Читать книгу Jack’s Passion - Bill Kinsella - Страница 11

Jack and Veronica stayed the night in Boston, and took a bus to Cape Cod at an ungodly hour to make the earliest ferry to Taylor Island.

The prow of the boat cut a V-shaped wake through the smooth water heading toward Taylor Island. It would get into Chimera harbor at 7:15 where Uncle Browne would meet them. Taylor Island had two main towns, one at either end. Chimera on the Northwest side and Cythere, fifteen miles away, on the Southeast end of the Island. Jack’s aunt and uncle lived in Cythere.

It was a pleasant morning, not as chilly as usual coming across the sound, so Jack took off his parka and placed it on a white steel bench next to Veronica. They were up top in the open air. Veronica sat, busily trying to push her camera back into her over-stuffed backpack. Jack stood at the rail, watching as the boat glided over the water, searching ahead for the outline of Taylor Island. He wore a long sleeved white linen shirt, tan khaki pants and penny loafers. As the sun rose, it made his hair shine reddish gold. His clear blue eyes eagerly looked out toward the island.

With the commotion Veronica made, Jack turned to watch as she wrestled with the back pack, determined by sheer force of will to get everything into it. Amused, Jack commented, “V, no sense stuffing the camera back in, you’ll just be taking it out again in a minute.”

Veronica hesitated, not sure whether to put the camera in the bag or use it at that moment to snap a photo. She scanned the view before her.

“You said it’s lovely here, and it is,” she commented, the camera now raised and ready to shoot.

“I said lovely? That sounds like your word. I said it’s cool here,” Jack responded, eyeing Veronica. She wore a light silk rainbow scarf to keep her neck warm, and her chestnut hair cascaded around her shoulders and over the top of her iris-blue blouse. She had on thick, black, sunglasses Jack had bought for her. She could have been an Arabian princess, and Jack loved looking at her. “Veronica,” he said, “you look great this morning. Maybe we can get someone to take our photo.”

A young ship’s assistant passed by and Jack asked him to take their picture. Standing against the railing of the boat, with the sun rising and the island coming into view behind them, and with the calm, aquamarine water in the background, they looked splendid.

In a few moments the ferry horn sounded and the ferry slowed as it came into the channel to dock. The captain swung the boat around to back it into its slip and that gave Jack and Veronica time to get their things together. Veronica scudded about, picking up her things, looking around for anything she might have left behind, making a small uproar by her anxious movements. She started putting the camera away again but stopped when she noticed Jack watching her. He was just about to laugh.

“What?” she asked. “What’s so funny?”

“You, you seem altogether discombobulated.”

“Thanks a lot,” Veronica grinned, “guess I’m nervous about meeting your aunt and uncle. Do you think they’ll like me?” she asked beseechingly, at the same time abandoning attempts to control everything around her and trying to relax for a moment.

“I know they’ll like you,” Jack said confidently.

“How do you know that?” Veronica asked.

“Because they’re nice,” Jack insisted.

“But why will they like me?” Veronica pleaded, raising the sunglasses off her eyes so they rested on her forehead and Jack could see her anxiety.

“Because you’re nice,” he said, walking up to her and warmly gazing into her eyes to reassure her, “and you have nothing to worry about and we’ll enjoy ourselves, right?” Jack had placed his hands on Veronica’s shoulders so as to steady her and he felt her body relax under his touch.

“I’m being absurd, I know,” Veronica said.

At the dock it had suddenly begun sprinkling even while the sun still shone.

“Island weather,” Jack said, “you never know.”

Uncle Browne wasn’t there yet. Jack had called the night before and given the arrival time. He explained to Veronica, “He’s never on time. I think he goes by a different clock.” But Veronica’s insecurity had resurfaced.

“I hope it has nothing to do with my coming. You’re certain they know I’m coming, right?”

At school she was usually confident, doing Dean’s list work every semester. But she was insecure about Jack’s family and their affluent background. And recently she’d started to imagine Jack’s aunt and uncle as aloof snobs, probably because they lived on this well-to-do island, out of circulation with the average world, where many of the islanders were, in fact, rich. “Stop it, Veronica,” Jack laughed, “you remind me of a kid about to perform in front of an audience. Trust me; you’ll like my aunt and uncle.” Just as he said that a car horn beeped. It was a high pitched, squeaky sounding beep, as if the horn had just inhaled helium or came from a child’s bath toy.

“That’s my uncle’s car,” Jack said excitedly, “no mistaking it.” They turned together. At the curb a tall, thin, man exited a cobalt blue Mercedes coup.

“Jacket!” he called out.

The Mercedes had its top down and the driver waived a hello with one hand and held an open, pink, umbrella in the other. He had silver hair with bushy, protruding, eyebrows that looked like white caterpillars resting horizontally above his eyes. He wore a pale blue blazer and navy polo shirt and had a red bandana tied around his neck in a makeshift ascot. When he spoke his eyes moved all around with great animated interest­—up and down, then wide open, and then almost closed. And the eyebrows, with all of this expressiveness, resembled white moths jumping around a wild-eyed flame. Uncle Browne walked over to Jack.

“Damn switch to the convertible top is broken and I never know when the top will go up or down. I was lucky your aunt left this umbrella in there,” he said, waving the umbrella like a sword at the sky and letting go a burst of laughter in his frenzied jubilation.

“Uncle Browne,” Jack said affectionately, shaking his uncle’s hand.

“Jacket, boy-you’re the spitting image of your young dad, and even more handsome if that’s possible. Sorry I didn’t make it to your graduation but we had one of our own, you know. I’m so happy you came up,” he said, embracing Jack. Jack stepped back to stand beside Veronica.

“Uncle Browne, this is Veronica,” Jack offered proudly.

Uncle Browne took a step backward. He was a tall man at six foot four, slender and genteel looking. His silver hair was long and brushed back and he had an aquiline nose. When he stood tall and held his chin up to contemplate something, he looked distinguished and formidable, like some early American aristocrat poised around a table as some important document is signed.

“Veronica,” Uncle Browne said dramatically, “how nice to see you. My nephew talks about you with hyperbole, you know. But I must say it turns out to be understatement.”

“My uncle’s an English professor at the community college here,” Jack explained. “He’s the only person I know who talks about usual things in unusual terms. He once told me I was the personification of youthful splendor. Isn’t that what you said, Uncle Browne?”

“I did and still do,” Uncle Browne proffered.

“I think he’s some kind of word wizard,” Jack said to Veronica.

“I tend the un-penned garden of words that grow all around us, Jacket. That’s my stock and trade. But what I say about you and Veronica, like all good verbal blooms, grows out of the truth.” Uncle Browne punctuated his statement with a wink, and then continued. “Now are you two hungry at all?” He asked the question, did not wait for their answer, and nodded yes for them.

“Good,” he said, “we’ll go over to The Doc’s Diner. I love it there. It’s the best greasy spoon on Earth.”

Jack and Veronica had not had breakfast so the diner idea appealed to them. They followed Uncle Browne up from the ferry terminal parking lot and crossed the road to enter a path in the field that bordered the still sleeping town of Chimera. A pleasant sea breeze came off the water and they inhaled the briny sea air. They walked with the sun rising higher over the sound behind them, feeling generally uplifted by the fresh quality of a new day on the island. The quiet streets of Chimera were empty but for a few early risers out for breakfast or to walk their dogs. Uncle Browne, Veronica, and Jack were the only ones walking on their side of the street. They passed a series of closed shops on Chimera Way.

Chimera was the whimsical equivalent of the quaint fishing village of Cythere where Uncle Browne and his wife lived. It had become a kind of artist’s colony in the last decade. And it was unusual with its gingerbread houses in as many bright colors as there are crayons in a crayon box; an antique ·but still functioning carousel; a main street loaded with esoteric boutiques. Jack hadn’t been there in three years but particularly remembered one shop, a glass blowers shop that had enthralled him. He looked for it as they walked along Chimera Way.

They passed a series of other unique shops with everything and anything artistic and eclectic: a bead store, a rare book store, a medieval dress shop. Then Jack spotted the glass blower’s shop. Uncle Browne and Veronica walked ahead chatting, so Jack paused by himself to look at the shop.

Through the front window he could see some pieces displayed that returned the exuberant feeling he’d had the last time he’d come to the shop. He’d gone into it then. Today, he had to settle for what he could see in the display window.

A piece containing swirls of orange suggestive of desert sand caught his eye. It was as if sunlight over the sand at dusk had been glazed for posterity and now remained forever captured in the surface of a table top. Next was a glass lampshade of silver delicacy, spun in a spiral, surrounding muted light. This shade resembled a pine tree enameled by crystals of ice shining on a winter night. Another piece, a honey-colored vase, touched by dots of glistening mica, stood out without flowers as if itself in bloom-the white-silver specks of mica rising in relief from the honey plane like pearl droplets on a suntanned hand. All of these nuances of light, these specks of gold the artist must have known and drawn upon, Jack thought, as he gazed at them. He wanted to see more. He tried entering but the door was locked. Then he heard Veronica calling, and moved quickly to catch up. At the end of Chimera Way they turned onto a short, narrow, street and walked toward a different dock. They came to a cobble-stoned alley fronting the water and there The Doc’s Diner sign hung, creaking in the slight wind. The sign was dark blue and rusty around the edges. The diner faced the water, which was calm and sunlit. Above the water a swirl of small birds swept the sky in what looked like a pointillist’s black hand as they flew in perfect synchronization this way and that before disappearing somewhere. Jack admired the pattern the birds made while Uncle Browne lifted his nose; nostrils flared, and took in the aroma of coffee.

“My God,” he said, “I love that smell.” He walked into the diner without hesitation, smiled at those he knew, and sat down on a stool at the long counter. He spun a little on the stool so that he could see Jack and Veronica entering. Then he patted the stool next to him for them to sit down.

They sat on stools at the counter of this railroad-car like diner. Bacon sizzled on a huge, grease-smeared grill. It smelled wonderful. A tall man, thin, with a pony tail tucked under his baseball cap worked the grill like a magician. His tattooed forearms moved in repeated patterns and his large hands fetched and broke and spilled what seemed like half a dozen eggs at a time onto the sizzling skillet when they weren’t stirring and turning and flipping the flapjacks or eggs or grabbing slabs of bacon to separate and fry.

“What’ll it be, Browne?” the cook asked.

“Whatever’s most decadent, but don’t tell my cardiologist,” Uncle Browne retorted.

“I’ll give you the artery clogger special,” the cook said.

“Delightful,” said Uncle Browne with a devilish smile.

“Doc,” he said, addressing the cook, “I’d like you to meet my nephew, Jack, and his girlfriend, Veronica.”

“Nice to know you; vacationing?” the cook asked.

“We’re taking a few days, yeah,” said Jack.

“You came at a good time,” the cook said. “It was just announced, Illumination Night is this week.”

“Is that right?” said Uncle Browne. “I thought it’d be. You two will enjoy that,” Uncle Browne said earnestly. “Jack just graduated from Duke,” Uncle Browne said next.

“Impressive,” the cook said, “know what you’re going to do?”

“I’m thinking things over,” Jack said.

“Good idea,” said the cook.

“He’s thinking about Wall Street,” Uncle Browne said, giving the cook a long contemplative expression, acting very dignified in the process.

“Are you?” the cook asked, and then softly, “I used to work on Wall Street.” He moved down the counter after that, working the line of customers. He came back to them when they had finished eating.

“Enjoy your food?” the cook resumed.

“You’re going to kill me,” Uncle Browne said, and then like a vaudeville comedian, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Sure, Browne,” the cook said, “I’ll prepare something equally deadly for you.”

“What did you do on Wall Street?” Jack inquired, his interest piqued.

“I have a doctorate in economics,” the cook answered.

Uncle Browne seemed delighted with this. Jack and Veronica reacted with surprise, looking at each other as if to say do you believe this?

“That’s why it’s The Doc’s Diner,” Uncle Browne said.

Once outside Jack pressed Uncle Browne. “Does that guy really have a doctorate in economics?”

“Absolutely. Next time we go in I’ll get him to show you his diploma. I think it’s hanging in the pantry.”

“And did he really work on Wall Street?”

“For ten years, I think. Hated it. Loves this, though,” Uncle Browne said.

“That’s amazing,” Veronica said.

“So why the diner?” Jack queried.

“Doing something he likes.” Uncle Browne sounded slightly more serious.

“Wow, an economist working a diner,” Jack said. “I guess he used what he’d studied on Wall Street. I guess he did what he had to.”

“Uses it now, too,” Uncle Browne put in. “He tells me he can figure out, way ahead of time, how many eggs the summer will eat.”