Some weeks before I was carried off the Island feet first to the country club rehab in Newport, my friend Pepe Quero came to the U.S. to visit from Mexico. That month on the island was his only window on life in the states (although I confess that when I lived in Mexico Pepe and I had raised a certain kind of hell not unlike life on the island, so he was probably more at home there than he would have been in some suburb).
The freight situation on the island got completely out of hand for a time awhile ago, but fortunately fate stepped in and prevented a possible lynching. Bung Ward has run the freight business for a long time, probably forever. The business consists of him meeting the mail boat with his 1968 Chevy pickup which got here on a barge in 1976 because it couldn’t pass inspection on the mainland, a condition which seems to be fairly chronic around here making for some pretty inexpensive vehicles.
Sometimes a person is awakened from a dream by the very thing he is dreaming about. For some veterans I know, the deafening chop-chop of helicopter blades takes them back to Viet Nam. For us, the din of the blades and the intensity of lights so bright they bathe the island in daylight means someone is in trouble.
Around late January the holiday cheer begins to run thin. The harbor might be frozen over which means no boat. No boat!? Damn, I’m out of booze.
You’d think that by now a little planning would have been appropriate. Hell no. On the island, planning is just not part of the fun. In Dickie’s case, planning ahead wouldn’t matter and in fact could be fatal. Whether Dickie buys a bottle or a case, he just sits down and drinks it until it’s all gone. Five cases would be fatal and he knows it.
The other day Cam Bergeron was standing in line at the grocery store on the Vineyard talking to a friend about Gosnold town business when he was interrupted by a man standing behind him. The soft-spoken gentleman asked if Cam was from Gosnold and Cam told him that he was. The tall, stately black man said that he had never met anyone from Gosnold but had wanted to for a long time. He needed an explanation for something that had happened to him near there. He then told this story.
You probably want to know a little more about the hermit, Alfred. From the start I’ll tell you that it’s very hard for the islanders to talk about Alfred, although we all carry him on our conscience. On the day that Alfred died just about everyone on the island passed by his house and saw him waving from the window. Although most unusual, we all waved back and continued on our way.
