“You cheatin’ motherfucker!” Caesar screamed at Trader. “This seafood’s dead as a doornail. How long you had it in your trunk? A month? Peeee-yooo.” He waved his hand in front of his face as he lifted the bucket out. “You lying white trash. Here’s what I think of your fucking fresh seafood.”
Suddenly, the crabs and trout were sailing out of the bucket as if they were dashing out a fire. They flew through the air and splashed into the James River, where the crabs sank to the bottom and sat, looking around, stunned, as the trout swam in lazy circles over them.
“Look! I see the trout swimming down there!” Trader pointed at the shadow of the trout deep below the sparkling surface. “They’re not dead! You threw away my fresh seafood! Hand over fifty dollars!” he demanded.
“Nope.” Caesar gathered up his ruined fishing gear.
Trader’s pirate genetic coding was fired up and he punched Caesar in the eye. Caesar turned his fishing pole into a whip and stung Trader’s cheek with thirty-test monofilament and several small sinkers that Caesar had attached with his teeth shortly after arriving hours earlier on his bicycle. The two men fought fiercely with each other, rolling on the ground, yelling obscenities and beating on each other. Enraged and bleeding, Trader darted for his car, which Caesar began kicking before he smashed out the front windshield with his damaged metal tackle box.
Frenzied and out of breath, Trader dove into the driver’s side and fumbled for the flare gun he always kept hidden under the front seat. He cut his fingers on splinters of glass as he stuffed a .12-gauge flare into the wide barrel of the old flare gun that had been handed down in his pirate family since 1870. He rolled out of the car and pointed the flare gun in Caesar’s direction as the deranged fisherman hurled lead sinkers at him, one of which struck Trader on the nose, causing an instant reflex that twitched his trigger finger.
The flare exploded through the air like a small fiery missile, streaking straight toward Caesar and slamming into his chest. The crabs and trout watched in horror as the fisherman burst into flames and ran several steps before collapsing. Trader fled in his banged-up state car, the trunk still open, the windshield a spider web of shattered glass. When he limped into the governor’s mansion a little later, he was pale and bloody, his suit and tie torn. He was agitated, paranoid, and confused.
REGINA was confused, too. She had never seen her mother so made-up and heavily perfumed. Had Regina run into her mother in a funeral home, she would have assumed Mrs. Crimm was full of formaldehyde and overlaid in putty and had gotten her clothes mixed up with some other dead lady who was much smaller and fond of fuchsia.
“What the hell happened to you, Mama?” Regina asked as she worked on a thick slab of honey-glazed ham that was tucked inside a huge biscuit dripping with butter and globs of mint jelly.
Mrs. Crimm, running a little late, seated herself at the foot of the table and lifted a fork to signal that everyone could begin eating.
“What do you mean, what happened to me?” Mrs. Crimm shot Regina a threatening glance. “And you’re not supposed to start eating before everyone else. As if I didn’t raise you better.”
Andy cut off the only morsel of lean ham he could find in the mound on his plate as Trader walked into the dining room. Andy noticed instantly that the press secretary was bloody and in shock and smelled faintly of burned chemicals and gunpowder.
“I’d rather know what happened to you,” Andy said to Trader.
Mrs. Crimm inferred from this that her handsome young dinner guest didn’t think for a minute that anything at all had happened to her. She always looked alluring and thoughtfully put together. It was irrational and Victorian for women to hide their bodies beneath thick layers of loose, long clothing. Andy’s attention would find its way down to the foot of the table any minute and linger to wander all over her. After dinner, the two of them would sneak up to the master suite and she would lock the door and say yes and mean it. Even if the governor came home, as long as she and Andy were quiet, he wouldn’t see them.
“Did you wander into a riot or a hurricane?” Andy’s attention remained on Trader, who went into a lengthy, breathless explanation, talking so fast that his words tangled and ran into each other midair.
“What on earth did he say?” First Lady Crimm asked Andy every few seconds. “I wonder if he’s had a stroke!”
Trader’s story could easily be summed up, although he took a long time to tell it and the facts changed like clouds. The gist was this: He arrived at the river at nineteen hundred hours and an African-American male was fishing out by his bicycle. Trader greeted the man and they discussed the weather as Trader dumped the crabs and the trout overboard.
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Crimm interrupted. “He didn’t toss the crabs into the James, did he? Unless they can find their way back to the bay, they’ll die, sure as shooting.”
Trader rushed ahead with his story.
“He says there was a shooting, now that you mention it,” Andy translated. “A Lincoln with New York plates roared up and a Hispanic male in his twenties started firing a nine-millimeter Sig-Sauer pistol out the window and yelling obscenities. He shot the fisherman at very close range, probably in the chest, and the fisherman possibly caught on fire, possibly from burning gunpowder that was possibly fueled by a Bic lighter that was possibly in the fisherman’s shirt pocket.”
“How come he doesn’t know anything for sure?” Regina reached for another biscuit. “Didn’t he even check to see if the poor man just might still be alive or if he was really burning up? Why didn’t he try to put the fire out or call for help?” She fastened her eyes on Trader as she ate. “You just rush off and not try to help or anything? What kind of person are you?”
“He shit at me!” Trader raised his voice, not realizing that his sudden speech problem was due to post-traumatic stress that had somehow activated a genetic code that caused him to talk like a pirate.
“We don’t talk that way at the table!” Mrs. Crimm fired back at him.
“He shit at me again and again! I was afeared to get near him!”
“I can’t stand this.” Regina covered her ears. “Someone talk for him. Andy, just tell us what he says. And does he really mean to imply that the Hispanic was doing number two at him? Doing it or throwing it?” She scowled. “What does he mean that the gunman shit at him?”
“Regina!” her mother scolded her. “We don’t talk about bathroom habits at the dinner table!”
Trader started to make the point that he was talking about a shooting, when Andy cautioned him not to say the words shoot, shot, shooting, or shooter, but to simply simulate by mutely pointing his finger and firing it like a gun. This worked, and the First Family settled down and resumed eating as Trader claimed, through Andy, that he was certain the Hispanic was the one committing the hate crimes and was coming after the First Family next, so Trader had raced back to the mansion instantly to make sure all were safe and protected.
“He say he hated Crimm,” Trader blurted out. “And he thinks all Crimms should be put to death.”
“You sure he didn’t mean criminals, as opposed to Crimms?” Regina considered as she chewed. “Papa’s very much in favor of sending criminals to death row and is known for it.”
“Honey, that wouldn’t make much sense,” Mrs. Crimm replied. “The Hispanic is clearly a criminal himself, so why would he be on a spree of hate crimes that target people similar to himself?”
“Damnation seize my soul, the villain meant ye!” Trader pointed at each Crimm in an ominous, morbid way. “Crimm. Not criminals.”
Faith was frightened. “We won’t be able to leave the mansion ever again, Mama.”
“What if he’s out there somewhere?” Constance’s eyes were wide, and she kept refilling her wine glass with nervous hands.
“I’ve never heard of anyone catching on fire when they’re shot.” Andy pressed Trader on this point. “Did you really see smoke and flames and his clothes igniting? I realize you’re saying you didn’t
hang around long and were frightened and also concerned for the Crimms and may have suffered a small stroke, but I’m having a very hard time with your story.”
Trader rather condescendingly replied that it was a well-known scientific fact that people do burst into flames and have cremated themselves unannounced since the beginning of time.
“It’s called spontenuous combusting,” he said. “Look it up.”
Andy didn’t need to look it up. He was quite familiar with spontaneous human combustion and the stories of people suddenly bursting into flames for no good reason.
“Well,” he said to Trader, “we’ll see what the medical examiner has to say.”
“You don’t think that psycho’s gonna come here and set all of us on fire, do you?” Constance worried aloud.
“Why would he hate us?” Grace couldn’t make sense of it. “What did we ever do to him or any Hispanic? And we’re not a minority except for our practically being a royal family, and there certainly aren’t many of those.”
“We don’t even know any Hispanics,” Faith reminded her family as she looked around the table, her horse-shaped face wavering in soft candlelight. “And Papa hasn’t a single Hispanic working in his administration and never has. So what do the Hispanics have to be resentful about?”
“Probably what you just said,” Andy replied.
“Which was what?” Regina asked between chews.
“It’s been my observation that the governor’s administration could use a little more variety.” Andy tried to be diplomatic. “When an entire group of people finds itself excluded, hard feelings arise and can turn to violence.”
“But Bedford doesn’t speak Spanish,” Mrs. Crimm explained. “He sees no reason to.”
“He really doesn’t see reasons for much of anything, First Lady Crimm.” Andy was candid, and he almost added with all due respect, but the specter of Hammer had been hovering over him all day. “I’m convinced if he could do something about his vision, his life would dramatically improve.”
“His vision is the same as it’s always been,” the First Lady replied. “He envisions a Commonwealth that is uncommon and committed to the wealth and well-being of one and all, and that from this day forth, there shall be the uncommon goal that the people . . . Oh dear, I’m afraid I can’t remember the next line. What does he say?” She scanned her daughters’ bored faces.
“The same thing he says at every inauguration,” Regina replied in disgust. “He’s used the same speech every time he’s elected and it was stupid the first time and it’s still stupid.” She looked at Andy. “He thinks Virginia ought to be renamed the Uncommonwealth of Virginia, because he hates North Carolina and is damn tired of all these Fortune 500 companies and banks and movies going there instead of here.”
She reached for the butter, and the silver knife leapt from her buttery, thick fingers and fled across the heart-of-pine floor. Pony appeared out of nowhere and picked it up. He replaced it with a clean one from the silver chest.
“Can I get you anything else, Miss Reginia?” he politely inquired.
“That’s not a bad name,” Andy said in surprise. “Why don’t all of us call you Reginia instead of the other?”
“I don’t want to be called something else, and I’m sick and tired of everyone worrying about what I’m called! And I’m even more sick and tired of no one ever calling me to begin with.” Tears jumped out of her eyes. “Every time the phone rings it’s just somebody trying to find the base unit. I don’t have any friends. Not even one.” Regina cried with her mouth full, chewing and miserable. “I was born in a coal mine . . .”
“No, you weren’t,” her mother firmly interrupted.
“I was conceived in one.” Regina became indiscreet. “I know exactly what happened when you and Papa went down into that deep, dark shaft and you had on that little hard hat with the flashlight. Imagine how I feel knowing his sperm had black dust all over it and swam straight to an egg and decided the result would be me!”
She reached for the bottle of wine, and it slipped out of her grasp and rolled across the table and onto the floor. Pony patiently crawled under the table after the bottle of Virginia Chardonnay.
“I’m so fucking sick of everything!” Regina bellowed.
“You are not to use that word ever again,” the First Lady told her severely. “What in the world happened to make your mouth so foul? When you were born, you didn’t talk like that. And I think the F-word is filthy and unspeakably degrading and unbecoming to a young lady, especially the daughter of a governor.”
“That’s the way they talked in the coal mine,” Regina smugly said to Andy, and by now no one remembered that Trader was at the table or even in this world.
Then he made the mistake of thinking like a press secretary and speaking like a pirate. “Yay. Better ye use euphetisms like darnt, doggone it, fudge, rats, for Pate’s sake, that’s the darntest thing I ever hear, shit, oh shit . . .”
“Enough!” Andy ordered him. “I told you not to say shoot in any tense.”
“Why are you talking like that?” Regina was out with it, uncovering her ears and glaring at Trader.
“I was born on the island as was everybody afore me,” he said as he dabbed his bleeding face with a linen napkin. “I’m afraid the shock of witnessing the murder has done something to me brain.”
“Well, I don’t care if you were born on the island. You can just forget the rubbish that what you’re speaking is Old English or Elizabethan English or that John Smith said shit instead of shot or shoot. Now he might have said shat, but not shit. Does everybody on the island talk like you, or do you have your own special secret vernacular or something?” Regina was brutal but honestly curious. “After all these centuries, why don’t you talk so people can understand what the hell you’re saying?
“Mama, I insist Papa fire this man. I can’t stand him in the mansion another day. I just know I’ll hear him in my head all the time and it will drive me to distraction. And I simply can’t afford to be driven to distraction because there are so many distractions already and I’m bored to death of being driven everywhere by EPU! I want a car and a license and to go places without security!”
“Shhh!” the First Lady ordered as Pony detected footsteps out front and hurried toward them.
Momentarily, the door shut loudly in the entrance hallway and the tone of murmuring voices suggested that Bedford Crimm had not enjoyed the day much.
“I smell ham!” he announced in dismay. “I thought we were having seafood tonight. I am most decidedly not in the mood for ham. What happened to the crabs I had flown in?”
“Sir, will that be all?” a trooper asked.
“No!” Maude Crimm called out from the dining room. “Don’t let him go, sweetie! We need all of the EPU to stay right here!”
This was very much out of character for the First Lady, who was known for getting annoyed with omnipresent security details. At first, she had felt important and admired when squadrons of powerfully built EPU troopers in immaculate suits surrounded her everywhere she went and made certain her every need was fulfilled. Then she grew weary of it. Maude Crimm longed to sit in the garden or the tub or watch TV or shop on the Internet or get her cosmetic procedures without cameras or others taking all of it in. She was becoming increasingly paranoid about her privacy and nurtured a growing suspicion that the troopers saw everything she did—everything, including her endeavors to hide her collectibles.
“What’s this all about?” the governor asked as he walked into the dining room and squinted in the candlelight to make out what was on everyone’s plates. “Ham,” he muttered disagreeably. “I can’t stand ham. What happened to the crabs?” He fixed his unhappy, dull gaze on Regina.
“We let them go.” She was candid with her father.
“I flew them in on the state helicopter and you let them go?”
“And the trout,” she replied, reaching for the mint jelly.
“Sir.” Andy was determined to g
et to the heart of the First Family’s difficulties. “There’s a situation I think you need to know about. A black male was just murdered while he was fishing in the river, and Major Trader has alleged that you and your wife and daughters could be in danger. Apparently, he allegedly witnessed the crime and is alleging the suspect is the same one who assaulted Moses Custer and killed Trish Thrash.”
Crimm reached for his dangling magnifying glass and was visibly startled when his press secretary came into focus.
“Heavens!” the governor exclaimed. “Shouldn’t you go to the hospital?”
Trader was afraid to speak and shook his head.
“What happened?” the governor demanded. “I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic, but it’s not sanitary to bleed at the dinner table.”
Trader got up, holding a napkin to his forehead. He mutely stood on the antique Oriental rug, his eyes darting about as he tried to sort out his tangled thoughts and come up with a plan. For starters, he decided, his transient speech disorder was a good thing because under the circumstances, it was smart to talk in a way that made little sense to others. His condition made lying easier, and people were less inclined to question him closely. Not to mention, if he required a second party to speak, then Trader’s testimony would be hearsay and not admissible in court.
“It’s awful.” Faith was describing what had happened. “This monster makes people burst into flames and then speeds off. He’s from New York and speaks Spanish and intends to do the same thing to each of us.”
“As much as I hate it,” Mrs. Crimm said, “I think we need all of the troopers to surround the mansion until this terrible person is caught. Maybe the National Guard ought to help out, too, dear.”
The governor pulled out a chair and sat down, not sure what to do and perplexed that no one had briefed him about this emergency before now. Often, he found out bad news when he came home for dinner, and certainly this wasn’t helping his submarine in the least.