The Sea is a Thief (11 page)

On this day he seemed to be standing a bit taller.  His jaw was squarer and his eyes more bright.  He smiled a quick smile that spoke only to her, silently whispering:  
Shhh
.  
They must not know.  
Her eyes retuned his confidence.  She knew Sam had not told his shipmates of the days they had spent together.  His good friend Ethan had guarded their secret.  Sam had told her how Ethan would take his part so that he could visit her.  Here indeed were Ethan, and Mr. Bagwell, and Sam's Captain.  Her mother introduced her to Captain Sharpe.  She took his hand.  She curtsied to each gentleman in turn, then poured the tea and excused herself to the kitchen.  She was grateful for a few moments to collect her thoughts.  

Henry Sharpe was charmed by the Daiseys' little cottage, the first such he had entered on Chincoteague.  It was modest by any standard, but orderly and clean.  Everywhere there seemed to be carvings of ducks.  He took hold of one, a hooded merganser, with flaring neck feathers and a thin, hooked bill.  

“Most well done,” he said, turning it over in his hands.  “Who is the carver?”  

“It's mine,” Beau replied.  “They're all mine.”  The Captain surveyed the room with its array of wooden ducks.  

“Is this your trade?”

Beau folded his arms across his broad chest.  “It would be my trade, sir, if men would give a dollar for any of them.  Many of us on Chincoteague carve ducks.  Others carve them only well enough to lure birds to their guns.”  

The Captain raised an eyebrow.  “Your skill is commendable.”  

How easy it would have been for most young men to utter a simple word of thanks for the sake of courtesy.  For Beau it was not easy.  He silence was like a thunderclap in the small, crowded room.  Henry Sharpe turned to face Beau.  “Commendable.”  

“I am told I make them better than they need to be,” he muttered. The Captain replaced the merganser on its table.   

Suddenly Beau's eyes were full of fire.  “Not everyone on this island finds you Union troops welcome,” he hissed. “I myself have friends in the Confederate Army!”  

Edmund Bagwell stepped between the Captain and Beau, placing a calloused hand on the younger man's shoulder.  “We are well aware of the few of our citizens who have taken that unfortunate step,” said Bagwell, with deliberate slowness.  “And the Captain and his generous crew are well aware of the good faith and gratitude of the rest of us, including you and your family.  Is that not so, Beau Daisey?”  

Beau cast his eyes downward.  “It is.” he said.

“As indeed I thought!” said Bagwell, suddenly jovial, and in a mood to leave.  The tea was forgotten. “Mrs. Daisey, we are most indebted to you for your hospitality.”

“As we are to you, Captain Sharpe, for the invaluable assistance of your crew,” Mary replied.  She curtsied as the group began its departure.  Anna came to her side.  

“It has been a pleasure, ladies,” said Sharpe, replacing his cap.  

They gathered for a few moments outside to examine Sam's handiwork: the shutters, the siding, and the rain barrel.  Sam Dreher was the last to leave.   As goodbyes were said and the leads of the horses untied, Anna approached him, unnoticed.  Her voice was barely audible, but her eyes spoke more strongly.

“Would you like to see the ponies on Assateague Island?” she asked.

 

Time rushes past young men and women unnoticed and unheeded, like a breeze on their faces.  Rarely, it pauses to offer them a moment to hold, as one keeps a butterfly found in a spiderweb.  Sam would forever see Anna's face at that moment: the autumn light on her shining hair, parted over her smooth forehead.  Her eyes, deep-set under graceful brows, meeting his gaze unwaveringly.  Her strong, slender neck, framed by the simplest lace.  Her lips closed on the final word she had spoken, and he heard it all in a rush:  
 Assateague Island.
 

“Yes, Anna,” he answered.  “I believe I would.”
 
 

The party was not far down the road when the Captain expressed his concern to Edmund Bagwell.  He was not given to anger, but he had commanded men for fifteen years, and was unaccustomed to impertinence such as Beau Daisey's.  He told Bagwell that, in so many words.  

“Understood, Captain Sharpe,” Bagwell reassured him.  “We all know him.  Allow me to offer you an apology on his behalf.  You've nothing to fear.  His father was a fine man, and he's good at heart.  All talk and temper, that one!”

Sharpe turned to Sam Dreher.  “Watch that young man.”

Normally, Sam was very attentive to his Captain's words, but if he heard them at all on that occasion, he did not remember it.  He was already rowing a sneak skiff to Assateague Island, Anna Daisey in the bow.   They were going to see the ponies.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

The Other Island

 

In the autumn of the year, Elizabeth Reynolds harvested honey.  The keeper of the Assateague lighthouse was a beekeeper as well; rows of circular hives supplied her with fine golden honey, and enough beeswax to make the many candles that powered the light.  The bees prospered throughout the long summer among the lush wildflowers of Assateague.  They made far more honey than they needed to endure the short island winter; sticky orange gobs of it, fragrant of blossoms, carefully stored in their man-made warehouses.  Now, their labors concluded, they clustered together for warmth inside their grass hives, offering their surplus to Elizabeth.  The bees liked her, in their way.  They barely noticed as she worked among the hives, a thin veil covering her face, her smoke-pot fueled by smoldering hay and pitch.  She worked quickly, scraping the honey into a clay pot.  The air had cooled in the past week.  The winds that skimmed the ocean brought a chill to her face.  Her shoulders were wrapped in a homespun woolen shawl, and she wore her tall winter boots.

Soon the time would come for Elizabeth to move inside.  While the warm sun shone and the fresh breezes cooled her, she lived outdoors in a billowing tent alongside the lighthouse.  She had sewn it of sturdy canvas, with sheer linen sides that let in light but kept away the ever-present bugs.  Its tall supporting poles stood strong against the storms that swept in from the sea.  Of all the places a person could live on the island, it was the most pleasant.  Only a few souls called Assateague Island home.  No one could cultivate the marshy soil.  Assateague was useful only as a place to graze cattle and horses.  Herds of both animals roamed the island; they were Elizabeth's closest neighbors.  

To the United States government, she was a lighthouse keeper, but she was a medicine woman by trade.  In the cool of the morning she roamed the dunes and creeks, sprigs of citronella grass pinned to her skirts to ward off mosquitoes, gathering the herbs that she used to treat the islanders' illnesses.  In the heat of the afternoon she reclined on a twig bench, sorting and grinding the dried plants and smoking her pipe. When her work was done, she drew.  She drew on rough brown paper with little sticks of charcoal from her fire, sharpened with her penknife.  She drew during every idle hour.  When a drawing pleased her, it found a home inside the lighthouse tower, fixed to the heavy brick walls with a dab of pitch.  Visitors did not go inside the lighthouse.  It served as her private gallery.

At twilight she climbed the winding wooden staircase forty feet to the top of the tower, carrying a single candle.  She lit in turn twenty-four larger candles, their small, valiant light focused by a thick glass lens. They burned throughout the night, warning ship captains as best they could of the barrier island's presence.  Her task completed, she took her rest, awakened each day by the sun rising over the surf.

When the winds turned sharp, Elizabeth packed up her tent and moved her belongings into the lighthouse for the winter.  She sensed that the day would not be long in coming.  She did not look forward to it.  A small room had been built on the lee side for the keeper, all of brick, with a wood stove for heat and cooking.  In the summer the brick room felt like an oven; in the winter it was snug and safe.  Already she was spending her nights there, emerging outdoors into the autumn sun after mid-morning.  

For her efforts, the lighthouse keeper was paid a small fee by the U.S. Department of the Interior.  Few would have considered it fair compensation for their constant vigilance in that lonely place, but Elizabeth's needs were small.  Twice a year, she called on the Postmaster in Chincoteague to collect her stipend.  She crossed Main Street to the Bagwell Dry Goods and Grocery to turn it into store credit.  Edmund Bagwell made sure that the credit covered her needs until the next letter from the government arrived.  At times her ledger ran into the red, but whatever the tally showed, the proprietor's initials on Elizabeth's account ensured that she never left the store empty-handed.

When a Chincoteaguer fell ill, his first recourse was to Elizabeth Reynolds.  A messenger, usually a boy from the family, would be sent in a boat to fetch her from her outpost on Assateague. She would question him thoroughly about the sick person's symptoms and then fill a canvas bag with preparations from her stores.  Elizabeth did not read, but had no fear of choosing the wrong herb for her purpose.  Each sack and jar was carefully labeled with a drawing of its contents.  Her preparations complete, she would be taken to the home of the suffering person, where she would stay until he recovered or went to be with the Lord.  A real doctor was available off-island, but that was a more difficult trip, and more expensive as well.  Doctors usually did not accept payment in tobacco or cornmeal.  Elizabeth did, when a family had no money to pay her.  On other occasions she would leave with coins in her pockets.  High up in the lighthouse, nearly at the top of the staircase, a brick could be worked loose with a little effort.  There in a hollow behind the wall lay the medicine woman's earthly treasure.

Often her cures worked when the doctor's failed.  More than one elderly citizen swore that he owed his longevity to Elizabeth Reynolds.   No one could explain it precisely, for Elizabeth would not reveal the source of her remedies.  Some said she was part Chincoteague or Kickotank Indian, and her knowledge had been handed down from her ancient native forebears.  If she was, she didn't know it.  Her parents had never spoken of they ancestry, and they were gone.  No Indians had lived on the island for a hundred years.  Perhaps the secret of her success was nothing more than the confidence of the islanders.  Whatever the source of her talents, she profited by them, living as she wished in her solitary place.  She was solid and strong, browned by the sun and toughened by the wind, her face a map of lines.  Her hair, once black as a mussel shell, was heavy with grey.  She wore it in a long braid, twisted into a circle at the back of her neck.  She did not possess a mirror.  God, she liked to say, could look upon her whenever he wished.      

 

Anna Daisey could see the smile on Elizabeth Reynolds' face from a great distance.  Her smiles were rare, but appeared quickly, like rays of sun from behind a cloud. She was in the meadow tending her beehives when Anna approached in the sneak skiff, emerging from Swan's Cove Pond by a little creek.  Anna drew the skiff onto the muddy bank and beached it, running towards her friend.  Elizabeth set her smoke pot on a flat stone and lifted the veil from her face.   Leaving the bees, she joined Anna in an embrace.  Anna kissed her brown cheek.  “It's your father's boat, child!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

“Yes, we've repaired the skiff, as sound as before!”

“You and your brother?”

“No, Elizabeth, Sam and I.”

“Sam?”

Elizabeth held Anna at arm's length, searching her rosy face for a clue.  Her hair was covered by a woolen bonnet, and over her long-sleeved dress she wore a canvas jacket with a heavy collar.  “And who is Sam?”

Anna collapsed into the arms of her friend once again, her features dissolved into smiles.  “There is so much to tell!”

“There must be, child.  I haven't seen you for weeks!”

“Yes, yes. Elizabeth.  I've missed you.  I'm sorry.”

“Come along, Anna. Come and eat something.”

The two friends walked together towards the tent, Elizabeth's work forgotten.

“Where is Willow?” Anna asked.  “Is he about?”  

“I haven't seen him today,” Elizabeth answered, gazing towards the beach. “But his herd was just down the beach last evening about sunset.”

Willow was Anna's pony, one of hundreds of wild ponies that roamed Assateague.  No one could say for certain where the herds had come from.  Island grandfathers liked to tell youngsters long yarns about the shipwreck of a Spanish galleon, its cargo of Arabian horses swimming to safety on the barrier island.  The romance of it did appeal to Anna, as it did to many people.  The coastline had seen its share of shipwrecks.  In her more levelheaded moments, she leaned towards the less colorful but more likely explanation: that the ponies were simply domesticated herds lost on the island and gone wild.  It had been common practice to graze livestock there as long as anyone could remember.  There was plenty of forage for the animals and no means for them to escape.  Chincoteague lay sandwiched between Assateague and the mainland; both islands were long and narrow, and even at low tide the channel between the two held deep water.  The barrier island was the perfect place for horses to run loose, to be rounded up later when they were needed.  Over time, some of the owners passed on, or lost track of their livestock, and wild herds developed.  The ponies thrived tolerably well under difficult circumstances.  Once a year at pony-penning, as many as could be rounded up were driven across the channel to Chincoteague, and the foals were sold to the islanders who wanted them.

The wild ponies knew Elizabeth, and did not hesitate to come close to the lighthouse, where she cultivated plants they liked.  It was a respite from the tough marsh grass that bloated their stomachs.
 
They did not fear her.  Most could be handled, and the more docile ones could be broken to ride. Anna's pony was such a one.  Her father had spotted him when he was very young.  His color had caught his eye.  Most of the ponies were a mixture of brown, black and white, with dark spots and patches of color.  Willow's coat was a pale golden-tan, with a few lighter patches scattered about: a champagne-colored horse.  Almost all the Assateague horses had brown eyes, and some had blue, but Willow's were green—the color of the earliest buds of the weeping willow, the first tree to bud in the spring.  Anna christened him Weeping Willow, and over time his name became Willow.