Zed Read online

  Zed

  a novel by

  Jason McIntyre

  2nd Edition

  Published by The Farthest Reaches

  Copyright © 2016 Jason McIntyre

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Fiction titles by Jason McIntyre

  On The Gathering Storm

  Thalo Blue

  Walkout

  Mercy and the Cat

  Black Light of Day: A Collection

  Nights Gone By: A Collection

  The Night Walk Men: A Novella

  The Devil’s Right Hand: A Night Walk Men Novel

  Corinthian: A Night Walk Men Story

  Kro: A Night Walk Men Story

  Dovetail Cove titles by Jason McIntyre

  1. Deathbed (Dovetail Cove, 1971)

  2. Bled (Dovetail Cove, 1972)

  3. Fled (Dovetail Cove, 1973)

  4. Redhead (Dovetail Cove, 1974)

  5. Zed (Dovetail Cove, 1975)

  6. Unwed (Dovetail Cove, 1976)

  7. Shed (Dovetail Cove, 1977)

  8. Dread (Dovetail Cove, 1978)

  9. Instead (Dovetail Cove, 1979)

  - 10. [COMING SOON] (Dovetail Cove, 1980) -

  Learn more about the author and his work at:

  www.theFarthestReaches.com

  For VDM

  Dovetail Cove

  Tuesday, August 19th, 1975

  The water is wide, I can-not cross o’er.

  And neither have I wings to fly.

  Give me a boat that can carry two,

  And both shall row, my love and I.

  A ship there is and she sails the seas.

  She’s loaded deep, as deep can be;

  But not as deep as the love I’m in

  And I know not if I sink or swim.

  I leaned my back up against an oak

  I thought it was a trusty tree

  But first it bent and then it broke

  Thus did my love prove false to me.

  O love is sweet and love is kind

  The sweetest flow’r when first it’s new

  But love grows old and waxes cold

  And fades away like the morning dew.

  —The Water is Wide, Common folk song

  Part I

  Pretty Girls Laughing

  1

  Nineteen year old Tom Mason had skinny white wrists, so he needed both weak hands to get the shifter knob on the short bus up to first gear. He had to stomp both his Birkenstocks on the clutch too, but down under the dash and hidden from view. Karen Banatyne could only see his awkward, wire frame sloping to the side as he grappled with the knob. Still, he ground the gears. And she cringed.

  Fifty-seven year old Nurse Karen, as the houseguests called her, sat in the front row, hip to hip with her own guest, James Roundtree, the mucky-muck from off-island. She had been in the midst of explaining to James why she referred to her home’s occupants as guests, rather than patients or residents or any other term she deemed derogatory.

  “They love me, James. Abso-tively! I’m like a second mother to them. I always say, ‘We need to treat them, not like children, no no no, but like loved ones.’ It’s only fitting that we give them what they need as if they were guests in our home. Just a sec, hon—”

  Nurse Karen, who had partial training in nursing from a school on the mainland, but never finished, patted James on the knee twice and gave him a shiny-toothed smile. She got up—even though she didn’t need to—and leaned into young Tom in the driver’s seat ahead of them. He caught her perfume: A bathtub’s worth of L’Air du Temps.

  She whispered a forcefully breathless blab into the lad’s ear. Tom froze.

  “Listen here you little shit you drop the tranny in my new van and you’re going to find yourself on the unemployment line by the end of the day got it?”

  Despite the heat inside the crowded van, an ice cold itch hit the small of Tom’s back at her endless exhale of a threat. That itch crawled up between his shoulder blades. “Yes, ma’am, got it,” he said in a croak, without taking his eyes from the windshield which showed the sprawling front yard of Ocean View Manor. The property didn’t really have much of an ocean view. From the third story, if the pines were swaying in a middling wind, a snippet of sky met water off to the south-west of the island, but the rest of the home was surrounded in greenery. It was pleasant, at least from the outside looking in.

  Nurse Karen, dressed in her ever-present, all-white uniform–despite not being a real nurse—turned back to James Roundtree who was wiping his brow with a striped hanky. She already had her pleasant face back on display. She blinked quickly, creating a batting effect with her thick, black lashes. “We’ll be off in a tick, James. Don’t you worry.”

  He nodded an uncomfortable agreement and shifted in the tight leatherette seat to put his handkerchief back in the breast pocket of his plaid suit coat.

  Nurse Karen stood slightly crouched under the limiting height of the van, which wasn’t really a van, but more of a small white bus with wheelchair ramp entry at the back. She hesitated while James finished replacing the hanky, then clapped her hands together, long red fingernails clacking where they met. Her big costume rings clunked each other too. She made sure James was looking her way again and then beamed a smile of sunshine at the remaining passengers who all sat at various heights and widths throughout the back of the hot van. “Is everyone ready for a fun afternoon?” she asked with volume. Her smile was so wide her red lipstick threatened to crack.

  Five of the six heads turned in her direction. Mary clapped and bounced excitedly in her chair next to Smitty. Her blotchy face squinted tight, making her black eyes even smaller. Smitty wiped his nose with his sleeve, but kept his vacant gaze out the window at nothing in particular. The rest seemed to perk up momentarily, but some returned their gazes to their laps or, in Ingrid’s case, to the picture book she always had with her. Having James Roundtree on board had made many of Ocean View Manor’s residents—or guests, as Nurse Karen referred to them—nervous. Their nerves made them even more shy than normal.

  Ocean View had been a private retirement community in the sixties. Karen Banatyne and her husband had inherited it from his parents and once they were dead, about six years ago, began phasing out the retirees in favour of mentally handicapped residents. Karen was the brains of this new version of the Banatyne Corporation and decided that too many of her guests were dying. She was always moving someone in or moving belongings out. If they could get lifetime ‘guests’ it would be cheaper and more profitable, she reasoned with her husband, whom she always referred to as Christopher and never Chris.

  Get a handful of docile retards with well-off parents, she’d said after a few glasses of wine, and the money will roll in every month on its own. She had been referring to rich parents willing to cough up for the right to ignorance. Their kid wasn’t like everyone else’s but they could afford to hide that fact at a pricy, but invisible, care home on an island in the middle of the Pacific.

  But subsidies for the mentally handicapped were richer too. It’s a win-win, Karen had told Chris, thinking that two checkmarks in her column meant she could throw around that expression.

  After the lacklustre response from her guests, Nurse Karen took a breath and looked back around at Tom, who had turned to wait for her. She gave the ‘go ahead’ wave of a rolling hand and said, “Well, then, off we go!” with an equally lacklustre tone.

  B
efore they did, though, Tom gave a shout. “Anyone have to go to the bathroom?”

  In sloppy unison, all five of his charges shouted back. “Nooooo!”

  A smile in the rearview at his loveable troop and then Tom’s hands were back on the shifter knob. He got the gear shift slammed into first and popped the clutch. Nurse Karen’s leased third-hand shuttle van lurched and she tottered on her feet. She threw out her hands to steady herself, but missed the back of the leatherette chair. She fell into James, who clutched both ample boobs and gave out an oomph! with the last wind her collision stole from him. Mary, in the back, had been watching intently and let out a note of surprise. She was awfully lucid this morning. Karen noted that from the corner of her eye as she lingered in the artless embrace of a man who could undo everything she had worked for the last decade.

  Their faces were awfully close. James felt Karen’s coffee breath on his nose, lips and chin. Then it mingled with her perfume and he began to ease her off his lap. With stiff neck and shoulders, he gave a tight smile and his eyes crinkled at their corners.

  This was a routine visit from one of the regulatory agencies on the mainland. The mucky-mucks Chris might have said. But Chris wasn’t here. Not today. And it was only Karen, trying to show James Roundtree and his rubber-stamping superiors that the rules were being followed to the letter... and that Ocean View was a progressive and supportive environment for their guests. They even did day trips.

  And that’s just what they were doing today. To coincide with Roundtree’s visit.

  The van drove off, leaving Ocean View behind for the afternoon. Mary let out a squeal of delight. She clapped her hands and bounced again on her seat while Smitty sniffled at the air and let his eyes go blurry at the movement of the curb and the trees.

  They headed north, out of town, for their one and only day trip since the last time anyone from James Roundtree’s agency had been island-side.

  2

  Once stopped, Nurse Karen led James to the back of the bus first, then realized she didn’t know how to operate the door handle, or the back stairs. She motioned for Tom to hurry along and the three of them stood crowded and hunched at the back while Tom struggled with the handle. Skinny wrists didn’t matter. The latch was stuck.

  Mary stood and Karen tried not to snap at her, even though Karen’s patience was wearing thin. Smitty was telling a story about Uncle Martin from My Favourite Martian and Dar was moaning at nothing in particular. Ingrid rocked and hugged her knees while she recited the first two lines of Mary Had a Little Lamb over and over, as if it could ward off evil spirits. Everyone was hot and, since the van’s back windows didn’t open, everyone was flushed and sweating. Nurse Karen’s docile retards were a stinky crew.

  “Sit down, Mary. Patience is a virtue.” It came out strained and James kept his tongue still. So did Tom.

  Mary said, “Nurse Karen, we going to the hot pool today?”

  “Yes, dear,” Karen said, not looking at Mary but only staring at Tom’s efforts to release them from the van with an intensity people have when they think they can do a better job, but really can’t. Karen’s hands were at the ready and she itched to have at it, certain this snot-nosed piss-ant she shouldn’t have hired would have them stuck in the back of this sweat lodge for the rest of eternity.

  Finally, he jarred it in the right direction. He could feel the relief in both James and Karen, as if it had reverberated from their bodies in a sudden, violent tremor. Nineteen summers on this earth had not prepped Tom Mason for fourth months of employment with Karen Banatyne of the Oregon Banatynes.

  “Alright, everyone,” Karen shouted. It was piercing in the tiny space, even with the generous back door gaping. “Our guest, Mr. Roundtree first. Well, Tom first—hop down, Tom, and get the stairs. Then everyone else. Single file, one at a time.” Then she pushed her voice up a few octaves and sang, “Patience, patience, patience! Everyone gets a turn.”

  Tom lowered the stairs and let Karen and James out. They both looked sweltering and exhausted but Karen kept her plastic smile as the two of them wandered over into the shade of a big tree.

  Next came Mary who vibrated with excitement. Apprehensive, Ingrid came down as if she was exiting a rocket ship on a distant planet. Smitty followed with a yawn. He was a dwarf with bow legs that seemed perpetually filled with lead. He stumbled but Tom caught him and he stayed upright. Smitty always seemed to have the feet of a baby and each time he took to them, it was like he was learning to walk for the first time. The others came, too, slowly. Dar Salem, the other young man with motor deficiency and the heavy lisp, came to the door. He wheeled up in his chair from the space where one seat had been removed from the van. Tom would have to put the stairs back up and lower the ramp.

  “Hey,” Tom called into the back of the van. “Zee, buddy, you comin’ or what? ‘S a nice day, m’man, don’t let the ladies hog the water.” Nothing from Zeke, who sat stolid in one seat, alone, near the middle. His back was to Tom, but Tom could see a three-quarter view of him, his thick specs catching the light. His bright white whiskers and thin wisp of matching hair wiggled. He had his hands clasped as if he was praying, but Tom knew that Zeke didn’t have any religion in him. At least, not in the last forty years, so the stories went. Zeke’s clutched, intertwined fingers shook and he rubbed his two thumbs against his nose. His eyes were closed and he muttered something to himself. He pushed his glasses up his greasy nose. Then he got up in a flurry and brushed passed Dar’s chair to quickly make his way down the stairs.

  “How are ya taday, Zee?” Tom asked, his young, thin face full of honest earnestness.

  “Good, Mr. Tom, good,” Zeke said. “I have me a good feeling ‘bout today. Sure shootin I do. Sure shootin. Sure, sure shootin.”

  “Great, buddy,” Tom said and clapped the older man on the back. Zeke shrunk back from that as if he was three feet tall and made of straw, but Tom knew he was a solid man, strong too, despite his round belly and advancing age. He had no physical defects. Just a lacking mind. His memory was a steel trap—well, compared to the others at Ocean View—but, as Zeke himself put it, M’ thinker’s a glass bottle, crushed under a heifer and glued back together with snot. Don’t shine so nice no more. Don’t hold no water neither.

  Zeke kept mumbling as he moved off from the van. “Sure, sure shootin,” he kept saying, like it was his nervous mantra. Tom got Dar down the ramp safely and into the scattered crab grass where he was able to slowly move his own chair through the weeds and dirt to a place under some shade. There were big trees here. It was just off the main road and about ten minutes further north from Neckline Beach, a secluded place that the kids came to, mostly. No one really had a name for it, but it was quietly understood that, though Dovetail Cove was a tourist spot in the summer, only locals told other locals about this place. To share it with off-islanders, only here to spend their dollars in town and down the way at the main beach, was sacrilege. This place was for DC’ers only.

  Some of the kids called it the nameless beach. There was sand and gravel and water. But no ocean and no lake. It was a set of three small ponds, each progressively deeper and cooler as you moved away from the high spring that fed them. It was mineral water, though no one had ever had it tested, as far as anyone knew. The spring formed a pool at a high point in a crevasse and trickled down in a noisy splash which cooled it from the 108 degrees it came out at. It was about 104 by the time it filled the first shallow pool, which was muddy and brown. It trickled to a second pocket which was much bigger and further from the most jagged of the red-orange rocks. In the middle pool, you could sit on the rounded boulders beneath the surface and still keep your head above water if you were of average height. In the last pool, the coolest and largest, you could float and do some relaxed swimming. Some of the idiot kids in town would jump in, though Tom suspected one of them was bound for a wheelchair of his own soon enough. He saw a few flattened beer cans scattered at the far end.

  He also saw three teenage girls on the high
rocks on the opposite side. They were in swimsuits and sunning themselves on beach towels, but propped themselves up on elbows to see who had arrived. Six or eight feet up, at the highest rocky spot, there was a smooth plateau and the girls would have climbed up to reach its steady stream of sunshine and work on their tans while they gossiped, or in Tom’s view, did whatever girls do in groups.

  Much of Nameless Beach was sheltered by tall trees swaying against the backdrop of blue and white. Thick wild scrub started at a perimeter and made this a secluded a place, as though it had been cleared by machinery.

  Above him, gulls circled and one cried out as Tom made eye contact with one of the girls.

  Tom didn’t know them, of course. Since he’d been in town, he’d mainly been at work. Except for his five charges at Ocean View, he didn’t have any Dovetail Cove friends.

  The blonde girl among this trio wore a clingy one-piece in red, while the darker-haired girls both wore rainbow bikinis. They watched Tom from their pedestal as he helped his crew get their outer layer off, down below. Back at the manor, most of them had been able to get into their own swimsuits and dress themselves with shirts and shorts over top. Only Dar Salem—the paraplegic—had needed Tom’s help.

  After Mary hung her towel on a low branch of the tree near Nurse Karen, Zeke did the same, making sure his was right next to hers. One by one, the rest of Ocean View’s guests hung theirs up in a tidy row of multi-coloured flags.

  Tom pulled off his own shirt and one of the girls gave a catcall whistle. He looked at them and they laughed. Tom smiled, but he wasn’t sure if it was the pretty blonde, or one of the other girls. His crew of child-like adults made their way to the middle pool of Nameless Beach while Tom drove Dar’s chair on the uneven rock, gravel and grass.