Swash!
a novel
by Brendan P. Myers
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Brendan P. Myers
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
First Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
* * *
Swash!
~
Being a true account of
the daring adventures and
outrageous exploits of the
marauding pirates of
Sully's Rump
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Swash!
Copyright © 2010 by Brendan P. Myers
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
First Smashwords Edition
* * *
* * *
Swash!
~
Book I
"Where there is a sea there are pirates."
- Greek proverb
Chapter One
For three days and nights, winds from a howling nor'easter whipped the seas of Cape Cod Bay into a frothy brew, pummeling the shore with thirty-foot waves and pounding seawalls up and down the coast. Wind gusts of seventy-miles an hour created whirlpools and eddies that rode atop and swirled beneath unusually high tides, churning the current above and scouring the seafloor below.
On a heart-shaped plot of land that jutted into the bay, while making his daily rounds through the driving rain, Lucas noted most year-round residents of Sully's Rump appeared to be battened down within their homes. McGarvey's burger joint was locked up tight. Down the street, Annie's Variety had closed just before noon. All the boats at the small marina were present and accounted for.
Only two regulars weathered the storm inside the Captain's Cove, the bar closest to the point. They didn't bother turning their heads when the door opened and Lucas walked in. Only the bartender glanced up from his Us magazine and smiled.
"How's it hangin', Luke?" he asked.
The cop hung his slicker by the door. "Down and to the left today, Marcus," he answered. "Thanks for asking."
He turned and nodded to the two flannel-shirted men nursing beers at the bar. Clem Johnson was a grizzled local fisherman. Beside him, his head buried in a scratch ticket, was his faithful crewman Perry Winslow.
"No fishing today, Clem?" the cop asked, sitting down at his usual place.
Clem chuckled. "Nope. Not today. Ain't had a blow like this since . . . when was it? '91?"
"Had a few since then," the cop answered as he took his seat. "But you're right. This's a bad'n alright."
The barkeep set a cup and saucer down in front of Lucas, who nodded his thanks before glancing up at the corner behind the bar.
"TV out?" he asked.
Marcus nodded.
"Went just after noon."
"That's a shame," the cop replied after a moment, unable to mask his disappointment. "We'll miss the wedding."
Today was the day two longtime characters on an afternoon soap were supposed to tie the knot. Lucas stopped in about this time every day to catch a few minutes. He'd secretly been looking forward to the wedding for months.
The bartender looked thoughtful before he spoke.
"Maybe not," he said. "Smart money's still on Reese coming back to break things up. Angelina still loves him, you know."
The cop snorted. He was just about to give his opinion of that tramp Angelina when his radio crackled.
"Lucas . . . you there Lucas?"
It was the voice of Mike Tomlinson, a young rookie Lucas had taken under his wing. Removing the radio from his belt, Lucas lifted it to his mouth.
"10-4, Mike. What's going on?"
There was a brief burst of static before the answer came.
"I'm down the stretch. Mainland side. Where you at?"
"Stopped by the Cove for a cuppa," Lucas answered.
There was another burst of static.
"Think you better get down here. Looks like . . ."
His words were lost in another crackle. Lucas tried hailing him a few more times before giving up. The new radios were nothing but trouble. Course, he knew the storm wasn't helping anything. He downed the last of his coffee before standing.
"Thanks for the coffee, Marcus. We'll see you boys on Monday."
"You be careful out there," Clem said, tilting his bottle in the cop's direction before raising it to his lips.
Lucas nodded once before again donning his heavy slicker and heading into the deluge.
Back in his car, he drove down the narrow street, turning around in the circle that marked both the end of the road and entrance to the public beach. Weatherworn buildings on either side served mostly the tourist trade, though the tattoo parlor was open year-round. He wasn't surprised to see the half-dozen or so motorcycles normally parked out front were off the road today. The rest of the businesses were shuttered now, but come summer they would be a beehive of activity: T-shirt shops and ice cream parlors and salt water taffy stands.
To the west and east along the beach were scattered cottages, though since being named part of the National Seashore decades earlier, no new building had been allowed. Most summer homes on the Rump had been in the same families for generations anyway.
He turned left onto Sea Street and drove through a quaint commercial district, where well-kept clapboard buildings housed seasonal restaurants, antique dealers, an art gallery, and a used bookstore. Further up the road was the town green, its centerpiece the tallest and oldest pine on the island. Across from the green loomed the steeple of the Rump's only church.
One block down came the houses, densely packed Cape Codders with weathered shingles and tiny front lawns. Most were seasonal, though some were the year-round residences of locals or old-timers who chose to retire here. Though the population swelled in the summertime, year-round Rumpsters numbered no more than a hundred or so.
Nearer to shore, across the street from each other, he passed the entrances to two nightclubs, the Pump and the Ramrod. Closed for the season, they both catered to what Lucas called the "alternate lifestyle types" who for some reason flocked to the Rump in the summertime. Lucas didn’t quite get the attraction, but as long as they kept their noses clean – and both they and their customers invariably did – it was no skin off his nose.
Rain pelted his roof with a machine-gun clatter as he drove through the high dunes and clumps of sawgrass leading down to the stretch, what the locals called the narrow land bridge connecting the Rump to the mainland. Coming out of the dunes, Lucas caught his first glimpse of the stretch and realized suddenly exactly what Tomlinson had been talking about. Moments after he came to a stop, his radio squawked.
"You seein' this?" a voice asked. It was Tomlinson.
Lucas reached for his radio. "10-4," he answered.
The stretch was about a quarter mile long and raised some ten feet off the water. Built in the thirties by the Corp of Engineers, it was made mostly of earth and silt dredged up from the channel.
But from inside his squad car, Lucas saw wide gashes now cut through in at least three places, allowing water to stream through to the other side. Even as he watched, more and more of the earthen mound was being eaten away by the nearly twenty-foot storm surge pounding up and over the road.
"You better get while the gettin's good," his radio blared.
Lucas saw that much was true. He put his car in gear and headed for the entrance of the bridge.
His windshield wipers were little use against the drenching his vehicle was taking from all sides, so he drove waterblind, relying more on instinct and his faith in General Motors than anything else. The largest wave came at about the middle of his crossing, slamming the car broadside and lurching it sickly to the left. Gripping more tightly to the wheel, Lucas compensated as best he could while beads of sweat streamed down his forehead and ran into his eyes. He blinked them away. About two-thirds of the way across, his bowels loosened when he heard the roadbed beneath begin making grotesque, unfamiliar sounds. He decided then that the sensible thing to do was close his eyes and floor it the last two hundred yards and hope for the best.
Tomlinson stepped out of his cruiser as Lucas came screeching alongside. Lucas took a moment to compose himself before getting out of his own car, wiping his forehead and clenching his bowels once more. He nodded a greeting to Mike, but the wide-eyed young cop paid him no attention, keeping his stare fixed across Lucas' shoulder toward the bay beyond. Curious, Lucas turned as well, understanding only then why the road had sounded funny.
Now unsupported by earth, long stretches of asphalt dangled above the sea. As the two watched, sections close to their end began to sag and then collapse into the water. Moments later, a long segment near the Rump did the same. It took only another minute for the rest to go. With the connecting asphalt gone, the remaining sand and silt beneath collapsed and washed away, and the two sides of the ocean greeted each other for the first time in more than sixty years. Mike was the first to speak.
"The Rump's an island again," he said.
Lucas hadn't heard him. He was already back in his cruiser, trying to recall where the nearest public bathroom was.
* * *
Though it peaked in the late afternoon, the storm abated sometime around midnight and headed out to sea. The morning papers would report it caused scattered power outages and minor damage across the region. A long disused drive-in screen in Wellfleet was a total loss, while two more houses built on the beaches of Chatham tumbled into the sea. The wind also knocked down signs along Cape Cod's auto mile, though damage there was reported to be minimal.
Below the fold, a brief sidebar noted that the shifting sands of the Cape had once again proved too great a force for man to control. This time, a narrow slice of land jutting into the bay that locals called "Sully's Rump" was once again an island.
* * *
As had happened for the past two weeks or so, fourteen-year-old Chris Duggan awoke to the sound of scratching at the window above his bed. Opening his eyes, he yawned and took a long stretch before reaching out to raise the shade. There was some more scratching followed by a loud thump and then a large head appeared.
Seeing the boy was awake, the dog stuck out his tongue and slobbered it against the window. Chris smiled and got out of bed. He threw on yesterday's jeans and an old sweater before heading upstairs to the kitchen, where his mother was preparing breakfast. Their family bed and breakfast had two guests at the moment, an older couple in town for an anniversary party. Upon hearing footsteps, his mother turned and smiled.
"Morning sleepyhead," she said.
Chris walked over and gave her a kiss. "Can I help?" he asked, reaching his finger into the muffin batter.
She playfully swatted his hand with her spoon before looking up at him, licking her palm to smooth down one of his stubborn cowlicks.
"No thanks. Almost done here."
Though she smiled, Chris knew she was worried. The winter months were always the worst. They'd had only four guests in February, and eight in all of March. Money was tight. Then again, summer was coming, he thought, leaning away from his mother's ministrations and walking to the fridge.
"You finish the book?" she asked as he rummaged.
Shielded from view, Chris rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah" he answered, hoping his tone would put an end to the conversation. No luck.
"Any thoughts?" she asked.
He'd been home-schooled a few years now, since his father died and his mother moved them to the Rump. There weren't many kids, but it wasn't all bad. He took art classes from a New York artist, music from a symphony violinist, and history from a retired professor. His math tutor was a retired furniture dealer who kept a collection of exotic animals on his estate. Chris spent as much time there as schoolwork and chores allowed. So yeah, he thought. He could do a lot worse.
Grabbing the bread and cold cuts from the fridge, he brought them to the counter. "I don't see what's so great about him," he said.
"How do you mean?" his mother asked.
Chris paused from his sandwich making, crinkling his face like he always did when he thought hard about something.
"Well, first off, he's a fake," he said. "Know what I mean? All those stories about his life. He made them up, right? And where did he get his money from, anyway? He never says. So, you know what I think? I think he's just a thief and a gangster. Gatsby isn't even his real name! The title is supposed to be ironic. There's nothing 'great' about him at all."
Turning, he looked at his mother and saw she was smiling. "What?" he asked, embarrassed to think he might have missed the point entirely.
She chuckled and shook her head. "Nothing," she said, returning to her mixing bowl. "But for what it's worth? I think you're dead on."
He pondered that a moment before putting his sandwich in a paper bag, sneaking in a few extra slices of ham for the dog.
"Going for a walk," he said. "Back soon."
"Button up," his mother said. "Can't have you catching cold."
Stopping at the end of the hall, he put on his jacket before reaching for the door.
"Take the clothes!" his mother reminded him, referring to a bag of old clothes awaiting donation to the drop-off box at the church. Most were from the lost and found, but some of it was stuff Chris had outgrown over the winter. He picked up the clothes and opened the door.
"And stay away from the water!" she yelled.
Chris smiled. He knew that someday, his mother's protectiveness was going to get annoying. But not today.
Outside, the dog was waiting. Putting down the clothes, Chris reached into the brown bag for a slice of ham and dangled it over the dog's head before throwing it into the air. The dog leaped and acrobatically snatched it. Smiling, Chris patted it on the head.
A medium-sized mutt with a long snout, short hair, and black and white patches, the dog had shown up after a winter storm a few weeks back. Chris noticed it following him, always staying far behind, and stopping every time Chris turned to see if it was still there. Over the course of several days, the dog moved closer, until the day it grudgingly let Chris reach out and pet him.
Desperately thin and reeking of the sea, once Chris gained his trust, he fed him, gave him a bath, and made sure there was a bowl of fresh water nearby. The dog had been coming around ever since. Chris had discovered quite by accident one day that if you grasped it tightly beneath the neck while staring it in the eye, the dog would stick its right rear leg into the air for no reason at all. The trick never failed to make Chris smile.
After stopping by the church to drop off the clothes, the two walked down to the beach and ate their breakfast on the rocks. The air was cool, but the ferocious winds of the last few days had died down. Though gray clouds still hung low in the sky, Chris noted they were moving quickly to the east. He guessed sunrise was about twenty minutes away.
Chris loved this time of day, that brief interlude between night and day before most of the world had woken up. He especially liked spending it here at the beach. When he looked out at the vast ocean, he imagined what it might have been like the day human ancestors first crawled out of the sea on floppy fin-legs to begin making their way on land. For a reason he couldn't quite articulate, he would've bet anything it had happened at exactly this time of day.
After finishing their breakfast, Chris stood and wiped the sand from his butt before wandering toward the seashore. He kept his head down, looking for bits of sea glass, broken shells, or pieces of discarded trash to use in his art projects. His art teacher drilled into him that anything could be used to make art, once telling Chris that for a whole year, he'd used nothing but what he'd found discarded in alleyways and dumpsters within a block of where he lived. Lately, he'd taken to making artwork from the boxes and boxes of fireworks he brought back with him from his frequent trips to Florida. Chris smiled to think Dale cared nothing for the fireworks — and they were starting to pile up — but only for the colorful packaging.
While staring at the sand, Chris found nothing obvious to use in his art, but upon seeing an interesting chunk of driftwood, he bent down and picked it up. After looking at it closely, he fluttered it tantalizingly over the dog's head before reaching back and heaving it down the beach. Its tail wagging, the dog chased it down and ran it back, laying it dutifully at the boy's feet. Chris picked it up and threw it again.
As their game progressed along the beach, Chris reared back and threw it up and over a tall dune that overlooked a narrow cove the locals called Nutmeg Hollow. After watching it fly, the dog bounded over to retrieve it. Chris followed. Halfway up, he began to hear excited barks and frenzied yelps come from the other side. Curious, he moved faster. When he reached the top and looked down, it took a few moments for him to understand exactly what he was looking at.
On the beach below the dune, like the exposed ribs of an excavated dinosaur, thick black beams protruded from the sand. Though mostly buried, the part that was visible was about fifty feet long from end-to-end. Dismissing what he at first thought might be the skeletal remains of a whale, Chris crept down to get a closer look at what he now understood were the remains of an ancient shipwreck.
Approaching it now on level ground, he noted the twenty-four or so V-shaped ribs on both sides were about two feet apart and extended about four feet above the sand, their smoothly eroded ends evidence of its long stay beneath the sea. When he looked closer, he saw rounded pegs jutted from each rib. Glancing to his right, he estimated the shoreline was about forty feet away and wondered whether the storm's waves had uncovered it where it lay or perhaps thrown it from the sea.
He reached out and touched one of the coppery pegs while running the fingers of his other hand along the smooth edge atop one of the ribs. After a while, he reluctantly let go and stepped back to take it all in, soon becoming lost in imagining what it might have looked like in its day. He didn't know how much time passed before the dog's yelps brought him from his reverie. With a tinge of sadness, he stepped away from the wreck and turned toward the barking dog.
"It's okay, pup. Nothin' to be afraid of."
But the dog seemed more excited than nervous, wagging its tail happily behind him. Reaching down, Chris scratched it behind the ears before turning again toward the wreck, staring a while longer before bending down to pick up the stick. The yelps got more excited when the dog realized the game was again afoot.
"Go get it, pup!" Chris said before whipping it up and back over the dune. He took one last backward glance before going over the other side, wondering exactly who to tell first.
Chapter Two
Arthur Cobb was feeding his cat when the call came in. The retired professor and the author of several books on the Cape was often the first person called upon when something unusual happened. And though this sort of thing was not exactly unheard of, it was very unusual indeed. His heart raced with excitement after hanging up the phone. Wasting no time, he left his Sea Street home and drove to Nutmeg Hollow where the thing washed up, parking among the dozen or so cars and pickups already there.
He got out of his car and noticed a green SUV with Park Service markings that he knew belonged to Paul Quinn, the Ranger who had phoned him. It was still somewhat brisk after a week of gray skies and stormy weather, but today, the sun was finally out. He tightened his scarf and zipped his coat against the chill as he walked toward the crowd gathered on the beach. When he moved closer, through gaps in the crowd, he began to see wooden beams protruding from the sand.
"Remarkable!" he said beneath his breath.
Cobb knew most of the two dozen or so people gathered around. He smiled and nodded to one or two while making his way through. Some of the young parents had brought along their toddlers to gawk. Others had brought their dogs, who were scampering about or barking and playing down near the surf. Seeing Cobb, the Ranger smiled at his approach.
"How are you, Paul?" Cobb asked, reaching out his hand. "Thanks so much for calling."
The two men shook. "No problem," Quinn answered. "You're the first one I thought of."
Because it had washed up on the National Seashore, the wreck was the Park Service's responsibility. While waiting for Cobb to arrive, the Ranger had kept the crowd on the perimeter of the wreck, allowing people to touch the thing and to bring their toddlers over to do the same, but no more.
Turning toward the wreck, Cobb asked, "So what's the story? Who found it?"
The Ranger gestured toward a blond kid with short hair standing away from the crowd. "He did. Local kid named . . ."
Cobb smiled. "Oh, I know him all right. Tutor him in history on Tuesdays and Thursdays." Catching Chris's eye, he waved him over. "So you're the famous discoverer!" he said, clapping him on the back. "Tell me all about it!"
Chris recounted the story, embarrassed there wasn't much to tell. When finished, he asked, "What do you think it is?"
Cobb crinkled his forehead. "Don't know yet. But let's take a closer look, shall we?"
Chris nodded. The two approached the wreck, walking between the beams and stepping onto the hard sand inside. Cobb stood there a moment taking it all in before bending over to examine one of the ribs. He seemed to pay special attention to the pegs, reaching out to touch one before reaching into his pocket for a penknife. Using the knife, he scraped away some of the blackish exterior before moving closer to examine what lay beneath. When satisfied with that, he stood up and walked to one end of the wreck, then walked the length of it taking toe-to-toe steps and counting each beneath his breath. That done, he turned and put his hands on his hips. After a thoughtful moment, he began to speak.
"Of course, it's hard to determine the exact age and vessel type just by looking at it," he said. "And obviously, most of it is still buried. But I'd say it was probably built around or just after the Civil War."
Some in the crowd moved closer to listen. Cobb pointed toward the peg he had scraped and went on.
"They mostly used rounded pegs back then, before and just after the Civil War. After that, you see mostly octagonal pegs in ship construction." He looked up and smiled, almost embarrassed. "Mind you, it's all just guesswork at this point, but . . . if you look here . . ." he said, pointing to a spot where a few pegs were embedded in the ribs, "and here. See these notches along the sides of the pegs? Those are quite probably the marks of an axe blade, indicating they were hand carved." Pausing a moment, he stroked his chin before saying, almost to himself, "In fact, they might actually reveal an even earlier age." After another contemplative moment, he turned to Chris with a grin and asked, "You fancy a little digging?"
Chris nodded, and Cobb glanced toward the crowd noticing that some of the parents had brought along buckets with plastic shovels for their kids to play with. Upon seeing them, he got an idea and waved to two locals he recognized.
"Clem and Perry," he shouted, seeing the two fishermen in the crowd. "Care to give us a hand?" He pointed toward the kids playing in the sand. "If they'll allow it, see if you can borrow some of those buckets and come on in."
There was some caterwauling from one or two of the kids, but eventually the fisherman returned with four buckets. After handing them out, the three followed Cobb's lead and began digging into the sand in the center of the wreck, pouring the contents outside the beams. They'd gone down only about twelve inches before Clem's bucket struck something hard. Cobb used his hands to scrape away the rest, revealing what had been struck. "Remarkable," he said again.
"What is?" Chris asked, peering over the professor's shoulder.
"The plankings are still in place," Cobb answered, his voice filled with wonder. "After all this time."
Handing his bucket to Clem, he stepped out of the wreck and went to have a word with the Ranger. He found Quinn talking with someone he didn’t recognize, a reporter from the Cape Cod Times who had managed to make his way over to the Rump. After Quinn introduced them, the reporter asked, "Any idea what it is?"
Cobb stroked his chin a moment before responding.
"Could be any of a thousand," he began. "There've been more than three thousand wrecks in these waters since just eighteen fifty. And without identifying marks such as quarterboards or the ship's bell, the fact is we may never know. But it is possible that with a little digging they'll find some artifacts, though I don’t think that's likely."
Pausing a moment, he glanced toward the ship and saw Chris had remained on board. The boy was down on his hands and knees, brushing more sand from the newly excavated floorboards. Smiling, Cobb couldn't blame him. It wasn't every day you stumbled across a shipwreck.
"Anyway," Cobb continued, "all that being said, my hunch is it's simply the remains of an old schooner, maybe from the turn of the century. There used to be thousands of those things sailing these waters, hauling coal or lumber up and down the Cape. They'll dig to see if there's a keel, but even if that's gone, it doesn't really prove anything. They might have simply cut it down and turned into a barge."
The reporter wrote down a note or two before composing his next question. "Is this sort of thing common?" he asked. "I mean for them to just . . . show up like this."
Cobb smiled. "It's not as unusual as you might think. About ten years ago, the wreck of an old freighter washed ashore in Orleans. Just last year, a rusty old Confederate battleship washed ashore during a hurricane in Alabama. And of course, right here on the Cape, showing up every now and then, we’ve got the bones of the Somerset."
The reporter nodded, remembering the Revolutionary War-era British warship that surfaced last summer.
"But this . . ." Cobb said, gesturing toward the vessel. "Let's just say that Sully's Rump is going to get very popular very fast."
* * *
Inside the wreck, Chris held firm to one of the ribs. In his other hand was a mysteriously shaped chunk of rock and metal he'd found while digging out the floorboards. Raising his hand, he dropped it into his pocket and hoped nobody noticed.
* * *
Though he'd had the foresight to record it, it seemed now that fate was conspiring against Lucas ever seeing Angelina and Chad tie the knot. In his one-room apartment on the mainland, the cop had just sat down to watch when the phone rang, summoning him back to the station to help deal with the expected media throng come to see the wreck.
He had worked late into last evening, alerting public works and the highway commission about the collapse of the stretch. It wasn't the first time a land bridge to part of the Cape had collapsed or eroded away. But lately, it seemed local authorities were taking a hands-off approach to such things, allowing nature to take its course. He'd hate to see that happen to the Rump.
By the time he arrived at the station, things had calmed down a bit. Enterprising locals with boats were charging exorbitant fees to ferry reporters and their cameramen across the bay. Waiting on the other side were dozens of locals with cars and trucks, more than happy to take them to the wreck for an equally exorbitant fee.
It was mid-afternoon by the time the overwhelmed chief took Lucas aside and introduced him to Phil Haskins, the Park Service historian sent from Woods Hole. The chief asked Lucas to accompany him over to the Rump and stay with him as long as it took to make sure things were in order.
The two hitched a ride across the bay on Len Doyle's sixteen-foot skiff, then climbed in the back of Paul Murphy's pickup for the drive across the Rump. Halfway there, the Ranger saw the cop shake his head at all the activity.
"It's gonna get worse," Haskins shouted.
Lucas thought a moment. "Whaddya mean?" he asked.
Haskins smiled. "This is just day one," he answered. "If this wreck is anything like what I've heard, tomorrow it'll be the Boston stations, and then cable news and the morning shows will pick it up. After that will come the scientists and marine archeologists. Thing like this doesn't happen every day."
When they arrived on the beach, Lucas estimated the crowd at more than fifty people, at least half of them television and print reporters interviewing some of the locals. He saw Arthur Cobb being interviewed by a TV reporter he recognized. Still photographers from the newspapers shouted at the crowd to stand back so they could get shots of the wreck. Haskins asked Lucas to move the crowds back.
Ranger Quinn broke off his interview with a reporter when he saw his colleague had arrived. After greeting each other, Haskins opened his bags to remove equipment and got to work. With Quinn and Lucas keeping the crowd at bay, he walked around and then into the thing, touching the beams and pegs in much the way Cobb had, holding his hands apart to guesstimate the distances. After taking it all in, he removed a pad from his duffel bag and drew a few quick sketches, before asking Quinn to help him measure the thing from end-to-end and side-to-side. After that, he took out a camera and began photographing the wreck from every angle.
In the middle of his photography, Lucas caught Haskins’ eye and waved him over. He seemed to hesitate a moment to phrase his question correctly. "What do we do?" he finally asked.
Haskins glanced toward the wreck, snapping another picture before answering.
"Most important thing right now is to keep it intact. Discourage folks from taking souvenirs."
"That's gonna be hard to do," Lucas replied. "With the stretch out, patrols will be limited."
Haskins looked thoughtful before saying, "That might actually help things. Technically, the wreck is the property of the National Park Service, but locals have the most to gain by keeping it around."
Smiling, he glanced toward Lucas and added, "Business should boom for a while."
When finished with his latest interview, Arthur Cobb walked over and joined them. Lucas introduced him to the Park Service historian.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Haskins said. "I've read much of your work."
Cobb beamed before asking, "What's next?"
"Marine archeologists will be along in the next few days," Haskins answered. "They'll take more precise measurements than we did and get her GPS coordinates. They'll take samples of wood to see how old it is and what it's made of. Probably also do some preliminary digging to see how much more there is."
"Anything I can do?" Cobb asked.
"Just spread the word, tell folks to keep an eye on it. No reason they can't touch it, but ask them to leave it intact so there'll be something left for the scientists to investigate. We'll put up signs in the next few days warning folks about it."
Glancing over, Lucas saw some in the crowd had moved into the wreck. Adults were touching the smooth tops of the ribs while small children swung from the pegs. Cobb walked over to warn them about souvenirs while Haskins began packing his stuff.
Lucas looked up to the sky and figured there was another hour and a half of daylight left. While walking over to help Cobb with the crowd, he smiled to think that in just a few hours, he'd finally be free to see Angelina and Chad tie the knot. He couldn't wait.
Chapter Three
On the east side of the Rump, the new islands' largest landowner had just heard the news. The Duggan boy's mother had called to say he would not be coming around as planned, going on to say he had stumbled upon a shipwreck of some sort and apparently there was a lot of hoo-hah about it. Well, that was big news, of course. But still, he was disappointed. The old man looked forward to the boy's visits more than he had realized. On the other hand, it couldn't have happened to a nicer kid. He couldn't wait for Chris to tell him all about it.
It was now late afternoon, and he had just finished rounding up his llamas and putting them in the barn. Though he kept a zoologist and veterinarian on staff, he liked spending as much time with the animals as he could. They were so much more predictable than people. In addition to the llamas, he kept a harem of zebras, four miniature horses, and an ancient monkey named Mister Bobo on his forty-eight acres. He was in talks to acquire a giraffe, but negotiations were in their early stages.
"Whaddya need a giraffe for?" his son had asked in a recent telephone conversation.
Barney had no idea who had tipped him off, but he was certain his son was scheming to have him put away or worse, declared incompetent.
"What's it to you?" he replied neutrally, knowing his son recorded all of their conversations. There was always a strange hiss or clicking sound when the two talked. Barney was always careful what he said.
"Just kinda expensive is all, dontcha think?"
A semi-retired furniture dealer, Barney had started out fifty years before with just one store in a burned out warehouse. Over time, his stores had come to dominate the New England region, mostly on the strength of his advertising. His earliest black and white television commercials, back in the days when there were just three channels, featured his family dog, a golden retriever named Nell. But it wasn't until a delightful chimpanzee named Mister Bobo came along that Zimmerman Furniture became a household name, and the phrase "I'll be a monkey's uncle!" became forever associated with both him and his store. Though he retained the ceremonial title of Chairman, he’d passed the Presidency and responsibility for day-to-day operations off to his less than grateful son, Seth.
The first thing Seth had done was change advertising agencies, retiring Mister Bobo and all the animal-themed commercials in favor of a slick-looking, blow-dried, actor-huckster. The stores continued to thrive, despite the public's disappointment that some of the whimsy was gone from the company. Barney didn't ask for much in his role as Chairman, but he did insist that Zimmerman's long-touted satisfaction guarantees remain in place.
But even as he sought a peaceful retirement, it soon become obvious Seth believed Barney was flitting away his inheritance, building a massive estate and what Seth called a "Goddam zoo!" Barney sighed to even think about it. It wasn't enough his son had inherited the stores and the Presidency. But then, Barney knew hard work was never Seth's strong suit.
He made sure there was plenty of feed in the trough for the miniature horses before shutting the barn door and walking across the massive expanse of lawn. He glanced over to his boathouse, built into a V-shaped cove. The four-story building housed his forty-seven foot cabin cruiser, the Pamela, with room for two more. He didn't take it out anymore. Not since Pam died. He looked at his watch and did the math.
Two years, thirty-six days, fourteen hours, and thirty-six minutes ago.
He put that out of his mind while approaching the house. It had forty-eight rooms when they moved in, one for each year they'd been together. He added on another four before she passed. She had called the whole thing silly, complaining about the dust and the workmen and rooms that would never be used. He just called it love. He recalled her saying once that her favorite toy growing up had been a dollhouse. He'd built the front of this house entirely of glass.
* * *
The next few days and weeks were hectic ones for both the Rump and the Duggan Arms, the name his mother had given their bed and breakfast. When he arrived home that afternoon, Chris saw his mother had already summoned extra help. At the front desk was Julie Rovner, a college girl who sometimes helped out in the summertime.
"That one was from Australia!" she yelled excitedly after writing down another reservation. Misty Rowling and Bill Foley were there too. Misty was an older woman whose eight children had all moved away. When she came round to visit, she usually steamrolled her way into the kitchen and ended up doing most of the cooking. It was obvious she loved to cook, so Chris always had a sneaking suspicion that was the real reason for her visits. Bill Foley was a retired cop who did light maintenance at the inn. Walking in, Chris saw Bill headed upstairs with replacement parts for a toilet that needed two flushes to be fully successful. Chris himself was put to work immediately, laundering sheets and towels and making up beds in third-floor rooms that usually went vacant.
Before the day was through, the twelve-room inn was fully booked for the next two weeks. Those they couldn't accommodate were referred to the Captain's Cove, where Marcus kept a few Spartan rooms above the bar for those who'd had too much to drink. That was the extent of the accommodations on the Rump itself. The rest would have to find something on the mainland.
Town Council was called into emergency session to decide what to do about the Rump. Most towns on the Cape had long ago given up taking extraordinary measures to save or salvage the shifting sandbar. It wasn't economically viable, and usually ended up being a stopgap measure that eventually failed anyway. For their part, folks on the Rump were happy to continue things just the way they were, charging a fortune to ferry folks back and forth from the wreck site. But the town couldn't allow the confusion to continue, not to mention the lost revenue such under the table activity engendered. Before the meeting was over, it was moved and seconded the town would solicit bids to provide scheduled barge service to bring cars and tourists over to the Rump in time for the summer season.
The story got heavy play those first few days. The Cape Cod TV stations and newspapers were the first to arrive. After that came outlets from Boston and Providence and Maine. The cable news networks had all come too. Chris was nearby eavesdropping when a reporter from CNN interviewed some of the locals. As he listened, he couldn't help but think she was just having fun at their expense. When he heard she wanted to interview him, he made himself scarce. Later that day, he watched the interviews on a segment called "Odds and Ends" and it turned out he was right. They all had a real good belly laugh at the Cape Cod rubes.
Everywhere he went, people stopped to ask him about it. As the discoverer of the wreck, he couldn't hide from everybody, so he let himself be interviewed by a few newspaper reporters and a couple of TV stations. When he saw himself on television, he was mostly embarrassed about it, thinking he'd come off stuttering and looking stupid. He noticed too he hardly opened his mouth when he talked, wondering if it was self-consciousness from years of having metal braces on his teeth. Was that how he talked now? And though that would all be fixed in a few months when the braces finally came off, after a while he couldn't stand looking at himself and had to stop watching. But his mother was so proud he just kept that to himself. She had started clipping all the news stories that featured him.
The hubbub died down some after that first week, and life on the Rump started going back to normal. Chris went to his history class with Mr. Cobb on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He spent two hours every Friday at Barney Zimmerman's for tutoring in algebra and beginning calculus, though why anyone did math for fun like Mr. Zimmerman was beyond Chris.
When he finally did get a few minutes for himself, he stopped by the used bookstore and spent a few hours in the dusty upstairs poring over books about shipwrecks off the New England coast. After narrowing it down, he ended up buying two thick books: Tragic Shipwrecks of New England! and Of Widows and Heartbreak: Stories of New England Seafaring. Over the next few nights, he stayed up late reading about just a few of the thousands of ships that had gone down not far from where he slept.
A week later, he went to throw his dirty jeans in the wash and rediscovered the ball of rock and metal he'd found in the wreck. Sitting on his bed, he examined it closely. It seemed heavier than it should be for its size and was encrusted with what looked like rust and mineral deposits and grime. Using his fingernails, he scratched away some of the surface gunk, recalling the way Professor Cobb had used his penknife. Then, he remembered something he'd seen on TV.
Creeping into the kitchen so as not to get a lecture about the evils of soda, he opened the fridge and poured some cola into a glass. Bringing it back to his room, he put the glass on his nightstand and dropped the hunk of metal into it. Bubbles began coming to the surface, and then surrounded the hunk of metal itself. After watching it awhile, worried that his mother might throw it away, he moved the glass from his nightstand to the safety of his bottom drawer.
On Saturday mornings, he took art classes from Dale Duesenberg, the famed New York painter who now split his time between the Rump and his house in Florida. Still spry and sharp in his mid-eighties, he kept a studio over a gallery downtown. Dale had been away the week Chris found the wreck, so on his next visit he made Chris tell him all about it. He listened intently and asked probing questions, laughing knowingly when Chris told him about the CNN interview. When Chris was finished, Dale asked if he wanted to see what he was working on. After Chris nodded, the artist brought him upstairs to his studio, where arranged in a semicircle were a series of black canvases.
"What are they?" Chris asked.
With a sparkle in his eye, Dale said, "You tell me."
Chris began moving slowly from one to the next, examining each of them closely. As he did, he noticed that light from the transom overhead reflected on the canvases, creating shapes and shadows and hints of colors other than black. He stopped at the leftmost of the six when he saw something different about it. He crinkled his face in thought before speaking.
"This isn't done yet, is it?" he asked tentatively.
Duesenberg smiled and nodded. "You're exactly right, my young friend!" Beaming, he added, "We'll make an artist out of you yet! And if not an artist, then certainly a critic."
As always, the dog was waiting outside when he left the studio, and from there, the two walked down to the beach. Chris found he spent most of his spare time there now, drawn to the wreck for reasons he couldn't quite fathom. Surely, it had something to do with him being the one who found it and feeling proprietary about that. But he knew there was more to it. Whatever it was, it was something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Maybe that was the reason he rarely made his presence known, watching all the activity while lurking atop and behind the dune that loomed over the wreck, the same one he'd thrown the stick over the day he'd found it.
At some point in the past few weeks, somebody put a wooden fence around the thing with signs saying it was the property of the Park Service and warning people to keep away. As the chilly winds of March turned into the light breezes of early April, Chris watched from above as archeology students began digging the wreck from the sand, sifting every grain for clues to its identity. The hole around the wreck was now about ten feet deep and thirty-feet across. The students also appeared to be building wooden framing around the wreck, to brace it and guard against collapse.
All of the work was done under the watchful eye of Arthur Cobb, who was at the site most every day now acting as a kind of unofficial curator. Or maybe it was more formal than that, Chris thought. Perhaps the Park Service had made him a liaison or something. At any rate, Cobb had obviously insinuated himself into every aspect of the wreck and its excavation. Chris watched from above as Cobb coordinated building the framework, saw him work patiently with students on their excavation and sifting techniques, showing them that sometimes, even small items they had discarded were actually critical pieces of data. And on those afternoons when Chris met Cobb for his lessons, the professor spent most of his time talking about the wreck.
"Come here, my boy," he said one day with a gleam in his eye. "Take a look at this."
He led Chris to a work area in the rear of his office where he'd built a platform of sorts by laying a piece of plywood atop two sawhorses. Stapled tautly to the wood was a white sheet, providing a clean, flat surface. Within easy reach were two mounted magnifying glasses that swiveled here and there. An expensive looking microscope was off to one side.
Taped to the wall above the desk were sketches of the wreck, drawn from all angles and in various stages of excavation. The largest looked like it had been drawn from above, with numbers placed at various points around the wreck. Chris guessed the numbers were a code of some sort. One glance at the surface of the desk was enough for him to know he was right.
Spread out over the sheet were dozens of small and medium sized bits of what might be metal, and some of what were obviously pieces of broken glass. Mottled surfaces covered some of the items, but most were covered by something Chris was already familiar with: that bumpy, barnacle-like crust that was on the metal chunk he had taken from the wreck. Seeing the care the professor had taken with each item, he felt a little ashamed about just dropping his in cola.
Each artifact was placed atop a numbered index card on which were written other notations. Chris assumed the number corresponded to a location on the map where it was found. Glancing more closely at a few individual items, he saw one was a sliver of green glass labeled Slipware. Another was a strangely curving tube labeled Stem. Some were labeled in a language Chris thought might be Latin: Rattus norvegicus, Sylvilagus floridanus, Gallus gallus domesticus.
After Chris seemed to take it all in, Cobb spoke.
"The larger and more important pieces have gone to the university for study, of course," he began. "These are just a few little things I've picked up on my own."
Chris looked up at the professor. "What is it all?" he asked.
The professor beamed back at him proudly.
"My boy, what you are looking at is what is known as maritime archeology, the study of human interaction with the sea via the detritus man has left behind. Understand, every shipwreck is a miniature time capsule, and there are thousands of wrecks all over the world, hundreds of thousands, from every century and every country. Why, there are three thousand wrecks within the waters of Cape Cod Bay alone! Of course, most of the records of these ships have been lost over time, so the way to piece together each individual wreck is to look at what's left of the ship and its belongings."
He moved a magnifying glass within easy reach, then picked up the sliver of glass labeled Slipware.
"Now, see here," he continued. "Slipware was a ceramic that was used for centuries, in pitchers and bowls and tableware. It was manufactured from about the middle of the sixteen hundreds through about the middle of the eighteen hundreds. So, finding this, we've already narrowed down the possible date that our ship went down."
He glanced toward Chris and awaited his nod before placing the Slipware back on its card. Then he picked up the long, curving artifact labeled Stem.
"Now, this. We've found a number of these, a half dozen or so, though that's no surprise. But we have found at least one bowl, which is particularly exciting. Do you recognize what it is?"
Chris thought long and hard, but didn't even venture a guess, merely shook his head. Cobb smiled.
"Sorry, my boy. Probably not a fair question, given they've practically made it illegal nowadays. But there was a time . . ." he said, grasping the item in his closed fist and raising it to his mouth, "when a man had the liberty to enjoy the fine product of Virginia anytime and anywhere one pleased."
The moment Cobb raised it to his mouth, Chris recognized it as the stem from a pipe. When Cobb saw the gleam of comprehension in his eyes, he went on.
"Of course, there's more to it than that," he said, moving the magnifying glass closer. Then he picked up a ruler that was off to the side and placed it at the tip of the stem. "Different pipes went in and out of fashion over time, so the best way to determine what era a pipe came from is the width of the tube."
Turning to Chris, he paused a moment to catch his eye. "This style of pipe was quite popular in the early eighteenth-century."
Chris still wasn't sure what it all meant, but fortunately, Cobb wasn't done yet.
"Now, take a look at these," he said, pointing to a pile of what looked like crusty sticks. "Gallus gallus domesticus. But you and I know it better as chicken. Ships of a certain age often kept chickens on board, both for their prodigious egg laying capabilities as well as their delicious meat."
He pointed to another index card that looked to have larger sticks on it. "Sylvilagus floridanus," he said. "They didn't keep THAT on board for its eggs, my boy, because that is rabbit. Delicious meat."
Then, he picked up a small item from another index card that was about the size of a half-dollar.
"This here I find most interesting of all," he said, "though this one came along mostly for the ride."
After he placed it beneath the magnifying glass, Chris saw it was rounded on top like a small stone. Cobb continued.
"What you are looking at is the cranium from a creature called rattus norvegicus," he said, turning to Chris with a grin. "Known to us as the Norwegian rat."
Still smiling, he put the item back on the card while Chris began piecing it together. Glass from between 1650 and 1850. A pipe from the early 1700s. Chickens and rabbits and rats. Though Chris hadn't yet finished his books on tragic shipwrecks of New England, many of the voyages he'd read about sounded a lot like this one. He was no marine archeologist, but even he knew now that what he'd found was pretty old. Moments later, Cobb phrased it differently.
"My boy, the wreck we've found may very well be historic. In fact, it may be one of the oldest and most intact shipwrecks of its kind ever found!"
Chris turned to stare at the professor, his mouth agape, not just at his news about the wreck, but mostly wondering: what's this we stuff?
* * *
Over time, Chris noticed the Park Ranger spending lots of time at the wreck. He was often joined by Officer Lucas, now driving a rented SUV until barge service started and he could get his cop car back and forth. Professor Cobb still came every day, rolling up his sleeves, taking charge, and digging in with the students. From his hidden perch above, Chris watched him get excited about every little find from "his" wreck. But then, Chris couldn't really blame him. He was amazed too just how much more of the wreck there was still to find.
When he first came across it, what protruded from the sand looked to him like the half-buried ribcage of a giant whale. But the more they dug, the more they discovered just how much of the ship was still intact. One side was mostly skeletal, criss-crossing beams bereft of wood or plankings, looking like a skyscraper under construction. But the other side of the hull was remarkably intact. Chris watched Cobb's face the deeper they dug, heard his exclamations of: "Remarkable . . . remarkable . . . remarkable!" echo across the sand to his hiding place above. Chris was there the day Cobb pointed to one place on the intact side of the ship where an obvious repair was made. It was a tropical hardwood patch different from the rest of the ship's construction, no doubt put there while the ship was in sunnier climes, far from the windswept New England coast where it ultimately met its fate. He was there the day they'd gone down far enough to find that much of the keel was still intact.
Something else Chris noticed over time was that despite signs warning of fines and possible imprisonment, not to mention the watchful eye of the Park Service and local police, bits and pieces of the wreck seemed to disappear almost every day. At first, it was just a few pegs here and there, small pieces he figured maybe the Park Service or archeologists were taking as samples to test the age of the wood or to confirm Mr. Cobb's hypothesis about the ax marks. But one day, two of the skeletal beams went missing, and even he knew that was far more than needed for any testing. His suspicions rose.
On a mild Saturday afternoon, after the archeologists had gone home for the day, he was laying atop the dune reading his books and enjoying the weather when he heard the sound of voices. Laying his book down, he peeked above the dune and watched two men he didn't recognize approach the wreck. The taller of the two was dressed in a suit and tie and wore a long overcoat. The other was dressed as a workman. Chris knew something was dodgy about them from the way the well-dressed man looked back a few times, as if to see if they'd been followed. He slunk backward in his hideout, dragging the dog with him. Though whimpering with the obvious desire to bark, the dog seemed to understand implicitly.
The men spoke in low tones. Chris caught only snatches of their conversation. The well-dressed man did most of the talking.
"Folks'll pay a lot of money for a real shipwreck . . . One guy wants the whole damn thing for the floor of his study. You believe that? . . . Tonight . . . Midnight . . . Don' worry, you'll get paid . . . "
Anger burned inside Chris. These weren't scientists taking bits and pieces for testing, but souvenir hunters selling pieces of a "real live shipwreck!" He remembered the feeling he got each time he saw some of it gone, then remembered the wonder he'd felt when he first came across it. It had always saddened him to think that one day there'd be nothing left. But to think that day might be today angered him beyond measure. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he wasn't going to let that happen.
* * *