Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery by Dallas Murphy Page B

explode apart volcanically? Even Dickie shut up as we entered. The place seemed to demand solemnity from the people who entered, even those who did so often. I stepped from under the wheelhouse in order to look up. The cliffs loomed. Only lichens could live on them.
    The Crack could be explained, it had a knowable geologic origin. Uplift, volcanism, crustal plate tectonics, glaciation, one of those world shakers, but the feeling of the place didn’t encourage that kind of curiosity. Entering the Crack called up primitive anxieties, the kind that probably brought shivers up the spines of our ancient progenitors huddled around the paltry light of a campfirein an utterly dark world. I imagined otherwise extinct predators, saber-toothed tigers, dire wolves, giant marsupials peering down at us from the rim, licking their lips. Fresh meat. It felt like we were entering the blunt mandibles of a monster sprawled on its side. Inside, daylight dimmed. The cliff walls fell away to a shallower angle, still too steep to climb up, but shallow enough to build stairs down to the water—
    The apex of the Crack, the hinge of the creature’s jaw, formed a natural amphitheater, and there the submarine perched on a stand of interlocking railroad ties, a log cabin without a roof, twenty feet up on a ledge. The submarine was painted industrial orange, like the primer coat on highway bridges. The thing was as long as a pickup truck, but cylindrical, like a thick conduit. It was festooned with tanks, pipes, valves, hoses, connectors, adapters, nuts and bolts. It couldn’t be real. I looked through my new binoculars. It sure looked real. In front was a big Plexiglas bubble, like on those
M*A*S*H
helicopters. The captain would squat in there to con his ship. Its bulbous eye glinted in the sun.
    Dwight had slowed his boat to a crawl. The span narrowed. Several motorboats were tied nose and tail in a line down the middle, making the quarters very close near the apex, in the shadow of the sub.
    “Why did he bring it all the way over here to launch?” I asked.
    “This is where he built it,” said Dwight.
    “What? I thought there wasn’t any electricity on the island.”
    “There ain’t.”
    “He’s a genius,” said Dickie.
    Dwight docked his boat against a narrow wooden float near the apex of the Crack. Strings of wooden stairs ran up the rock in switchback flights. Some stairs came only halfway down, as if the rest had dropped into the water. Some step units were old, the wood black and grainy, others were fresh, and the rest fell somewhere in between, all heading in the same direction like a visible demonstration of decay.
    “There’s your boat,” said Dwight, tying his own to a corroded cleat on the float. “If you like it. I mean, you don’t have to take it. Don’t feel no pressure.” It was tied to the adjacent float.
    I stepped up onto the floating dock, which needed a little more flotation. Water leapt up through the cracks in the boards. I leaned against cool pink granite and looked at my new boat. It was open, wooden, about twenty-five feet long with a faded red hull and white insides. There was a steering wheel with spokes mounted on a short pedestal in the center of the boat on the left side. Her ribs were visible, thick and closely spaced. Here and there rust streaked her red paint. This was a salty boat. This boat had been used, it had been out there. Things were worn in the way old craftsmen’s tools are worn, the way Dwight’s gear was worn. I was glad. I didn’t want a tourist boat painted metal-flake magenta like a motorcycle helmet. I didn’t want a boat that had molded indentations to hold your rum swizzle. I wanted a salty craft, and this was it.
    “It’s a Hampton boat,” said Dwight. “Well, I guess you’d have to say it’s a modified Hampton boat. I pulled up her sheer a little ’cause I liked a jaunty look in those days, and raised the stern some just for balance.”
    “What? You mean you built this