Hot August Nights

Sometimes memories seem to come from nowhere.

Sitting on the back deck on a hot August night, waiting on the dogs, I listen to the sounds of the distant interstate traffic, a random train whistle, and several unsweet choruses of cicadas and crickets. For some unknown reason, it makes me think of the ocean and I remember the sound of the tide, the gentle, dark water as it washed up and out and back onto the rocky beach.  It had a steadiness to it, a calm rhythm that comforted even as it stirred a sense of loneliness.  It was the last sound I heard before being lulled to sleep and the first sound I heard when I woke.  It was music and magic and leaving it broke my heart each and every time.

Since then I’ve visited the ocean often from Hawaii to Gloucester, Cape Cod and Maine – even Florida for a time and a flying trip through California – but nothing comes close to those still, dark Nova Scotia nights listening to the tides.  Nothing brings me home like the moonlight on the water and the lights of Brier Island across the Fundy Bay.  The Atlantic water was freezing cold and the coastline a treachery of rock formations so I imagine it has to do with childhood – ever fleeting – and summers that ended all too quickly.

The world I live in nowadays is citified, made of cement and modern conveniences - computers and cell phones and drive thru everythings – instead of salt spray, it smells of exhaust fumes.  Instead of the moon making a shimmery path across the ocean, it filters itself through cypress and magnolia trees and gets lost in the shadows.  When I look out my windows, I see parallel parked cars and property lines, not pastureland or a blackberry patch.  Traffic is not an oxen driven hay wagon but a rumbling parish mosquito truck, spraying its poison after dark like an inept, creeping prowler. 

Progress, I suppose.  And growing up, giving up childish notions.  Forward instead of back.

But here’s the thing – the ocean is so much more than a childish notion – and it’s not a better world.

The cool wave didn't last but a week or so but it was nice while it was here.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one its net of wonder forever ~ Jacques Cousteau

God's House

I hadn’t really expected the old church to be open on a weekday afternoon, but inside it was cool, cavernous, starkly quiet and completely empty. Behind me, the heavy oaken door swung shut with barely a whisper. The sanctuary smelled like furniture polish and floor wax mixed with flowers and the residue of candle smoke. Above the altar, a monumentally huge and contemporary cross hung in mid-air, suspended with invisible wires and looking eerily like a 3D image against the muted stained glass windows. Very New Wave, I heard my inner voice – the one that doesn’t believe – say clearly and I felt an immediate rush of guilt for the thought. Don’t be sacrilegious! my mother would’ve no doubt hissed at me and probably delivered a cuff that would’ve left my ears ringing.

How little it’s changed, I found myself thinking as I walked slowly down the procession aisle and slid into one of the front benches to kneel in the shadow of the surreal cross.  My church going years are more than fifty years behind me - I turned my back on organized religion decades ago, believing that God’s true house has no walls and that too many of His followers are a little too organized - but the reverence for holy things is still within me, private as it may be. I stray, as do we all, but hopefully not so far that I can’t be redeemed.  If, of course, that inner voice reminds me, you believe in that sort of thing.

I sensed rather than saw or heard the priest come in and when I raised my head, he was watching me from a few steps away, hands in his pocket and half smiling. He was thin and slightly built, somewhere in his sixties, I imagined, with a well- worn face and a mix of kindness and mischief in his eyes.  He was wearing his day off clothes – black trousers with a neat crease, grey button down shirt with a turned around white collar and a dark cardigan sweater that had seen better days - his mostly silver hair was longish to the point of shaggy and reached almost to his shoulders. You’d have to have been blind not to see how good looking he’d been in his younger days.  Still was in a Woodstock-ish kind of way.

Hello, cher, he said quietly, Is there anything I can help you with?  There was gentleness but no recognition in those eyes, I was glad to see.

I shook my head but couldn’t help return the smile at the suggestion of creole in his words.  There’s a certain lilt to a French Canadian accent, an authenticity that can’t ever quite be imitated. It reminds me of the French Quarter and music that makes your heart want to dance.

No, Father, I said, Thank you, but I just needed a break and a few minutes to think.

Stay as long as you want, he nodded, Everyone’s welcome in God’s house.

I watched him make his way toward the altar, still favoring his right leg, I noticed - the one that had been so cruelly crushed under a wagon wheel when he was twelve - there’d been no doctor in Church Point back then and it was a rugged and rough three hour drive to Halifax.  I remembered that no one was sure he’d even survive the trip so his care fell to the local midwife and while the leg eventually healed, the bones knitted crookedly, just enough to give him a slight but lifelong limp.

Easily correctable, the surgeon had said a few months later.

An extravagance we can ill afford, his family had responded, surely a mild limp is no great hardship.

And so he had been sent to relatives in The Valley for the duration of his recovery - as luck would have it, to a family my daddy knew well - and it was there I’d met him.  I’d had a fierce crush on him for all of one summer but even then, he was a far-away kind of boy, a dreamer who liked Bible stories better than Andy Hardy, a boy grateful to have survived when I was sure I’d have burned with resentment at the unfairness of it all.  When I heard he’d been called to the priesthood, I remember feeling dense and foolish that I’d not seen it sooner.  With or without the accident, I somehow realized, he’d been born to it.  We spent at least a part of every day that summer together and when my mother and grandmother came to collect me at the end of August, they said we had no time to stop and tell him goodbye.  I was convinced my pre-teen heart would break.

And so, some forty years later when I found myself passing through Evangeline country, I stopped at the old church and discovered its doors open.

I sat for a little while longer, listening to the ceiling fans whirring and remembering back to that long ago summer. When I left and pushed through the heavy doors into the sunlight, I wasn’t surprised to see him waiting but it took my breath away when I heard him say my name.

It’s good to see you again, cher, he said, You’re looking well.

And you, I managed to say, Religious life has been kind to you.

 

He smiled and nodded and right there on the steps of God’s house, leaned forward and kissed my cheek.

Safe travel, cher, he said and smiled, Peace be with you.

And with you, Father, I answered as I’d been taught.

It was one of those rare bittersweet moments when for about half a heartbeat everything falls into place and you have just enough time to back up a few decades and put something right.  Such moments are random and hard to find - tiny miracles, if you will – and I was grateful to have stumbled on one in God’s house.

If, of course, you believe in that kind of thing.

Somewhere in Montana

After we caught the Boston Strangler, I was walking down the country road and saw the bison.  They were silvery colored with flecks of glitter in their shaggy coats grazing peacefully on the lawn of the convent.  A young nun, dressed all in white from her high necked collar to her button down shoes was giving one of the juveniles a bath on a brick walkway in front of pair after pair of double glass doors.

What a lovely picture that would make, I thought to myself and then remembered that my camera was in my car so I hurried to go get it but by then the other nuns had finished stringing the barb wire fence and were scattered across the open pasture, manually cutting hay and singing in a language I didn’t know, and I had to walk an extra mile. It was dusty and hot and before long I heard F. Lee Bailey explaining his defense of Albert DeSalvo and then I was awake and on the television, F. Lee Bailey really was explaining his defense of Albert DeSalvo.

I almost never have dreams that are more than a fragment of two of something that makes absolutely no sense and even less often do I remember them for more than a minute after I wake up.  This was out of the ordinary.

The Strangler explains itself since a documentary was playing.

I’d recently been working on a story about an encounter with a priest.  Nuns weren’t part of it but, I decided, the connection was close enough.

I watch numerous wildlife videos on social media and that very day had seen one about a massive herd of elk jumping over a barb wire fence to cross a dusty two lane road somewhere in Montana or Utah, I couldn’t remember which.  It might even have been Idaho but it was most definitely somewhere I had never been.

A snippet of this, a smidgen of that.  Let sit overnight, sprinkle with reality.

And you have a dream.

Uncle Rutledge & The Clam Shack Widow

The summer I was fourteen, Uncle Rutledge took his last bride.

He was seventy-something, she was in her mid-thirties and already a widow.  The scandal rocked the island, particularly the old timers who met regularly in the general store each morning.  Nana and I were doing some early morning shopping when we heard the news.

Kee-rist on a cross!  Uncle Shad blurted out from behind the mainland paper, I’ll be damned if he ain’t gon’ and done it again!

Shadrach!  Miz McIntyre scolded, Mind your language!

But she was outmatched by the old men rudely awakened from their early morning dozings by Shad’s sudden outburst.  Everyone came to with a start and eagerly leaned forward in their chairs, faces alight with curiosity, ready to snap at any tidbit to brighten their boring retirement day.

It’s Rutledge, Uncle Shad said wonderingly, He’s up and married The Clam Shack Widow!

There was a collective intake of breath at this and Nana snagged my shirt collar with her thumb and forefinger and gave me a quick pinch.  She disliked any gossip that didn’t originate in her own house and this was her way of reminding me to mind my manners but it didn’t take much effort to wriggle free and then it was only a couple more quick steps to the semi-circle of old fisherman.  I already knew about Uncle Rutledge – everyone knew the story of how he’d gotten rich selling land to the Canadian Pacific – then making a second fortune with a contract to cut and clear the land, and finally a third with his sawmill and lumber business.   Not everyone approved of how neatly all those pieces had fit together, I knew, but Rutledge had retired at thirty and moved bag and baggage to the mainland.  It was then he began his second career of marrying roughly every ten years, a habit the island simultaneously admired and criticized in great detail.

The Clam Shack Widow – her actual name was Arlene something or other – was almost as equally well known. 

Woman sheds men like bad habits, I’d heard someone once say.  She was generally known as the type to buy a new boat when the old one got wet and had worked her way through three husbands before turning thirty.  The gossip about that had been bad enough but when her fourth husband, the previous owner of The Clam Shack, had up and died smack in the middle of a touristy lunch rush and Arlene had neatly stepped over him and kept right on dishing out the fish chowder, well, that news had traveled like a runaway train.  No one on the island had actually seen this happen, of course, but neither did anyone doubt it.   The man had  been at work and he had died and that was good enough to go ‘round.

You listen to enough of these island stories, you might get the idea that truth is just a decoration, my daddy had observed at the time, a remark that earned him a  cold glare from my grandmother and two days of colder breakfast coffee. 

Well, one of the old man said with a shrug, Speakin’ for myself, I’m thinkin’  mebbe they’s meant for each other.

Mebbe so,the others agreed a shade reluctantly, Woman does make a godly finnan haddie, so I’ve heard tell. 

As things turned out, The Clam Shack Widow was to be Uncle Rutledge’s last bride.  Despite the talk, or maybe in part because of it, they prospered and lived happily for the next dozen years until, much to everyone’s surprise, Arlene caught pneumonia and didn’t recover.  To the dismay of everyone on Route 101 between Digby and The Valley, Rutledge closed and shuttered the little café and it rapidly fell into disrepair and was sold for taxes.  It was, the old timers gathered in the general store all agreed, a sad reminder of days gone by.   When Uncle Rutledge died a few years later, it was said his coffin was built from the remains of The Clam Shack’s wooden support beams and he was laid to rest beside Arlene in the village cemetery.  Wildflowers blossomed over their graves and eventually intertwined and grew together.

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been.................

After a long day full of wrangles with the work dogs and petty nonsense with Michael – he has forgotten to mention that he’s leaving town (tomorrow, no less) and has not made arrangements for the animals as he promised -  I’m feeling prickly and out of sorts at the prospect of four days of additional dog care in this sweltering heat.  As soon as I plunk my old bones down on the loveseat, a commotion breaks out in the other room and seconds later an unhappy tabby comes flying through the double doors with the kitten hot on her heels.  Both leap and scramble directly at me, tearing across my unprotected lap and opening up a series of long, deep scratches in my thighs.  The small brown dog and the little dachshund, both directly in the path of this oncoming destruction, freeze in terror then dive for cover.  Amid the blood and debris, my patience and perspective both desert me and I snatch both cats by the scuffs of their necks and shake them to their senses.

Enough!  I screech in my best fishwife voice and knock their little heads together for good measure, Now scat!

Chastised and still mad, they slink out.  It takes most of ten minutes to doctor the scratches and then convince the dogs that the danger has passed. They emerge wary and watchful, uncertainly climbing across my still stinging and bloody thighs and huddling against me. 

Five cats under one roof is, at times, as close to madness as I care to get, especially since the advent of the kitten who was clearly a terrorist or possibly a hit man in a former life.  While the elder cats are content to eat and sleep and generally keep to themselves, the kitten seems dedicated to violent revolution.  She has no dignity – none – and no fear.  And I’m absolutely certain that she enjoys creating chaos, she’s always at the center of it

Are you a communist or just an outside agitator?  I ask when later in the evening she casually strolls into the sunroom and settles herself between me and the little dachshund just as if nothing at all had happened.  She trills once or twice and begins to knead his exposed belly – he tolerates this with barely a glance at her – and it isn’t long before she stretches out and falls asleep, her head on his paws.

One of the secrets to happiness, Rita Mae Brown wrote, is a bad memory.

It must be so.

Gun Control

It was one of those silly, small spats that happen with people who are close and it surely would’ve died a natural death if only it hadn’t been between Old Hat and Glad.  Each of the sisters could argue with a fence post all night and that particular night, they’d commenced to drinking just after sunset and by midnight were pie-eyed with moonshine.

Sparrow, making his slow way home along the dirt road from the canteen, heard the commotion and the gunshots and scrambled for the ditch, diving in wooden leg and all.

Knee walkin’ drunk they was, he told Nana the next morning, both wavin’ them old scatter guns like the damn Union Jack and screechin’ about who was the better shot!

I could tell my grandmother wanted to laugh but was trying hard not to. 

Nobody hurt though, she observed, trying her best to sound sympathetic.

Not fer want of tryin’, that’s fer damn sure!  Sparrow complained bitterly, I ain’t sayin’ I was anywheres near sober as a judge but when them two old gals get likkered up, they’s both just crazier’n a run over dog!

Nana winced at the expression.

What was they fightin’ over? she asked.

Rockin’ chairs!  Sparrow wailed, Them two rockin’ chairs that Hattie’s got settin’ on the porch!  Glad done set herself in the left ‘un and Hattie weren’t havin’ it but Glad wouldn’t move and next thing you know, they’s shootin’ and I’m in a goddam ditch!   He shook his head and sighed mightily.  Them chairs are exactly the same, Alice, jist exactly!  It’s them wimmen that ain’t normal!

And, he added with a scowl, They scared the livin’ sh…... scared the blazes out of my ol’ dog!

 Nana tsked and shook her head but I could see the corners of her mouth twitching.  She tried to cover it with a cough then a cigarette and finally busied herself pouring more iced tea and holding a paper napkin to her mouth, trying to wipe her lips as delicately as she could.  It was no good though. Just when I thought she might pull it off, her shoulders began to shake and she busted out laughing, spraying a fine mist of iced tea all over her apron and narrowly missing her shocked guest.

It ain’t funny, Alice!  Sparrow protested indignantly but that just made her laugh all the harder.  Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her face – they left smeary red streaks in her carefully rouged cheeks – and when she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she gave a gasp and doubled over in her chair, ineffectively clutching at her sides.  My calm and reserved grandmother howled with laughter, ruined her makeup, dropped her glass of iced tea.  Sparrow watched all this with an icy glare but when it became clear that she wasn’t going to stop – couldn’t stop to save her soul – he couldn’t help but relent.  I watched the glare soften then turn into a smile, then into outright laughter.

Yes, it is, you old fool!  My grandmother finally managed to choke out, Only you would end up in a ditch!

She took a massive breath, laid one hand on her heaving bosom and wiped her eyes with the other, finally able to get hold of herself.  Sparrow grinned and gave her a wink.

Mebbe I made too much of it, he said ruefully, Ain’t the first time them old hags gone at it.  Don’t ‘spect it’ll be the last.

No, Nana agreed, Don’t ‘spect it will.

Sparrow survived his encounter with the crazed sisters and was even persuaded to call off the mounties who arrived the following day and delivered a stern lecture to Hattie and Glad about firearms, respect for their neighbors, the perils of alcohol and keeping the peace.  The two old women, still badly hungover and both in vile tempers, were cagey enough to listen and convince the officers that they’d meant no harm and had certainly learned their lesson.  The shotguns had mysteriously vanished – safely stashed in the root cellar or hastily buried in the back garden, many thought – only Sparrow knew they were resting in the dark water off the breakwater, precisely where he’d flung them and the ones before them.  The old pirate had been trying to disarm Hattie for years.

Reckon they’s a regular arsenal down there by now, he told Nana as the mounties waved and drove off, Ever’ time I pitch one, old crone seems to come up with three more.

Well, my grandmother told him with a wry smile, Leastways her aim ain’t improvin’ none.

Sparrow laughed, intact and back to his old self, lit his pipe and made his way down the front path, ready for the next round, be it buckshot or bullshit.  You never could tell.

Hats in the Attic

Good gracious, Aunt Pearl said with a sigh, Now there’s somethin’ I weren’t expectin’ to see.

And we thought we knew her, Aunt Vi agreed, Alice!  She called to my grandmother, still sorting and separating downstairs, Come see!

Miss Hilda had died a week earlier and according to island tradition, the women had been organizing and packing up every day since.   As they’d expected, the old house had been pristine, arranged with the military precision Hilda had so valued, every room spotlessly neat without the first trace of dust.  Every room, drawer, closet and corner was immaculate and symmetrically arranged.  Even the dustjackets on the books were shiny and new-looking, the utensil drawers carefully stacked and grouped, the contents of the cabinets looked as if they’d never been used.  Every window was streak-free, each area rug vacuumed within an inch of its life and resting perfectly straight over every polished floor.  Not a single framed picture hung a micro bit off kilter, not a single drape was uncreased.  The house resonated with discipline and order.  And then we got to the attic.

I crept around my two favorite aunts and stared in awe – the attic was a jumble of hatboxes in absolutely no order at all.  They were stacked randomly, piled here and there, lying half-opened all over the floor, hanging from pegs on the walls, perched haphazardly on clothes trees, most covered with a thick layer of dust. 

If that don’t beat all!  I heard my grandmother say from behind me, Looks like a whole hat factory exploded!

There were hats with feathers, hats with veils, hats with imitation fruit.  There were small hats in soft muted colors and huge hats with extravagant floppy brims.  There were summer hats and winter hats and spring and autumn hats.  There were demure hats and brazen hats, straw hats, felt hats, wedding hats, hats for every conceivable occasion or mood.  All were still in their colored wrapping paper with price tags attached.  Some boxes hadn’t even been opened.

They ain’t never been worn, Aunt Pearl declared in surprise, Not a single one!

‘Pears so, Nana agreed, Reckon there must be over a hunnerd of ‘em.

Closer to two, I ‘spect, Aunt Vi added.

There were, when all was said and done, two hundred and twenty-eight.  It took another two days to go through them all and it wasn’t until they’d all been dusted, carefully re-packaged and carried downstairs that the women were able to bring up mops and buckets and floor polish to restore the musty attic.  It was in the process of this final cleaning that Aunt Vi noticed – well, stumbled over, truth to tell – the trunk in a dark unexplored corner.   A steamer trunk it was, made of real leather with brass straps and handles, scarred and faded in some places and showing its age.  My imagination, always ready and willing to take flight, immediately turned to ships and shuffleboard and ladies in high button shoes, travel in the time of the Titanic, mystery, sorrow and secret treasures. 

Should we open it? Aunt Vi asked tentatively and I could see at once that she didn’t want to.  Aunt Pearl was looking thoughtful.

Likely just more hats,  Nana said briskly, Open her up, Viola.

Maybe there’s a body it!  I said a little excitedly and earned a hard glare from my grandmother while Aunt Vi took a fluttery step backward.   She looked from Pearl to Nana and shook her head almost violently.

Don’t be a goose, Vi, Aunt Pearl said a tad sharply, It’s just an old trunk!

Every house on the island has one just like it, Nana said reasonably, Mine’s full of bed linens and I know for a fact that Clara keeps souvenir pillows in her’s – she paid Uncle Len ten dollars to line it with cedar – and Miz McIntyre keeps her weddin’ dress in her’s.

Don’t care who keeps what where, Vi muttered with another backward step, I ain’t agonna open it.

Nana gave an exasperated groan.

Pearl, you’re closer, she scowled, Open the damn thing.

Aunt Pearl shrugged and walked to the trunk, knelt – a little painfully in deference to her arthritis – gripped the brass locks one in each hand and lifted.  The old relic opened easily.

So?  Nana asked impatiently.

Ain’t hats, Pearl said quietly, Surely ain’t hats.

The trunk was full of dresses – gowns, actually - floor length, silk and satin, trimmed with lace and velvet ribbons, some with puff sleeves, some with delicate cameos sewn into the low necklines, all with impossibly tiny waists and matching petticoats.  My wide-eyed Aunt Pearl lifted each one out with great care, smoothing the folds and hanging it gently on the wall pegs where the hats had been. There were five all told – a deep rich blue, a pale rose, a shockingly bright lavender, a subtle green, and at the very bottom, a cream colored with see-through sleeves, inlaid with rows of tiny pearls from shoulder to lace-edged hem. 

It was Aunt Vi who finally cut through the slack-jawed silence.

These are…..I don’t know….. she whispered reverently, they should be ….. mebbe in a museum or somewheres.

She spoke so softly I wasn’t sure I’d heard her at all but it was enough to break the spell and snap us all back to the moment.  Pearl and Vi gently folded each of the gowns and laid them back in the trunk, careful to keep them in the same order and lowering the lid as if it were made of glass.  No one spoke and we left the attic in single file without looking back.  A few days later, Nana made discreet arrangements to have the old trunk moved to our back bedroom for safekeeping – even so there was some talk – and she and the aunts divided up the hatboxes, each taking custody of as many as they could make room for.  Later in the summer, they gave away what they could and donated the rest to the Baptist Church jumble sale. 

The leather trunk sat undisturbed in the back bedroom all that summer and well into the next while the women argued and debated what ought to be done.  Nana wrote to museums and historical societies all over the province and even to a London-based auction house but there wasn’t any interest.  All attempts to locate Hilda’s family failed miserably – it was as if she’d dropped out of the sunny summer sky and floated to earth like a ramrod straight and iron willed Mary Poppins.  It was next to impossible to reconcile the magic dresses with the woman we’d all known and in time we were forced to accept that her secrets had died with her.

Then, in the mid 60’s, my grandmother happened across a story about The Museum of Costume in Britain and was sure she’d found a home for the trunk and its contents.  She wrote them and sent pictures and they wrote back saying they’d be delighted.   After some ten years of caretaking, Nana and the aunts anxiously shipped the old trunk – by ocean liner, no less, it just seemed appropriate they all agreed – to London.

We had no way of knowing for sure, but we all thought Miss Hilda would’ve been pleased.

A Minor Act of Grace

It was mid-day in mid-July, a hundred degrees in the shade with air so mucus-y thick it dulled the mind and clogged the senses.  From the relative comfort of my air conditioned little car, I could see the bus stop, just a nondescript street corner with a tired transit sign set against a backdrop of an abandoned convenience store - and where there was no shade at all - and the two people standing and waiting.  One was an elderly lady, shrunken with age and crone-like, dressed all in black with a death grip on her oversized umbrella and several plastic grocery bags hanging from her arm.  The other was a balding, paunchy, middle aged man in khakis and a sweated-through t shirt, holding a bright yellow homemade sign.  They didn’t seem to be together but both looked wilted and a little desperate.  Curious about the sign, I swapped my sunglasses for my trifocals and looked again.  It was actually no more than a flimsy piece of poster board with crudely written black lettering, cheap and handmade but perfectly legible.

Help bury my grandpa, it read, Donate.

I read it twice, not quite sure whether to be amused, disbelieving or disgusted.  The liberal part of me that still thinks the human community is decent and worthy to be here wanted to empathize but my cynical side saw a cheap, common scam. 

I was still considering what to think about this when a city bus – brightly painted with mural-style green and purple flowers, a possibly well intentioned project the local arts council dreamed up in support of beautification, I suppose – chugged and coughed its way to the bus stop in a haze of exhaust fumes.  Tired brakes groaned and the laboring engine rumbled to a stop, I heard the doors open with a whoosh of air and watched the old crone make her way on board.  The man with the sign stayed where he was as the multi-colored bus wheezed its way away.

Help bury my grandpa, I read again, Donate.

I wasn’t surprised when the police car arrived and pulled into the empty parking lot.  Panhandling, while illegal here, is mostly tolerated depending on the zip code – oh, my, more cynicism - or unless it becomes aggressive and I had no doubt that someone had taken offense to the man or his sign or both.  A weary looking officer, hot and irritable I imagined, climbed out of his car and walked slowly toward the sidewalk. The conversation was brief with no sign of hostility from either side and ended with the man rolling up his poster board and trudging toward the side street.  The officer was halfway into his vehicle when he hesitated and re-emerged, holding a bottle of water in one hand and what looked to be his wallet in the other.  He called to the man with the sign to hold up and as I watched, he handed over the water then reached into his wallet and withdrew a few bills and handed them over as well.  This second meeting ended with a handshake and a smile on both sides.

There’s nothing like a minor act of grace to make my inner cynic beat a hasty retreat.