The Ghost

take one off.
    Just out of West Tisbury I stopped by Scotchman’s Lane to check directions. The sky was really threatening now, and a wind was getting up. I almost lost the map. In fact, I almost turned back. But I’d come so far, it seemed stupid to give up now, so I eased myself back onto the thin, hard saddle and set off again. About two miles later the road forked and I parted from the main highway, turning left toward the sea. The track down to the cove was similar to the approach to the Rhinehart place—scrub oak, ponds, dunes—the only difference being that there were more houses here. Mostly, they were vacation homes, shuttered up for the winter, but a couple of chimneys fluttered thin streamers of brown smoke, and from one house I heard a radio playing classical music. A cello concerto. That was when it started to rain at last—hard, cold pellets of moisture, almost hail, that exploded on my hands and face and carried the smell of the sea in them. One moment they were plopping sporadically in the pond and rattling in the trees around me, and the next it was as if some great aerial dam had broken and the rain started to sweep down in torrents. Now I remembered why I disliked cycling: bicycles don’t have roofs, they don’t have windshields, and they don’t have heaters.
    The spindly, leafless scrub oaks offered no hope of shelter, but it was impossible to carry on cycling—I couldn’t see where I was going—so I dismounted and pushed my bike until I came to a low picket fence. I tried to prop the bike against it, but the machine fell over with a clatter, its back wheel spinning. I didn’t bother to pick it up but ran up the cinder path, past a flagpole, to the veranda of the house. Once I was out of the rain, I leaned forward and shook my head vigorously to get the water out of my hair, and immediately a dog started barking and scratching at the door behind me. I’d assumed the house was empty—it certainly looked it—but a hazy white moon of a face appeared at the dusty window blurred by the screen door, and a moment later the door opened and the dog flew out at me.
    I dislike dogs almost as much as they dislike me, but I did my best to seem charmed by the hideous, yapping white furball, if only to appease its owner, an old-timer of not far off ninety to judge by the liver spots, the stoop, and the still-handsome skull poking through the papery skin. He was wearing a well-cut sports jacket over a buttoned-up cardigan and had a plaid scarf round his neck. I made a stammering apology for disturbing his privacy, but he soon cut me off.
    “You’re British?” he said, squinting at me.
    “I am.”
    “That’s okay. You can shelter. Sheltering’s free.”
    I didn’t know enough about America to be able to tell from his accent where he was from, or what he might have done. But I guessed he was a retired professional and fairly well-off—you had to be, living in a place where a shack with an outside lavatory would cost you half a million dollars.
    “British, eh?” he repeated. He studied me through rimless spectacles. “You anything to do with this feller Lang?”
    “In a way,” I said.
    “Seems intelligent. Why’d he want to get himself mixed up with that damn fool in the White House?”
    “That’s what everyone would like to know.”
    “War crimes!” he said, with a roll of his head, and I caught a glimpse of two flesh-colored hearing aids, one in either ear. “We could all have been charged with those! And maybe we ought to have been. I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to put my trust in a higher judgment.” He chuckled sadly. “I’ll find out soon enough.”
    I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was just glad to be standing where it was dry. We leaned on the weathered handrail and stared out together at the rain while the dog skittered dementedly on its claws around the veranda. Through a gap in the trees I could just make out the sea—vast and gray, with the white lines of the incoming waves moving remorselessly down it, like interference on an old black-and-white TV.
    “So what brings you to this part of the Vineyard?” asked the old man.
    There seemed no point in lying. “Someone I knew was washed up on the beach down there,” I said. “I thought I’d take a look at the spot. To pay my respects,” I added, in case he thought I was a ghoul.
    “Now that was a funny business,” he said. “You mean the British guy a few weeks ago? No way should that