The Dark of Summer

“Shouldn't I?” she asked, in a perfectly neutral tone of voice, deciding to make him initiate whatever verbal battle there was to be. She was quite sure that there would be one.

“Yes,” he said, smiling again, pushing his white hair back from his forehead. “You shouldn't be here on the beach. As I understand it, mermaids are supposed to keep in the water.”

Ordinarily, his compliment would have pleased her, though she would not have let on that it did. Now, however, it only served to give her anger a sharper edge, for she interpreted it as nothing more than a smooth line to soften her up, a false compliment to keep her from asking him why he'd told her a lot of awful lies about William Barnaby. She felt as if he were attempting to use her, mold her reactions, and she did not like that.

“You aren't smiling,” he observed.

“Should I be?”

“Yes.”

“Oh? Why?”

“For one thing,” he said, “I'm the funniest man in the entire fishing fleet.”

“And for another?”

“Mermaids should avoid getting frown lines.”

She still did not smile.

“Headache?” he asked.

“No.”

“A bad breakfast?”

She said nothing, but watched him.

“Have I done something?” he asked. And then, as if remembering, just then, he said, “Are you angry about what I said, day before yesterday?”

“Of course, I am,” she said.

“I didn't mean to make you angry with me,

Gwyn,” he said. “I was only telling you the truth as I -

She interrupted him with a forced laugh, trying to sound as if she were mocking him. She was pleased to see him wince at the harsh sound of her voice.

“Now the roles are reversed,” he said, no longer smiling. “You see something funny, and I do not.”

“It's quite funny,” Gwyn said, “to hear you talking about 'truth,' since you have so much trouble recognizing it yourself.”

“Oh?”

“Even now you're not being truthful,” she said.

“How so?”

“You're pretending you don't understand what I mean, while you understand perfectly well. You told me a long string of lies about my uncle, sent me off thinking I was staying with a genuine human monster. But you neglected to add a few details that would have painted a very different picture.”

“What details?”

“Oh, come on—”

He stepped closer, shaking his head. “No, really. I want to know what details you think I left out.”

She folded her arms across her chest, still holding her tennis shoes in one hand. “Okay. You asked for it.”

“I sure did. Tell me.”

For days now, it seemed as if the world were striking out at her, striking out blindly and malevolently, bringing her pain and worry. It was nice to strike back for once, even in this limited fashion. She said, “For one thing, you told me that Uncle Will, when he first bought the place, refused to rent the facilities at Lamplight Cove.”

“He did refuse!”

“Outright?”

“Yes,” Younger said.

“That's not the way I hear it.”

Younger said, “Barnaby wouldn't listen to reason, wouldn't give us a chance to—”

“Don't continue to lie to me, please,” she said, in an even voice. “I know that my uncle would have let you rent Lamplight Cove if you had been willing to meet certain conditions which were altogether reasonable.”

“Such as?”

“He asked you to stop polluting the waters of the cove; if you had agreed, you could have rented the buildings there. He asked you to cease dumping sludge oil from your boats into the cove waters, but you somehow couldn't agree about that. You repainted your boats there, and you let old paint, turpentine, solvents and other garbage run right out into the cove, where the fish and plant life were being killed.”

“This is all a lie.”

“You're quite bullheaded, aren't you?” Gwyn asked.

He said, “I assure you, Gwyn, that your uncle did not make any conditions. He merely bought the cove out from under us and told us' to get packing. He offered no reasons for the eviction, and he provided no alternatives of any sort.” He sighed, bent down and sifted sand between his fingers, looking up at her. “Besides, we positively were not polluting the water around Lamplight Cove — or anywhere else, for that matter. A responsible fisherman — and most all of them are responsible — would never dump sludge oil overboard, because he knows the sea is his livelihood, his entire means of support. Sludge oil is pumped into barrels and sold, periodically, to a reclaiming plant near Boston. And though we had a dry dock at Lamplight Cove, it was extremely well policed by everyone who used it; no contaminants could have gotten into the sea from there, not even by accident.”

“Are you saying Uncle Will lied to me?” she asked, looking down at him, fuming.

“He's been known to lie,” he said. “Look, why don't you let me take you to Lamplight Cove? You'd see how clean it is. By no stretch of the imagination could you say—”

“I'm sure it's clean, now,” she said. “After all, you people have been gone from there for a year.”

“It was clean before,” he insisted. “Your uncle lied to you.”

“I suppose he also lied about International Seafood Products?”

He fielded that one easily. “He probably did. What did he tell you about ISP?”

In brief, clipped sentences, no longer able to conceal the depth of her anger, Gwyn told him exactly what her Uncle Will said about the proposed seafood processing plant, how it would damage the ecology, foul the air, and ruin the land values all around Calder.

“Lies,” Younger said.

“What is true, then?”

He said, “Oh, there are seafood processing plants just like the one that he described for you, have no doubt. They're messy; they dump rotting fish into the sea just as he said they do; and the odor of decay clings like glue to the land for two or three miles in every direction.”

Confused, she said, “Well, I thought you said he was lying.”

“He is, Gwyn. I would be against the construction of a plant like that. After all, Calder is my home, the sea my livelihood and my love. But the ISP plant wouldn't be anything like that. It's a super- modern, one hundred percent mechanized place. They pack the flesh, but they don't then discard the scales, guts and bones, as many plants do. Much of that, along with the meat that can't be cut into filets, is pulverized to make a high-protein flour substitute. That's used in the making of other foods, and much of it's exported to poverty stricken countries overseas. What guts and bones can't be used for that are pulverized for fertilizer. The ISP plants don't throw out anything, and they produce no unfiltered wastes that are dumped into the sea. Furthermore, they've more than met all the federal government regulations on air emissions, and their new plants don't give off any odor at all. They have a plant like the one they want to build here up in Maine. I've seen it. It's clean as a church.”

She turned away from him. Trying to digest all that he had told her, she looked far out to sea, squinting against the fierce glare of sunlight that shimmered on the water.

For a time, they were both silent.

And still.

But, eventually, when he felt that he had given her sufficient time to think, he got impatiently to his feet,