Rose Marie is trying something a little different, serializing a book she has written — "The Evil Men Do." Each month she will be sharing a chapter with you. As the months go by, you will be able to go back and re-read previous chapters if you wish to. We both welcome your thoughts on both the book itself and the process we are trying. So — jump in!

If you missed Chapter I, it can be read here. Read Chapter II

Chapter Three — The Marsh

by Rose Marie Zurkin

Again, Sgt. Hinckley interrupted his plans by phoning and asking him to come down to the station.  This time he wanted Stu to view a lineup, eight men, one of whom they hoped might be the attacker. "How is she, the girl?" Stu asked.  "I don't even know her name." He thought the look Hinckley gave him was a little off.  "What?"

"Why would you want to know her name?"

"I don't exactly want to know it. Just, it seems strange I don't. Nobody told me. It didn't come up. But I hope she's okay."

"She is," Hinckley said. "Far as we know. We haven't heard from her. She wasn't raped, by the way. She told the truth about that."

"Why would she lie?"

"You'd be surprised," Hinckley said.

"She's the one you should ask to look at these men," Stu told him.

"Yeah, we'll do that too."

Stu remembered Hinckley's sister, a plump, drab girl with frizzy, mouse colored hair. "How's your sister?" he asked.

"She's a nun," Hinckley said.

"Yeah, I remember she said she wanted to be a nun." Hinckley led him into a small room. "This is one of those rooms where I can see them but they can't see me, right?"

"Right," Hinckley said.

Stu wondered who were these men, with a start recognized his old friend, Anthony.  "What's he doing there?" he asked.

"Anthony?  He volunteered." He's the right size anyway.

"Volunteered?"

Hinckley snickered. "You might say I volunteered him. I saw him the other night at the fish market, buying clams."

For his restaurant, no doubt. That explained his volunteering. In Stu's experience, Anthony never volunteered for anything. Through the glass he watched the men turn, left profile, right profile, back. "Well, I don't recognize any of them. You'd better ask the girl." He wondered why they hadn't asked her first.

"Yeah," Hinckley agreed. "Listen, thanks for coming down."

Stu drove home and proceeded with the plans Hinckley had interrupted, phoning all the people he planning to interview, starting with the doctor, Berenson, and moving on to Prudhomme's three brothers.  Only the youngest brother, George, sounded glad to hear from him. Stu had always liked him even though he couldn't help wondering at his lack of ambition. George didn't work. If Prudhomme had been telling the truth, George's wife paid the bills by selling real estate. George said he could come over whenever he wanted.

They lived in a pretty town on the north shore, Cold Spring Harbor, and, before last night, Stu might have looked forward to the drive out to George's cottage. George called it a cottage, but he was the only one who did. Cottage was a misnomer for what was a fairly large house, but Stu was aware that George cherished certain fantasies. He liked to say he lived in a cottage and pretended he farmed the land around it. Never mind the apartment in the city where you could find

George when he wasn't on Long Island, and where his wife, Suzanne, was most likely to be found as that was where her office was. Stu hated the long trip into the city, which he'd have to make when he interviewed his two older uncles, who lived there all the time. It was another story, however, when he thought about visiting Sharon. He was already looking forward to it. In the past, when he visited the city to see the uncles in their apartments or Prudhomme in his office, the skyscrapers seemed to remind him that he too should be a part of that landscape, that as Prudhomme's son, he belonged there. Although, lately it had been different. His infrequent trips into the city had opened up a train of thought Stu had been unwilling to pursue till now. He couldn't call himself an artist now that he didn't feel like painting anymore. What had happened to him? It seemed his father's death had made him re-evaluate his way of life. As before when these questions surfaced, he forced himself to think of something else. Easy. He had learned how many years ago at boarding school, when he woke up at night and could not fall back to sleep. Boys learned quickly not to wake up the others. Retribution followed, swift and terrible. He forced himself to think of so many things at once that they all raced through his mind like wide screen images. Then, somehow, eventually they all stopped, and when they did a calm, white nothingness replaced them in which the jumbled pictures made sense, everything fell into place, and he dropped back to sleep. In the morning when nothing had changed, he couldn't remember why everything had seemed all right the night before. The pattern had vanished, but his unhappiness, his feeling of being wronged, was easier to deal with during that day. Luckily, he spent only half a semester away from home. It was around the time when his mother died. He still didn't know the details; nobody would talk about it. After her death, he came home.

Stu wished he felt like a long session in the studio—his bedroom—but in truth he welcomed the drive as a diversion. Last night, after leaving Sharon, feeling uneasy and depressed (as Prudhomme had felt, perhaps? No, he wouldn't think like that), he had dropped into a bar near the college and ordered a drink he had not had in years, a manhattan, and when it came for a long time he sat looking at it, wondering why he ordered it; he never liked manhattans. It was about when he had finally taken his first sip that he noticed the two women next to him. Carefully made up, wearing jeans and spike heels, they looked to be in the mid to late thirties. One wore a shirt with gold metallic threads running through it, while the other wore a sweater with a cowgirl, a cactus and a pair of boots embroidered on it. Eavesdropping, Stu heard them discussing what was wrong with their lives, agreeing that each had attended college "because at the time everybody did." 

"But we should have majored in something useful," observed the blond, shaking her head ruefully.

"Instead of getting married."

"I got married because everybody was doing that, too," her partner said, "didn't you?"  She had trouble focusing her eyes, kept opening them wide, wider, then squeezing them shut. Despite that, she noticed Stu and poked the other woman in the ribs.

"I'm ready to start enjoying life again," the blond said, with a wink at Stu.

"What stood in your way up to now?" The bartender, putting down their change, joined in easily.

"Not what, who, but not any more," said the blond. "Next time I want a big diamond. I mean, really big, and I don't intend to buy it myself. Oh, no, somebody else's going to buy it for me." The bartender laughed and moved away.

Make me happy or else, Stu thought.

"Say what?" the blonde asked.

"Sorry," he said, "I mean, I didn't realize I spoke out loud."

"You got something to say, say it." Belligerent.

Instead, he paid his bill and left. In the car, he realized he'd started out feeling superior to the two women but was he any different? He wondered what Janet would say. When he stopped for a light, he revved the engine; the car ahead of him didn't move quickly enough when the light changed, and he leaned on his horn. The other driver held up a finger. Fine. He deserved it. When the world ends the innocent will fall in line right behind the guilty. Everyone is capable of everything. Betrayal. Murder.

By the time he returned to Cold Spring Harbor, Stu felt hungry. Last night the manhattan had killed his appetite, and he had skipped breakfast. He was close to Anthony's, wondered if he might risk going back there, drove around for a while instead, like a tourist, except tourists didn't normally venture this far, testing himself, asking himself the question, did he really want to go to Anthony's? What was he afraid of anyway?

To the east lay the public beaches, to the west the private ones. No difference, except there were fewer people on the private beaches. The reason was the water, murky with seaweed and worse, and the sand, not fine and white like on the south shore but stony enough to require shoes. On the east side you had to show a pass to get in, though that was only for cars. You could walk in anywhere. Walkers, especially if they were female, especially if they were young and looked good in their bikinis, had no trouble getting in. Those who were welcome whether or not they belonged knew who they were.

Before Anthony's the beach ended. This part of town had a nickname, Sunken City. The houses on these streets were little more than shacks. Debris looking as if it had been accumulating during more than one lifetime littered the yards and sagging porches—toys, broken appliances, a tire or two, even an entire automobile sans tires or fenders, rusting away in the weeds. As Stu drove slowly by, a child opened the ill-fitting door on one of the houses and climbed off the rickety porch. Though ragged and dirty, her face was beautiful, alabaster skin and regular features. The waif-like quality contrasted oddly with her silky hair and pale face, like a wax flower. Children and adults in this neighborhood shared a strange beauty, though it passed quickly. They seemed like a tribe apart from the mainstream, like a delicate nobility too fragile to adjust to the changing times and consequently slowly disappearing off the face of the earth, their numbers dwindling as they withered early. They possessed all the sad beauty of an endangered species.

For some reason, Stu figured the girl who was nearly raped lived here.

There stood the pier and Anthony's restaurant at the end of it, close to the junction of the village road with the shore road. Hardly a restaurant, more like a clam bar, the place had not changed at all. Still dilapidated, the boards half mildewed and rotting from the salt air. Barely large enough to accommodate eight round high tables, it measured maybe eight feet long and six feet wide. The walls inside looked no better than outside, and the fishnet draped across one wall looked dusty and tired. Most people did not go inside to eat anyway but stayed outside and ate on the dock or leaned against the window where Anthony hung out taking orders. It took a long time to get served as Anthony did it all. Took the orders, cooked the food, mostly fried, served it up. The kitchen, visible through the window, was a narrow rectangle surrounded on three sides by counter space.

At one time, a marina at the end of the pier was open, and at that time Anthony's did a better business. When the marina closed, most of the clientele, coming ashore from the assorted small craft tied up at the marina, found other moorings, Northport, Sag Harbor.

The sign outside the window where Anthony stood taking orders offered hamburgers as well as fish, but no one who knew better ordered hamburgers, which came in sodden buns, accompanied by  limp fries. People ordered fish sandwiches or clams, fried, steamed and raw on the half shell. The clams and fish sandwiches brought people back and kept Anthony's in business even with the marina closed.  The clams, not the dogeared menus still propped between salt and pepper shakers on the tables inside, falsely promising a dozen different entrees, unavailable should anyone ask, or the indifferent service performed by Anthony, son of the proprietor of the same name. The young Anthony used to help out during the summer but stayed on, the only one now, the elder Anthony having turned the business over to him in order to keep him off the street, and escaped to Florida. Anthony stayed because he hoped to sell and move away.

Stu and Anthony had been pals ever since Stu began roaming around by himself during summers at the shore, each drawn to the other by boy radar. Oddly, Prudhomme, normally so controlling, didn't begrudge Stu this freedom, more than he'd had at Stu's age, or so he claimed. He didn't seem to notice what Stu did or with whom. Stu was grateful for his inattention without asking him the reason, grateful too that, after that first half semester, he wasn't sent away again. Once in a while when Prudhomme noticed him, usually at the end of the day, when he sat at the table with a glass in his hand, a bottle on the table, he told Stu how his summers had been taken up with lessons, swimming, sailing, tennis, even typing and French. That was when he lived in the big house upstate. After Stu's mother's death, they'd moved to Long Island, eventually selling and moving back upstate. That is, Prudhomme had done so.  Stu had moved into the beach house where he still lived. 

Stu and Anthony, the same age, once they found each other went everywhere together, drifting, marauding when the opportunity arose, between them constituting a nuisance to one and all. Anthony by himself would have been stopped. Until the incident on the railroad bridge, people let them alone because of Stu, or, more accurately, because of Prudhomme. Stu may have been unaware of this fact, but Anthony knew. Then, at about sixteen they had a falling out. Over a girl, what else?

Stu's private strip of marsh was visible from Anthony's. He knew how much Anthony hated it, hated the sea itself since working as a boat hand and fisherman before he started working at the restaurant. He hated it because it failed to provide him with enough cash to leave. He didn't seem to realize that his lifestyle, his predilection for fast cars and faster women, prevented him from saving any money. The restaurant had at least made money before the marina closed, now provided a living, but Anthony, dissatisfied, still intended to sell it.

Prudhomme had had something to do with the marina's closure. Stu wasn't sure what, and he was afraid to ask in case it had to do with Janet. Maybe it wasn't Janet, maybe it was that the marsh was so near. The papers hinted that developers were making a deal with the locals to develop the marsh, turn it into a mall. If so, Stu's father was sure to be one of them. Contrary to what Sharon said, Prudhomme had claimed he saw no beauty in the marsh. Stu, preparing himself for a fight, had assumed his father had decided to go ahead with his plans to develop it. So what had Sharon meant, why had he talked as if he suddenly decided it had value? 

Anthony was optimistic about the possibility of development since it seemed likely that in the event someone might offer to buy Anthony's. Like Prudhomme, the only one Stu had known, Anthony had no use for the marsh or any other kind of wilderness. Often Stu had heard him say how much he preferred sidewalks to the beach, transit systems and single bars, where he could admire and be admired by the opposite sex. He couldn't understand why Stu, who had the means to leave, stayed.

Stu thought, looking at them together no one would guess they no longer were on the best of terms. "Hey, Anthony, looking good."

Anthony, a handsome man with a sinewy body and thick black hair, did not look surprised to see him, which itself was a surprise. He greeted everyone the same way. "Hey, compa', what'll you have?"

Stu ordered the fried claims.  "Here or to go?"

"To go."

"So, how's life treating you?" Anthony's stock question, no matter who the customer. His voice sounded friendly, but his black eyes were cold. Now that Stu had started looking into all of the aspects of Prudhomme's death—and life—he wondered if any part of Anthony's obvious dislike was due to Prudhomme's change of heart and what it might have engendered. "Hey, my condolences on the death of your father and all that."

"Thanks."

"You coulda knocked me over with a feather. A man like him, everything to live for. What you think's gonna happen on the business part?"

"I don't know, I'm not involved." Anthony's lip curled in disgust. Stu could almost hear him thinking, if he had a fraction of Stu's chances, what couldn't he do.

In a way Stu admired, even respected Anthony, who made no bones about how he felt about the marsh or anything else. He understood Anthony's resentment. Stu, because of who his father was, had had opportunities unavailable to Anthony and hadn't taken advantage of them. He knew that Anthony would have been downright eager to don the three-piece suit, acquire credit cards, pay taxes, in short, begin the life-long climb that, if successful, led to accumulation of wealth and neuroses and, if unsuccessful, led to depression and one form or another of suicide. How could Stu fault Anthony's approach to life when it was the same as Prudhomme's? Stu's father, his grandfather, his uncles, would have approved of Anthony, would have understood him. He was one of them. Ruthless, like them.  Wasn't Prudhomme's suicide, if Anthony believed in it, enough to make him question his eagerness to lead that kind of life?

Not that he was exactly like those businessmen. Anthony didn't fit anybody's mold. He'd be the kind of guy you'd hope to have around if you were shanghaied. Pragmatic and resourceful, definitely more predator than preyed upon, maybe it was the light in those black eyes or the downturn his mouth seemed to take, but he also seemed more alive than most people.

"So what do you think? You must have some idea if they're going ahead with the industrial park."

"What industrial park?" Stu asked, knowing Anthony would despise him for not knowing.

Which he did. "Jeez, man, how can you not know those things?  Sorry, but you know how it is with me. They came, made me an offer, but I thought, wait for the second offer, don't act too eager.  Then nothing happened for a while. I should've acted when I had the chance. Now I don't know where I stand. When I saw you come in I thought you might be the one to tell me. You sure you don't know—or you stringing me along like them."

Stu didn't want to talk about what Anthony wanted to talk about. Instead, Stu wanted to ask him why he'd volunteered for the lineup. If he'd volunteered. But he wasn't supposed to know about it.  Anthony didn't know it was Stu behind the one-way mirror, and Stu decided he didn't want to be the one to tell him. "You hear about the latest attack?"

"On the marsh?  Sure," said Anthony, wiping the counter. "Time they filled it in, got rid of it for good. I'm hoping that's what they'll do."

"Was it in the paper?" Stu asked. 

Anthony stopped wiping. "Why are you so interested?"

"I live there, remember?"

Anthony stared at him. "You're the one who rescued her," he said. "The paper didn't print the name, but it was you, wasn't it?"

Stu nodded. "I asked the police not to release my name," he said.

"Why not?  You should be proud, though why you'd bother I don't know. She lives in Sunken City."

"What difference does that make?" Stu asked.

"You know how they are down there, the girls. Half the time they're asking for it."

Stu opened his mouth to protest, but a tap on his shoulder made him turn around. His heart sank when he saw who had done the tapping. He knew the guy, searched for his name, couldn't find it. "Boy, am I glad to run into you. I heard you were living out here someplace but I didn't know your address. I tried to call, but they said you have an unlisted number. At any rate, I have a scheme going—let me take that back. I don't want you to say no before you even hear it. Scheme's not the right word."

But Stu thought it probably was exactly the right word. The man's name swam up to him from memory. Absentmindedly, he listened while Chuck Forster, who passed himself off as an old buddy from school although he and Stu were two years apart, rambled on. Chuck's acquaintance came about as a result of Stu's being shipped off to school that time following the crisis at home, and they discovered they both lived on Long Island. Stu had been very young then as well as young for his years. The move had followed some crushing incident in Prudhomme's life. Stu still didn't know what, had stopped asking questions a long time ago.    

Up to now, he hadn't thought about that period in his life so maybe he owed Chuck something after all. Stu remembered Prudhomme's alternately frantic activity followed by long periods of inertia when they still lived on Long Island. Now that he thought about it, Stu figured he must have been drinking at the time—Prudhomme, so careful later on about any kind of indulgence that might let slip the mask he wore for people. Stu wondered about the incident that caused the aberration and whether, even so long ago, it might have something to do with his death. No doubt about it, Chuck had done him a favor, and Stu owed him one in return.

"You could do me a big favor," Chuck said. "That is, if you're free."

"What is it?"

"Attend one of these meetings I'm telling you about. I promise it won't take longer than an hour.  Listen to the spiel. I bet when you hear you'll want to help us."

Against his better judgment, Stu nodded. Dammit, along with gratefulness for the reminder, now that he really remembered him he felt sorry for the guy. He too had been sent home, like Stu, to attend public school, where he'd been on the outside of everything, always, trying to get in. Allowed to tag along if he was already there. If not there, nobody missed him, called to tell him what was going on.  Stu remembered his surprise when parents turned up at the graduation. Their beaming faces revealed their unawareness of Chuck's social failure, or perhaps they simply did not care. What did it matter anyway, in those days when they all were so green. Stu eyed him. Chuck hadn't changed that much. Still soft, sorrowful brown puppy eyes that pleaded, now for Stu to attend a meeting.

"Thanks, pal. You won't regret it."

But Stu thought he probably would.

A few minutes after Chuck left, Janet walked in. She had said she never would come back to this town, give these people another chance to hurt her, turn away from her, yet here she was. Where had she been in the intervening years, and why had she returned?

Stu couldn't ask. He didn't have the right. Besides, some questions have no answer. Was there a reason at all? Some people accepted what life dished out as destiny, duty or both. Some people knew what they wanted early on—or at least what they didn't want—and nobody could make them do what they didn't want to do. Nobody had to tell them they were headed for trouble. They knew it, but they didn't care. Another kind of person saw himself headed for trouble without being able to talk himself out of doing what he didn't want to do. Which was he?

She peered at Stu through Anthony's fly-specked window and a second later was off and running down the street. Well, not running but walking fast, as if she wanted to get away quickly without drawing attention to herself. She never liked to have people look at her. In that much, she had not changed. Stu watched her hesitate, then duck into the maritime museum, as if no one would dare to follow her in there. Maybe she thought he wouldn't dare. He'd remember being chased out by the former curator, Emmalee Jones, after accidentally knocking over a display of whale's teeth.

Emmalee was retired, but the whaling museum, still open Monday through Saturday from nine to five, Sunday from one to five, housed a prize collection of scrimshaw and memorabilia of an era when the sperm whale was hunted and slaughtered. The world remembered the time proudly, an era which displayed so much color and individualism.

Portraits of local sea captains, scowling fiercely through luxuriant whiskers, lined the museum walls. Among them, Janet's great-grandfather, well known for his strong character and courage, his having set sail with some twenty men for the Cape Verde Islands. There, a large sperm whale rammed and sank the ship. Only eight of the original twenty men survived, Janet's great-grandfather one of them.  Surprisingly, all eight returned to the sea. All except the captain, whom the sailors considered jinxed by the incident and forced to retire ashore. Swallowing his anchor, she told Stu they called it, leaving the sea.

Without a doubt, she belonged here and had returned to the place where she belonged. Stu turned back to Anthony, wiping the counter now, and noted that Anthony did not act surprised. "You knew she was back?"

"You didn't?"

Stu acknowledged it by shaking his head.

"You know why?"

"Not that either," Stu said.

"She came back home to take care of Per."  Per Mathiesen had owned the marina, resisted selling for as long as he could, but an old man with a mortgage and his whole life tied up in boats had limited resistance.

"What happened to him?"

"Stroke. He was completely helpless for a while, but I heard he's improved."

So she had a good reason for coming back. Stu wondered how much of Per's disability Prudhomme had caused. The mind kept secrets from the body for only so long. For that matter, he too was to blame. He wanted to believe he had changed from the person he had been two years ago.

"Here's your order."

Stu turned his attention to the deep fryer, where another order of clams slowly turned golden.  Nobody else was there. Had she called in the order? Would she return to claim it, and was Anthony expecting her? Stu paid, left, drove off and passed the museum in case she was watching. If they were her clams, she should not have to wait for her dinner. He wasn't in the mood to talk to George any more and used his cell phone to cancel. He drove all the way home, stopping for lights, turning at the right corners, without remembering any of it. When he got home he ate his meal without noticing and gave the remains to the orange tabby that didn't belong to him but dropped in for meals.

He decided to let a couple of days go by and then drop in to see her. She might run away again, but he had to try. He had to find a way to make it up to her and Per what he and Prudhomme had done.  Everywhere he looked he found people whose lives had been destroyed by Prudhomme. Any one of them might have found a way to get back at him. He could understand their feelings. He himself had shared them.

Check Next Month's Issue for Chapter 4

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