The Diviner's Tale (16 page)

"Do we have to go?" Jonah asked. The boys were scanning southwest, where Mr. McEachern would be arriving from Mount Desert.

"Yeah," said Morgan. "Relax. It's not like he did anything."

Much as I knew they loved riding in the Bunker & Ellis and poking around the old general store on Islesford, I also was aware that they, still on their way to becoming island people, were nervous about sailing in rough seas—never failed to make them sick as dogs—but were far too proud to admit it. I was torn. Didn't want to leave them here by themselves, yet didn't want to force them to make a seasick passage. My strong intuition was that the man had left, having gotten his message across. Rosalie was going to be able to clear this up for me, once I got her on the line, I was certain. And if not her, then Niles might know what it was about.

"Besides, we have our own stuff to do right here."

"Such as?"

"Just stuff," he answered, rolling his eyes. I decided I needn't drag them along, that they would be fine. Needed to remind myself they were making a sacrifice to be up here with me in the first place, and it behooved me to give them as much time to themselves as they liked.

Their descriptions of the man were vaguer than I might have hoped, not to mention contradictory. Morgan insisted he had brown eyes; Jonah was sure they'd been blue. They did agree he had black hair, was wearing a Windbreaker, and had a tall forehead. He was on the pale side, Jonah noticed, and wasn't too tall. Certainly didn't sound like anyone I knew.

My approaching ferry lay on the horizon, a mere indistinction almost as small as the mystery boat had been the day prior. Before long we could see its prow knifing the water between some bobbing eiders and guillemots, carving it into greenish-white wakes. Drawing close, the mailboat soon enough docked, the surge of wash heaving it up and down as the captain tossed his bowline, then stern, which Morgan caught, then handed off to him as he jumped onto the plank dock to tie up.

Mr. McEachern—a ruddy-faced, bull-shouldered, soft-spoken man with a tidy gray beard—asked how everything was. I told him I needed to ride with him to Little Cranberry and then be dropped off back here when he was done with his rounds.

"Might not be before sundown, if that works for you. I got some extra drops today."

"That works," said Morgan brightly.

"Take your time," Jonah added.

"You two make sure there's a place to come back to, you hear me?" I said, hoping my trip to Islesford would prove a big waste of time. My nerves had been tight and tense as piano strings these past weeks and I wondered if I hadn't overreacted. When one is spooked, every little thing seems charged with meaning.

The mailboat reversed its engine, crabbed away from the dock even as I was speaking those words. I watched the boys wave to me, and I waved back as the boat set out over the wide wild water. I did ask Mr. McEachern if he happened to have ferried anybody over to Covey the day before, and he said no. He also answered no to my question as to whether, to his knowledge, anyone had been inquiring after me or my family in Northeast Harbor. Mr. McEachern constituted a kind of central sounding post in these islands, saw and knew everybody, heard or overheard everyone's news, their doings, their scuttlebutt. No gossip himself—indeed, a through-and-through gentleman—he wasn't given to disclosing all he knew. But he was a noticer, too, a conscientious soul, and would have told me if he had heard anything that might be cause for concern.

The post office and general store on Islesford, as Little Cranberry Island was also called, reminded me of my youth, when we used to come here for basic supplies. Nep made a practice of treating me to red licorice sticks or jawbreakers from big Ball jars on the counter. Its smell, a warm combination of pipe tobacco, gingerbread, and drowsing dusty dogs, remained the same over the decades. So did its look. A conjunction of stuff, which in any other locale would seem eccentric, here made perfect sense—deep-sea fishing tackle and homemade fudge behind the glass counter, life jackets and greeting cards, buoys and bottled milk. The telephone was behind the cash register. Not private, but since no one was here aside from the proprietor, who was half-deaf, it didn't matter.

Rosalie and Nep's line was busy, so I called Niles. Was surprised to find him in.

"How's your disappearance going?" he asked.

"Not quite as invisibly as I'd hoped. We had a visitor to Covey yesterday. Showed up unannounced, left more or less the same way. I have no idea who he was, and it's not like he was willing to say."

"Go on."

"There's not much to go on about," I said, and told him the small balance of what I knew. "I'm trying to reach Rosalie. Sounds like it could be something to do with money being owed maybe."

Niles didn't necessarily agree, saying he didn't know what it sounded like.

"I'm almost afraid to ask, but what's happening with Laura Bryant?"

"Nothing more, really. She's back home. Turns out she had a history of running away, so it fits a pattern."

"I feel bad for her."

"So do I, but it's out of our hands now. She's getting help, I hear."

"Good," I said, and wondered if Niles was reminded of my having been a sometime runaway when I was younger than Laura Bryant. I felt self-conscious about the parallels and knew it was wisest to leave the matter unspoken.

"Her mother tells me Laura would like to thank you in person, talk with you a little."

"I'm not so sure, Niles."

"Well, I can give you the number if you change your mind," he said. "By the way, I heard that Henderson is going ahead with his development plans."

"It's a shame to think of those beautiful woods being all carved up."

"Weren't you one of his first hired henchmen?"

"Henchwoman," I said, but couldn't argue the point.

"If your man comes around again, get his name why don't you."

"Will do, Niles. Thanks," and we hung up.

Finding the line at my parents' still busy, I decided to take a ramble along the lanes of the village. I had time to kill and always liked this seaside place, with its piles of old wooden lobster traps baking in the open air, its children playing on porches or riding their bikes up and down the dirt roads, its high-steepled white church that seemed so legitimate and necessary here, where men went out on the water every day to make their living. From the near distance, gratingly loud yet not visible, came the distinctive noise of kids racing around on four-wheelers. Like swarming locusts they buzzed, reminding me of the days when my brother and his raucous gang were obsessed with riding them through the Corinth countryside. Not a pleasant memory to interrupt the serenity of my otherwise calming stroll. When I returned to the general store and phoned again, I finally got through.

"You ought to know that's impossible," she stated in response to my question whether she might be enough in arrears on some bill causing the township to send out a collector. "I've never missed a deadline paying my taxes or a bill in my life. Your father used to tease me about it, don't you remember? Called me the
Pollyanna of Payables.
He had to be there for some other reason, but listen, Cassie—"

"Yes?"

"Seems to me the obvious answer is that the twins are being a little inventive. Maybe somebody dropped by from the other side of the island and chatted with them in passing, and they just got it wrong what the fellow said."

"Well, that wouldn't be any more like them than you forgetting to square away some debt. Besides, I checked over there and no one was around," mentioning the smells of Mrs. Milgate's baking and her refusal to answer the door, though leaving out the cigarette stubs because I knew Rosalie would shrug them off as the meaningless ciphers they likely were.

"Cassandra. You're there to take things easy and that's what you should get back to doing. Your father and I are looking forward to spending time with you."

"We are, too. Do me a favor, though, and don't bother Nep about this. I don't want to worry him more than I already have."

She agreed, and that was that. I didn't relish leaving the matter unresolved but saw no reason to press it further. Besides, I had spoken to the only two people who might shed some light on it, and they were less concerned than I might have imagined. Best leave it as a dead end, I thought, walking back toward the piers, knowing that it was going to gnaw at me anyway, just as he intended, whoever he was.

I waited for what seemed like forever on the town dock, looking out past the fleet of anchored lobster boats and floating clusters of brown rockweed. Overhead, gulls scolded my impatience as I paced the weathered planks. Finally the sturdy ferry returned in heavy slant-light pouring through the thin fog that had accumulated. It hugged the stony shoreline, making waves as it did, and drew alongside. Rather than waiting for Mr. McEachern to tie her up, I jumped on as the mailboat hammocked in backwash waves.

The windows of the house burned a warm amber as we approached the island. The lighthouse, glowing white like some robed sage in the dusk, looked contemplative and wise. Secure there on its promontory. Yet Covey seemed so solitary to me this evening, almost desolate against the Atlantic expanse. Its dock fragile, mere pilings surmounted by a course of stalwart boards jutting out into the sea. Unthinkable that one would feel confident walking on such a frail thing, but in a moment I would, trusting it the same way I trusted the boys had spent a trouble-free afternoon with the island to themselves.

It was growing dark swiftly, the air a dense inky blue. The packet's running lights were on, green and red. Only a couple of other passengers were aboard, an old woman and a little boy, headed back to the mainland after visiting relatives. I apologized to them for having to make this unchartered detour on my behalf, while wrapping my sweater around me against the moist chill. Was this how things were going to go from now on, taking unchartered detours? I wondered, as the boat rode high swells, then made a graceful and deliberate circle past the clanging bell buoy.

Thanking Mr. McEachern, I informed him my parents were coming to join us and asked, would it be possible to run them out from Northeast Harbor?

"I'll take care of it," he said, in his broad Down Easter accent.
All tek kay-ah ovett.

As I began my climb up the well-worn path, I looked over my shoulder and saw the mailboat's running lights grow smaller and fainter, heard the grinding rumble of the engine fade. Twilight assumed preeminence by the time I reached the keeper's cottage. Light pouring from its windows welcomed me back. The first stars were out, brave throbbing pinholes poking through the soft haze, declaring themselves from the coldness of space to be more than tiny sparks, but suns, sons of suns, huge in their own neighborhoods.

Jonah and Morgan had gotten it in their heads to replicate our first night. Candles on the table. The fire pit roaring. They had brought out all the leftovers from the nights and days before. Quite the beggar's banquet. Canned chili, oyster crackers. And, though we didn't have lobsters, they managed to collect enough mussels to cook in seawater and kelp to make a meal.

"Everything all right here?" I asked, as Jonah ceremoniously handed me a cup of fresh coffee.

"Morgan burned the house down."

"Didn't mean to. Just one of those things."

"But we built it again before you got home."

"That's a relief," I said.

"So what's your story?" Jonah asked. "You find out who that guy was?"

I studied his face when he said this, looking for any telltale gesture that might suggest yesterday's visitor was an embellishment or whimsy, but he was all earnestness.

"No idea," and began helping them set the table.

"Cassandra—"

It was never a good sign when one of them addressed me by my full first name. No matter how many times I'd asked them to desist, they proceeded after their fashion as if I hadn't uttered a word. "Yes," I said, scowling a bit.

"We had a board meeting when you were on Little Cranberry and—"

"We've decided we're not going to some wipeass summer camp."

"Right, forget that bullshit."

"Guys, please let me pretend I'm a good mother who isn't raising children that use words like
bullshit
and
wipeass.
Humor me that I haven't raised a couple of barbarians."

"Point is, we're staying with you," said Jonah. "You need us around."

"I appreciate what you're saying. Just, let's sort this out tomorrow."

"Nothing to sort," Morgan said with finality.

His brother added, "Now come on. Dinner's going to get cold."

Mussels never tasted sweeter. Fiddleheads never more buttery. The coffee, though muddy, might as well have been some gourmet espresso. My boys had prepared a feast to remember. And made a decision which, for all their foul-mouthed assurances otherwise, was a real sacrifice as well as an act of devotion.

W
HAT A CEASELESSLY
spinning spider is memory. The unseen pack of four-wheelers on Islesford continued to buzz in my head after dinner that night, drilling through to an aural memory of Christopher and his tight-knit gang of friends in the bad old, good old days. Half a dozen boys in all different shapes and sizes, most of them a little older than my brother, which was fine by him since—not unlike my own boys now, my boys who constitute their own small gang—he never really thought of himself as a kid.

— Childhood's for weaklings, Cass, he once told me. —You got that?

— Got it, I said, thinking if that's what Christopher believed, it must have been right.

— And weaklings are for the birds.

I nodded, pretending to understand.

Ben Gilchrist was the number-one man in their gang. While he wasn't the oldest, he was the tallest, which brought him a measure of respect. Built to rip-roar his way through life, he often egged the others on to greater, madder glories. I have wondered over the years if he lived so fast and hard because he knew deep down his life wasn't fated to run the full stretch, guessed he was destined to be a sprinter rather than a marathoner. That his father was the town supervisor gave him a false sense of privilege of which he took full advantage. Whenever he or Chris or any of their gang landed themselves in trouble, chances were good that Rich Gilchrist would get them off with little more than a slap on the wrist.