The Keating Script - First Chapter

    The small scar sitting on May Keating’s left eyebrow was visible, the thin crescent of it now a pale silver arc of a line on her tanned skin. Heavy rain could bring that change, or a raw wind lashed with rain thin as mist and sharp as blades. Or raw passions rare as moons could put the same silver in place. There were times she totally believed she was moonless; she believed this, the way Fate, in its inordinate way, talks to those who listen.

All around her Nonquit grasped the Cape with its craggy fingers, and the Cape clutched Massachusetts with its whole fist, and Massachusetts was only too happy that its borders were squeezed tightly against Rhode Island and Connecticut and New Hampshire and Vermont, and, far from the ocean, at the end of the line, past the Berkshires, was anchored by New York.

     The storm beating at her piece of the earth was wild, though there was an evident orchestration to it, in its mightiness, in its abundance. Horizons for sure were to break, and daylights and new elements lurked but steps away.

            Before the wind came, before twenty days of September had accumulated the yowling and reed-splitting screeches, Cable knew what the day was bringing. Its barometer of knowledge talked on the tight skin of his forehead. It whipped, past his face, grasses in their fanatic webbing. All morning long, from the last hopeful but short ride in a noisy Chevie which he himself had ended abruptly, monoxide like syrup too much to bear, the talk too, the Portuguese gardener’s hands loose over the wheel, he was aware of excitement in his gut. It was an extension of imagination, part promise, part dream, a piece of his past rushing again to be a new shape. He tasted the wind, reveled in the potable trail of the sea, the thin edge of iodine slicing its way through his mouth buds. Knew hunger, how it threatens control, then falls away to other dominances.     

     From the first freshets, which leaked through the twin-trunked maple tree, the late afternoon wind distressed May Keating. Unknown odors rode in on the wings of it, passed through her mind for recognition, and were left nameless. Thirty-four years of hurricane seasons, systematically filed for future reference, as much classroom as any of slate, full of lore and legend no teacher could unearth, failed her. She cocked her head, attentive, inhaling slowly, measuring; and felt apprehension’s  grip. It was real as manacles, a bite to it, the harder she tried to throw it off, the deeper it bit, squeezing, and a cosmic policeman at the screws.

     She laughed on the rear porch. The wind passed through the balusters and then her legs, testing her skirt. Today’s melodrama, she thought, produced and directed by May Keating. She gave her uplifted face to the strength coming in off the Atlantic, knew dories in it and lobster traps and frayed ropes and yellow slickers dotting a frantic horizon.                                                                     

    Inside, Peirce Keating struggled awake from an afternoon dozing. He was dewed and damp and sea-labored. Excitement came in one shoulder only. Mere at that, and in neck and throbbing head. Remnants, he reminded himself, of his other life. A dry throat seemed his first knowledge, the permanently inert body a quick second. He fought against total consciousness, abhorring the vacuum of it, the detestable nothingness of his life, nearly frozen into the one posture; no itch to feet too long a day in tennis shoes, no tense of muscles once bunched in his thighs, no soft and wafer-like and iron-vise and exciting toes that May locked behind his knees in their dark pleasures now barely on the horizon. More conjured than actual it seemed. He assessed the curtains of the window in their butterfly movement, felt the September wind as furtive as an infiltrator intentionally giving away secrets, felt with a strange extension of his mind, a truly physical extension, a boat deck tremble at waves, tasted at the back of his throat the whole potable breath-being of the seas; Cape Hatteras, Bermuda, St. Thomas, indeed the mad push of the Caribbean as it gathered much before its celebrated autumn winds.

     It wore, slightly at first and then in inundating closeness, all the matter of the sea and the islands, the brine-beaten sands the subtle sting of kelp; it carried its overpowering identity of storm in the brewing pot.

     Peirce moaned at his recognition of the elements; how they pieced together in his mind their essence: whiteness of initial wave caps as if a grand master was at the keyboard, freeing music and motion in a gray world; the face-shove of Atlantic forces out of an ancient fortress, forcing eyes to squint, lips to compress, bringing to life every sense of the body, the roar, as yet unheard, that body-slam of sound, tenacity of a being coming to life. He called to May, heard her on the porch; understood the wind and the sea and the union of them

     Cable could at last see the Atlantic kicking up its heels.

     On the brow of a slight hill two small Cape Codders snuggled into thickets of trees. Granite outcropping bled brown as molasses opposite them. A basketball net on a pole standing its lone totem was a Braille mark of suburbia, Looking out to sea, the wind beating at him, chunks of all Atlantic in its mouth, he thought of Lord Jim’s terse description of a sea storm, hissing “like twenty thousand kettles,” and noted the endless pushing of waves and their white caps, the irrefutable sense of power its viewing could emit. Salt came on him in, slicing its edge into nostrils opened as if a surgeon wielded an oceanic scalpel.  The back of his throat filled up with the taste the sea salad has in its immense serving, onions and kelp and scallions and fish raw and lively, smells brine bears with it like diesel fuel and wet sand and distant bogs giving off gifts and a woman someplace sitting in the wind, a chill touching her whiteness, her eyes full of message.   

     Cable staggered as one quick fist of the wind punched him broadside. “God, you’re a mighty wonder!" he said.

      His options were few. Money he had in his pocket, and time on his side, and in his small suitcase a change of dry clothes, but the wind again, as it had all morning, called him on, teasing, giving promise. He was abeyant in the face of life-long odds against the gambler who loved daring the unexpected, the unrehearsed, the informal.  It was what he always expected of himself, noting wryly his own inconsistency on the point                                                                                                                                          

      When the same blast of wind that staggered Cable came off the corner of the porch, it tore loose one of May Keating’s sheets, wrapping its wild flowers about her in the quickest embrace. It framed her in the September afternoon grayness, caught her breath in one ball deep in her chest. Cable saw the flowered features fall over the short rail of the porch, hit the ground, heard the minute yell more of surprise than of terror, raced to the fallen flowers.

       He lifted her gently, pulled the sheet from about her head. When she looked into his eyes, looked into the deep set of them, she broke his heart. Rain pelted at them. Cable marked her as wife, mother, lover and the woman sitting in the wind. His heart was raw. She was the woman everywhere; in the best part of the wind, outside a train window or left at the curb of an outland bus stop, the face that has not yet turned to you from an airport ticket line, a subway face but three feet away in a car going in the opposite direction never to return even if you waited a thousand years. Her eyes came out of the Atlantic depths, a green he had not seen in eons, touched with a pain so real it made him flinch. He marveled at their intensities, so blatant and so fragile at once, felt the sudden measurements coming back at him; mirror bright, seeking acknowledgement, baring so much in the merest seconds of communion. The wiry thinness of her arms telegraphed energy into the files of his mind.

     She was light but hardly fragile and leaned against him for a moment longer than she ought. Cable was stunned, speechless at her momentary leaning, raked the back of his throat for a few simple words, and at last laughed at himself, man of the world, itinerant, road warrior with a red face in the rain and someone’s woman in his arms.

    She spoke first, feeling at once the power in his arms and hands, the presence of his being, recognizing in her nostrils the odors of the man and the rain and the sea riding over her like a grand courser, with the apprehension she had felt during the day, as if she were soothsayer and omen dealer in one swoop of mind.

     “I wasn’t really in that much of a hurry,” she said, giving another meaning to her words, leveling her eyes at him. She felt visible and open and it did not bother her.                     

     Cable released her arms, taking a last measurement before he let go. “It’s a day for hurrying, making quick decisions,” he said, immediately sorry for the intent he leveled in his words. Her eyes threw nothing back at him. He quickly continued, “There’ll be one god almighty day around us before this one’s over.” It sounded so apologetic at first and then he realized it was just another example of the innuendo he had made part of his social wardrobe. The sudden desire to be honest hit him. . He thought it necessary to weigh every word and realized just as suddenly that he shouldn’t engage in any games. She had been open and fair with him, a stranger in the rain and wind, a face out of the swift September grayness becoming more violent about them.

     In the eaves, the wind found whistles on every edge. Gutters and downspouts made mad tunes, like brass sections at high pitch. The rain beat its drums against the side of the small cape, pounded in the tall thin maple beside the house, beat on his back and on her face, still intent on him.                                                                          

     “You’re absolutely drenched,” she said, looking up at him, neither doubt nor fear in her eyes.

      He placed her at about five foot, six inches tall, wiry and healthy, with short, blonde hair you would probably never see her working on.

     “Looks like you’re wearing the whole day on yourself.”  A bit of mystery sat on her lips, almost pouting. Her lashes, though not long, were not cluttered. Cable had already decided that he favored her a number of ways, but it was the lack of the usual facial treatment residues that gained his admiration.  God, she’s clean, he thought, though still seeing that pain buried beneath some wall down inside.   A curious aching, at nerve speed, came warmly in his chest.  He tried not to broadcast the ache on his face.

     “You’re not doing too well either,” he replied.  He could not take his eyes off her. She was not embarrassed or offended, and slowly rolled the sheet into a sopping ball at one hip. He tried to think of the name of the flower highlighting that hipped bouquet and thought it was jonquil. The wind’s roar deepened and the rain sliced at them as if they were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and some deed just done. Rain ran on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. She balled the sheet tightly up under her left arm and a breast blossomed against the pale blouse, with its nipple known against the material, deepening the petals. Old arguments began in the barracks of his mind. The two of them stood against the universe and all the elements. Then  everything stood still for a moment , a block of wind, a sheet of rain, a man and a woman, the guttural cry of want that nearly bellowed inside of Cable, and the subterranean pain in May Keating’s eyes.

     “I’m just glad I could help a little, Ma’am,” continued Cable. “I’ll be on my way.”

     Honesty flushed her face. “Where in God’s name are you going on a hellish day like this? If I could, I’d cancel out the day, at least in part.”  Her voice had a subdued quality to it, a softness, one that seemed to allow the listener to add his own inflections. Cable thought of the recorded books his father used to get from the library at Perkins Institute for the Blind, how  some of his favorite readers on their three beer nights of long listening, would sift softly through the breadth of a book, their voices almost flat, almost dull, allowing that blind and once-avaricious reader to  create his own stresses. He felt the darkness of the old man’s room wrap around him, the faded blue wallpaper lost in darkness, the glow of a Pall Mall one of the few signals of the night, now and then a cough, a sigh, perhaps the late rush of a police car’s tires singing on the macadam, and the soft droning voice giving all of life a chance to be something, to be somewhere. She’s not alone in her pain, he swore to himself. He turned to look for the small suit case he had dropped getting to her side, finally felt the reality of the rain, the heaviness of his jacket. The retrieval was his gesture of departure, of seeing the encounter closed for the moment.

     She asked in that soft voice, “You could use a change of clothes, if that’s what you’re carrying in that?”  She nodded at the case. A variety of contents of the case clicked through her mind “You could change here. Have a cup of hot coffee for your trouble.” There was no broadcast in her words, no terms or conditions or any ultimatum.

        Cable noted the honesty in her voice again, shorn of any inflection. Even with the rain moving down over her face, her lips were soft, almost helplessly warm. He felt invaded, his private turf, not hers, trespassed upon. The side of the house showed the lack of maintenance, paint peeling on the red trim, a few clapboards loose at their ends, something gone wrong, out of whack, not matching the energies that emitted from her frame, the aura about her.

     “The rain’ll be gone soon enough,” he said. “I’d better be on my way.”

     “My name is May Keating. I believe we’re in for a hell of a lot more. Maybe the cruelest day of the year. I appreciate your helping. It takes time and a bit of sacrifice. Some people get driven off by the elements and some really don’t know how to help.”  She sorted parts of him, made judgments, felt comfortable with herself and the stranger beside her house. He was over six feet tall, sort of athletic she thought, with good shoulders and hands, but he had a busy face, much to read in it, brown eyes lit by a tender lamp, a straight Roman nose that would have shown effects of brawls or other misadventures, his lips made her think of berries and cream with a tart taste to them. He’s not a devil, she thought, but he is capable and alert and if he wasn’t walking about in the damn rain he could be a piece of The Rock. She noted the trim hair and the obviously shaved chin.   “Are you going some place local?”

     She had rolled all her questions into one, he thought.  “I’m going to spend some time at the cottage of a friend of mine, Frank Mitman’s. Not far from here, if I’m on course with the directions.  He’s a friend from way back. He’s gone to the coast, probably until the spring.” He held the small suitcase in the air. “I’m going to do some reading that I’ve put off for too long. No vehicle to deter me, no peevish errands to do, like living off the land but under cover.”

     “You’d be as well off with a change of clothes,” she nodded. “Want that coffee or not?” and added, not really as an afterthought but as a direct qualifier, “What books bring you to Nonquit?” Her face was again blatantly honest in its purpose, the way a child puts questions to experience and authority. Cable found a small, circular scar high on her forehead, at the hairline over one eye, and noted how well it had fought the summer sun, a porcelain-like pinkness with its own shine; a brand mark of her daring he imagined, thinking of an accident on a twisting deck, blood flowing from the head wound for a brief moment, her wiping it away casually. Her energy leaped at him.

     “I’ll pass on the coffee.” It was a very official statement, not labored at all, not to be argued with, as she understood. His eyes were warmer than a moment earlier. She thought for a moment their color had changed, an inner stoking taking place. “A few

old ones, a few new ones, probably a few that I’ll not like the first time around. I try to make friends with them. When you get a good one, you keep it company. You keep getting paid back. My father always said they’re best friends when you need them.                                                “Would he have stood about in the wind and the rain, your father, talking about them? I’d imagine that he would.” He heard her words above the wind, thought of the scar high on her face, the blood as it must have flowed, and pointed her inside.

    “He would, and we’ll finish it,” said Cable.

    “It’s the one with the blue trim on the next curve, on that spit of land just ahead. It’s got a great fireplace.  The wood is in the little shed on the other side. I’ve only seen a few of Frank’s books. If you need anything, tomorrow or whenever, just give a yell. We’ll be here.” She had made a finite pronouncement about Frank and it made Cable smile openly.

     “Frank and I don’t have the same reading lists.” He pictured Frank in a sleeping bag with a flashlight, oblivious of everybody else in the regiment.  “But I have to tell you, I like the way you wear your linen.” It was the unintended cuteness of his words that bothered him almost immediately. He felt shorn and open and knew it was habit biting at him, not letting go, as much as he wanted to control it. He shrugged his shoulders and May Keating smiled at both messages.

     “I’m certainly glad of that,” she said, not noting which statement she was referring to. She turned toward the house, pulled the sheet tighter under arm and walked into the wind and the rain. The tree overhead hissed its excitement, and then laid its branches over them as the wind leaped again. The downspouts whistled and gutters moaned and the clapboards danced in a few places. The screen door slammed behind her.

     Cable stood for one breath as the seas leaped toward him. A leaf slapped at his face, a wet glove, a gauntlet dare. A whole sheet of air, a wall of wetness and salinity, slammed at him, entering portals he had not opened, touching skin suddenly cool and fragile. Salt entered his body. He could feel it penetrate clothes and then the organ of his skin, pores by the hundreds opening under the siege. He could smell vinegar and from absolutely nowhere came a whole physical sense of being at  the old Pit at Revere  when he was only seven years old,  going down under the flume of water washing over him, filling his mouth, hands grabbing at him, pulling and yanking as if he were in the middle of a fight, then the dry sand under his backside, the sun beating down at him its total glory, finding his breath sure and clean, believing in miracles, believing in warmth, glad to be basking, and the old gent, having come to bring him home, taking him by one arm and the waist of his trunks and tossing him into the water again. Cable smiled at the thought. Never after that had he been frightened by the madness of the sea, no matter in what form it had come at him.