Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

Okay, enough of philosophy. This is a crime story; the publisher, who thinks I can write and occasionally commissions something specific, is into crime now. He is a moral man, but there is an off side to his goody-goody character and just to titillate himself, and his goody-goody readers, he told me he wanted me to write some real bad stuff this time.

“Like true crime?”

“Not too true,” the publisher said.

He is usually here for the summer. In wintertime, bothersome folks leave us in peace. They think we have weather here. Sure, we do have weather, very nice weather, too. Ice, sleet, freezing rain, blizzards, sea fog drifting in from the ocean, and very clear days when the water is almost unbearably blue, the chickadees are singing, and Priscilla has her big-bellied stove going and we all toss in maple logs, and beech, and oak, and apple-tree logs even, and have to peel ourselves out of our layers of jerseys and sheepskin vests and the younger women show their cleavages again. We exhibit some musical talents. Ex-Harvard graduate lobster-man Tom Tipper on keyboards; I work my snare drum and a minimal set of cymbals; and Doc Shanigan plays weird but acceptable bass. Priscilla plays trumpet. Usually softly, intricately, setting a theme and then improvising in unexpected ways, with us right behind her. One wouldn’t expect that a huge woman could be subtle. Sheriff hums, his wife Dolly sings scat.

Yes, crime stories. I know.

Bad stuff happens in picturesque Downeast Maine?

Define “bad.” You mean involving “blood and gore”?

Let me describe, for your amusement, in as much detail as strictly needed, some recent local tales incorporating blood and gore, perhaps, on occasion, even featuring me as a player. No confession on my part — please. None of this never happened. When pressed by the authorities, such as they are, I will suddenly know nothing. The double negatives used are correct language here, due to the many French-speaking folks in northern Maine, although right here, in Down East, we generally try to speak one of the many brands of English.

“Down” indicates that boats, when helpless due to torn sails or a gummed-up engine, are pushed by the prevailing winds to the lower east. Our clear blue sea hides razor-sharp cliffs, surrounded, right now, by ice floes rubbing each other with a silver sound. Some cliffs are pedestals to bizarre shapes sometimes. Right in front of Big Bitch Island you’ll see a rock formation that looks, from a certain angle, like a giant mother Labrador, howling at the moon. Her tits are swollen and two puppies gambol between her feet. Little Bitch Island just shows one puppy.

There is true danger down here. Freak high tides flood anchored boats, low tides make them rip their bottoms on gravel or bottom ice. Our powerful currents — well, you just can’t figure them out, they change at will. We have sudden strong wind falls, called “cat’s paws,” that tear at boats. If a vessel collects heavy snow on her superstructure she is likely to flip. Happens every winter a few times, always at night, and tends to annoy the insurance people, who tell us that their statistics show that snow-flipped boats are always old and only recently covered.

Yes sir, we love to suffer all kinds of impolite weather that the forecast fools forget to tell us about.

Down East is littered with sunken wrecks, hiding, waiting, desperately looking for company. Torn up themselves, they want to share their fate. Dead cargo boats from yesteryear, nineteenth-century tea clippers, hundred-year-old ferry boats out of Boston are marked on the charts with deadly crosses, but wrecks shift, and they stick you with a sharp mast, or throttle your boat inside their ribs sticking up from the slime.

“One dark, stormy winter night, driven toward an inhospitable coast, a cargo of chained young noblewomen prayed for mercy.” That’s one way seafaring crime tales like to start off. But our crime tale #1 started off on a bright winter morning. Everything was just right, until Elizabeth spotted the bleeding chair on top of a huge floating navigation marker. The sea, supporting this horror, except for slowly swirling currents and just a touch of ocean swell, was calm.

We were enjoying a day of Indian summer that warms our coast for a week or so that time of the year. We had stripped down to our long silk underwear, which looked good on my stern man. The dog Tillie preferred to melt close to the You Too cabin’s kerosene stove. Our shouts brought the little mongrel out reluctantly.

Tillie sniffed, then barked. “Fresh meat?”

She looks cute, but a dog is basically a wolf. She was soon scratching the gunwale, wanting to climb the marker and lick the blood off the chair.