Stranger at the End of the Day

Stranger at the End of the Day

By Heather Ann Martinez

It was often said in our little village that no one was a stranger. Everyone was a friend you had not gotten to know yet. The coastal village of Haven in Rhode Island had its share of travelers and tourists passing through. Many of them had not been to the New England states. They knew very little of our traditions and way of life. Haven had three stoplights, one diner, one post office, one general store and one harbor full of fishing boats. There was a voluntary fire department and the only police station was ten miles away in the next county. Haven had a year round population of four hundred residents. There were many people who owned summer homes along the coast. The local residents called them the winter people, because they vanished the moment the colder wind consumed every breath of the autumn breeze.

Despite the arrival of the winter people and the tourists in the spring, everyone knew there was a certain rhythm until a stranger came to Haven. A man no one had seen or heard of before. A man who seemed lost but knew his way to the oldest home in the entire county. Several people saw him drive past the general store in the heart of downtown. Jill was leaving the post office. She was carrying several envelopes. The man waved at her as he was driving by. Jill waved back but didn’t know why. She did not get a good look at him and brushed it off as a friendly gesture. She continued walking towards the diner. 

“Hey, Aunt Mattie!” Jill shouted to her aunt who was cooking in the back of the diner.

“Hey, Jill! Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a minute.” Aunt Mattie responded.

Jill continued to greet everyone by name as she made her way to the corner table she sat in every day since she was five. Jill and her sister Tess had carved their initials in that table some twenty years earlier. Jill took off her jacket and hat and started going through the envelopes. Gus, the general store manager, stopped by Jill’s table as did a handful of fishermen to collect their mail. Somehow, Jill had become the designated mail carrier of Haven. The post office did not have a full-time employee and was only open a few hours a week. Most of the fishermen could not make it back in time to get their mail so Jill offered to pick it up for them. Jill’s father and brother were among them. She knew how difficult it was for them to live both on land and the ocean. Both the land and the ocean had different rules.

Aunt Mattie joined Jill at the table. Mattie started going through the stack of envelopes as she was sitting down looking for her name on them.

“Mattie, did you know someone was coming to Haven today?” Jill probed.

“No, I haven’t heard of anyone coming in. You mean a winter man?” Mattie looked at her surprised by the question. Mattie thought all of the winter people settled in two weeks ago.

“I saw a man driving past the post office as I was leaving. He was driving up to the Buefield Manor. He knew exactly how to get there but he kept looking at every nook of Haven. I don’t think he kept his eyes on the road for more than a split second and then he waved at me. Here is another one of yours.” Jill handed the envelope to her.

Mattie was going to respond when the door opened. The stranger entered the diner.

“That’s him!” Jill tried to whisper but several other people in the diner took notice of the handsome stranger. He looked to be in his 30’s. He was tall like the fishermen but did not have any callouses on his hands nor weather marking his face. He asked for a cup of coffee and sat at the counter. Aunt Mattie got up to serve him the coffee and find out who he was. Jill looked at her watch and realized it was a lot later than she thought it was. She quickly put her jacket on and told her aunt she would come back later. The stranger said hello and Jill smiled. She wondered if he was a tourist but kept thinking whoever he was he was a stranger at the end of the day. He wasn’t a winter person or a son of Haven.

Jill tried to put the stranger out of her mind as she ran to the harbor. Her father and brother would be returning from their fishing expedition and she wanted to help clean and categorize their catch. Her father had just anchored the boat when Jill came running up to him. Her brother had already started sorting their catch on the deck.

“What happened? Why are there so few?” Jill asked as there weren’t more than six buckets of fish sitting on the deck.

“Really bad storm, honey. Had to turn around almost as soon as we got out there.”

Jill’s father Bruce said.

He shook his head and muttered that it wasn’t worth risking their lives. Jill’s brother BJ told Jill their dad got spooked when they went by Dead Man’s Cliff. Jill hung her head. Dead Man’s Cliff was where their high school friend Brett died. Jill blamed herself for Brett’s death because she had dared him to jump from the cliff after they had been drinking with Jill’s siblings. Jill, Tess and BJ all saw Brett jump off the cliff and he never swam back to the shore. The police searched for days but Brett’s body never resurfaced.

Jill helped her brother load the fish into her brother’s truck. BJ was going to take them to a restaurant in the next village. He didn’t even want to show Aunt Mattie their poor catch. He knew she would laugh at them and didn’t want to be humiliated in front of the other fishermen.

BJ told Mattie he would be back in time for dinner at the diner and drove off. Jill turned around and saw the stranger talking with Charlie, the harbormaster. The stranger and Charlie laughed and then hugged. Jill went to get her father who was washing the boat deck. She begged Bruce to come with her to see the harbormaster. The harbormaster was alone now with his clipboard.

“Charlie!” Jill ran ahead of her father to get Charlie’s attention.

“Jill? Jill, what’s going on?” Charlie was surprised that Jill was running towards him.

“Charlie, who was that man you were talking to?” Jill asked almost out of breath.

“An old friend. I didn’t think he’d come back here. It’s been such a long time.” Charlie said.

Bruce caught up to Jill. “What’s his name, Charlie? Who is he?” Jill asked.

Charlie looked at her. “Ah, I don’t know. I’m not good with names. He’s a Buefield. He used to live up at the manor.”

Bruce interjected. “Charlie, he can’t be a Buefield. The Buefield family left after their boy died jumping off of Dead Man’s Cliff. The manor has been vacant for more than twenty years.”

Charlie looked at both of them and said, “He said his name was Buefield and he was here to take care of the manor.” Charlie threw up his hands and started walking away citing that he had more important things to do than gossip about a neighbor.

Jill looked at her father. “Could it be Brett? Maybe he didn’t die that day.”

Bruce looked at her and reminded her not to go jumping to conclusions. He said the stranger could be a cousin or some other relative that spent summers at the manor. Bruce reminded her that the Buefield family had lots of family gatherings at the manor before Brett’s accident. Their extended family lived all over the state. Bruce told her Charlie probably misunderstood what the stranger was saying to him. Bruce reminded her that Charlie was well over seventy and hard of hearing even with hearing aids. Jill told him she had to know.

Jill ran back to the diner. She wanted to ask her aunt if she found out who the stranger was. The dish washer told Jill her aunt went to the general store to buy some ingredients that didn’t arrive on the truck. Jill walked to the general store and saw the stranger talking with the cashier. Jill grabbed the general store coupon flyer and a grocery cart and started walking towards the magazine rack to get a better view. They were both about the same age as Jill. Jill kept squinting her eyes at the stranger. She kept thinking he could be Brett, an older Brett. Up until now, Jill had not paid much attention to the stranger.

“Jill?”

Jill turned around. It was her aunt.

“Jill, what are you doing?”

“Aunt Mattie! You scared me half to death.” Jill stood up to face her aunt. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m spying.”

“Jill, who are you spying on?” Aunt Mattie asked.

“The stranger is talking to James over there.” Jill then looked at where she was pointing and the stranger was gone. James, the cashier, was restocking the shelf behind his check-out counter.

“Jill, there is no one there. Are you talking about the stranger that waived to you this morning?” Aunt Mattie asked.

“Yes, the one that you served coffee to. Did he tell you his name?” Jill begged.

“He said his name was Ralfe Buefield and he was here to take care of the manor. He even gave me his business card.” Aunt Mattie started digging around her purse and pulled out the business card.

It read: Ralfe B. Buefield

               Museum Curator

               Maritime Artifacts Collection

               State of Rhode Island

“Who’s Ralfe?” Jill was even more puzzled.

“He seemed familiar to me. He even asked me if Lucille was still baking apple pies for the diner like she did every Saturday twenty years ago. He said those were the best pies he ever had. I didn’t talk with him more than that, sweetie. I had to get back to cooking which is what I need to do now before the dinner rush. It is almost 3. Look, maybe you should talk with him instead of spying on him.” Aunt Mattie said in a firm tone.

Jill saw the stranger, Ralfe B. Buefield, at the post office the following week, the harbor the week after that and multiple times at the diner. Every time she got up the nerve to talk to him, he walked away. Aunt Mattie often joked that he was the invisible man and kept disappearing.

Almost a month later, Jill went to the post office to get the mail for her aunt, brother, father and fishermen. She went to the diner and sat at her table and looked down. There were more carved initials on the side of the table. Next to her sister’s initials were RBB.

“Aunt Mattie!” Jill screamed. Aunt Mattie came running from the kitchen.

“What is it Jill?” Aunt Mattie came to try to help calm Jill down as Jill literally jumped several feet from the table.

“Do you see them? There are more initials on the side of the table. R-B-B.” Jill asked standing and pointing.

“What are you talking about? Those initials have been there since you were all kids. You, Tess, BJ, the Buefield boys, Gus’s son Hank, the Smith girls...” Aunt Mattie circled the circumference of the whole table.

“The Buefield boys? I thought Brett was an only child.” Jill was shocked.

“No, Brett had a twin brother. His twin brother was a sickly boy. He didn’t leave the manor that much. He had an allergy to the sun as I recall. Their great-grandfather had a similar condition. The whole Buefield family did a lot of activities in the evening. They went night fishing, swimming, and the boys often jumped off those rugged cliffs. They were so competitive with one another but Brett’s the one you went to school with. His twin brother Raymond was tutored at home.”  Aunt Mattie pointed to the second set of initials on the opposite side of the table. R-A-B. “Those were Raymond’s initials. I can’t believe you don’t remember. They switched places all the time especially on Halloween. Do you remember the haunted house? The hall of mirrors? You kept seeing double. We had three sets of twins growing up in this village. You and Tess Hensen. Raymond and Brett Buefield and Violet and Grace Smith. ”

“Aunt Mattie, who is Ralfe B. Buefield?” Jill asked.

“I think I better answer that.” The stranger entered the diner. Jill was shaking. Memories of her childhood started flooding through mind.

“Who are you?” Jill asked him directly.

“I’m Brett. Ralfe is my first name. I never liked it because it was too close to Raymond’s name.” Brett answered.

“That’s impossible. You, you died. You never came back out of the, the water. We looked for days on the cliff and the police said your body never washed to shore. And I dared you to make that jump.” Jill stammered.

“Even if you had dared me to make that jump, I would have jumped anyway. It wasn’t me you went drinking with that night. It wasn’t me you dared to jump off of Dead Man’s Cliff. I stayed home that night. I went out with you and Tess and BJ the night before. I told Raymond how much fun I had and he was so sick of being cooped up in the house. The doctor had given him a few weeks to live. He kept saying he wanted just one night to be normal, to go out with friends. We switched places. Jill, you didn’t have anything to do with his death. He didn’t die that night. He swam to shore and died in the hospital two days later. He died of complications from his condition. My parents wanted to make certain no one else died from jumping off Dead Man’s Cliff so they told you I died in that fall and moved us away from here. My father passed away last week. He told me in his will what he had done. He wanted me to come here, sell the manor and tell everyone the truth about what happened. I am so sorry I didn’t know sooner. I would have come here but it was so hard after Raymond died.”

Brett covered his face with his hands and tears fell from his eyes. Jill grabbed his hands and the two embraced.