Cry for the Strangers Page 0,86

warn you. But not here. Here she takes things, and she keeps them. Reckon that’ll be the way with your boat. Wouldn’t be surprised if nothing ever turns up.”

“There’s always wreckage,” Jeff said. “It’ll turn up somewhere.”

“If I were you I’d just go away and forget all about it,” Riley said. “Ain’t nothing you can do about it, son. Clark’s Harbor ain’t like other places. Things work different here.”

“That’s just what the police chief said last night,” Jeff said angrily. “What do you mean, things work different here?”

“Just that. It’s the sea, and the beach. The Indians knew all about it, and they thought this was a holy place. I suppose we do too. Strangers have to be careful here. If you don’t know what you’re doing, bad things happen. Well, I guess you know about that, don’t you?”

“All I know,” Jeff said doggedly, “is that my boat’s wrecked and my brother’s missing.”

“He’s dead, son. If he was on that boat he’s dead.” There was no malice in Riley’s voice; it was simply a statement of fact.

“If his body turns up then he’s dead,” Jeff replied. “As long as there’s no body he isn’t dead.”

“Suit yourself,” Riley said. “But if I were you I’d just head on back to wherever you came from and start over again. And stay away from Clark’s Harbor.”

He reached out and patted Jeff on the shoulder, but Jeff drew angrily away.

“I’m going to find out what happened,” he said.

“Maybe you will, son,” Riley said placidly. “But I wouldn’t count on that. Best thing to do is learn to live with it, like all the rest of us.”

“I can’t,” Jeff said almost inaudibly. “I have to know what happened to my brother.”

“Sometimes it’s better not to know,” Riley replied. “But I guess you can’t understand that, can you?”

“No, I can’t.”

“You will, son. Someday, maybe not very far down the road, you’ll understand.”

The old man patted him on the shoulder once more and started back toward shore. Then he turned, and Jeff thought he was going to say something else, but he seemed to change his mind. Wordlessly, he continued on his way.

Jeff stayed on the wharf awhile longer, then began walking south along the narrow strip of beach that bordered the harbor. Somewhere, parts of Osprey must have been washed ashore. If he was lucky, one of those parts might offer some clue.

The storm of the night before had left a layer of silt on the beach, washed down from the forest above. Wet and thick, it clung to Jeff’s boots as he trod slowly out to the end of the southern arm of the harbor. Nowhere did he find even a trace of wreckage. He hadn’t really expected to. If there was going to be anything it would probably be north, taken out by the ebbing tide, then carried up the coast on the current. But from the end of the point he would have a good view of the rocks. Perhaps something would be visible from there that couldn’t be seen from the wharf.

There was nothing, only the black and glistening crags of granite, clearly visible and unthreatening in the calm sea. Nowhere was there a sign of the damage they had wreaked the night before, nowhere a scrap of the boat that had broken up on them.

Jeff lingered on the point for a while, almost as if his proximity to the scene of the disaster would somehow help him to determine what had happened. But the reef merely mocked him, taunting him with its look of innocence.

After thirty minutes he turned away and started back along the beach.

He didn’t go out to the end of the sand spit at the north end of the harbor. Instead he followed the worn path that cut across it to the rock-strewn cove beyond. Jeff explored the small beach carefully, inspecting pieces of driftwood that appeared to have been brought to shore the night before, his eyes carefully searching for any familiar object, any broken piece of flotsam that might be part of the vanished trawler. Again there was nothing.

Finally he rounded the point and stood at the southernmost tip of Sod Beach. For the first time his eyes stopped searching the shore at his feet and took in the beauty of the spot. It seemed incongruous to him that something as magnificent as this could be here, in the middle of such deadly surroundings. The beach lay bathed in sunlight, and the surf, free to wash