach was boiling with activity. There must have been twelve or fifteen cars parked here and there, as well as trucks, a couple of delivery vehicles, even a horse van. On the beach itself, shadowy forms of men milled around in light cast by a row of headlights. They were the shore crew, silent for the most part, looking often out to sea.
Soon, the sound of a boat’s engines could be heard and the wallowing form of a craft appeared out of the dark, slowly approaching the shore. I dropped to my knees and crawled up behind a pile of rocks at the far edge of the beach. What I saw next nearly stopped my heart.
Mr. Riley, owner of Riley’s General Store, was standing not twenty yards away, staring intently at the incoming boat. He wore a fisherman’s cap pulled low over his eyes instead of the snappy fedora he sported on visits to the store. But his double-chinned profile showed up clear in the glare of headlights. Though he was short, far shorter than my father, his meaty chest gave him the hunched look of a bulldog. More than once I’d had the impression that my father played a careful hand around the guy.
A shout came from one of the men onshore. Mr. Riley walked down to the water’s edge. He was wearing city shoes and stood fastidiously out of range of the waves. The speedboat, painted an anonymous gray, sat low in the water, obviously carrying a load. It approached the dock at a fair clip, waiting until the last moment before turning and killing its engines. The craft drifted neatly wharfside and lines were tossed toward the old dock’s pilings. An eager crew of men rushed out along the dock’s length. With the hull pulled snug, unloading began.
Wooden cases from the boat’s hold were lifted and passed along a chain of human hands down the dock and up the beach to the back of a waiting vehicle. The work went swiftly and largely without sound, except for grunts and occasional bursts of laughter when a heavy crate slipped or caused someone to lose his footing. Through the gloom, I picked out some men I knew from town. Henry Crocker, a local farmer, was there, along with Reg Blankenship, who raised hogs up the river. There was Horace White, a mechanic in the gas station at Four Corners, and Tony Rabera, a handyman and gardener for summer folk who needed upkeep on their vacation houses.
In all, some twenty men labored to bring the cases up the shore. As each vehicle was filled, it drove off into the night and another truck or van or a fancy roadster backed up to the feed line. Like a silent film, the action played in front of me: the frantic movement of the shore crew, the flicker of headlights coming and going.
The hour when my mother would have expected me home had now come and gone. I knew I should leave, but I could not. A quarter hour went by, then another. Finally, with more than half a hold of cargo still on board, an ocean swell came in that caused the gray-hulled boat to roll and crash against the dock. Work halted while boat lines were untied and cast off. With a roar of engines, the skipper began the process of moving the speedster around to the other side of the dock, where it could be in the lee and more protected from the surge.
All this took time, and at last I saw no way but that I must go. I crawled backward from my rock hiding place until I came to the edge of a field and could slide into its bushy shadow.
From there, I felt safe enough to gaze back once more at the activity on the water. The rumrunner craft was in the process of approaching the dock again. The wheelman was a young man, dark and dashing as a pirate, it seemed to me. He revved the powerful engines, idled them and, with an expert hand, allowed the boat to drift into position. As it swung around into the dazzle of headlights, I caught sight for the first time of the ship’s name, painted along the starboard bow.
Black Duck.
A second later, the boat swung away. The dark captain brought the bow into the wind, revved up once more and cut his engines. Across the suddenly peaceful water I heard him give out a full-throated laugh of satisfaction. Then the chain of men on the dock began to reform for another round of unloading. With all eyes turned toward the water, I chose this moment to sneak away up the dark lane.