The Fisher Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

left of Sodom and Gomorrah…A salty waste on the shores of the Dead Sea.”
    At this point, something jolted my memory, like your body jolts when first surrendering to sleep. I had seen this man before, televised, amid colored fountains and the statue of an angel ten stories tall. Others recognized him too, and moaned, “Oh God!”
    “I’m so glad somebody finally brought Him up!”
    People whispered and then shouted his name: “Hollings Fair, Hollings Fair from the Christian Soldiers!”
    At this point, all decorum collapsed. The lesbian author shouted, her earrings flashing like swords. I saw Miriam for the first time, standing toward the rear and hissing.
    Fair continued, “Three-hundred-eighty-five years ago, the Pilgrim fathers dropped anchor in the New World, at Provincetown. Now, we too come here, in the same spirit of hope and opportunity.”
    “You’re not a resident!” Roger Morton shouted. “You don’t belong at this meeting!”
    “Opportunism is more like it,” the lesbian author said. “We know what your people did out west!”
    “Shame, shame!” some activists shouted.
    Hollings Fair folded his hands on the podium and tried to appear serene, but he was squeezing his knuckles white with tension.
    “I’d like the floor,” said a blue-haired lady I knew worked at the local bakery. The chief tapped Hollings Fair, but he refused to move. Instead, he bowed his head in silence, apparently in prayer.
    “Sir,” said the chief of police, “please make your point in a timely manner.”
    “I will,” said Hollings Fair. “I just wanted to tell God about it first.” His voice became strident. It might have been the voice of his ten-story angel, with her sword and concrete wings: “We do have a stake in what happens in Provincetown, we
do
have a right to voice our opinion. Because we
are
property-owners as of this week!” He pulled papers from his jacket and waved them aloft. “Here’s our deed, here’s our deed!” He quoted an address on Commercial Street.
    Many in the audience groaned or swore. “Focus, focus!” somebody called.
    “We are going to change this town!” Hollings Fair announced. “We are going to take back this town in the name of the American family!”
    Roberto stood and yelled, “Are you behind what happened at Arthur’s party?”
    “Of course not!” Fair yelled back.
    “We’re here to discuss the incident about the dog,” the moderator pleaded. “Please yield the floor.”
    At last Fair obeyed, taking his deed and Dead Sea salt to a far rear corner of the room where his followers had been collecting, not anemic ladies in straw hats with veils, but crewcut men who were Parris Island-lean, some in camouflage and boots black as iron.
    Then the blue-haired woman from the bakery took the microphone amid scattered but intense applause. I had often seen her, among the turnovers and Portuguese pastries. Introducing herself as Mary Almeida, she said, “I’m a lifelong, year-round resident of Provincetown,” a dig at summer people like Ian and the famous author. “My son is on the police force,” she said, and some people in the audience began clapping.
    Mrs. Almeida made a speech about unity in the face of hatred and was the first person to praise Arthur’s long list of contributions to Provincetown. Coming from someone local with a son on the police force, her words carried an added authority, especially when she ended her speech with, “And who could do such a thing to Arthur, of all people?”
    There was sustained applause.
    But where
was
Arthur? Frightened into seclusion in his house? If he’d been alone, I might’ve been less uneasy, but he was with that dubious little Edward Babineaux.
    As we filed out into the humid night, Ian accosted me. “Did you believe that holy roller?” He was violating my space, as some people might say, standing inches in front of me, his breath reeking of beer, like a frat-house the morning after a kegger. “Did you see those