A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard by Philip R. Craig Read Free Book Online

been coming there for generations.
    Mondry asked questions and took notes. I modified my earlier notion that he wanted to ride shotgun only because it would give him the opportunity to dazzle Zee. He seemed to be doing the job he was supposed to be doing.
    I drove him around East Chop, over the Oak Bluffs bluffs, and told him of the time when I was a little kid, that the sound had frozen a third of the way out from the island and a third of the way out from the far Cape Cod shore, leaving only a channel down the middle of the sound.
    â€œNo kidding,” said Mondry, glancing at the blue August waters. “You’d never guess that now.”
    â€œIf you look at photos taken in the old days,” said Zee, “you see pictures of wagons and sledges out on the ice unloading square riggers. It really got cold back then.”
    We drove past the hospital where Joshua had been born, and went over the drawbridge and past the island’s only red light. The Shenandoah, which sails out of Vine-yard Haven harbor, had her square foresails up and was heading out before a small following wind. She looked like something from an earlier century.
    I drove up Main Street and out onto West Chop. There, at the far end, I told him the tale of the island’s most famous murder and showed him the buildings associated with that never-solved crime.
    â€œIt captured people’s attention because the victim and the suspect were both involved with a theater company,” said Zee. “The guy they charged was found not guilty, but even afterward a lot of people were sure he was the one who done it.”
    â€œJust like modern times,” said Drew Mondry. “People love to know about scandals involving theater people.”
    I ducked down to the Lake Tashmoo landing, then drove out to the entrance to the pond, where musselsgrow on the rock jetties and I’ve caught more than one bass and bluefish. Across Vineyard Sound, the Elizabeth Islands seemed close enough to hit with a stone from my slingshot.
    Then it was up-island, via Lambert’s Cove Road, Christiantown, and North Road, to Menemsha, a fishing village that looks like it was built by Walt Disney as a set for a movie about a fishing village. Drew Mondry, seeing the obvious, got out and snapped several pictures and came back full of enthusiasm.
    â€œWe’ll shoot here, for sure!”
    Joshua, less impressed, had taken advantage of the stop to pass that morning’s breakfast along to his diaper, requiring a change of clothing by his mother, who didn’t mind because she’d seen Menemsha lots of times but still barely knew Joshua and his habits.
    â€œWhy do you call it up-island?” Mondry asked.
    I told him about the two explanations I’d heard: that it was up-island because the prevailing winds were westerlies and you usually had to sail up-wind to get there from down-island, and vice versa; and that it was a longitude matter, with Gay Head being a higher number than, say, Edgartown.
    â€œI favor explanation number one,” I said, “because I’ve beat my way up the sound more than once, but I’ve never met anybody who knows the longitude of Edgartown or Gay Head.”
    â€œAnd that’s why you go down Maine, I guess.”
    â€œI guess that, too. Down Maine and up to Boston. Of course, I’ve never sailed to Maine and back again, so what do I know?”
    â€œYou seem to know quite a bit,” said Mondry. “If you ever decide to go into a new line of work, you might consider buying yourself a bus and running your own tour of the island.”
    Quel horror!
    â€œHow you doing?” I asked Joshua, who once again smelled sweet.
    He said he was hungry. What a kid. As soon as his belly was empty, he wanted it filled again.
    â€œI’ll tend to his lunch,” said Zee, and she did that while I drove us past Beetlebung Corner and on toward Gay Head. I paused at the overlook where you can get the