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This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Jeff Van Pelt has a doctoral degree in counseling from the College of William and Mary. He spent fifteen years doing psychotherapy, and for the past five years has worked in behavioral healthcare management. He lives with his wife and two children in Midlothian, Virginia and enjoys sailing and gourmet cooking. This is his first novel and draws upon his rich experiences as a psychotherapist, as well as years spent living in, and sailing to, some of the remoter parts of Virginia's Tidewater region.
The line of vehicles crept toward the gate of the shipyard in bumper-to-bumper, end-of-shift traffic. Hume followed the rusty old shitpile Firebird with a bumper sticker said “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God.” A guy on a Harley followed Hume. He felt the sound of the bike’s “potato, potato, potato,” as it idled in stopped traffic. It’s rider--people just called him Ice--was a welder who had been working on a project with Hume’s crew for several months. In his rearview mirror, Hume saw the afternoon sun glint off the Harley’s black gas tank. The heat and humidity were onerous and the rider had sweat running down his face. Hume was glad to be in an air-conditioned truck.
The guy in the old Firebird, Burbal Meeks, was an electrician on Hume’s crew. Burbal had been after Hume and Ice for weeks to go to some titty bar after work, and Hume finally agreed. Now he was having second thoughts. He hadn’t been feeling right lately. He didn’t know what it was but he felt wired and on edge. He did a line of coke minutes ago in the parking lot, but it didn’t help--might have made him worse. Maybe it was all the shit Anna was putting him through, he didn’t know, but the slightest noise jarred him, as if someone were reaching into his skin and grabbing a handful of nerves and twisting them. And he felt he couldn’t trust anyone. A lot of people had been looking at him funny, like there was something wrong with him or they knew something he didn’t. But it was too late to back out now, else they’d be pissed at him, or worse, they’d think he didn’t like pussy.
Once out of the shipyard, traffic moved okay--at 4:00, it wasn’t general rush hour yet. They crossed the Hampton Roads tunnel into Norfolk and headed down Granby Street. Thick black clouds were beginning to darken the sky to the west. Late afternoon in August that usually meant a thunderstorm. Hume thought about Ice on a bike in a thunderstorm and the hint of a grin crossed his somber face.
Burbal led the way across the Downtown Tunnel into South Norfolk. Not for the timid, South Norfolk was run down frame houses and marginal businesses, bleak alleys and warehouses. The blocks were rigidly segregated along racial lines, a checkerboard, as if a committee had sat down and said this will be for blacks and this for whites.
The sky became increasingly dark and threatening, like a nasty contusion. The three vehicles sat at the intersection in a white neighborhood, waiting for the light to change. On the right was Bootsie’s Pawn Shop in an old cinder-block building. The front porch was cluttered with junk you might find in an old shed after the owner died--a wooden trunk, a wrought iron floor lamp, an ancient Coca Cola vending machine, a Cities Service gas station sign. Cater-corner across the intersection was Ellwood’s Adult Book Store--“ENTER IN REAR” the sign said. Hume turned his headlights on.
Several sheets of newspaper blew by in the gusty wind. A blinding flash of light spider-webbed across the sky and was followed seconds later by the crash of thunder. The stoplight turned green and the three vehicles made a left-hand turn. The wind gusted harder and whipped the tops of the few trees. Several huge drops of rain splattered on Hume’s windshield, forming rivulets of mud. He hadn’t noticed how dusty he had let it get. He turned on the wiper-washer, but it wasn’t necessary. Just then the sky opened wide and dropped torrents of rain. It hammered the roof and hood of his truck with great fury. Lightning arced across the sky again, creating a stroboscopic image, as if the rain were briefly frozen in mid-air. Hume laughed aloud as he looked at Ice in the rearview, doggedly holding his course. Was Ice’s scowl on account of the weather or had he seen Hume laughing?
Moments later, Burbal pulled into the parking lot of a bar. Girls, Girls, Girls. Exotic Dancers. Adult Entertainment. The place had enough signs you couldn’t miss it in a thunderstorm. The building’s exterior was brown T-111 siding, the kind you use on storage sheds, and it had no windows. It was called Tony’s Tiki Tai. Hume and Burbal got out of their vehicles and ran for the shelter of an overhang by the entrance. Ice pulled a towel from the storage compartment behind the seat of his bike and walked over at a leisurely pace. He couldn’t get any wetter.
“You look like a wet rat, man.” Burbal laughed at Ice. Burbal was a talker, cheerful and emphatic by nature, always in the center of things. His facial features all looked a size and a half too large. He had short black hair and a Yasser Arafat beard that looked like he forgot to shave for a few days, but he always wore it that way so Hume figured he did it on purpose.
The shipyard provided them a locker room, and they had all three changed out of their work clothes. Hume wore his signature tight, full-length jeans and boots with an olive shirt. Burbal wore old jeans and a Rolling Stones tee shirt with a huge mouth on the front. The shirt-tail was out and it made a tent beneath his belly big enough for a nice-size cat to sleep under.
Ice wore a jeans vest without a shirt underneath, showing off hardened biceps and pectorals which were covered in menacing tattoos of a wolf, several spiders, a coiled snake, and of course, Harley wings. He walked up looking stony-faced and grim, as usual. A guy on his crew said he’d even look butt-ugly-mean winning the lottery. His face was hard planes, as if cut from wood. He had high, prominent cheek bones, intense blue eyes, and a closely cropped goatee. In contrast to Hume’s height and Burbal’s girth, Ice was a trim but intimidating 5’8”.
When he got close enough, Ice shook his mop-hair like a retriever, flinging water on the other two. “Bastard,” Burbal said good-naturedly. Ice’s face lightened up momentarily at the acknowledgement of his revenge.
They walked inside the dimly lit club. It smelled of cigarette smoke, beer and deep-fried food. There was a bar against the far wall and a woman was drawing beer from a tap while a waitress stood by with a tray. Down the center of the room was a runway for dancers, about as high as the tabletops. It extended outward from one wall, where it was wider, like a stage, and stretched a little more than halfway across the room. There were maybe two dozen men sitting at tables, some alone and some in small groups, but all pulled up close to the runway, where the action would be. At the wall end of the runway was a door, probably to a dressing room. The runway was lined with lights to illuminate the upcoming program, and these provided most of the light to the rest of the room as well.
A thin man with a sallow complexion and a cigarette hanging from his lips walked out of the shadows. His face was gaunt and sunken, like block prints of Ichabod Crane Hume had seen when he was a boy. He looked about fifty.
“Cover’s five bucks. There’s a two-drink minimum. First show starts in a few minutes,” the man said indifferently. They paid him and took a table midway along the runway. Burbal motioned to the waitress for a pitcher of beer.
“This is what you need, man,” Burbal said, looking at Hume. “Some ladies.”
Hume looked at him suspiciously.
What did he mean by that? Does he think I’ll turn queer since my old lady’s gone?
Burbal fidgeted as Hume held his gaze too long. Suddenly, music came on and the stage lights got brighter. Hume turned to face the runway and Burbal chugged some beer. The music had a driving beat: ABBA, Super Trooper.
When the song ended Ichabod Crane climbed the steps to the stage and spoke, not bothering with the microphone sitting off to one side. “Gentlemen, we have three ladies to perform for your pleasure during happy hour. More will be on later this evening.” His voice was insipid, without inflection. “Two things to remember: don’t touch the ladies except to tuck money in their suits--and that means tuck it in lightly, no groping; and number two, the ladies work for tips. Bo over there enforces the rules.” On the far side of the room, a huge guy in his mid-40’s stood up and smiled broadly, revealing a gap where his upper front teeth should have been. His long hair, which was pulled into a ponytail, was dark brown mottled with gray, and his beard was of the same colors but grayer. He sat back down.
“First performer is Velvet,” Ichabod said. Then he left the runway and the same song started up again, louder.
The door opened onto the runway and a woman stepped out. She gyrated to the music, making her way slowly along the platform. A red satin negligee covered her from neck to thigh and she wore a blonde wig, all piled up and fluffed out like Dolly Parton. Make-up was caked on her face like she thought it would cover the lines of age, but Hume put her at about forty.
“Yowww.” “Take it off, baby.” “Yahoo.” The hoots and shouts came mainly from two tables. Burbal’s eyes were transfixed on the woman, his mouth open and grinning. Ice’s expression hadn’t changed since they arrived. Hume looked around the room. The average I.Q. was decidedly in the double digits. He was feeling uncomfortable but he didn’t know why.
Velvet dropped her outer wrap, evoking more hoots and a few whistles. She wore a red lamé G-string wedged between her buttocks like dental floss. It was complimented by red high-heel shoes, and red pasties on her breasts. To each pasty was attached a tassel on a three-inch string, and she whirled to the music so that the tassels undulated along with her flaccid breasts. For five bucks this is what you get, Hume thought.
The woman worked the crowd methodically. She sashayed over to first one table and then another and flailed and rotated until the men tucked a dollar inside her string. When she came to their table, Burbal was ready with a five. She must have had fine eyesight because she gave a lot more fervor for five than she did for one. She moved as close to him as the platform would permit, and smiled flirtatiously as she moved to the rhythm of Funky Town. She alternated rotating her pelvis in circles and thrusting it back and forth, toward him and away. She leaned over to within inches of his face and blew him a kiss, then turned around and swirled her buttocks in his face awhile. When she turned and faced him again, Burbal stood and slipped the bill dead in the middle of her G-string. She just smiled, pulled it out and held it in her hand with the others.
Ice was sitting about ten feet back from the runway with a sliver of a smile on his face. Hume was sitting close to the runway like Burbal, and Velvet walked over to him next. He felt himself tense up and he grimaced. She smiled at him and started to dance for him. He stared at her paunch, unsmiling and not making eye contact like the other men had. She must have felt his censure and took it as a challenge. She increased the ardency of her bobbles and gyrations, swinging her tassels in his face, licking her lips and winking. But all he could see was her belly, jiggling like jello, and her tits flailing like a bell-hop hailing a taxi. He felt his face getting hot. It seemed all eyes were on him. He squirmed in his seat as he glimpsed Burbal laughing at him. Across the room others were laughing too. His heart began to race, which scared him. Was he about to have a heart attack? The heavy bass in the music was pounding in his ears, all through his body.
Ice half-yelled to Burbal over the sound of the music, “If I had a woman looked like Hume’s old lady, I wouldn’t go for this one either.” Burbal laughed raucously, nodding in agreement.
Hume couldn’t make out all of what was said, but he knew it was about Anna. He remembered the time Anna had picked him up at the shipyard when his truck was in the shop, and how Ice had looked her over, stared at her coolly, not even trying to hide it. And--his heart started pounding even harder--Anna stared back at him. They must have been exchanging signals! Adulterers had a way of doing that, without using words, like ESP. That was about the time Anna quit wanting to get it on, and started staying away from home more and more. It all fit together.
Just then the song ended and, after brief applause, the room became quiet. Velvet, who had given up on Hume and moved on to the next table, now walked back over to him. Her narrowed eyes and tight-lipped smirk looked like a woman scorned and out for revenge.
“You’re not afraid of women are you?” she said to Hume. Laughter erupted from around the room.
Hume felt dizzy, light-headed, like he might pass out. His fingers and toes tingled. He was sweating and it felt like he couldn’t catch his breath. The room started to blur--all he could see was directly in front of him, as though he were looking through a tunnel.
So this was why Burbal wanted to get me here. He had this all set up, probably paid the bitch to harass me, so he could get me back for the times I dumped on him at work. He laughed and went along with me, but he must have been plotting all along to get me back. Burbal and Ice. In this together.
Hume turned toward them, ignoring Velvet. “I’m onto everything now mother fuckers,” he said loudly enough for others to hear.
“Huh?” Burbal looked confused. Ice just looked at Hume.
“I said I’m onto your shit.” He pointed with the forefingers of both hands simultaneously, one at Ice, the other at Burbal. His eyes bugged out, the pupils big as dimes. Velvet stepped back, unsettled by what she had apparently set in motion.
“Whoa, this is getting weird,” Ice said, looking at Burbal as if for guidance.
“Take it easy, man,” Burbal said to Hume. “You’re bummed out about your old lady.”
Hume stood up and started laughing incongruously. The rest of the room got quiet as the oddness of his behavior became more apparent.
“Burbal and Ice-cube are gonna die,” Hume said in singsong meter, “Burbal and Ice-cube are gonna die.”
Hume was sliding down a razor blade toward a pool of rubbing alcohol. No going back. He picked up the half-full pitcher of beer from the table and threw it at Velvet. The plastic pitcher bounced off her chest without harm, but it soaked her as well as much of the runway and several onlookers on the other side. She shrieked and ran backstage. Bo-the-bouncer stood and started across the room in their direction. Hume turned to Ice and the two men locked eyes. Hume lunged at him impetuously, but Ice was ready and adroitly scooted aside and kicked at Hume’s leg, knocking him to the floor with his own momentum. Hume bit his tongue when he fell. He got up, more enraged than ever, with blood dripping from his mouth. His teeth looked like bleached bones in a pool of blood. He picked up a beer bottle off the next table but Bo got there before he could use it.
Bo was as tall as Hume and he must have weighed 50 pounds more. He came up behind Hume and encircled his torso in a bear hug. He quickly lifted Hume off his feet and wrestled him to the floor, face down, then sat on him and pinned his arms behind him.
“Okay buddy,” Bo said. “I don’t know what this is all about. Don’t care. I just keep the peace here. You sit still till the cops get here and nobody gets hurt. You give me a hard time and I’ll have to knock your head on the floor to help you relax.” He was matter of fact, professional even, not like some bouncers who enjoy intimidating and inflicting pain. He continued, “Everybody step back. Cops have already been called. They know the way here. Won’t be long.”
Hume struggled to free himself but his body felt extraordinarily weak and Bo had him well-pinned. He gave up and closed his eyes and lay there. Soon he heard a siren, louder and louder. It felt like his life was over.
**********
The church spire on Tangier Island, and the beacons marking the harbor entrance, were now visible. It was early afternoon. After another twenty minutes of sailing, the boat was approaching the point where the channel narrowed, so Sam started the motor and headed the boat into the wind, then gave the wheel to Anna while he lowered the sails.
“I see some Tangerines,” Anna deadpanned.
“Tangerines?”
“The people who live on the island.”
Sam laughed. “I guess the folks on Smith Island are called Smithereens,” he said. Smith Island lay just to north, in Maryland water.
Tangier island was three miles long from north to south, and a mile wide. A waterway cut the island in half from east to west, and in the middle, that waterway widened into a basin which comprised the harbor. To the north, the island was mostly marsh and uninhabited. The southern half was densely packed with nearly 800 residents. Sam motored slowly into the crowded harbor, which was busy that time of day with workboats returning full of crabs.
“This place was first explored by Captain John Smith in 1608, just a year after Jamestown was founded,” Sam said.
“There’s the historian again,” she smiled.
“Yep. Most of the residents are descended from early Cornish settlers. Half of them are named either Crockett, Pruitt or Parks.”
The waterfront was sparsely developed on the northern side of the harbor, but on the southern side it was a densely developed, bustling place. Everywhere, weathered wooden buildings on stilts straddled the water and land. Docks were squeezed into every available space, and to those were tied workboats of all sizes, sometimes two and three abreast. Harvesting the bounty of the Bay was the main source of income for the islanders.
“The waterfront reminds me of pictures of Thailand,” Anna said.
Sam slowly motored in close to the main dock of the largest marina he saw.
“Got any spaces to rent?” he shouted to a brown, leather-skinned man in his fifties who was sitting under the shade of an overhanging roof.
The man sat forward and looked appreciatingly at Anna’s figure as he responded to Sam. “Nope. Those slips you see there are all taken. Skippers’ll be returning ‘fore long. Best bet’s see if somebody’ll let you tie up alongside ’em.” Sam noted several distinctions in his pronunciation: “. . . toi up alongsoid ’em.”
“Thanks.” Sam motored on.
“I’d better put my shorts and tee shirt back on.” Anna smiled and headed below deck. Sam thought it a mark of her character that she took the good-natured ogling in stride. He never liked the way Judith’s younger sister dressed revealingly, then got angry when men stared at her.
After poking around the harbor awhile, Sam found a young man busy unloading his catch of crabs from a long wooden boat which was tied parallel to a dock. Sam handed him a ten dollar bill and got the okay to tie up beside him for a few hours while he and Anna walked around town. He put out four rubber bumpers along his starboard side, then tied the two boats together. He locked up the cabin and he and Anna stepped across the foredeck of the waterman’s boat, avoiding the area where the man was working.
By this time, the arrival of an outsider in a fancy sailboat had attracted the attention of a swarm of tow-headed children who crowded around Sam and Anna on the dock.
“Where are you from?”
“Do you live on that boat?”
“What’s inside of your boat?”
“It sure is large for a sailboat.” Large was pronounced lorge.
The children were polite and Sam and Anna enjoyed answering their questions. An Englishman might have thought he was in Devon or Cornwall, or even stepping back in time. Traces of West Country and Elizabethan intonations in the children’s speech were proof that their way of speaking was far from extinct, as some had predicted would happen once radio and television became available on the island. Anna asked their names. Murry and Pull, they said, for Mary and Paul.When one of the children said he had hart his hill, Anna had to be shown before she understood he had hurt his heel. Similarly, “Most every parson on the island warks the say,” meant that most every person on the island worked the sea.
A couple of the inquisitive children made Sam think of Ben and Rachel, and he felt a wave of disquiet come over him. He stepped back from the group, briefly pensive, but he didn’t want to do that to himself.
Put unpleasant thoughts aside and enjoy the present.
“I’ll tell you what, guys,” he said, stepping forward again. “I’ll pay each of you a dollar to guard my boat and make sure no one gets on it. Okay?”
They agreed, and he gave them each a dollar, two of which he had to get from Anna. Then he and Anna walked off the dock and started down the narrow street which paralleled the waterfront.
“You don’t really think they’ll be able to stop anyone who wants to get on the boat, do you?” she asked.
“No. It’s to stop them from getting on it.”
She laughed. “Oh, I see. The judicious use of bribery.”
They turned right, onto one of two main streets which ran north and south. A small canal and salt marshes separated the two streets, and several small bridges connected them. There were almost no cars on the island, which was a good thing, as the streets were very narrow. Most got around on golf carts, bicycles or motor scooters. The modest frame houses were necessarily crowded together since land high enough to build on was in short supply. Many homes had graves in their small front yards due to the shortage of high ground, and even then the tombs needed heavy lids so caskets wouldn’t float away when the water level rose.
Anna held onto Sam’s arm as they walked. A swarm of flies followed them.
“Time’s fun when you’re having flies,” Sam said, swatting at the offenders and drawing a laugh from Anna.
“I wonder what it’s like living here,” she said. “You would have to have all your food brought over by ferry, and so far to go to do any shopping.”
The island was served by ferry from Reedville in the Northern Neck, and Crisfield, Maryland to the east. The ferry brought basic supplies to be sold at a couple of general stores. There was a small airstrip on the island, and a doctor and dentist from the Northern Neck flew over once a month in their own plane to see patients.
Sam felt another tinge of unease. This time it was the wraith of Dr. Necko that spooked him. He recalled the nervous man’s facial tics in front of the Board of Medicine, as he answered the allegations against him. How would I sound trying to explain that what I’m doing is different from what he did?
They walked in silence awhile.
“What are we going to do for dinner tonight?” Anna asked.
“I’m making something special.” Sam brightened up. “It’s a secret. But first I want to show you the rest of the island.”
**********
Hume Baliles arrived at the Phoenix Counseling office a half hour early for his appointment with Dr. Mergler, having come straight from the hospital. His hair was matted and uncombed, and he had gray-blue bags under his eyes. He had on the same clothes he wore the previous night to Tony’s Tiki Tai, but the hospital had washed them for him since they were beer-soaked. He walked up to the reception window and told the sunny young receptionist his name. While she was looking for his paperwork he stared at her ample breasts and tried to imagine how they would look unsheathed. She became flustered but eventually found the right forms and handed them to him. He took a seat facing her and alternated between watching her and filling out the forms.
At 4:00 promptly, the receptionist opened the door to the waiting room and held it for Hume. “You can come on back, Mr. Baliles.” She motioned for him to take the lead down the hallway.
“I’ll follow you,” Hume said with a smirk. He wanted to get a look at her ass, and he couldn’t do that if he were leading the way.
She sighed and walked off briskly. He followed.
Mergler had his jacket buttoned, and a red and gold silk tie provided a splash of color against the dark blue background. When Hume walked into his office, Mergler stood and greeted him.
This shrink looks like he jacks off to Cosmopolitan.
“Have a seat.” Mergler motioned to a blue satin armchair. “It sounds like you had a rough couple of days. How do you feel now?” Mergler wielded a clipboard like a Roman shield, and a pen for a sword.
“I feel as much like I did yesterday as I do today,” Hume said. Mergler looked at him blankly but didn’t reply. “I feel like shit, man, after getting thrown in with the psychos and pumped full of bad drugs.”
“What feels bad?”
“I’m tired as hell, my mouth feels like I got a tampon in it, and my joints ache like an old geezer. Does this medicine do all that to you?”
“Navane is an anti-psychotic medication that was given to you to control paranoia. It can cause side effects until your body adjusts to it, but its very important that you keep taking it until Dr. Milano tells you otherwise.”
“It makes my throat closer than it seems. I feel like I could pet furry animals by the mouthful.”
Mergler wrote something on his clipboard. “I understand you use cocaine and drink alcohol pretty regularly. Is that correct?”
“Yeah, you could say I’m pretty regular.” Hume chuckled at himself.
“How often have you been using cocaine?”
“Every day.”
“About how much do you use in a day?” Mergler continued until he had established the pattern of substance abuse, then moved on to a review of psychiatric symptoms.
“Do you ever have thoughts about suicide?”
“Hell no, man. I got things I want to do with my life.”
“Like what?”
“I forgot, what’s the next question?”
“Do you want to hurt anybody you work with?”
“There’s a lot of split personnel at the shipyard, and they keep getting on my aspects of the situation, but they didn’t screw me over; my wife did. She keeps telling me one thing one day and out the other. She’s the one that has to pay for her unclean acts.”
“Wait a minute.” Mergler straightened up in his seat and stopped writing. “Do you plan to hurt your wife?”
“Damn right, I will, soon as I find her.”
“How would you hurt her?”
“That’s all I’m saying.” Be careful, anything you say can and will be used against you.
“This is important, please, tell me what you would do if you saw your wife.”
“That’s all I’m saying.” Hume’s voice was louder and his tone irritated.
“Can you promise me not to harm her?”
Hume narrowed his eyes and stared silently at Mergler. After a few moments Mergler averted his glance. At an obvious impasse, he moved on. “Do you ever think you hear voices when there’s no one there?”
“Naw.” Hume grinned and rolled his head like Stevie Wonder.
“Do you ever think you’re being followed?”
“Once I thought I was being followed by a pair of boxer shorts.”
“Oh? What happened?” Mergler seemed to perk up again.
“I woke up.” Hume guffawed and Mergler looked impatient.
The questions continued for about half an hour.
“Mr. Baliles,” Mergler said finally, “judging from your history, I don’t think you have a major mental illness like schizophrenia or manic depression. We think what happened to you is drug-induced paranoia. You have a predisposition to become paranoid when you use cocaine or alcohol--”
“So I’m a lunatic, but its not so bad because I can blame it on drugs.” Hume wore a smirk.
Mergler continued, ignoring the flippancy. “The only sure cure is to stay off cocaine, alcohol, all drugs.Otherwise you’ll wind up committed to the hospital, at best, or in jail or dead, at worst.”
Committed to the loony bin? No way! It was time to cooperate. “I’ll do whatever I got to stay out of the hospital.”
“Good. I recommend you stay on that medication. Your thoughts are still a little jumbled. And I want you to enroll in our outpatient substance abuse program. Its a therapy group that meets for two-and-a-half hours, three times a week.”
“Come on doc, can’t I just see somebody one-on-one every week? I’m not into that group stuff. And I got a long drive for three times a week.”
“All our substance abuse treatment is in groups because experience shows groups are more effective than individual therapy for treating substance abuse. And I don’t think three times a week is too high a price. You’ve got a lot at stake, Mr. Baliles.”
“All right, all right.”
“Your first group is tomorrow at six. I want to see you again myself, too, to check on how you’re doing. How’s next Friday?”
“Good as any.”
Mergler wrote the appointment on a card for him and showed him to the exit.
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