A TELEPHONE IS RINGING. OVER AND OVER. From some room back in the house.
Mr. Hart doesn’t hear it. He’s still in Tom Morrison’s chicken coops, eating crab stew and dreading the future.
Want me to answer the phone?
The phone?
It’s ringing.
Where?
I don’t know. Where is it?
Mr. Hart looks around with a dazed expression.
Outside, rain is still coming down and they’re still in the parlor, sitting on those rock-hard chairs. In darkness now. The wet weather has caused a strenuous new bout of growth in the window bushes out front. It really is time to cut them back, David thinks. He can hardly see his notepad.
He still brings the pad with him every day, believing he’ll be taking notes, though he never does. Perhaps, he thinks, he’s not suited for journalism, a profession requiring a bloodhound nose for the truth, wherever it lies hidden, and (apparently) an ability to write in places only a bat could navigate.
In the bedroom, Mr. Hart says about the telephone. Can you get it for me?
David races back and answers. At first, there’s silence from the other end. Then:
Ruben? A woman’s anxious voice.
He’s here, David assures her. I’m just answering for him. Wait a minute. I’ll get him.
The old man is already making his way to the phone. He mouths to David: Must be the wife! and slices a humorous finger across his throat.
David grins. He goes back to the parlor to give them some privacy. The small tables laden with photographs are there, evidence of Mr. Hart’s long life with friends and family. While he waits, David wanders around examining them.
A head shot of a very pretty girl with laughing eyes and long, dark hair catches his attention.
There’s an old wedding photo, a mass of bridesmaids and groomsmen fanned out around the happy couple. Ruben Hart and wife? The groom is too decked out in wedding finery to tell.
The next photo stops David in his tracks. It’s of a fishing vessel tied alongside a pier. Three men stand on deck, gazing straight into the camera’s eye. A fourth is in the wheelhouse, his face just visible through the glass. David bends closer and, despite the parlor gloom, reads the boat’s name in faded letters on the bow.
There it is!
He picks up the photo. The men staring out at him are young and earnest-looking, nothing like the wisecracking outlaw crew he’d imagined. They’re wearing plain fisherman’s overalls and heavy rubber boots. Two are solemn, and have taken off their caps in honor of the camera. The third wears a captain’s hat cocked jauntily over his forehead. He’s raising his hand in greeting, a teasing smile on his face, as if he knows the photographer.
None of them looks remotely like Ruben Hart, but then David wouldn’t have expected him to be here. He was a kid at the time, fourteen years old. The only survivor of the Black Duck shooting was Richard Delucca, a man in his early twenties, according to the newspaper. There’s no telling which of this crew he is, though David would bet a good amount that Billy Brady is the guy in the cocked hat.
He returns the photo to the table. It gives him an odd feeling to look into the young faces of men who will soon be dead. Their eyes announce confidently: I have my whole life in front of me! They have no idea of their approaching fate. Even if they’d appreciated the risk they were taking, and had “no one to blame but themselves,” as the newspaper clipping said, David feels a deep regret for the waste of their lives. He wants to warn them: Don’t go. Watch out. It’s not worth it!
For the hundredth time, he wonders what happened out there in the fog. Were they machine-gunned without warning, as the most recent newspaper article he found seemed to report? Or did Rick Delucca, member of a crew caught with over 300 cases of liquor on board, a crew with a reputation for brazen escapes in the past, tell that story in self-defense? There’s one person still alive who may know the answer.
In the back room, David can hear the old man winding up his conversation with Mrs. Hart.
You come home when you’re ready. I’m fine here. . . . No. No. Don’t you worry, I’ve got plenty. I’m still working on your clam chowder!
A hearty act. Reality shows up a moment later when Mr. Hart clumps back into the parlor, lowers himself onto a chair and gazes dismally at the floor.
He’s gone, he announces. Just heard it from my wife.
Who?
Jeddy McKenzie. Died early this morning. He glances up. In the split second before he looks down again, David sees tears welling up in his sea-colored eyes. I hope you won’t mind me stopping early today. Don’t have the stomach for any more.
Of course not. So, your wife was looking after Jeddy?
She was. It’s over. She’ll be coming home now.
You won’t be going there?
He wouldn’t want me. Now you’d best go.
Can I do anything? Really, I’d like to help. I could run an errand. Whatever.
Come tomorrow, Mr. Hart says, wearily. And bring a good pen to write with. You’ll be hearing something that’s never been told.
David leaves him sitting alone in the shadowy room, an old man haunted by a friendship broken seventy years ago. Does it have something to do with the Black Duck shootings? The photo of that boat and its doomed crew rises up before David again. On the spur of the moment, he decides to go by the town library one last time, in case he’s missed anything. He mounts his bicycle and heads out.
The rain has slowed to a fine drizzle. David’s tires slap methodically against the wet pavement. Something about the weather makes him think how Ruben Hart once rode these same roads on his bicycle. And there, in a flash, as if answering a call, the ghost of the young Ruben descends. David feels him, can almost see him, pedaling at his elbow. For a long minute, they ride together, side by side, the wind rushing past. Then it’s over. The ghost departs. David pushes ahead alone. He picks up speed and races over the wet road toward the library. Time is running out. December 29, 1929, is about to arrive. Fog is rolling in across Coulter’s Beach toward Tom Morrison’s cabin, which means it’s already thick out on the bay. All the signs, as they say, are pointing in one direction: Mr. Hart’s story is coming to the end.