Vineyard Blues by Philip R. Craig Page A

it!” He gave me another grin.
    â€œPlenty of people got it in for Ben Krane,” said a voice from up the counter. That would be Zack Delwood, who didn’t like anybody too much. Zack and I didn’t socialize a lot.
    I’d never thought that Zack was too bright, but he and Charlie were both right about Ben Krane. A lot of people would be glad if Ben got put out of business.
    I, for instance, would not have wept if Ben had decided to move off island and take his houses and their occupants with him.
    As if reading my mind, Zack loudly added, “Too damned many college kids down here, too! Burn down all of Krane’s damned houses and they’d have to stay home and leave us islanders alone!”
    It was a variation on the ever-popular attack on the Vineyard’s summer visitors. Locals who didn’t own businesses moaned all season about the traffic and the crowds and how great it had been in the old days when you knew your neighbors and could find a parking spot on Main Street. The island’s businesspeople, on the other hand, wanted all of the visitors they could get, because tourism greased the Vineyard’s wheels. Zack, being of the first class, scorned the summer people. Of course, he scorned most islanders, too, being a mean-minded guy in general. He and I had a truce, however, so he usually left me and mine out of his wide-ranging condemnations of his fellow humans. I never could understand how anyone could be so sour, but Zack managed it.
    â€œZack’s right about Ben and about them college students, too,” said old Charlie, nodding his bald head. “We’d be better off without any of ’em. But I don’t like the idea of burning buildings down when there’s people in ’em.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about, Charlie?” said yet another voice. “You haven’t missed a fire in forty years.”
    Charlie leaned forward and looked up the counter toward whoever it was that had made that crack. “I admit it. I do like to watch a fire, but I don’t want no people inside of it! You want to burn down Ben Krane’s houses, you do it in the wintertime when they’re empty!”
    â€œYou burn ’em down, Charlie. You were the fireman, I never was! Haw! Haw!”
    Had the speaker remembered
Fahrenheit 451
and its fire-starting firemen?
    Charlie hadn’t. “Only fires I ever started was in a stove, goddammit!”
    Other voices entered in.
    â€œProbably nobody started this one either. Probably bad wiring. Ben Krane never puts a cent into those hovels of his.”
    â€œOr one of those college students got stoned and left a cigarette butt burning in a couch or something.”
    â€œHow about them Sox?” asked someone, just to change the subject.
    â€œWhat do you mean, how about ’em?” rejoined another fan. “It’s only June, for God’s sake. Plenty of time for them to do the Fenway flop.”
    â€œHey,” said Zee, who was always ready to talk baseball, “they may not have Roger anymore, but they have Pedro and they finally have an infield and some D in the outfield, too. They can catch anything hit near them. They’ll be okay this year.”
    â€œThey can’t hit the long ball. You got to hit the long ball to win at Fenway.”
    Zee shook her head. “They hit the long ball for eighty years and never won a World Series. D is what wins for you. Same as in any sport. Ask the pros.”
    And so it went. Baseball, summer tourists, fishing, and the fire took turns occupying the attention of the talkers. Tragic, comic, and inane subjects in a typical human mix. I’d heard it all before, except for the part about Millicent Dowling. Millie. The girl Adam Washington had fought with and then had perhaps gone to find.
    â€œI think we’re done here,” said Zee, wiping little hands and faces with napkins. “You kids ready to go?”
    They were, and so we