Chapter 14
September 23
Bivalves from Outer Space
HUPPA THUPPA WHUP! Huppa thuppa whup! Huppa thuppa whup! Fizzz. Huppa thuppa whup! Huppa thuppa whup! . . .
“What fresh hell is this?” asked Albertine as she leaped from bed in the glorious altogether and stood at the window in the pale glow that precedes the dawn. She threw the window open, leaned out into the fresh autumn air, and shouted to the world outside, “What the fuck is it now?”
The world answered, “Huppa-thuppa-whup!” Or, now that I could hear it more clearly through the open window, perhaps it was “Hoopa-thoopa-whoop!” It might have been misunderstood, but it couldn’t be missed. It was deafening.
I ran to Albertine’s side and leaned out the window to see what was the matter, to ascertain the cause of all this clatter. Offshore, but barely offshore, not more than a few yards offshore, was a barge crowded with ancient mechanical equipment, enormous pistons thrusting, shafts turning, iron gears advancing notch by notch, and every aged piece of the infernal engine complaining every time it did its bit, in a cacophonous chorus of screeching, pounding, hissing, and whining.
“What is it?” she asked me. “What is it?”
“A dredge,” I said.
We pulled our clothes on and ran downstairs. The sun was still not up, and the dredge was still not up to full steam. We ran to the edge of the water and began shouting, but there wasn’t a chance that the operator would hear us over the noise. We began throwing stones. I was trying to land one near enough to the barge to splash the operator, but I think Albertine was trying to hit him. She did. He spun around. It was Dexter Burke.
Albertine — how shall I put this? Albertine threw a fit, a doozie, a temper tantrum, a maniacal display of undirected fury. It was, in its way, a beautiful thing to watch. It drove Dexter to the other side of the dredge, where she couldn’t hit him with anything, but it didn’t stop the machine.
I dragged her into the hotel. The noise pursued us. It was aggressive, determined, dogged. It was out to get us. It had begun as noise, but it was becoming something stronger, a force that set in motion everything around us. It roiled the water, shook it into waves, shuddered through the sand on which our domain rested, and made the old hotel tremble.
Albertine put through a call, not to Rockwell Kingman, but to the Babbington Department of Public Works. The news was not good. The work would go on for four or five weeks. The plan was to dredge a new channel that would run right alongside Small’s Island, and to use the spoil — the sand dredged from the new channel — to create a new island in the bay that would lie between us and Babbington.
“What’s the point of making a new island?” Albertine shouted into the mouthpiece. She listened to the answer with a blank expression. She hung up.
“What did they say?” I shouted.
“The Parks Department is going to turn the island into a ‘water sports facility’ — ”
“Well, that’s not so — ”
“ — for ‘personal motorized watercraft.’”
“Oh,” I said. “Jet skis.”
AT THREE O’CLOCK, the noise stopped, just stopped. The entire population of the hotel drifted outside with the dazed and bedazzled look of people emerging from a cave into the bright light of midday. We walked in silence to the water’s edge and watched Dexter get into the aluminum skiff he had tied to the dredge, cast off, start the outboard, and head for home. As he headed away, he waved, without looking back. I gave him the finger. Everybody else joined in.
[to be continued]
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