“Then we come to paradise,” I went on.
“Chilmark.” The place on earth where I was most at peace, the place that I thought had more physical beauty than any place in the world I had ever visited. Its rolling hills and countryside are very evocative of the English countryside. The landscape is dotted with gray-shingled farmhouses, simple and functional in their beauty; and rambling throughout the houses and fields of sheep and horses are miles of ancient stone walls, built by the early settlers and farmers to mark the boundaries of their property. I like those walls best in winter and early spring when you can see the amazing combinations of rocks that have been fitted together to form their spines, before the wild roses and bittersweet of summer climb out and over to dress them in green and pink and scarlet.
And most of all what I love about Chilmark is that wherever you are in the midst of this glorious countryside, you are never very far from the sight and the sound of the water.
Miles of perfectly white sand beaches on the south shore, rocky beaches both south and north, enormous ponds with clams and oysters you can dig out and take home for dinner, and ever-changing vistas of ocean currents from hilltops at every turn, of waves that could carry you anywhere you wanted to go in a real or imaginary world.
Last town beyond that is Gay Head, the westernmost tip of the island. Much smaller in territory than Chilmark, it is also flatter and rimmed with dunes around its shorelines.
But it builds to a spectacular sight at its furthest point: dramatic cliffs of multicolored clay which plunge to the sea at the junction of the Vineyard Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.
By the time we began our descent into the Boston area, Mike was up-to-speed on the island history and description, most intrigued by the fact that only two of the towns Edgartown and Oak Bluffs were wet, and that you couldn’t buy liquor in any of the stores or restaurants up-island.
“Sounds fuckin‘ weird to me can’t even have a beer with lunch.”
“Don’t worry, there’s a full supply at the house. You’ll make it.”
From the shuttle terminal we walked across the drop-off area to a small counter at the end of a row of commuter airline desks, none of which looked as if it had been in business for more than a week and each of which served two or three places you’d never heard of in New Hampshire and Maine.
“Good morning,” I said to the girl she looked about eighteen who was standing below the Cape Air logo.
“We’ve got reservations on the nine forty-five to the Vineyard. Names are Cooper and Chapman.” I handed her my credit card and she pulled up the computer list for the flight.
“Okay. Got ‘em Alexandra and Michael, right? What are your weights, please?”
“Excuse me?” Michael asked.
“I’m one twenty-two and he’s… what are you these days? And please tell the truth, Mike, my life may depend on it.”
“What do you need my weight for?”
“Like it’s a Cessna 402. We’ve got a weight limit, so we have to know like what the passengers weigh, and the baggage, so we can like distribute it and stuff.”
“What are we flying in, Coop, a rowboat? I can’t do this.”
“You’ll be fine. It’s only half an hour you’ll be up and down before you have time to think about it.”
“Two-ten,” he murmured, clearly miserable as he looked out the window and noticed the tiny nine-seater parked near the exit door.
Picking up on his discomfort, the counter girl chimed in, “Like you can sit up front next to me, in the copilot’s seat. I brought her in from Nantucket an hour ago and it’s a perfect day for flying. There’s no fog and like very little wind it’s really awesome.”
The kid was playing with Mike and he didn’t get it yet.
I watched the exchange, and could see she was attracted to him, which got me to thinking about him in a way I hadn’t done for years: as a guy, and not just a working partner.
Today, even at moments like this when his wonderful smile wasn’t working for him, he was handsome and lean, and a standout in most crowds. Dressed in his navy blazer, striped shirt with white collar and cuffs, jeans and loafers, he looked like any other yuppie headed for a fall weekend at a country inn.
“Thanks, but the pilot might get jealous,” Mike responded to her.
“I know you’re a very good investigator, Chapman,” I said as I nudged him with my elbow, ‘but she is the pilot.“
“What? You gotta be kidding me. She’s an infant, she’s gotta be in junior high school, she’s…”
“Trust me. She’s ”like“ the pilot, Mike.”
As soon as the three other reservations arrived, the counter girl announced the flight, helped an older man in overalls carry the luggage of the other passengers out to the tarmac, and then gave her clipboard to him and climbed up onto the wing of the plane and into the window-door of the pilot’s seat.
We started to board the Cessna, with Mike doing a soliloquy under his breath.
“Women are terrific… they can do anything… I believe in feminism… equal work for equal pay. But this is bullshit… this is a little girl flying an airplane… They ought to call this thing Cape Fear, not Cape Air.”
“Calm down, buddy. Women fly combat missions now.
Think of them, think of Meryl Streep you know, Karen Blixen in Out of Africa, think of Sally Ride, the astronaut, think…“
The only one I can think of is Amelia Earhart, and the last I heard, blondie, she still hasn’t landed.“
I bent down to walk the short aisle of the plane and sit in the empty copilot’s seat, knowing how great the view would be as we soared over the island on a clear morning.
Mike was coming in next as the pilot reminded him that she needed his weight near the front, and he seated himself directly behind me.
We taxied out and took off, the light craft shaking mildly as she was steered to a smoother flying altitude of four thousand feet, above the low-lying winds. I could feel Mike’s hands clutched on my seat back, but there was too much noise from the busy propellers to say much along the way. About fifteen minutes out of Logan, the Massachusetts shoreline came into view, and the distinctive outline of Cape Cod spread out below. If you were familiar with the landscape, it was easy to pick out everything along the way, from New Bedford and Woods Hole, to Hyannis and Provincetown.
And then Martha’s Vineyard rose across the sound, still green in late fall, as we crossed over the whitecaps and watched the ferries plying their regular routes to and from the mainland. I tried to turn my head and point out some of the landmarks to Mike I always became so animated when we got close enough for me to recognize the places that were such an indelible part of my emotional life. The pilot banked and began her approach from the east, instead of from ‘my’ end of the island, but she came in low over the shore with its exquisite stretch of white beaches and a seemingly endless array of ponds, which looked like fingers reaching out to the ocean to hold it in place and keep it lapping onto the sand.
Mike didn’t relax his grip until the plane had come to a complete stop next to the small wooden terminal and the propellers were shut down.
The pilot unlatched her window and started to climb back out onto the wing.
“Thanks for flying with us… not that you have many choices,” she chuckled.
“Going back with us tonight?”
“Yes, thanks. See you later.”
“You, too, Mr. Chapman. Wasn’t it like awesome?”
“Yeah, awesome,” Mike responded.
“Looks like we’ve got a greeting committee the Homicide Welcome Wagon,” I noted as I looked out my window, waiting for the other passengers to deplane down the narrow steps. “That’s Wally Flanders and one of his guys on the right, looks like a state trooper in the uniform next to them but I don’t know him and-‘ ”Who’s the one in the three-piece suit and the shades, thinks he’s going formal?“