Off Season (3 page)

I was slightly depressed when I left the meeting, and so, remembering the adage that a case of beer is good for a case of nerves, went home and had a Sam Adams. While I drank, I phoned the jail. Neither Nash nor Mimi had been offered board and room. Tony D'Agostine had prevailed over their passions and sent them home. All was as well as it could be. I sat in front of my new stove and enjoyed the heat still emanating from it. When the Sam Adams was dead, I stuck a couple more sticks of wood in the stove and went to bed. There was a whiff of Zee's perfume lingering on her pillow. That wasn't as good as having Zee herself there, but it was better than nothing.

The next morning, early, I drove down to Wasque Point to try for the champion bluefish that I had not caught during the bass and bluefish derby which had ended just the week before. The nineteen-pound,
seven-ounce bluefish which had won the prize was a good two pounds bigger than my best effort had been. It had been caught on the next to the last day of the derby, giving credence once again to the ancient maxim that the big blues come in just as the derby is ending, and it had been caught “on the south shore,” according to its captor. The south shore of Martha's Vineyard is twenty miles long, so even if the fisherman had been telling the truth, which no one particularly believed, he was giving away no valuable information. I knew he hadn't caught it at Wasque, because I had been there since before dawn on the morning he caught his winner, and I had not seen him.

Wasque Point is on the southeast corner of the sometimes island of Chappaquiddick, and is therefore on the south shore of Martha's Vineyard. It is one of the best spots in the world for surfcasting for bluefish, since the Wasque rip tosses up a lot of bait that appeals to the blues. This morning, since the derby fishing frenzy had passed, I was not surprised to see no fresh tracks in front of my lights when I turned off the pavement at Katama, put my rusty Toyota Land Cruiser into four-wheel drive and started east along the beach toward Wasque. All of the other people who had been fishing night and day for the last month were probably home in bed, recovering. I was the last lone fisherman. I wondered if I should scratch “lone” and replace it with “dumb.”

Chappaquiddick is hooked to the rest of the Vineyard by a narrow sandy beach which runs for a couple of miles between Katama Bay on its north side and the Atlantic Ocean on its south side. Sometimes a storm will knock a hole through the beach, and for a while Chappy will be an island. Usually, though, it's just a
peninsula reachable by boat, four-wheel-drive truck over the sand, or via the tiny, four-car On Time Ferry, which runs back and forth between Chappy and Edgartown, the Vineyard's prettiest village.

In the chill, late October morning, I had South Beach to myself. Elsewhere on the island, duck and goose hunters were hunkered in their blinds waiting for sunrise. But the weather was too good for duck and goose hunting. The worse the weather, the better the shooting, they say. Today was too nice. No howling wind, no driving rain, no sleet. Instead, a clear sky with a few stars still in view, a nippy wind out of the south and the promise of a sunny morning. Fishing weather.

I fetched the Wasque reservation, and drove along the road through the dunes. There was a brightening of the sky in the east, where the fall sun was rising over toward Nantucket, that other island on the horizon that I had yet to visit. I had been to Vietnam, but I had never been to Nantucket. So things go in these modern times.

I parked where I could see the light buoy out by Muskeget channel, and climbed into my waders. I put my topsider over my sweater, got my graphite rod down from the roof-rack and tried to guess whether I should use metal or a popper for a lure. What the hell. I snapped a Hopkins on the end of my forty-five-pound leader, walked down to the small surf and made my cast.

Nothing.

I fished for half an hour, changing lures now and then, then went up to the Land Cruiser, put the rod in the spike on the front of the truck and had some coffee while I listened to the C and W station in Rhode Island. Tanya sang a song about a good woman loving
a not so good man. The sun hesitated beneath the horizon and I watched for the green flash. Suddenly, the orange ball peeked at me and began to climb. No green flash once again. You can't have everything. It was another incredibly lovely morning, like the beginning of time.

A half an hour later, something very big hit my Ballistic Missile. An incredible hit! Thank you, God, for making me use a twenty-pound test line! The fish ran off almost all of that nice strong line before I got it turned and could jack it in a little way. It ran again and this time I thought it was gone, but again it slowed and I was able to turn it. It walked me down the beach, and I was able to get a few more cranks on the reel. Then it pulled me down the beach farther. A hundred yards west of the Toyota I got the fish stopped enough to reel it in a bit more. Then I went down the beach some more.

It was a fine fight, and I was a long way from the Toyota when I finally got the fish onto the sand. I hooked my hand in its gills and dragged it up away from the water.

A monster bluefish! I carried it back to the Land Cruiser, and hung it on my scale. Wouldn't you know it? Twenty-two pounds! The biggest bluefish I'd ever caught, but a week too late to win the derby. More proof that not even Martha's Vineyard is perfect.

I looked at my watch. If I hurried, I could show this beauty to Zee before she went to work. She would be wild with jealousy. I put the fish in the fish box and headed for West Tisbury.

When I was a small boy and first came to the Vineyard with my father, the islanders made most of their tourist money between the Fourth of July and Labor Day. Since then, the season has stretched out quite a bit. People come down earlier and stay later. The fishing derby brings in a crowd between mid-September and mid-October, and a lot of people make it down for Columbus Day weekend, Thanksgiving and Christmas. On balance, though, once Labor Day comes and school begins, the island empties out. A hundred thousand tourists and summer people go away and ten thousand year-rounders once again have the place mostly to themselves.

You can find parking places on the town's main streets. Except for Vineyard Haven, which has a flotilla of sailboats all year round, the graceful yachts disappear from the harbors and are replaced by rough and ready scallop boats. Most of the restaurants, hotels and shops close up for the winter. Lovely Edgartown, whose stores once catered to the everyday needs of its citizens, but now are almost totally oriented toward summer tourist trade, becomes silent and empty, save at the end of Main Street where the locals collect at the Dock Street Coffee Shop and, for a month, the fishermen weigh in their fish at derby headquarters across the parking lot.

There is a nice emptiness about the whole island. You can feel space around you. The beaches are almost abandoned. You can walk the long beach between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs and not see anyone else. No more towels, umbrellas or kites. No more lines of parked cars. Only the water lapping at
the sand. On South Beach, only a few cars still park at Katama while their owners walk the lonely, lovely, windy shore, hand in hand, looking at the cooling sea.

Summer greens fade and are replaced by tans and browns. After the leaves have fallen, you can drive along the roads and see deep into the forests. Houses that you never knew were there come into view. Vistas hidden by verdant summer trees and bushes are now revealed. There is a sense of cozy roominess about the whole island.

When you meet people in the streets or along the highways, you now often know who they are. Out-of-state plates are more rarely seen, mopeds disappear, the summer-long traffic jam in front of the Edgartown A & P is gone and it becomes easy to make left-hand turns all over the island.

In September and October, the waters are still warm enough for swimming, the air often comfortable enough for shirt sleeves, the gardens are full of fall veggies, the bluefish are back and the scallop and hunting seasons have begun. Later, when winter arrives, it rarely brings the cold or snows that hit the mainland, because the same surrounding water that cools the island in the summer warms it in the winter. By January the seed catalogues are being studied, and by March the question “Got your peas in yet?” can be heard among the gardeners.

When you live on the Vineyard all year round, it's easy to understand why the tourists like it so much, but it's also nice to know that they mostly come only in the summer. The rest of the time the island belongs to you.

And the year-rounders make both the worst and best of the off season. For some, it's a time for malevolence.
Old antagonisms, put on a back burner during the busy money-making season, reappear. Meannesses, both petty and grand, manifest themselves in and out of court. Tire slashers make their presence known. Anonymous telephone callers and letter writers harass their victims. Drink and drugs continue to mix with driving and the abuse of relatives and associates. Arguments break out over fences or in committee meetings, threats are exchanged, angry letters appear in the papers.

For other islanders, the winter season is a time of special blessing when, no longer obliged to structure their lives around the activities of a hundred thousand visitors, they can pursue their private intellectual and aesthetic interests. Their enthusiasms for culture and the arts flourish, with concerts, benefits, dances and lectures being attended on a nightly basis. People go to theater, listen to speakers, plan charitable events, gossip and otherwise use the off season to good advantage.

The islanders also exchange buildings and businesses in a sort of giant, real life Monopoly game, and, in like fashion, also exchange spouses and lovers rather actively. A popular joke is that of the small boy who, when challenged by a rival about whose dad could win a fight, replied, “Your dad can't either lick my dad. Your dad
is
my dad!”

In these ways, the island is a microcosm of the world, with all the good and evil, mediocrity and extremism you can find anywhere else, and in about the same proportion.

As I drove to Zee's house, I considered my options for the day. Zee herself, unfortunately, was not one of them, since she was working the day shift at the hospital. That being the case, I had other choices, all appealing. After showing the fish to Zee and establishing
bragging rights for the biggest blue of the year, and after filleting the wonderful fish and sticking all or part of it into my freezer for future reference, I could go shell fishing or duck or goose hunting, although it was a little late in the day for hunting, or I could do some ahead-of-time cooking which would also go in the freezer. Some seviche made from part of my fresh bluefish and to be eaten tomorrow would also be nice. Or I could sit in front of my new stove and read another one of the books I'd gotten at the summer book fair in West Tisbury. Or maybe I would do nothing at all. By noon the sun would warm things up enough to allow me a midday snooze out in my yard. Maybe I would do that. The joys of the bachelor life on Martha's Vineyard were many.

Soon, of course, those joys would end for me, and would be replaced by the delights of marriage. After saying no to my proposals for more times than I could remember, Zee had shocked and delighted me by saying yes. Now we were officially an item. A couple. Engaged.

Engaged. Soon to be married.

Married. I had been married once, long before. Zee, too, had once been wed. Now we had agreed to try it again. The triumph of hope over experience.

As a married man, could I ever again decide to do nothing at all, just because I felt like it? Now I owed nothing to anybody, but when I married, Zee would be part of every decision.

Or would she? Were there, even in marriage, areas of privacy which needed to be maintained? Both Zee and I were used to living alone and making decisions for ourselves. Neither of us was the dependent type, neither inclined to ask permission for how we lived.

Hmmmm.

But the thought of her in my house forever filled
me with joy and amazement. I shed not a tear at the thought of giving up my bachelorhood. It couldn't happen too soon.

I got back to the pavement at Katama, shifted into two-wheel drive, and decided to take the Meetinghouse Way shortcut to the West Tisbury road. Mistake. Meetinghouse Road is Edgartown's worst public road. It is corduroy from end to end and will shake your car to pieces in short order if you drive it often. I take it every now and then just to see if it's been improved, but it never has been. It doesn't get any worse, because it can't, but it never gets any better, either.

By the time I got to the West Tisbury road, my teeth were loose in my gums. I lived in a house converted from a hunting camp, I drove an ancient, rusted-out Land Cruiser, I was always short of money and I had other problems, but at least, by God, I didn't live on Meetinghouse Way, so things could have been a lot worse.

I drove up past the contested fifty acres belonging to Carl Norton, past Mimi Bettencourt's place and the acre of jungle that surrounded Chug Lovell's sagging house, then past Phyllis Manwaring's huge house. No one seemed to be up and around. I went on to West Tisbury, passed the mill pond and took a left. I drove by Alley's general store on the right (long since owned by people other than Alley) and the field of dancing statues on the left, and on to Zee's driveway.

Perfect timing. Zee, in her white nurse's uniform, was coming out of her house just as I pulled in. I sat and ogled her. Her raven hair was pinned up, her tan was still smooth and dark, her great dark eyes were bright and her teeth flashed when she saw me. I got out and put a modest expression on my face. She was immediately suspicious.

“All right, Jefferson, what's going on? I've got to get to work, so don't take too long.”

“You wound me,” I said. “Have I ever done anything that was not in your best interest? Have I ever been self-serving in my actions?”