Summer of Pearls Read online

  “I was there,” said George Blank, the blacksmith. “I swear I had given him up for dead a full three minutes when he finally came up for air.”

  Some of the pearl-hunters looked sideways at Judd Kelso when talk of the Glory started, but Kelso just sat remorselessly in his chair. He even snorted a little to show his disregard.

  “That’s how he learned pearls,” Trevor said. “He used to tell me his plans for preserving the oyster beds. He had everything scheduled to the year and month. He would protect the oysters in certain localities about Mangareva during certain years, to make sure the natives didn’t harvest them all. He wasn’t happy just to dive for them, either. He wanted to become the world’s expert on pearls. He was going to spend five years diving for them, the next five buying them, like me, and the rest of his life acquiring and collecting them. I believe he would have done it, too, if the bloody pirates hadn’t come to Mangareva.”

  “Oh, hell,” Kelso groaned. “Here come the pirates again.”

  “What about those pirates?” George Blank asked. “What happened?”

  “Bloody pirates they were,” the captain said, putting out his cigar and sipping at his whiskey jar. “Outcasts from France, Spain, the East Indies, and South America. Cutthroats. No other name for them. They told Billy they wanted half the pearls the natives harvested or they would kill everyone in the village. Billy got mad then, he did. He had a pistol I had given him, and he put it against that pirate captain’s head. He went with them to their schooner, holding that gun on the captain. Made them throw their cannon off the bloody deck. Two six-pounders! He told them never to come back and threaten him again or he would have the natives boil them alive!”

  “But they came back anyway, I guess,” Esau said.

  “Aye, they came back, mate, and Billy knew they would. He was ready for them. He and his pearl-divers had brought those two six-pounders up from the harbor. He had learned how to shoot them, too, and borrowed some powder from the wicked Whistler. They kept a watch up day and night, and when those pirate bastards sailed into the harbor with new cannon and fired on the village, he crippled them good. Blew the mizzen mast away and sent them limping for Tahiti!”

  “So, he whipped ’em!” Junior Martin said.

  Trevor shook his head sadly and nudged his satchel with his foot to make sure it was still there. “They came back yet again, they did. I was there at Mangareva in sixty-seven when it happened. The guards were posted about the harbor, and Billy was ready for another attack by sea. But the bloody cutthroats had anchored out of sight, around the coast, and they sneaked into the mountains above the village. At dawn, they came down. Every one of them had a revolver and the best rifle available. Billy had only a few old muskets and the pistol I had given him.

  “We fought at first, we did. But it was suicide to stay. I used all my ammunition and jumped in my launch to reach the Wicked Whistler. I told Billy to come, but he wouldn’t. He tried to organize the natives, but they were scattering all over the place running like scared dogs. The bloody pirates were killing them everywhere. My God, what a mess that was. Young children killed, women violated. Billy stood on the beach and shouted, trying to pull the villagers together, but they didn’t know much about fighting pirates. He wouldn’t leave, so I knocked him on the head with my pistol butt, threw him in the launch, and took him away by force.”

  “And you got away?” Junior Martin asked.

  “Hell, he’s here, ain’t he?” George Jameson said, and the saloon shook with laughter.

  “The pirates were shooting at the Wicked Whistler, but we were well out in the harbor. Once we got out around the reef, they had no chance of catching us.”

  “What happened to the village?” Esau asked.

  “Destroyed. The whole thing burned. Billy went well-nigh crazy with guilt. He swore he had brought death and ruin to those simple natives. He said I should have let him stay on the beach and allowed the pirates to kill him, too. Bloody stupid move that would have been. It wouldn’t have helped anything, but Billy tortured himself.

  “I had saved the Mangareva pearls in my launch when the Frenchmen attacked. When Billy found those pearls aboard the Wicked Whistler, he went screaming about the deck, throwing them in the ocean like a madman. I put him ashore in San Francisco. Never thought I’d see him again.”

  The saloon fell silent, and Captain Brigginshaw took a swallow of Esau’s moonshine.

  “Well, I lost the Wicked Whistler last year in a bloody, wretched hurricane on Jamaica, so I’ve been buying pearls for International Gemstones to earn enough in commission to buy a new vessel.” He sneered a little when he mentioned his company’s name. “I was in New York when Billy’s letter came from here. He’s not the same old Billy yet, gentlemen. Coming around a bit, but he’s still got Mangareva on his conscience. Won’t bother with pearls, either. Says they brought evil last time he fooled with them.

  “Anyway, that’s the story of Billy Treat. He knows pearls, he does. And a few other things as well.” He drained his jar and handed it to Esau for a refill.

  Kelso had finished his drink, too, and got up to buy another. He smirked and shifted his ugly gator eyes as he crossed the smoky room. “So that’s the story of Billy Treat. Hell, it all makes sense now. I see why he gets on so good with Pearl Cobb.” He stood beside Brigginshaw and held his glass up to Esau. “They belong together. Him a coward and her a whore.”

  The blow came without the slightest warning. Kelso’s eyes stood level with the big Australian’s shoulder, so the fist angled down on him, backhanding him to the floor. Esau moved gracefully aside. The saloon customers gasped, then sat still and quiet.

  Kelso jumped up but, dizzied by the sudden stroke, stumbled back against a table whose legs rattled across the wooden floor like the hooves of a startled horse. He shook his head, touched his brow to check for blood, gathered himself, and rushed the pearl-buyer with grunts and gritting teeth.

  Trevor doubled over and latched one big hand around the handle of his money satchel. Kelso’s fist against his temple staggered him a single step, but he slung the smaller man aside with his free arm, sprawling him across a cracker barrel.

  Some of the men left the saloon quickly, others merely stood and moved out of the way. A few smiled with excited eyes, and one shouted, “Get him, Captain!”

  Trevor drew himself to his full height, holding the satchel in his left hand. He waved Kelso in with his right hand, then made a fist of it. “Come ahead, mate,” he said, his teeth showing a smile in the middle of his beard. “You’re a little man, so I’ll just use my one fist. I fight fair, you know.” He cocked his arm like a pugilist, elbow down, slightly bent, his fingers curling up and in toward himself.

  Kelso stood and got both fists up. His eyes narrowed with anger. He moved in cautiously, staying out of reach, circling to the Australian’s right. The moment he made his move, Trevor came around with the heavy satchel, catching Kelso in the head and bowling him into a shelf filled with jars and glasses.

  The roaring laughter of the pearl-buyer followed the tinkling of shattered glass. He dropped his guard and looked around at the men in the saloon. “Never trust a drunken sailor to fight fair, mates! It isn’t in him!”

  Kelso chose the moment to spring from the shattered glass and throw a wild blow at Brigginshaw’s head. The captain’s beard absorbed the punch as his knee came up and caught Kelso in the ribs. He made playful jabs at Kelso’s nose and ears, backing him up until he knocked him over the stove. There was no fire, but the stovepipe fell out and a black cloud of soot dropped into the saloon.

  When Kelso got to his feet, the leather satchel swung again, knocking him all the way through the door and into the woodpile outside. Trevor began shaking with laughter, and the customers remaining in the saloon joined him. Even Esau smiled, though he was shaking his head and surveying the devastation around him.

  “Not to worry,” Brigginshaw said. “International bloody Gemstones pays all my expenses.” He put the leat
her satchel on a table and began unbuckling it. “Including damages incurred in protecting my pearls.”

  As he peered into his leather case, Trevor sensed a sudden change in the mood of the crowd. He pulled back the tail of his jacket, found the grip of his revolver, and drew it. As he turned, he cocked it, and found Judd Kelso in the sights as the burly little man came through the door, an ax above his head.

  Kelso stopped so suddenly that his shoes slid across the dirty wooden floor. He was still quivering with rage, but he knew better than to rush the big man now. He stood as if in leg irons, the ax handle at his shoulder, the broad steel blade above his head.

  “Drop that weapon,” Trevor said.

  Kelso’s face writhed with flexing muscles.

  Trevor raised his aim a few inches and sent a bullet glancing off the ax head, humming through the wall, and sailing out over the lake. The weapon jerked in Kelso’s hand. A couple of customers bolted for the door, and others dove under tables or behind barrels.

  “Drop it!” Brigginshaw repeated.

  Kelso threw the ax aside.

  The big Australian laughed again, but in a distinctly devious tone. “You’ll wish you hadn’t raised a weapon to Trevor Brigginshaw when I’m finished with you, mate.”

  Esau shuffled through the broken glass. “Captain, let him go,” he said. “There’s been enough trouble. The constable may have heard you shoot.”

  “Not until we finish our fight,” Trevor said, easing the hammer down on the pistol and returning it to his belt.

  “I ain’t fightin’ you with that gun on!” Kelso said.

  “Then you will be shot,” Trevor said, bringing both fists up and assuming his boxing pose. “The choice is yours.”

  “There’s been enough damage done, Captain,” Esau said.

  “There’s been too much bloody damage done,” Trevor answered. “And no one will leave this room until some of it’s been accounted for.” He bent his head forward and moved toward Kelso.

  “I don’t want to fight no more,” Kelso said, taking a step back. “I give.”

  “Run, and a bullet will stop you, mate. Put your fists up and fight like a man!”

  Reluctantly, Kelso put his fists in front of his face and circled away, backing around chairs and tables clumsily. “Goddam, Esau! Stop the crazy son of a bitch!”

  Esau did nothing.

  Trevor continued to stalk the retreating man until he got him trapped in a corner. When Kelso crossed his arms in front of his face, a flurry of crushing blows arrived, coming with incredible rapidity from a man of such size. Kelso doubled over until a punch to his chin stood him straight. Another snapped his head against the wall. His knees buckled and he slid unconscious to the floor.

  Trevor, as if he had failed to see his opponent fall, continued to belabor the wall until a board came loose, letting all the lake’s animal croaks and chirps into the saloon.

  Still fuming, he turned to glower at the men left inside the saloon. He saw his leather satchel open on a table. He saw the ax on the floor. He stalked across the room, picked them both up, and went outside.

  Esau breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the ax splitting wood. He motioned to a couple of customers. “Drag Kelso out through the back,” he said. “Don’t let the captain see him.” He mopped his sleeve across his forehead and reached for the flask in his pocket. “That Australian sure gets mean when he drinks.”

  12

  I GOT SOOT IN MY EYE WHEN THE STOVEPIPE FELL OUT OF THE CEILING. Adam Owens and I had sneaked down to Esau’s place after dark to watch through the knotholes in the wall. We were hoping to see a fight, but hadn’t bargained on guns and axes. Adam ran for home as soon as the pistol slug glanced off the ax and ripped through the wall.

  I was more curious and less cautious. I stayed until the bloody end, and even watched Captain Brigginshaw chop wood until he was so tired he could hardly stand up. I watched from a distance, because it was frightening to listen to him heave and grunt, and to look at his crazed face. He must have split enough wood to last a week.

  While Brigginshaw was chopping, I was wrestling with my conscience. It wasn’t the fight that was on my mind, but the story the pearl-buyer had told of Billy on the island of Mangareva. It had given me an unforgivably wicked idea. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself from thinking about it. I was fourteen and in love with the most seductive woman in creation.

  Before Billy Treat, there had been a far-fetched hope that Carol Anne would share her body, if not her heart and soul, with me someday. But since they had gone into business together, and started socializing around town, arm in arm, there was no hope of anything. Billy would have her all—heart, soul, and body.

  Billy had saved me from the sinking riverboat. He was the first adult to treat me as a man. He had started me in the lucrative catfish and drinking-water enterprises. He was my hero, and a hero of the entire town. I idolized him. It was difficult to think of stabbing him in the back, but I was a desperate whirlwind of surging confusion.

  My crush on Carol Anne had become an obsession. She was everything to me. Visions of her consumed me, day and night, only to be intruded upon by visions of Billy Treat.

  Until that night at Esau’s place, I had thought Billy invincible. There had been no chance of weakening his hold on Carol Anne. I was doomed to watch him take her. Then I heard the story of Mangareva. I knew why Billy seldom smiled. I knew why he suffered. There was no greater shame for a man than to be labeled a coward, and Billy had so labeled himself for not dying with his island friends. I saw a weakness in the invincible Billy Treat.

  It was wrong to even think of it. I knew very well it was wrong. I personally didn’t think of him as a coward, even if he thought of himself that way. I knew what kind of mettle he was made of. I owed the man my life.

  But I was fourteen and driven by motives I could not control. I couldn’t win. Either I would lose my slim chance with Carol Anne, or I would lose the respect and friendship of Billy. According to the stuff that was coursing through me, there was no choice to make. I could do without Billy.

  I waited until the next morning after breakfast, when Billy drove the store wagon to the pearling camps. I sauntered into Carol Anne’s store, already ashamed of what I had not even done yet, and waited until she and I were the only ones in the room.

  She looked at me and smiled. She had taken to smiling more since she and Billy had started their business. She was wearing the Treat Pearl, the one I should have found. Lord, she was a sight to make a boy yearn. I knew then that I would betray a hundred Billy Treats for a thousand-to-One chance at knowing the pleasures of her flesh.

  “Hi, Ben,” she said. She was dusting the tops of some canned goods and she couldn’t prevent herself from moving provocatively all over, though she was only using a feather duster. She didn’t do it on purpose. She was just put together that way.

  “Mornin’,” I replied. “Have you heard?”

  “Heard what?” she asked.

  “Captain Brigginshaw got drunk last night at old Esau’s place.”

  “Oh, yes. I think I even heard the gunshot last night. I know I heard something.”

  “I was there.”

  “Ben!” She propped her fists on her hips and stared at me, half amused and half concerned. “What’s a boy like you doing around there? You should have been home in bed!”

  That hurt, but I only shrugged. “You know what the fight was about?”

  “From what Billy says, Captain Brigginshaw doesn’t need much of a reason to fight when he gets drunk.” She was not really very interested.

  “Judd Kelso said Billy was a coward.”

  She stopped in a shaft of morning light that was streaming through the store window. Tiny particles of dust swarmed around her like the fancies of a young boy, wanting to be near, but afraid to touch her. She suddenly seemed to realize that I had come to tell her something important. “That was a stupid thing for him to say. Why would he even think such a thin
g?”

  “Captain Brigginshaw told everybody at Esau’s a story about Billy, and Judd Kelso said it made Billy a coward.” I didn’t tell her that Kelso had also called her a whore. I wasn’t trying to destroy her image of herself, just her image of Billy. It was a sneaky, cowardly thing for me to do, but I was beyond honor. I was fourteen.

  She asked me to sit down with her behind the counter, and I repeated the story as Captain Brigginshaw had told it, trying to remember his every word, wishing I could borrow his accent. In my version, Billy put up a little less of a fight as Captain Brigginshaw thumped him on the head, deserted the island village a little easier, and went a little crazier with shame aboard the Wicked Whistler.

  It was sad to watch Carol Anne’s face as I talked. The story hurt her. I thought it might be breaking her heart. By the end of the tale, her fingers had fallen from the Treat Pearl and lay clasped in her lap. She wasn’t smiling now.

  “So that’s it,” she said. “I knew there was something. I could tell.” She got up and walked aimlessly out into the middle of the store, holding her fingers to her lips. “That’s why he never talks about the South Seas. I knew something had happened there.”

  I barely enjoyed ogling her. The story had taken the luster off her smile. “Well, I thought I’d better tell you,” I said.

  She turned and looked at me. Her eyes were glistening with tears that wouldn’t quite roll down her cheeks. Suddenly she came toward me. I jumped from the stool I had been sitting on just as she reached me. She put a warm hand on each side of my face. I felt electricity in her touch.

  “Thank you, Ben. I’m so glad I heard it from you instead of from some gossip.”

  She leaned toward me and kissed me square on the forehead. I went almost as blank as Judd Kelso had the night before. Fire started on the spot where her lips had touched me, and sent a wave of crimson across the rest of my face. It was happening fast. Too fast for me to handle.