The Sea is a Thief (24 page)

Captain Sharpe continued to send men ashore to help the islanders; more now, for the need was more immediate.  Many of the island's cottages were in a shambles.  There was one change in procedure.  All work details were accompanied by a trusted officer, a veteran of Sharpe's command.  He rode about the island on a horse supplied by Edmund Bagwell, ensuring that each sailor was exactly where he had been ordered to be.  Invariably, they were.  Henry Sharpe's mission to Chincoteague would produce no further intrigue.  

 

The morning that calm returned, Mary Daisey sat in her kitchen with a bowl of cornmeal mush.  Beau had gone to the wharf to see what boats might be going out later in the week.   He assured her he would not fish that day, but would return to keep watch.  Anna was quiet.  In the lulls such as this one, between the bouts of fever, Mary could rest and eat.  She heard a knock at the front door.  When she opened it she was face-to-face with John Grinnald.  

He was dirtier than usual, his canvas coat covered in drying mud and his beard matted about his neck.  His face looked as though he had been in a fight.  Bits of bark stuck to his hair.  Mary saw that he had left a handcart in the roadway.  It was overloaded with bundles, lashed to the wooden sides.  He held his broad brown hat in his weather-beaten hands.  When he saw Mary his eyes flew open, their customary squint abandoned.  

“Missus,” he asked, “is your girl alive?”  

“She is,” said Mary, beckoning him.  “Come in.”  

“Thanks be to God,” he muttered, still frozen to the spot where he stood.  Mary took him by the arm.  Reverend Carter had been her first visitor after the storm; he was the second.  

“Come in, John Grinnald,” she repeated.  

He walked slowly into the parlor, uncomfortable in the house.  His watery blue eyes darted about, looking for Anna.  

“Follow me,” Mary said.  “She is in the kitchen.  She has a delirium.”  They went together to the small room where Anna lay.  She was very still.  Mary could barely see her breathing, the old quilt rising and falling so slightly on her chest.  Grinnald stood silently over her, his head bent low.  He took a step backward.  

“My boots,” he said, pointing to his mud-caked shoes.  

“Think nothing of it, Mr. Grinnald,” she replied, “We have a broom.”  She bent down to lay the back of her hand on Anna's forehead.  She was cool.

Grinnald had not entered the Daisey household since the night when he brought Sweet William's body home to his wife.  He was recalling it now: the cold rain, the dark night, the lean body of the market gunner a dead weight in his arms.  Mary's thoughts returned to the same night.  Their eyes met, and each knew.  There was nothing to be said.    

“Surely you must be hungry, Mr. Grinnald, and you will take some tea?”  Mary put the kettle on the hot stove and began to ladle cornmeal into a bowl.

“Most gracious, missus,” he answered.  She handed him the bowl and drew a chair up to the table.

“While she is quiet, we can eat.”  He ate quickly, as though he had not had a meal in some time, the spoon held tightly in his knotted fist.

“How did you fare in the gale?”

“Cabin's gone,” he said. “Broke up, then washed away.” He gazed out the window at the clear sky, so changed in only a day. “I was inside when the wind began to come up.  I put to bed, then the water rose up, and I woke with it floodin' in all about.  Climbed a tree, I did, and stayed there all night with snakes and lizards climbin' past me.  At first light I found myself a little high spot of land, and made for it.”  

“What will you do?” Mary asked.  

He shrugged his broad shoulders, shedding tiny flakes of mud. “It's all gone out to sea, save for a few things that got hung up in trees.   I lived in a tent while I built my cabin.  That's what I'll do again.  I've got sailcloth in the cart.”  

“Your dog?” Mary asked.  

“Ain't found him.”  

“I'm sorry,” Mary said.  

He nodded.  “Pony herds are comin' out of the woods, though.  They always weather the storms, somehow.”  

Mary rose and went to Anna, checking her again for signs of fever.  

“Have you seen Elizabeth Reynolds?” she asked.  Grinnald hung his head, shaking it slowly from side to side.

 “Went over there,” he said, scratching at his beard.  “She wasn't about.  The sand washed out from under the leeward side of that lighthouse.  It ain't plumb.  I saw big cracks in the brickwork.  Didn't go inside. ”  

“Where could Elizabeth be?”  

He looked away, and shook his head again. “All I can tell you, Mrs. Daisey, is that there's no sign of her.  Tent's gone altogether.”  

Mary sat down, her fingers knitted together.  “God keep her.”  

Grinnald turned to Anna. “Will she live, missus?”  

“Only the Lord can say,” said Mary.  “But I am hopeful.  Her fevers come less often now. I feel her gaining strength.”

“The Union sailor saved her from the storm, then?”

“No.  He was very nearly lost as well.  It was Beau who went out to them.”       

She told John Grinnald the story: how Beau had taken the drift boat, and how he had found them, adrift on the upturned skiff, and borne them home.  Grinnald listened and then sat in silence for some time, twisting his mustache.  When at last he spoke, he chose his words carefully.  

“I've got no good word for any man, and no man has any good word for such as me.  But I'll give you my opinion anyway.  Do you understand what your boy has done?”  

“I do indeed,” replied Mary.  “He has saved his sister, and a good-hearted young sailor, from a certain death.”

“How many men, older than he is, and bigger and stronger, could have taken a boat through the teeth of that?”  His finger punctuated the air, pointing towards the channel.  He stared at Mary, blue eyes locked on hers. “What if he couldn't bring her back safe to port?  None of the three of ‘em would be here today.”  He gestured to Anna with a sweep of his massive arm.  Mary bowed her head.  “And don't think he didn't know exactly what he was up against.”  He coughed hard, and paused for breath.  

“Didn't stop him for a moment, though, did it?”  Mary shook her head.   

Grinnald leaned forward, resting his elbows on his crooked knees.  “You're proud of your boy now, ain't you?”

“I surely am, Mr. Grinnald.”

“You should be.  Everyone should be.”  He was restless.  “I'm obliged for the meal, Mrs. Daisey.”

“You are most welcome, John Grinnald.”

“I must be to work.  Days are short.”

“I understand.”

He stood, hat in hand, over the calm Anna.  “She's strong, too, missus. Same as her brother.”  Mary bit her lip.  

He turned to go.  “I'll come back when I can.  Can't say when.”  He strode to the door and closed it behind him as he left.

For the first time since Beau had brought Anna home, Mary Daisey wept.

 

During the long hours she endured the storm, Anna Daisey's world slowly narrowed to a cold grey corridor. The huge effort of rowing kept some warmth in Sam Dreher's body, but she suffered in stillness.  When the sneak skiff overturned, her limbs were too stiff with cold to protect her.  She slid suddenly beneath the boat, its hundred pounds crashing down full on her head, and lay in the water unable to move as the waves tried to snatch away her life.  Had Sam Dreher not reached her when he did, she would have been gone by the time Beau arrived.  As it was, she hung on by the most slender of threads.  Beau kept her from drowning when he forced the seawater from her.  The blanket and oilcloth had blunted the worst effects of the cold.  For a few brief moments in the drift boat, she could look around and see her brother.  Then a deep blackness closed in on her.  Her weakened body fought its death match with the cold, and, soon, with the fever.   The bond between soul and flesh was strained to breaking.

Even as her family gathered around her, her spirit left their company and sojourned in a distant and unfamiliar place, far from the cruel earth, where they could not join her.  

 

She sat alone, her legs crossed beneath her, on a tuft of grass spun into a spiral as broad as an eagle's nest.
 
She held a thin stick of charcoal lightly in her fingers. A sheet of paper lay in her lap.  
 

A flock of sandpipers worked the shoreline.  Their wings, flecked with rust and grey, stood out against their snow-white bellies; their tiny sewing-machine legs were a blur as they raced the surf.  She endeavored to draw them, setting the charcoal to paper.  With a single turn of her wrist, a bird would appear, fully-formed, tiny and perfect on the sheet.  Then from the top of the page, came the sea, rolling in, foam and spray outlined in crisp charcoal like a Japanese print.  It covered the bird she had made and then retreated, leaving no trace.  She brushed the sheet with her hand, wiping away the sea, but it was empty, inviting her to draw again.

Her eyes sought out the sandpipers in the near distance.  Two approached her.  She drew them quickly, turning her wrist as before in one motion, the charcoal gliding effortlessly with perfect smoothness across the page.  She formed their pointed bills with a flourish, as though placing a comma in a sentence.  They seemed to come alive, their charcoal eyes shining; then the sea crept up again, crackling down on the paper.  She called out to birds, warning them, but she had no voice, and the sea covered them as it had covered the first one, flowing back away and leaving nothing.     

She saw no more birds; then, standing above the sand on her grassy cushion, she shaded her eyes with her hand and searched far up the beach.  She saw a woman.  As she drew nearer Anna saw it was Elizabeth, driving a cloud of shorebirds before her, waving at them with her apron.  The birds massed in front of her, settling onto the sand as Elizabeth approached.  Elizabeth knelt down, took one in her thick hands, and brought it to her.  The bird looked up at Elizabeth as if for instruction; when Anna tried to speak, Elizabeth held a finger to her lips and walked to the lighthouse, bare feet moving tracklessly across the sand.  Anna knew she would see the light illuminated as soon as Elizabeth could ascend the stairs, and in a moment's time it was, blazing like a second sun.  As she waited for Elizabeth to return, she drew the sitting bird, feather by feather, the lines falling from her fingers like water flowing over a smooth rock.  When she finished she watched for Elizabeth so that she could show her the drawing, but Elizabeth did not appear.  The sun set behind her, shrouding the ocean in shadow, and the bird flew.    

She awakened from a deep sleep on the beach at Assateague, in a little tent made from the palest sailcloth.
  It was only large enough for her, and she felt its walls with her hands, testing its strength.  They were smooth like her own skin.  The brightness of the sun roused her and she burst from the tent, leaping into the air and flying above the sand as if swimming, kicking her legs like the tail of a dolphin, gaining speed as she reached the ocean.  She skimmed the surface of the water.  The breakers grew taller as she flew farther out, beyond the sight of land.  Finally she dove, arms extended, into the face of a wave.  The sea was warm, salty and familiar but clear and thin like broth.  It offered no resistance.  She glided through the water as she had in the air, fingers stretched out before her, breathing with ease.  She kicked again and dove deeply to the clean sand bottom, rippled and empty as far as she could see.  She brushed her bare arms across it, scattering plumes of sand that rose into the clear water like smoke.  Shafts of pure light shot downward, and she ascended one as if climbing a rope, its heat warming her face.
 

She rose to the surface and floated lightly on her back, chin upturned to the rays of the sun.  In a moment, Sam was beside her, speaking her name.  He held her, and she wrapped her arms about his neck, the sea buoying them up together.  They floated as one on the waves until she heard him call her name again, this time from far away.  She turned to find him, but could not see him.  His voice faded in her ears and he was gone.  She launched herself into the air, speeding atop the water, searching for him in the blue depths until darkness obscured them.   

A wide cedar bench had been built behind her home, as wide as the back wall, and she was seated at one end, tucked into the corner where a curling armrest extended from the back.
  Her mother was at the other end, far away, intent on unraveling a long piece of cloth with her fingers.  
As she pulled the tangled threads from the cloth she separated them and discarded them onto the ground.  Where her mother sat, the bench was painted a solid bright blue like a cornflower.  Her end of the bench was unpainted.  She ran her fingers along the grain of the wood.  It curved and undulated in unearthly patterns like no wood she had ever seen.  She traced its lines, blending them together and separating them again as she closed and spread her fingers.  Beau stood between her mother and her.  His hands were covered in thick blue paint.  He spread it carefully on the bench with his palm, absorbed in his work.  She called out to him; she wanted desperately to stop him from painting her side of the bench.  He did not respond.  She saw that his bad ear was turned to her, and called out more loudly.  He continued to paint, elongating and shaping the wood with his hands as he went along.  He twisted the rungs into delicate spirals and used his fingertips to score deep ridges along the back rail, but he never came closer.  
 

She turned her eyes forward.  She saw that the house sat atop a high bluff.  Some ways ahead lay a wide expanse of marsh, flooded to form a broad pool.  A great distance away, at the far shore, stood a line of impossibly tall pine trees, their needled tops disappearing into the hazy sky.   The surface of the water was smooth as glass.  Save for the sound of the breeze, there was silence.  She heard faint cries far off.   The cries were ducks and geese calling.  Gradually, they filled the sky.  Flock followed upon flock, descending on the marsh before her: ribbons of Canada geese in deep V's, white snow geese, and dun-colored canvasbacks.  The marsh was alive with birds, calling and swimming, covering it like a fanciful quilt.