The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie Read online

  “Here it is. You said her lips were ‘red like a wound.’ And then you said, ‘like Snow White.’”

  He thought he saw a glimmer on the horizon, a figure of light, but perhaps it was just a break in the clouds.

  “I’m not an expert on fairy tales, but I decided to look into it and I have to ask, were you the prince?”

  “What?”

  “You told me she crossed the street to get away from you.”

  “I was not threatening her.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  Quark appreciated the lull that fell between them at that point. It gave him space to concentrate on not shaking his head. It would be most unfortunate to have one of his fits at that moment.

  “So, when exactly, did you last see Charlotte?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “What time?”

  “I am not certain. I believe I slept later than usual. It must have been very late in the morning, or very early in the afternoon.”

  “And where was she when you left?”

  “Under the arbor. We drank tea and ate scones. They were delicious.”

  “Oh? There wasn’t any sign of that.”

  “We ate all of them.”

  “There wasn’t any sign of a picnic, is what I’m saying.”

  “We sat in chairs. It wasn’t a blanket picnic.”

  “There weren’t any dishes out there.”

  “I washed them and dried them and put them away before I left.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes. Why would you clean everything like that?”

  “I…. To help. I wanted to help.”

  “But you left Charlotte under the arbor?”

  “She looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to disturb her. I was trying to do something good.”

  “Was she breathing when you left?”

  “Yes,” Quark said, though even to his own ears he sounded uncertain.

  “Right. I got some other folks I need to talk to.”

  Hoping he didn’t appear over-eager, Quark opened the door for Healy who, cap in hand, took a step forward, then stopped abruptly. “They saw you break her neck.”

  “What? Who?”

  “The gull. At the park. They saw you kill it, Quark. The boys. You were right about them following you. They saw what you did.”

  “I never…that is…. Those boys.”

  “What about ‘em?”

  “They are liars.”

  “I found the bird.” Healy leaned closer. “Just something to keep in mind; we didn’t locate any signs of Phoebe in your truck, but there were quite a few traces of animal blood.”

  “I think…”

  “What?” Healy’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll tell you what I think. Your time is running out. You got anything you wanna tell me? This might be your last chance.”

  Quark wanted to say what he was feeling, but it was all mixed up, an aurora borealis of emotion. The sorrow of Mrs. Winter’s passing, the regret that, while she’d been alive, he neglected to thank her for all she’d given him, the touch of wonder in his childhood, the strawberry tea, the kindness.

  Not everyone knows when they save a life, he thought, as the sheriff donned his cap and, with an abrupt nod, walked out the door. Quark stood with his back against it, waiting until he heard the car drive away. “Are you here?” he asked, and asked again.

  When no one answered, he stumbled to the couch, and wept.

  He wept for Mrs. Winter, found so close to the cemetery her spirit might have arrived there on the last gasp of her final exhalation. He wept for Thayer, trapped in some way Quark was incapable of penetrating—much like a mirror world, he guessed—bearing great resemblance to reality without containing any of its consequences. He wept for the gull that mourned its mate with no capacity to understand life’s course. He wept for the mortal loss he’d known as inevitable, yet never embraced, as though the truth of it was another Bellfairian fiction, death as a ghost ship leaving only absence in her wake. So much absence! He wept for the mother he barely remembered, the touch he could not recall, the smile he could not conjure, her stories lost, too, with Mrs. Winter’s passing. Gone. Mrs. Winter gone and, with her, anyone who would shelter him in a storm.

  Gone was the girl with bright red lips. Gone, forever, Quark’s—or anyone’s—opportunity to save her and, because of his inadequacy, gone too, her chance for love. Love! He wept for the mystery everyone else seemed to understand, reminded of how the Old Man used to say he was saved—all those years ago after the wreck—by a sweet scent he first thought was a sign of doom. “Hell’s perfume,” Thayer called it, which he followed “like a starving dog after a poisonous bone,” through the roiling sea, on the back of a horse. (“I don’t know where she came from, and I don’t know where she went” he used to weep) to that small island where red flowers bloomed beneath the moon.

  “And I was saved,” he’d add with so much anger in his voice Quark was never sure if it was a happy ending or not. “Saved so I could raise you, I guess.”

  27

  He felt lost at sea—the way he’d always feared—lying on the tattered vessel of that stinky couch. How long did he roil in despair before the Old Man arrived, signaling with a crook of his finger for Quark to follow? By the time he sat up, he was alone.

  How to proceed? So many had fed him, those early days of his mourning and, while some of the food had spoiled under his poor management, Quark greatly appreciated all of it. He decided to make a cake for Coral. Doing so necessitated a trip to the grocery store and, since he would be out anyway, it seemed a good a time to visit Henry Yarly.

  Before any of that, however, Quark sat at the plank table folding each letter into a neat rectangle he tucked inside an envelope and addressed using the phone book as a resource. His tongue soon felt so unpleasant from licking the glue that he briefly considered abandoning the project. Instead, he reminded himself of the kind of person he wanted to be which was not the sort of man who never apologized simply because it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  Finished, at last, he turned his attention to the ditty box. He soon felt overwhelmed by the choices, peering into the chipped and stained coffee mug many times, as if it would reveal the secrets that had been whispered over its rim. If he had been successful in finding the Old Man’s ship building book, it might have been easier to part with such detritus but, when Quark brought the shot glass to his nose, he inhaled—beneath the vague scent of dish soap—the notes of cinnamon and clove and that particular Bellfairie aroma of water, stone, and something sour. It was no longer a simple glass but a portal to their last night together.

  Why hoard such meager material as if the memories were good? Nonetheless, he set aside a box of small things to keep. Inside it went one mug, both shot glasses, a belt made of knotted rope, and the tie he puzzled over. It looked new. Quark wondered if it had ever been worn and why it was purchased. He asked the shadows but got no answer. Eventually, struck by either inspiration or desperation, he scoured the backyard for cedar shavings. Staring up at the figurehead leaning into the sky, he wondered if Aurora would actually float. It was no small thing to create something buoyant enough to ride waves, yet strong enough to resist gale force winds.

  Back inside, he pressed one of Thayer’s old socks into the ditty box, topped with a combination of wood shavings and driveway glass. He regretted his decision as he prepared to leave, searching for his own socks which he vaguely recalled taking off after stepping into one of the many puddles that kept appearing throughout the house. Where were they? Why did everything keep disappearing?

  He didn’t like wearing shoes without socks but had no other choice, unless he ransacked the ditty box, which felt like grave robbing. He decided, instead, that he would stop at the Emporium to purchase another pair. On his way out of the bedroom, he spied that little gold heart on the dresser and decided to set it on the shards; he liked the way it looked in the nest of glass and cedar. He grabbed the letters, a
nd dropped them off at the mailbox, flipping the flag to signal for pick up.

  Grief is a man without his truck, Quark thought, trudging towards the shore.

  He had accompanied the Old Man to Yarly’s house many times, stacking pebbles and collecting seashells while the two men sat on the porch with their whiskey and tobacco. Sometimes their visits lasted so late both men fell asleep in the rocking chairs while Quark watched the waves lick nearer until the cairns he’d built were destroyed. Remembering those long ago nights perfumed with acrid smoke and the briny scent of the sea filled him with longing, as if he would choose to go back to that time he had been so eager to leave.

  It was true he had no interest in being out on the Old Man’s ship, or any other, but Quark did appreciate being near water, imagining a world that flourished below the waves where bells still rang and the dead danced in Fiddler’s Green. He had not anticipated that he would find the way to Yarly’s uncertain but he turned into a rock-strewn cove, then rounded another bend and came upon a large, modern home he stared at in confusion until he saw a face looking down at him from an upstairs window. Finally, after a few more such false arrivals, he found the place, much as he remembered it, in need of paint, two rocking chairs on the sagging porch. For a moment he thought he saw someone sitting there but it was just the way light shimmered near water, rippling the air like a curtain.

  He surveyed the beloved shoreline of his childhood, surprised to find Yarly facing the ocean, as if stopped in mid-stride, knees slightly bent, hands cupped towards the horizon, pushing away the waves, though that was obviously an illusion.

  “Ahoy! It is I!”

  Yarly turned at the salutation but stood immobile for so long Quark worried he was not welcome, unprepared for the confluence of emotion that arose within the embrace.

  “What brings you, here, son?”

  “You said I should come. So we could say goodbye to Thayer in private.”

  “That’s right. I’m getting old. Memory dies, you know. Time ships away. Well, you don’t want to hear all that. You’re still young. In your prime.”

  Quark held out the ditty box in both hands, presenting it as though it were made of glass.

  “Is this...is he?”

  “Just some of his things. Nothing else. I am going to bury it. Like a grave. So we have a place to visit.”

  Yarly nodded, though he continued to stare at the box as if worried Thayer might arise from its shallow depth. “It’s good you did this. After all, you know what they say.”

  Bothered by the sand in his shoes, Quark shifted from foot to foot. “Grief is a ship without a captain.”

  “That’s right, son. Come on, now. Let’s go inside.”

  He followed Yarly up the crooked stairs, pausing to ask himself if he had ever been more at peace than on the rickety porch he’d nearly forgotten.

  “Son? You coming?”

  The last time Quark had been there he was young and not interested in the stone mantel above the hearth cluttered with framed photographs—a smiling woman in a white dress, a baby on a blanket—seashells, stones, feathers, a wisp of hair tied with pink ribbon.

  “Did you make this?” Sitting in a chair across from the couch, Yarly held up the ditty box as if Quark might have forgotten about it.

  “Yes.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t have to, if you don’t want.”

  Quark hadn’t anticipated the question. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

  “Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Go ahead. It isn’t much.” He sat on the sagging couch to watch.

  Yarly lifted the lid with such reverence that Quark found himself leaning forward as if he had no idea what he, himself, had placed there.

  “I know it’s not much. Just a few old things.”

  Yarly held the sock aloft.

  “I just….” Quark started, then stopped. He just what, after all? What had he been thinking?

  Yarly let the sock fall, moved to close the lid, stopped, reached in and pulled out the small gold heart, staring at it as if mesmerized.

  Quark wasn’t sure if he was expected to explain. He was uncertain what he had meant by putting it there. Something about love, he thought.

  “You still drink tea?” Yarly asked, closing the lid.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I keep the kettle going all day. It’ll be just a minute.”

  Quark peered at the window, watching waves roll over his reflection. He shouldn’t have come. He never should have returned to Bellfairie. Or he did the right thing by coming but should have left as soon as Thayer was found.

  “I wasn’t sure what to do,” he said, surprised to hear himself share his private thoughts. “I was hoping to find his book.”

  “What book would that be, son?” Yarly asked as he pulled cups and saucers down from the shelf.

  “His ship building book. The one he was writing. That’s what he said it was. He carried it with him everywhere when I was young. It was bound in leather. He told me I could have it after he died. You don’t know where it might be, do you?”

  “Sorry, I never heard nothing about it. But that makes sense, right? You two knew each other best. I ain’t got any of that strawberry tea you used to like. Hope you are okay with black.” Yarly set the tray on the old sailor chest that served as a coffee table and pointed at a little plate of star shaped cookies dusted with yellow sugar. “Saved some of these Thayer made.”

  “He made cookies?”

  “Yah.”

  When Yarly lifted the teapot, his hands trembled so much, the lid rattled in its perch. He’s old, Quark thought. Not much time left for him, now. Something flashed from Yarly’s eyes—too quickly to be examined—before he looked down to set the teapot on the tray.

  “Don’t think I didn’t know how he put you under pressure, son. I should of done better by you. After what happened to your mother he just had no more in him to give. Don’t think you ever knew the man, really. He was hard on you. Too hard, and I’m sorry. I should have done more. We all should have. Still, there comes a time when you are no longer a child, and must take responsibility for your own actions.”

  Quark reached for a cookie, his hand hovering above the plate as if the choice had deep implications.

  “Go on,” Yarly said. “They’re a little stale, but good. They have that smoky flavor you don’t get in store bought.”

  Quark selected a star he held up to catch the light, surprised he felt something like reverence, disappointed when, seeking a neat break, it crumbled in his hands.

  Yarly handed him a cloth napkin from the stack neatly folded on the tray. “You always have underestimated your strength,” he said softly.

  Rather than debate the topic, Quark brushed crumbs into the napkin then set it aside and picked up his tea cup, careful of the delicate handle.

  “I think it would be best if you leave all this with me.” Yarly said, tapping the ditty box with his finger.

  Quark shook his head no.

  “Now, don’t be angry, son.”

  But once begun, he could not stop, trapped within a necessary rhythm of his own body, no easier to terminate—through will alone—than the beating of his heart. When it was all over, he saw the shattered cup and Yarly’s eyes locked wide in horror. It was more than Quark could bear, this creature he’d become. He knew he should stay to clean up the mess, but he grabbed the box and ran.

  28

  Quark was standing at Felix’s Emporium, a bag of groceries held against his chest and a new pair of socks dangling from his hand, when he noticed the picture of the girl tacked to the bulletin board, “Missing” printed in bold letters over her head. Once again he thought how he had never actually seen her smile, and was struck by the difference it made. He knew the flyer was one of many distributed before the body was discovered, yet found himself pondering the implication of her happy face. Leaning forward for a closer look, h
e startled back as if electrocuted by the little gold heart that dangled from a chain around her neck.

  It took all of his strength not to run out of the store, even as he plodded to the register.

  “You all right there, Quark?”

  He blinked to focus on Felix.

  “I heard you’re in trouble.”

  Unsure how to respond, Quark stared straight ahead.

  “Yeah, well don’t give much mind to what people say. That’ll be two fifty-six.”

  “What?

  “Two fifty-six. For the socks.”

  “Oh, yes. They’re for my feet.” Quark set the bag on the counter to search his pockets for cash.

  “You baking a cake?”

  “Yes. For Mrs. Winter.” He handed Felix a five dollar bill. “I mean for Coral. Mrs. Winter is dead.”

  “See. That’s what I mean.”

  “Yes, well.”

  “She used to come in here, and she wasn’t all innocent like they’re making her out to be.”

  “Mrs. Winter?”

  “No. The girl. I saw you looking at her poster. She wasn’t no saint is what I’m saying.”

  “Well.”

  “Not that she deserved what happened. I ain’t saying that.”

  Quark extended his hand, palm up, for the change.

  “Hey, I been meaning to ask.”

  “Yes?”

  “You ever get rid of that dybbuk? You know, the one was bothering you?”

  “I need to go.”

  Quark didn’t mean to be rude, merely direct, but Felix’s eyebrows shot up like buckshot crows. “Don’t gotta get that way with me,” he said. “I might be your only friend, don’t you know?”

  Quark pocketed the change, tucked the socks in the bag next to the cake mix and, with a tip of his hat, exited the Emporium. Though he saw several people on his way back to the house, they were on the other side of the street, and he was relieved not to have to engage with them.

  Was the heart a coincidence or a clue? He pictured, as if his life had turned into a movie, his own fingers reach through the shrub grass for that glint of gold, and the next thing he knew he was shaking his head slowly enough to glimpse a woman across the street glaring at him as if he were disagreeing with a point she held dear.