As if a page had been turned and in concert everyone had exhaled a long-held breath, the paranoia and fear that had held townspeople in its grip through the past months eased. Even the drama of the pregnant teenagers had morphed into something like acceptance, and after the birth of the babies, attention shifted to caring for the infants. There were hastily arranged marriages, one adoption, and two girls who remained single and kept their sons to raise alone. And as if by tacit agreement, there had grown a consensus among the townspeople that Lucy Light had been murdered by a stranger, an addict who had been passing through, and as awful as it was—those things happened, just look at the news—it was an aberration that wouldn’t be repeated. In the face of the unimaginable, towns, like individuals, find ways to accommodate and compromise and go on. The green ribbons that girded trees throughout the town had faded to the palest yellow, their edges tattered and defeated. People again grew careless about locking their doors and relaxed the vigilance with which they watched over their daughters.
Concern and conversation now centered on the weather. A high-pressure area had stalled over the northeastern seaboard, and an extraordinary, record-breaking heat had descended. For five days the temperature hit ninety-nine degrees, and accustomed to the mitigating influence of offshore breezes even at the height of summer, the town was unprepared for the intensity of the heat. Every AC unit within thirty miles had sold out days ago, and brownouts occurred periodically as utility systems wilted into overload. At the Port Fortune Sun Times, the editor reported that historically heat waves had proved more deadly than hurricanes or tornadoes. He reminded readers to stay hydrated and to remain inside during the peak hours of the day.
Even in daylight, animals wandered into town. A deer was seen lapping water from a birdbath in Lucia Crowley’s yard, and two streets away Alan Moore witnessed a fox drinking from the bowl he’d set out on the back stoop for his dog. Over at Cape Port Ice, there was a sighting of a brown bear on the ramp leading to the worn loading dock, and in Jules Cavanaugh’s hives, the honeycombs began to melt in spite of the furious efforts of the fanning bees.
In four days, ten deaths had occurred: three elderly residents of Rose Hall Manor, one suicide, two dogs, and four of Ben Roark’s hen pullets, whose bodies he discovered inside the coop, limp and covered with greenheads. People spoke of the heat as if it were an animal, a great creature that had crawled into their town along with the fox and deer and brown bear, suffocating all with its low-slung belly and fetid breath.
That Tuesday morning at seven thirty the thermometer mounted outside the town hall registered eighty-three, and by noon it edged closer to one hundred. At the Morning Glory Bed and Breakfast, Leola Simmons had installed window fans in each bedroom, but arriving tourists, on learning there was no central AC, canceled their reservations and demanded their deposits be returned. At the Loaves of the Fisherman, the temperature in the kitchen by the Frialator reached one hundred and twenty-three degrees, triggering the fire alarm. Leon Newell, Caesar Amero, and Portuguese Joe sat at their regular table and recalled heat waves of decades past, the summers of ’98 and ’34.
At the town pier the Johnny B Good arrived in from a trip offshore to a pier so hot the crew felt as if they were stepping on the sun. Moving as quickly as the heat allowed, the men unloaded the trawler and re-iced their catch. Waves of white incandescence rose off the parking lot; tires on boat trailers sank into the softening macadam.
The police department issued extreme heat advisories, and Chief Johnson reminded residents that the elderly and animals were at the highest risk. Tempers flared as if in sync with the mercury, and Dot Hastings, the station dispatcher, dealt with a steady in-rush of calls reporting escalating bar brawls and domestic quarrels, people collapsing on the street, and homeowners violating the recently instituted ban on watering lawns. “This outdoes the full-moon mania,” Dot said to Dan Gordon, who arrived at the station having just cited the owner of an Alaskan malamute for leaving the dog in a locked car while she was shopping in an air-conditioned market. Even at the beach there was no relief. Swimmers suffered sunburns; cranky children blistered their feet just by walking across the sand.
At Holy Apostles, fans had been set up in the sanctuary, and Father Gervase’s garden was showing signs of stress. Each morning and evening he surveyed the brown-edged leaves of daylilies and the limp blossoms of hydrangea bushes, and mindful of the request to limit watering lawns and gardens, he convinced Mrs. Jessup to save her dishwater, which he carried in jugs to pour out at the base of the plants.
So life went on.
If people talked about the Light family now, they focused less on the mystery of the daughter’s murder and more on the honor her father was bringing to Port Fortune. Will Light had been chosen by the archdiocese of Boston to paint the murals for that city’s new cathedral, a series of the saints that would hang in the nave, portraits for whom he had asked some of the people of Port Fortune to serve as models.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Ya know, Jossie thinks this is pretty damn funny,” Leon Newell said.
“What’s that?” I was paying halfhearted attention to Leon’s conversation. When some models posed they tended to be talkative, and over the years I’d learned to filter them out.
“This. Me posing as a saint. Jossie’s laughing her head off about it. She says if I’m a saint, it has to be one with singed and broken wings.”
“She must be thinking of angels. I don’t think saints have wings.”
“Well, she says that maybe me posing as a saint some of it will rub off. I told her not to get her hopes up.”
I had to smile. As is true in many small towns, gossip was its lifeblood, and although I usually paid little attention to it, Leon’s reputation as a drinker was legendary. In that he was not alone. When the cod stock diminished, a good share of the fishermen began driving trucks with bumper stickers that said, “Port Fortune—A Drinking Town with a Fishing Problem.”
“We’re almost ready,” I told him. “It’ll just take me another minute or two to get things set.”
“No problem.” Leon looked around. “I haven’t been in this building in years. Used to be Louie Johns’s place.”
“That so?”
“Yup. I guess you’ve heard of him.”
I ran the name through my mind. “Sounds vaguely familiar,” I said. “But I can’t place him.”
“No kidding. I thought everyone in town knew of him. He was a boatbuilder. One of the best. A real craftsman. Wooden boats, ya know. None of that fiberglass crap for him. You wanted a dory or a catboat built, Louie was the man. Sloops, too. He had buyers coming up all the way from Maryland. Even a couple of times from Florida. Seams on his boats were so tight, they’d never sink as long as you kept them in water. Here. Let me show you something.” He stepped down from the riser I’d built for the models to stand on and crossed to the back of the building, walking with the rolling gait of a man who had spent years at sea. “Ya see that beam? See those cuts up there?”
I stood beside Leon and gazed up at the beam, saw a faint hatching of scars.
“There’s one for every boat Louie built. Must be a hundred of ’em. You can still see some of his earliest ones around the harbor. The narrower ones. They’re the ones that last longer. Boats are same as people. Bigger they are the more they carry, and the body can’t stand the extra weight.” Leon rubbed his thumb along his jaw. “Louie died a while back. Must be—let’s see. Must be ten years now. Kinda funny though.”
“What’s that?”
“You painting saints in here. I’ll tell ya, most Saturday nights there used to be some hell-raising going on in this place.”