Dead Season on Martha's Vineyard

By Tony Friedman

The story centers on Angela and Lutie, who have been married for over thirty years. Early in the book, I chronicle their upbringings; while Angela was sheltered and filled with the good things in life, thanks to her mothers personality and desires, Luties life was filled with hard work and the tragic deaths of his parents and an eventual brutal period of service in Korea. After the war, he puts himself through college and takes a bankers job in the very bank run by Angelas stepfather, and so they meet, fall in love, and marry. After the death of Angelas mother, in the early eighties, the couple decide to accept the legacy she left of a fine home on the Island of Marthas Vineyard, where much of Angelas growing up took place, and substantial investments to guarantee a genteel lifestyle. The transition from their home of three decades in Pittsburgh to a life of leisure on the Island takes some getting used to, but they soon come to enjoy it. In fact, before long Angela has taken on the mantle left by her mother as hostess and renowned artist in the community. Meanwhile, the unexpected reappearance of a hated old combat soldier from Korea thrusts Lutie back into that time period and that mentality and begin to take its toll. This, combined with an unwelcomed population burst on the Island, starts to wear on his normally imperturbable psyche. Angela observes the changes in her husband, which is never more noticeable than the night he attacks and beats up a crowd of rowdy teenagers breaking glass and scattering trash on his favorite beach. The real trouble will not begin until he discovers his loathsome old comrade frozen and dead in the house of a friend, closed for the winter. A vision of a chainsaw passes through his head, and suddenly he has a plan to stem the tide of growth on his beloved Island. It isnt long before the population is shocked and appalled to learn that a chainsaw-wielding maniac is wreaking havoc on the Island, chopping up human bodies and displaying their parts around the various towns. While the rest of the community is in a panic, Lutie grows increasingly agitated at what he has started; and when the investigation reveals the source of the bodies and the fear is assuaged, he decides to sink his remaining parts in the sea and get his life back to normal. It appears that he is in the clear, but is he? This book is skillfully crafted, highly suspenseful, and cleverly written, with an understatement that only serves to reinforce the plotline. It presents the troubling idea that people are not always what they appear, and it is a testament to the detrimental psychological effects of being in a brutal war zone. Given the high number of veterans experiencing this trauma in our current wars, the book has a high contemporary relevance. My wife, our two children, and I lived on the Island for over twenty years, and I have tried to distill the charm and grace, as well as the gritty underside, of this beloved piece of paradise. Book Reviewsilver-shingled cottages, salty boats and the captains who man them, patches of sand between glacial boulders, the crisscross of ferries and the mysterious realm of the rich. Such are among the evocations of Marthas Vineyard. Author Tony Friedman and his wife Barbara washed ashore on the Vineyard in the early 1970s, spent nearly 30 years living and raising their children here, and now comes Tonys first novel: Dead Season on Marthas Vineyard. Tonys keen sense of observation, deep knowledge of the Islands history, and a lifetime of storytelling combine in Dead Season on Marthas Vineyard to make a Writer finely constructed tale of the Tony interaction of several layers Friedman of Vineyard people, their lives and dreams, and the lengths to which each will go to keep the Island special. The dance of characters follows the clash and harmony of locals who make the Island function and the privileged who come for the season. With his finely tuned ear for authentic language and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450041096

Tony Friedman

Anthony Friedman has been a father, a ship captain, a soldier, a politician, chef and businessman in a long, world-spanning lifetime. And he has been always a reader, an absorber and a masterful teller of tales. When not traveling, sailing or exploring he lives in rural southern West Virginia with three cats and a small flock of chickens.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

CHAKA ROCKS RESORT Community, North of Durban, Republic of South Africa

October 1986

Still punchy from jetlag, Luther came to half-awake in living darkness, a fleeting memory of light and sound behind his gritty eyelids. Slightly disoriented, in an unfamiliar bed, he needed to move around. Tossing the sheet aside he felt cool tile under his bare feet and stood unsteadily, rocking somewhat as the hot crackle of his first real African thunderstorm gusted around his sweat moist body, cotton boxer shorts low on his lean hips. Out of the black night the white draperies on either side of the sliding doors blew about independently as great blasts of briny sea air surged in and out of the bedroom. With his eyes wide open a painful white flash scattered the night as a dozen thick bolts of lightning stitched the boiling clouds to the boiling sea across his horizon, and he felt the tile beneath him, tremble slightly, either from the hissing Indian Ocean breakers or the ear popping concussion of the immediate deafening thunder.

Forty kilometers north of Durban, Chaka Rocks was where the volcanic coast of the Transvaal began its steep rise to the towering Drakensberg peaks just inland, and the chilled mountain air of evening, sliding to the coast to meet the hot breath of the Madagascar channel were causing what his host, Wilhelm Erhard, had referred to as a ‘liddle toonderboomer’, increasingly common as the October night began the Southern African Spring.

He didn’t jump or turn around when he felt Angela’s body brush him from behind: he had known she was awake as well, when he left the rumpled bed to view the tumbling sea and forbidding rocks.

Are they putting this show on for us, or is this a regular occurrence in this part of the world? she murmured sleepily, as another marching skein of thick bolts probed the corners of the breakers forming up offshore. Again the immediate crushing thunder, quickly gone.

I would like to believe it is just for us, but since no one else is up and about to see it, I guess it is normal for this area. Any idea what time it is?

Her floor length filmy gown fluoresced in another intense flash and he pulled her against himself’, feeling thirty years of marriage fall away in the power of this exotic storm, her tumbling hair and sleepy scent familiar and comforting so far from home.

Would that be our time or here time? she mumbled into his shoulder, nosing and blending her own heat with the hot night air.

If we are going to be here all winter; or rather summer, I guess we better get on here time pretty quick.

Wilhelm’s guest house was perched on hard, flinty rocks ten meters above the pounding breakers, and only the pressing wind from the Dragonstooth Mountains kept the foaming seas from mounting over the balcony and into the room.

On the advice of experienced world travelers they had taken a freighter, actually a modern passenger carrying containership, from Boston to Antwerp, explored Belgium, and Germany, and then flown from Frankfurt to Johannesburg on South African Airways, a trip made much longer than the straight line distance because SAA was prohibited from flying over any Black African country. They had flown out over Portugal, the Canary Islands, and the cold Humboldt Current of the West African coast for twelve long hours before touching down at JoBurg, going through the intensive customs inspection, and connected with a short flight to Durban, on the coast, arriving early afternoon. Wilhelm, nearing ninety years of age, had sent his car and driver for them. Their travel fatigue was pushed back by their fascination with the city of Durban, looking like clean and golden California of the fifties, and the excellent highways, left side driving, of course, that took them up the coast. The Mediterranean style of the house, neatly tended grounds perfect in the intense sunlight made them feel welcome, and Wilhelm, who had been Luther’s chief at the Bank of Pittsburgh thirty years ago, before he had married Angela’s mother, still had his incredible commanding presence, although somewhat stooped and quite white on top.

They arrived in late afternoon, unpacked into the lovely white and gold guest quarters, situated on eroded black lava rocks, with stunning views of the sparkling Indian Ocean and patches of deep gold sandy beach, outlined with more ebony rocks and inshore reefs that turned the steady breakers to dancing froth all up and down the coast. They dined lightly with their fond host, tasted several of the fine local wines, and retired early to acclimate themselves to the bottom of the world. Now, the ‘liddle toonderboomer’ had bumped them from restless sleep and into a fire and light show that invaded their bodies and shook the little house. They stood holding each other lightly, cheek to cheek as the storm crashed and rolled around them, first with hot African night air, fragrant and heavy and then with cooler sea mist, rain with a touch salt, fresh and bracing. Once again the incredible stitching of lightning bolts, with the ensuing thunder a little delayed as the storm moved away from them. Smaller distant flashes limned their lean bodies, a touch of white around his ears and a curl of frost around hers the only dues they paid to thirty years of life together. Returning to the rumpled bed they settled comfortably into each other, melding sweetly as the storm faded and the night again became quiet. They dozed until the dawn brought a huge red sun booming up out of the calming Ocean, chasing the last of the cool rain back into the mountains. A solid wall of African heat came with it, tinting the blue of the sky with gossamer haze, so they showered and dressed in crinkly whites, and climbed the steep path to the main house, where ceiling fans, white stucco and red tile made natural air conditioning, and the kitchen crew awaited with the promised South African breakfast.

Wilhelm was refreshed and eager to see them. In faded khaki slacks and a sun-bleached dress shirt that once had been blue, he welcomed them to the table:

Nothing like that storm in Pennsylvania, eh, Lutie? And certainly not on Martha’s Vineyard either. Thunder like that would pop the shingles off every house on West Chop first time around, wouldn’t it?

Like most of the house the dining area opened to the sea. Higher ceilings above the windows sloped toward the back of the dwelling, with the thick white walls set off by the varnished wood trim. All of Wilhelm’s furniture was crafted of the same local heavy dark wood, but with all the non-window wall space taken up with bright modernistic art, and the suffused sunlight reaching every corner, it was a light and airy space. The dining table was a rough oval of boat-finished planks at least five inches thick, large enough to seat—a dozen if need be, and this morning boasted a silver buffet service on white pads, with fruits freshly peeled, porridge, hot bread and butter, and an urn of aromatic coffee.

I have heard desert thunder like that, but without the incredible rain, Angela told them, spreading soft golden butter on crusty bread. The whole world around us seems fresh and clean from that scrubbing, and the ozone gives the air an interesting taste too.

Out the open windows the sea beneath the house was calmer now, with long swells forming up far out, rolling in strict echelon to the rocks and coarse brown sand of the beach beyond the point. Silent black servants in white uniform brought plates of crisp fried fish and poured coffee into graceful cups as they chatted.

You can run on the beach all you want around here, Lutie, there is a very nice stretch of hard sand down toward the south, but don’t even think about going into the water until the tide is high. Wilhelm indicated directions with his coffee cup, and Lutie could see that there were stone walls and built-up sandy bottom areas among the tracery of well-worn lava exposed by the tide.

We have four meters of tide here, and many, many sharks just outside the breaker line. When the tide comes in you can swim in the enclosed pools, but you must never go outside them. We lose several people a year around here, mostly tourists just like you.

Angela pushed back from the table and stood up. I want to get my book and get to sketching, if you don’t mind. She smiled at Wilhelm. That was a lovely breakfast I won’t have to eat again all day. The old man followed her from the dining area to the patio, chuckling fondly. My people will be very insulted if you don’t eat what they fix. You must remember where you are. Food is very important in the South African culture."

Angela glanced back at Lutie, helping himself to another piece of fish. I guess I’ll have to start running on the beach with you, then. I did not travel halfway around the world to get fat.

You will want to wear good strong shoes for this beach, Wilhelm told them both. The sand is very coarse and sharp, not like the powder you are used to on the Vineyard.

As people with a lifetime of regular habits, Lutie and Angela quickly developed a routine for themselves. They ran and swam, hiked the coast road, ate well but lightly, painting daily for her, reading and lazy conversations with Wilhelm for him.

You have been here nearly two weeks, Lutie, Wilhelm said one afternoon as they sat on the deck and watched the shark patrol tend the nets offshore. I am still baffled as to why you left your island paradise and came all the way to Africa to sponge off an old man. He sipped red wine and watched his former son-in-law over the rim of his goblet.

Lutie toasted him as he rolled the fine robust wine on his tongue.

You know we have done nothing but the Vineyard for over twenty years… we love it of course but it seemed like a good time to get away and try something different. He placed his glass carefully on the table between them, and appeared to be ready to say something more, but Wilhelm held up his hand.

I heard about the little weirdness you had-on the island last year, and even Angela has been nudging me to see if you have confided your reasons for such a jaunt to me. I am very glad to see you of course, and you can stay as long as you like. I will not push you for your reasons. He rose slightly and pushed his chair out of the sun and into a shady corner of the porch and resettled himself. The hot sun of the afternoon slanting beneath the eaves would soon force them inside for a snooze in the cool bedrooms, a tropical habit Lutie had come to love.

One of the young houseboys, smart in crisp white jacket and deep red trousers brushing the tops of his bare feet silently approached. Baas… the mail is in, and there is a packet for Massa Luther. The boy bowed slightly and handed Wilhelm a newspaper and some letters with his left hand, placing his right hand on the upper part of his left arm as he did so, in the age old gesture that said ‘I will not touch you.’ Then he turned and repeated the move to Luther, with a fat envelope.

South Africa has many problems, Wilhelm said as the boy quietly left the deck, but the mail gets through, the telephones work most of the time, and everyone eats. He unfolded his newspaper and began to read as Lutie opened the taped envelope, noticing it bore the return address of his friend Tony on Martha’s Vineyard. Inside there were several notes from various friends and a copy of the most recent Vineyard Gazette. Tony ran a small seasonal restaurant and had obviously encouraged his patrons to write notes and sent them all along together.

We are suffering the onset of another wicked New England winter here on the island, He wrote, while you and Angela slide into continuous summer. I am green with envy. He went on and on about what was happening on the island, and it was only when Lutie put the notes aside and opened the newspaper that he gasped audibly and stood up, holding the newspaper right out in front of him and staring, pale and pop-eyed.

Wilhelm tossed his own paper aside, stood quickly and went to him, looking from his face to the paper to see what had upset him so much. At the top of the page there was a photo of a man and a woman in formal dress, circled in black marking pen. Another of my girls married and gone. was the quote written under it. In their conversations about the island Lutie had told Wilhelm about his chef friend, who only hired young girls to work his place, and the rural customers, mostly single and lonely, married them one after the other. Looking closely as he placed his arm around Lutie’s shoulders, he could see nothing that was shocking. The notice said that Lisa Kirby, office manager of Fat Tony’s Restaurant, and Michael Weston, carpenter, had been married in a small ceremony at the place where they met, would honeymoon in Nova Scotia, and move to Oregon to make their home. The bride had been attended by her stepmother, Darla, and given in marriage by her stepfather, Roy Hess of Charleston West Virginia. Werner took the paper from Lutie’s hand and turned him toward the house. : You better go and lie down, and I’ll get Angela. You look like you have seen a ghost.

Lutie shuffled with him toward the cool indoors. Yeah… I better go and do that, and after our nap I’ll have a hell of a story for you. Angela arrived at the door as they entered, in time to see his ashen face and hear the statement, and watch as he shambled off to the guest cottage, head down and shaking slowly back and forth. She and Wilhelm re-read the paper, then she hurried off to be with her husband.

CHAPTER 1

THE FULL YEARNING thrill of anticipation did not kick in until they were well out of town. Over the years Luther had trained himself to think only of the tasks of preparation for the trip, saving the best part, the savory anticipation, for the long road. Just getting ready to go took weeks, planning and packing, sorting the here and now into boxes and suitcases for the future. The drive itself, out of the gritty predawn of Pittsburgh, north on 79 to the newly finished 1-80 east and then seemingly forever after that was made bearable by the wonder of their destination. The Island Vineyard. THE VINYUD. Martha’s Vineyard, a coherent dream of peace and beauty and quiet and the sea. Three weeks of unremitting joy that felt to him like a renewal of life itself.

First the car was checked from bumper to bumper, engine and tires, brakes and shocks, radio and wipers freed from surprises. Then the packing. New things for the house came first, light bulbs and throw rugs, sheets and towels and kitchen goods, cleaning supplies and big beach, towels, then the beachwear and picnic stuff, some groceries non-perishable nature, and personal luggage. Books and more books for Angela, financial literature and corporate reports for him. Long lists made on yellow pads and checked off. Phone calls to the caretaker that crackled with intensity as the day of departure grew near. The staff surrounding Lutie at the bank knew the symptoms all too well. Mister Brewn of the Trust Department, stuffy and boring old Mr. Brewn, who was not really old, just seemed to be, tall and slender with thick dark hair, dark-eyed under dark brows, serious of face and stiff of manner, lost for months in his esoteric ledgers and investment books, beloved Lutie of the bluehairs and dodderers whose precious portfolios he carefully nurtured. An ultimate banker, soft spoken, conservative to the point of motionlessness, a more or less undistinguished pale cypher in a stony cathedral environment, who only showed real life in mid-August of each repetitive year and whose infrequent smiles became more smirky as the days approached the first of September.

He’s got that look on his face, it must be getting to be September already. the staff would say. Lovely September, when Lutie and Angela broke free of Pittsburgh, and for three weeks took the air and waters on the Vineyard, tucked away in West Tisbury, in the grey-shingled cottage of Angelique Mateer Raymore Coppolla Dudley Erhard. Angelique was a talented artist and beautiful, dilettantish, much married mother of Angela the bookworm, the bankers wife, fathered by husband number three, the fiery Francisco Coppolla and of whose temperament she had not a shred. What the child did inherit from him was a shapely head with luxurious brown hair and cinnamon skin, deep chocolate eyes and a slim northern Italian nose, almost all of which she hid from the world in one way or another: Her hair was always under a hat, and her eyes behind dark glasses or a book. Her father’s intensity burned within her and kept her figure consistently slim and vibrant, although she abhorred exercise, but the frumpy and unstylish clothes she favored kept her fine body a secret as well.

Angelique, reluctant mother, on the verge of too beautiful and too sultry, of medium height, extremely bright, was never known as Mrs. Anybody. She was her own person, always an enigma sired by a daydream, perhaps Belgian, perhaps Quebecois, no one really knew and she certainly wasn’t telling. Slim, trim and intense, her narrow shoulders were made to order for the haut couture of Parisian France, her high cheeked face created for the smoldering looks only the deep dark eyes of far off places could muster. With her strangely accented English, constant strong French cigarettes and air of mystery she was just suddenly there, smart; moneyed, aloof. She dabbled internationally in art and followed that life, secured from the mundane necessity of making a living by the substantial fortune of husband number two, the vibrant Wesley Mitchell Raymore, III, a dashing scion of old money who’d once owned two estates on the Vineyard, one for his first passion, offshore sailboat racing, in down-harbor Edgartown, and the quiet bucolic place on Old Courthouse Road, West Tisbury, where a skylit studio and adjoining shingled cottage overlooked field, pond and stream, and his young wife could paint and entertain.

They had met at a raucous victory party aboard a state-of-the art racing yacht in Portofino, pearl of the Riviera, each bent on re-entering social life after brief attempts at marriage, hers to a titled but nastily brooding, uncouth Frenchman, his to a chronically seasick but otherwise normally indistinct former debutante.

Angelique, of course, graced the roughest seas with glowing health and adored her tanned and salty mate, his blonde hair and sunny disposition a striking contrast to her unmourned first husband. After a tranquil, private honeymoon sailing the Greek Islands on a borrowed forty-footer, they returned to the United States for the Summer Sailing Season. Wesmore, as he was known in boating circles, carelessly interrupted the course of a heavy boom with his head in some dicey early season pre-race maneuvers, and left the scene abruptly, his sky blue eyes never reopening for his devastated bride. The shattered widow sold the Edgartown harbor place with its tragic memories and socked the money away with the rest of his substantial personal fortune in long term conservative investments, embarking on a life of art and marriage, travel and divorce, producing only her daughter. She kept the West Tisbury house open and functioning year round with the help of several caretakers and retainers, living the artist/student life in summer, gallery hopping and collecting art from the island and the Cape, then off with her more affluent friends to Bar Harbor for September, and the Caribbean-Mediterranean axis in the winter, picking up and discarding another husband along the way. Tall and commanding, Francisco Coppolla cut a dashing and romantic figure in his art gallery in Naples, but once out of Italy diminished into a whining complainer in the cool air of New England. Angelique quickly realized he would not transplant well to her life and they parted company with little rancor. His one-way first class ticket from Boston to Naples was used before his incipient fatherhood was discovered. With her usual zest Angelique thrived during her pregnancy, even quit smoking for the duration, exulted in the attention and showed her compatriots how it was done in high style. She traveled to Boston and bore her child at Brigham and Women’s early on June 4, 1936, with a minimum of fuss and discomfort, and quickly returned to her premotherhood lifestyle, leaving the nurturing and raising of the wispy, big-eyed solemn baby girl to her many hirelings.

Angelique had assumed her child would be just like her, commanding and demanding, and when Angela turned out to be subdued and shy, she was delegated out of the picture, except for special occasions, when, dressed and coiffed, she would be trotted out for a look and inspection, then it was back to a series of private girls schools around New England, New York, Paris, Switzerland, and Rockefeller center for Christmas, eye doctors and orthodontists. She was always on the periphery for school vacations, short cruises surrounded by arty dilettantes, a nanny always at hand. The Vineyard summers were hers, however, wandering in the woods and reading alone by the quiet pond. Never a central part of her mother’s frenetic lifestyle, she invented her own. Since none of her mother’s friends had any children accompanying them and the neighborhood was emptily rural, she lacked playmates other than those in her head or her books. There was no clinging dependence in her, although there were times when she felt somber and sunk in the desolation of her solitude. Along with the inner toughness that constant seclusion brings, pre-teen Angela developed an intense love for her pastoral Vineyard, a love beyond expression, one she could depend upon for happiness and security deep within herself, a source of strength. She read constantly, and due to her international education she was able to read French and Italian as well. Occasionally she would bring a classmate home for a holiday, or visit, the town house or country place of another lonely young girl, where they would languish in the comforts of wealth and position, discuss their dreams of love and life. But there was little opportunity to bone interpersonal relationships in any depth, especially with boys. There were tea dances, cotillions and theatricals, with dull and uncertain young males practicing at being supercilious, but for the most part there were her books, her girlfriends, and her wide-ranging imagination to fill the empty spaces of her young life. Suddenly, at twenty-one, she was a tri-lingual college graduate with a major in literature and minor in art, achingly shy, sweetly innocent, still on edges of her mother’s life.

There had been no loneliness in the youth of Luther Scott Brewn, quite the opposite. The third of eight little Brewns, five boys in a row, two girls, and one last little tad, he would have loved a little solitude. Born at home, like all his siblings in Mingo Junction, Ohio, three miles downriver from Steubenville. A one-industry town, Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation, to be exact, little Lutie shared bed, bowl and breath with his raven-haired, dark eyed siblings, his Mummie and Da, his ancient grandmother ‘Nonie’, and a wispy-haired, dull-eyed ‘uncle’ of indeterminate age, known only as Junior. Junior was mute, passive and never far from the front porch swing, where he rocked his days away, dressed by Nonie in an old plaid shirt and overalls and stingless boots that had worn a groove in the soft wood of the porch. They dwelt, like nearly everyone else in town, in an unpainted four bedroom house owned by the Company, between the railroad tracks and the soupy Ohio River. Moving to and from the local school and tiny town in a pack, roaming the riverbanks and gloomy red-dog streets and the dead tree covered hillsides above it he rarely had a moment alone.

They ate, fought and argued, tumbled, played and rambled, sharing clothes and the weekly bathwater. Boys slept in home built bunks in one room, the girls shared a double bed in another, the baby crib was in the hallway and Nonie took the big back room. Junior snored his nights away under the eaves in a windowless attic. The parents were hard-edged but loving, working long hours to make a life for their kids. Adrian and Marie had grown up together, married early and struggled like so many of their contemporaries, trusting to God and hard work to make their lives better. As in many underclasses, justice and honesty were held in high regard, when one had little, what one had was more precious than ever, and a rigid code of conduct prevailed. Strong, discipline and respect for their elders was part of each life.

The little white Church, stained and peeling in the toxic air of the Steel town, sat prettily on a low hill, surrounded by a graveyard and a couple of hardy oaks. Every Sunday the whole clan, excepting Junior of course, scrubbed up and attended services. His parents in their very best clothes, a black