9. Coffin Walks Alone
Scars Last for Life (9 of 9)
(The boys are dead. The murderers have left. The scars and the guilt remain. And a multiplying ball of cells.)
They were back on the night shift. The new schedule didn’t make it 24 hours.
Prospect Street, in front of the windmill and the DeSalvo house, is a major artery on Nantucket. After midnight, even in the fall, it collected more than its share of drivers blasting past. In two hours, Danny wrote more tickets than he had in two months prior. He hadn’t pissed off so many white people in years.
The Inspector never stopped him.
By three in the morning, the traffic had thinned. Henry continued to stare out the window, sober and awake.
“Do you want to go to the Lifesaving Museum?” The new chief asked.
“Right here is great.”
“Trying to keep him awake?”
Coffin didn’t answer.
So they stayed.
The night remained moist, close, and dark. The dark had drowned the moon and stars, then flooded the sky. More rain and more wind were coming. The ocean never stopped.
Chief Abraham knew the dark that filled up his partner. He knew it, he understood it, he was patient with it, but for now, he was also done with it.
“Good riddance.”
“Pardon?”
“Good riddance.”
“To?”
“Jack and Billy. Fare thee well.”
Coffin sat up, turned, and eyed his partner.
“They’re dead.”
“Yes, Henry. Yes, yes. A thousand times yes. I would not have killed them, but I will not mourn them.”
The old Quaker squeezed the bridge of his nose. “They’re dead. They are only what they were in high school. They never grow up. They never regret. They never become men.”
“I’m good with that,” Danny replied. “You want people to find the light, to walk on the path…”
“To walk in the light.”
“Yeah, that’s what you say. You wanted Lollipop to walk in the light.”
“Yes.”
“Mass-murdering drug dealer.”
“Yes,” Coffin said. “We can always be better than our worst days. Lollipop was many things, but he knew who he was. It wasn’t a lie.”
“He is a horror.”
“He was. I don’t know who he is now.”
“I don’t know, Henry. You see the power of change. I see the trauma.”
“People can be better.”
“No,” Danny said. “No, some people can’t. And some people won’t. And some people are not going to be allowed to.”
The Inspector considered his friend and his partner.
“Everyone should be allowed to find the light.”
“Well, maybe,” Danny added, “Maybe everyone should be allowed to not get drugged and gang-raped. Maybe everyone should be allowed to walk away from a party without the word “Remember” written on their ass. Maybe everyone should not have to have their rape on blast?”
Coffin sighed.
“What would you like Rick to do? Confess?”
Coffin was silent with his eyes in the dark.
“You want him to give up his family, put them into danger, and embrace the truth?”
“There are a lot of ways to do that?”
“Do you think we could convict him of manslaughter?”
Danny snorted.
“Henry, bad people are gone. Your house guest arranged it. Two more on the ledger for the Lollipop. And. They. Are. Gone.”
Coffin said nothing.
“What if Julian had lived? Would that house, over there, be happier?”
“I don’t know.”
“I would say yes.” Danny continued in a friendly but taunting voice. “Big Mike would also be happy to be back on the island with his son. How many girls on this island ‘remember’ those two boys? And how many would like to never have to ‘remember’ it?”
“It doesn’t need to be like this.”
“But it is.”
Coffin crossed his arms and considered the fog in front of the car.
“Henry, I get it. I know you. I know the hope you have for everyone. I understand why you didn’t give up Lollipop. You want us all to find the light. Walk in the light. You think the bitter wisdom of time had worked on Lollipop. Maybe it had.”
Danny sipped his cold coffee.
“But that requires an inhuman amount of patience and forgiveness. To forgive rapes. To forgive humiliations. To forgive assaults. To forgive murder. I am not inhuman, Henry. I’m human. I think of those boys, and the damage they have done to at least four families, and I think Good Riddance.”
Coffin nodded.
Danny was done.
The old man was still.
Then he spoke.
“Danny, you flatter me with your honesty. Forgive me.”
To his partner, the old man was speaking in an odd tone. He continued.
“You speak as a father who knows where his child is sleeping right now. You speak as a father who is sure that she won’t be caught doing something dangerous, criminal, or violent. You speak as a father confident in a future full of graduations, weddings, and baptisms.”
Danny nodded. “Fair.”
“At seven this morning, I am going to walk up and knock on the Bill Trotter’s door and show him his dead son’s sneaker, the one he got as a birthday present. I am going to tell him we think his son is dead. Do you want to come with me?”
No. Danny had to admit. No, he didn’t.
The Inn on Brant Point (Novella)
Milestone 1: The Boy Who Climbed the Windmill
Milestone 2: Remember
Milestone 3: Snitches Get Stitches
Milestone 4: Survival Ain’t Pretty
Milestone 6: Scars Last for Life
Some of my writing…
Barr’s For Life: A substack of essays and claptrap
The Boat at the End of Lover’s Lane
(NEW) The Girl Who Ran the Polpis Road
The Inn on Brant Point (Novella)
Her Lover on Monomoy Road. (Novella)
Her Father Came Home to Deacon’s Way (Novella)
Love Letters (Novella)
The Fisher King (Novella)
Home is Where the Ghosts Are (Novella)
Winter: A Collection of Island Living Essays set between January and April 1.
The Boys: A collection of essays about my two sons, written as they grew.
Rolling in the Surf: Essays on Teaching.
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Well, that is mostly it. this chapter does something that I love about Coffin and Danny. Danny can be right about the boys, but Coffin gets that moral and ethical spot in there. That's where the Quaker lives. His super power, if he has one, is the ability to say difficult things and stick to his beliefs, even if they are hard.