Chapter 4 - The Sea-Wall at Dawn
The storm had broken, but the wind off the Atlantic was still blowing forty knots from the northeast, driving sheets of cold, white spray over the twenty-foot granite sea-wall that protected the lower yard of the funeral home.
The sky was the color of a wet slate shingle.
When we stepped out through the small iron service door near the coal tunnel exit, the cold air hit my face like a thrown bucket of ice water. My blouse—soaked with my own blood and greasy with furnace soot—froze instantly into a stiff, hard board that scraped against my ribs with every step.
Three hundred yards down the wooden breakwater, a twin-diesel launch was idling in the grey water.
Its running lights—one red, one green—were flickered through the thick sea-fog like the eyes of a giant insect. The diesel engines were coughing continuously—thump-thump-thump-thump—as someone in the wheelhouse repeatedly cleared the throttle to keep the bilge pumps from stalling in the heavy swell.
"She’s alone," I shouted over the roar of the surf, pointing toward the boat. "She can't cast off the spring-lines by herself in this tide!"
My mother didn't answer. She was walking along the top of the sea-wall, her blue silk suit whipping around her knees, her grey braid flying wild behind her like a battle pennant. She held the heavy iron scraper in her right hand, using it to balance herself on the slippery, seaweed-covered granite blocks.
Fifty feet ahead of us, a figure was crouching near the iron bollard where the launch’s bow-line was secured.
It was Vanessa.
She had lost her shoes. Her beige wool sweater was torn at the shoulder, soaked through with saltwater, and covered in black coal dust from the tunnel. She was using a heavy iron dock-cleat to smash the bronze padlock that secured the main line to the ring-bolt in the stone.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The sound carried sharp and clear over the roar of the waves.
"Vanessa!" my mother called out.
Her voice wasn't a shout; it was that same low, clear, carrying tone that seemed to cut straight through the wind without rising in pitch.
Vanessa froze.
She didn't turn around immediately. She stayed on her knees, the iron cleat raised over her head, her breath coming in long, white plumes of steam that vanished into the fog.
Slowly, she turned her head.
Her face was white, scraped raw on the left cheek where she had struck the floor in the combustion bay. Her expensive hair was matted with salt and blood, hanging in ratty strings over her eyes.
"Evelyn," she gasped. She dropped the iron cleat. It fell into the churning water between the wall and the boat with a dull plop. "Evelyn... please. It was Adrian. It was all Adrian."
She scrambled to her feet, backing away toward the edge of the breakwater where the sea was slamming against the timber pilings with five-ton pressure.
"He told me you were already dead!" she screamed, her voice rising into an octave that was almost hysterical. "He told me the doctor had signed the papers three days ago! He said you were in a coma... he said you wouldn't feel anything!"
"You took my ring, Vanessa," my mother said. She stopped ten feet away from her on the narrow stone path. "You took it off my finger while I was lying on the table in the preparation room."
Vanessa looked down at her right hand.
The silver band with the pale Kashmir sapphire was still there, caked with dry blood around the setting. She tried to pull it off—jerking at her swollen finger with her left hand—but the skin was tight, inflamed by the cold and the salt water.
"Take it!" she sobbed, holding her hand out toward my mother. "Take it back! Just let me take the boat! The accounts... the money... you can have all of it! I’ll sign the transfers! I’ll sign whatever you want!"
"You don't have anything to sign, Vanessa," my mother said softly. "The money was never Adrian’s. It was never yours. It belonged to sixty-four families who paid for funerals they never received."
"They were dead anyway!" Vanessa shrieked. "Who cares about them? They were old! They were poor! Nobody was looking for them!"
She reached into her coat pocket.
Her hand came out with a small, sharp nickel-plated scalpel—a surgeon's tool she had taken from the embalming tray in the basement. The two-inch steel blade caught the dull grey light of the morning sky like a silver needle.
"Stay back!" she spat, stepping toward the edge of the timber quay. "I swear to God, Evelyn, if you come near me, I’ll drop the thumb-drive into the bay! You’ll never see a penny of it! The state will take everything! You'll be a beggar!"
My mother didn't look at the scalpel.
She looked past Vanessa, down into the black, churning gap between the granite wall and the hull of the diesel launch.
The boat was surging up and down five feet with every wave, its heavy rubber fenders groaning as they scraped against the barnacle-covered pilings. The exhaust pipe on the starboard side was blowing thick, blue-black diesel smoke that smelled of raw petroleum and scorched oil.
"Look down, Vanessa," my mother said.
"I’m not looking at anything!" Vanessa screamed, lunging forward with the scalpel.
She didn't target my mother. She lunged at me.
She saw me standing behind my mother, weak, bloody, leaning on the iron scraper, and she saw her chance to make a hole in our line.
The thin steel blade cut through the air toward my throat.
I couldn't move my arm in time to block it.
I didn't have to.
My mother’s iron scraper moved faster than the eye could follow.
CLACK.
The heavy iron bar didn't strike Vanessa’s hand; it struck the blade itself, shearing the thin surgical steel clean off at the brass handle with a sharp, metallic ring that sounded like a tuning fork.
Vanessa stumbled forward from the force of her own lunge.
Her foot slipped on a patch of wet, brown bladder-wrack seaweed that covered the edge of the granite block.
She lost her balance.
She didn't fall into the boat.
She fell into the eighteen-inch gap between the five-ton steel hull of the diesel launch and the granite wall—just as a fifteen-foot wave caught the vessel's stern and slammed the boat violently back against the quay.
CRUNCH.
It was a sound like a sack of dry walnuts being crushed under a heavy wagon wheel.
A short, sharp gasp of air—thin, high, and instantly cut off—escaped from the gap between the hull and the stone.
Then the boat rolled back out on the recession of the wave.
Vanessa didn't fall into the water.
She remained hanging from the iron bollard, her coat caught on the steel ring, her body limp, her face turned toward the sky. Her eyes were wide, staring up at the slate-grey clouds, her mouth open in a soundless expression of absolute, final surprise.
Her right hand hung down toward the churning sea.
The silver ring with the pale sapphire slipped off her cold, wet finger, hit the granite edge once with a tiny clink, and dropped into forty feet of black, salt water.
My mother stood on the edge of the sea-wall, looking down at the place where the ring had vanished.
She didn't say a word.
She slowly dropped the iron scraper onto the stone path, reached up with her pale, blue-veined hands, and pulled her silver braid back over her shoulder, smoothing down the loose hairs with her damp palms.
"The boat is still running," she said to me, her voice as flat and calm as if she were commenting on the weather. "Go turn off the ignition before the line snaps and the propeller hits the rocks."
I walked past Vanessa’s limp form, stepped across the two-foot gap onto the wet teak deck of the launch, and reached into the small open wheelhouse.
My hands were shaking so hard I could barely find the heavy brass key in the dashboard, but I turned it to the left.
The twin diesel engines coughed once, sputtered, and died with a long, low sigh of escaping steam.
The silence that followed was absolute—broken only by the crash of the Atlantic waves against the sea-wall and the distant, mournful cry of a single herring gull circling in the fog above the chapel roof.
May you like
My mother stood on the breakwater, her blue silk suit wet with sea-spray, looking out toward the north headland where two red lights were finally coming through the trees.
The Sheriff was coming.
