The Island - Part 4

by Michael Stark

  Joshua surprised me by noting that his dream was to be a concert violinist. Bits and pieces of each person spilled out until the only one left was Daniel. He had listened silently the entire time, his eyes as somber as ever.

  When Jessie had finished describing life in San Diego as a child, she turned to the boy.

  “How about you, Daniel? Do you have a story you want to tell? Any dreams for the future that you want to share?”

  Elsie stiffened and reached down protectively.

  Daniel thought for a moment.

  “I dream about ghosts,” he said finally.

  Jessie managed to frown and smile at the same time. “Ghosts? Who are they?”

  He smiled faintly. “Yours.”

  Elsie did pull him away then.

  “Come on, boy. It’s time for bed.”

  She paused and looked at me. “Hill William, why don’t you take the room downstairs? That place is too quiet for me. Every noise I hear has me lying awake wondering what’s outside.”

  I nodded and she turned back to the stairs.

  Jessie waited until the pair had disappeared before she tried to laugh off the sudden chill that had swept the room.

  “Now that was weird.”

  I licked my lips and turned away, listening to the voices eventually work their way toward laughter. I didn’t laugh. I knew better. Jessie wouldn’t make it through the winter. Whatever hopes and dreams she carried would die on this lonely, windswept island, far from the family she had just described in such a gentle, loving way. Somewhere on the sandy knoll where we’d buried Zachary and Gabriel, Jessie would find eternity.

  The pall Daniel had cast over the group lingered despite the attempts to turn the mood around. Tyler and Kate were the first pair to follow Elsie and Daniel up the stairs. The rest drifted off, one by one, leaving Kate and Devon to stand watch under the weak cone of light pouring down over the bar from Angel’s forward dome light. Keith had flicked off the two flashlights he had hooked up on the same circuit and blown out the lamp. With nothing but a single deep-cell battery powering the pitiful electronics at the station, consumption stayed on everyone’s mind. Dad’s windmill had proved to be a godsend. I’d be taking it with me though and none of them wanted the little light, weak as it was, to die in the middle of the night.

  I walked around the lower floor in what had become a routine check of doors and windows to make sure all the shutters Keith had made were drawn and barred and that the back door was secure. Devon and Kate had taken up a position near the end of the bar opposite the stairwell. That spot had become the chosen ground for watch-standers as it offered the only unobstructed view of both the front and rear entrances.

  The door to my new bedroom opened into stygian darkness. I pulled the lighter out of my pocket and thumbed the wheel. The dim yellow light revealed a clean and bare room with shutters pulled tight over the lone window. The more I looked at the space, the more I liked it. The dormitory atmosphere on the upper floor might provide a sense of security and comfort for the rest, but for me, working my way through sleeping bodies every morning at five a.m. without waking half of them was a chore I hated. The internal clock that sent me stumbling out of bed in the morning had been with me for years. I had no control over it. If Elsie wasn’t going to take the lower room, I could at least change where I slept.

  Sleep came easy as it always does with me. I can’t say that waking is such a simple process. Sometimes, I can go from dead asleep to wide-awake and functioning within seconds. Other times, crawling up out of the void is an exercise in feeling stupid and slow. Then there are instances where it takes a bit to remember where I am and to understand what’s happening.

  My mind told me that the woman crawling into bed with me was Jayne. I’m not even sure if I opened my eyes at first. I’m not sure it would have made a difference if I had. The bedroom had no light except for a thin slit at the bottom of the door.

  She was naked. Her hands groped in all the right places and knew what to do while they were there. A distant and faint voice in one corner of my mind buzzed a warning, but the rest of my brain accepted her as the same woman who had shared my bed off and on for two years. Somewhere in the process of her rising above me and settling down, the distant voice grew louder, screaming a bewildering hodgepodge of words like famine, pestilence, and island.

  I ignored it, and reveled in the sensation of a warm, tight, liquid heat working its way down, engulfing and squeezing me in ways that the instinctive side of my brain understood and welcomed. Comprehension didn’t dawn in the confusing haze until I reached up to pull her down. The low moan that slid through the darkness didn’t come from Jayne.

  It came from Denise, the girl who had stood next to the sand dunes wearing nothing but panties and a towel, the girl who had looked back at me and grinned.

  Chapter XVIII - Travels

  Denise was gone when I woke. Five o’clock in October means daylight is still more than an hour away. Devon and Jessie were on watch when I walked into the main room. Both looked tired. I told them I’d take the rest of the watch.

  I didn’t have to offer twice. Devon headed for the staircase the instant the words left my mouth. Jessie lingered long enough to make sure I didn’t want company. I had no doubt that she’d have stayed up with me if I’d asked her to, even though she looked as if she could barely keep her eyes open. I thanked her and told her no.

  She gave me a tired smile then and headed for the stairwell. I watched her go with a swirl of emotions running through me. Devon’s abrupt departure hadn’t surprised me in the least. Jessie hanging around until she was sure I was okay didn’t either. That brief moment in time defined them as much as any other interval that had passed since I’d known them. Jessie not only cared, but would also put herself second to see a job done, a person comforted, a task completed. Devon sat on the opposing end of that spectrum. He would work, but I could tell that he hated it. He’d stand watch, but the instant he could leave, he would. Devon did what he had to and nothing else.

  The girl had reached the stairwell before I called out her name.

  She turned and looked at me expectantly.

  “I just wanted you to know, I meant it when I said thank you. You’re a good woman, Jessie. We’re lucky to have you here.”

  Even in the dim light, I could see the color rising in her cheeks.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hill. I think we’re lucky to have you too.”

  I fired up the kerosene stove after she left and set the coffee pot atop the flame. The heat pouring off the burner felt so good in the cold morning air that I ended up building a fire in the wood heater as well. I knew it would burn out in a couple of hours, but the heat would knock the chill off the station and get us through to daylight.

  The warmth pouring up off the old stove as it cracked and popped reminded me of winter mornings at my grandmother’s when I was a kid. The only heat she had in the old house had been a woodstove in the kitchen. I’d wake up buried under blankets, dreading the thought of pulling on icy clothes. Then I’d hear pans rattling down the hall and knew that blazing warmth waited along with fresh biscuits, hand-churned butter, and honey from the beehive.

  Elsie slipped down the stairs a little after six and headed straight for the coffee pot. She poured a cup, sipped at it experimentally and pointed to the back door. The sky had lightened enough by then that I didn’t mind joining her.

  We sat in the little landing and smoked. The woman didn’t say much. I let her be, giving the caffeine and the tobacco enough time to get her brain moving.

  When she finally spoke, I found myself wishing she hadn’t.

  “I bet you’re feeling pretty good this morning,” she said. Her eyes glinted with humor.

  “Why’s that?” I asked as innocently as I could.

  She rolled her eyes. “Hill William, I am eighty-two years old. I know what two people in another room going at it sounds like.”

  I winced. “Was it that loud?”

  The
old woman pulled deep on her cigarette.

  “Let me put it this way. Next time you two want to make happy? Find a sock and put it in her mouth. I will say this though. It sounded like she had a good time.”

  “Oh come on, Elsie.”

  She snickered and puffed on her cigarette.

  I watched her for a moment.

  “You’re not going to ask me which one came traipsing down in the middle of the night?”

  “I know which one.”

  I scratched at my head wondering if I was stupid or just blind. “Okay, I give. How do you know?”

  She drew deep on her cigarette. When she answered, she ignored my question completely.

  “I told you them girls had eyes on you. Now, I suppose you could have been down there working out to your favorite Get Lean video but seein’ as how we have no video, no TV, and no power, I reckoned the gruntin’ and groanin’ meant you was otherwise involved.”

  The old woman reached over and slapped me on the arm. “Quit lookin’ like someone went and stuck a handful of flies in your soup. If I was you, I’d be plumb proud of myself. Think about it this way, Hill William, you get as old as me, you remember what it was like and how good it was, but all you got to play with is a horny old judge who would probably die on you.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh despite the fact that the potential for strife in the station had risen through the roof.

  “Yeah, well, you can think about how proud I should be when the rest get up and we’re all facing each other at the breakfast table.”

  She shrugged. “Moses is a big boy. My advice to people who figured they had troubles with their man or their woman was always to get over it. If you have to go fussin’ and fightin’ to keep somebody, in my book, they ain’t worth havin’”

  “I could agree with all of that to a point,” I told her, “but we all live in the same house. It’s not like any of us can move across town.”

  “You didn’t have no idea, did you?” Elsie asked with a frown.

  “That she was going to come down to my room?”

  The old woman nodded.

  “No. Until yesterday, she barely registered as a woman in my mind.”

  She huffed and rolled her eyes.

  “That’s because you’re a man. Men are like house painters where women are like artists. We go for the detail, the brush strokes that give life, the ones that have feeling. Men just slop it on and make sure they cover everything up.”

  I looked out across the hill sloping down behind the station. The sun had a ways to go before it would peek up at the edge of the ocean, but the landscape had brightened considerably in the past few minutes. I studied the outlines of the houses below, purposely giving myself time to let the irritation at her cavalier attitude die away.

  “Whatever,” I said eventually, “if last night was a painting, then it’s a damned messy one.”

  I stood up and stretched.

  “It’s time to get moving. Anything good for breakfast?”

  “Oatmeal,” she replied. “I’m trying to save the food Charlie sent. I don’t know if you noticed, but lunches are coming from the island. I use as little of the supplies as I can for those. Dinner we can do on seafood for a while, but breakfast bites right into what we have in those cabinets and they’re getting low where the first meal is concerned.”

  I shot a look at the chicken coop. “You think we might have a few eggs?”

  She shook her head. “I’d be surprised if there was. With the new place and all that bouncing around on the boat, it’ll be a few days before they’re settled enough to start producing. Even then, we might get two or three a day out of them. You’re looking at eggs for breakfast once or twice a week.”

  The old woman rose and slid the cigarettes and lighter into my jacket pocket. “Take those with you. Come on in now. I’ll fix us something to eat before you leave.”

  We had oatmeal with a dollop of butter and a squirt of honey. I had no idea how much butter remained. I could get more honey. My grandfather kept bees most of his life and had taught me how to find a hive. I couldn’t find or make more butter. Sooner or later, some items would be gone and we’d be without.

  I packed the last few items into the dune buggy after we’d eaten and checked the charge on the batteries. A touch at the back sent the needle on the meter high up into the green. I stood in the growing light, hoping the charge would be enough to cover the distance. The scenario that sucked most had me climbing out halfway down the island and leaving a dead vehicle behind me.

  The windmill sat in its mount, spinning slowly in the early morning air. Every revolution sent more electricity trickling down into the batteries. A few more minutes wouldn’t make much difference in the power level so I couldn’t use that as an excuse to wait until someone else had come downstairs.

  I glanced inside and saw Elsie washing up the breakfast dishes. She rose early every morning, but two people always greeted her. I’d sent the watch to bed and had no intention of leaving her alone in the kitchen. She would scoff if she knew the reason I lingered. Fortunately, I didn’t have to turn the morning into a debate. Fifteen years as a consultant and project manager had taught me the best way to avoid a confrontation was to engage people rather than dictate.

  I pulled the logbook I’d taken from Ark Angel out of my pocket and stuck my head in the door.

  Elsie stuck her head out of the door and frowned. “You not gone yet?”

  “In a few minutes,” I told her. “Come out on the porch. There’s something I want you to see.”

  Elsie came across the room scowling, wiping her hands with a dish towel. “What is it?”

  “Gabriel’s logbook,” I said as pulled it from my pocket. “I want you to look at it and tell me what you think.”

  We sat on the steps. Elsie dug her glasses out of her pocket and opened the book. I let her work through the entries to get a sense of the man. I’d done the same thing, peeling back page after page in a voyeuristic glimpse into the older man’s mind. Much of it had been dry commentary ranging from weather to courses laid out to the next destination.

  “This goes back almost a year,” she said after a few minutes.

  “He had a dozen more on his bookshelf,” I told her. “I don’t think the man had lived ashore in a long time. Take a look at the last few pages.”

  She skipped to the back. I sat while she read the final entries and the notes in the margins.

  “What’s a Kali Yuga?” she asked at one point, glancing up at me while her fingers rested on the handwritten words.

  I lifted my shoulders and spread my hands. “I’m not sure. If I take it in context with the rest, I’m guessing it has something to do with the end of the world.”

  The old woman nodded thoughtfully. “Some of this I recognize. This passage about the Four Horsemen is from Revelations. They represent war, disease, famine, and death.”

  She let her fingers trail down. “And this looks like Prophecy Rock.”

  “Prophecy Rock?”

  Elsie glanced up and peered over her glasses. “It’s a rock in Arizona filled with drawings. The Hopi’s say it foretells the end of this world and the birth of the next.”

  “Look at the last few lines.”

  She read the passages out loud.

  Your dead shall live. You who dwell in the dust, awake!

  A great destruction is coming. The world shall rock to and fro

  And there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.

  What is loosed upon you will confuse the healer and verily will eat his heart as surely as it will yours.

  She looked up and blinked. “Now, there’s a sunny disposition if I ever saw one.”

  I shot her a humorless grin. “Isn’t it? I don’t think that’s one quote. It looks more like different writings smashed up together. He had a book on the shelf called The Religions and Prophecies of Man.”

  Footsteps sounded in the
room behind us. The door swung open and Keith stepped out, yawning and scratching at the stubble growing on his face. His hair shot out at wild angles like he’d endured his own personal tornado at some point during the night.

  I rose and stretched. “Time for me to get going.”

  Elsie held the book up. I shook my head. “No, you keep it here. Let Daniel look at it.”

  The storm that slid across her features faded quickly. She stared up at me with flat gray eyes. “What is it you want to know, Hill William?”

  “Why Gabriel killed himself with a stick.”

  The younger man turned and headed for the door. “No discussions on death and dying before breakfast. That’s Keith’s rule, just FYI,” he muttered as he disappeared inside.

  I left the book with her and climbed into the dune buggy. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Keep them busy in there.”

  Elsie’s face still held the same stony look. “Remember what I said. Don’t bring anything back with you.”

  By the time I pulled around the edge of the dunes and rolled down onto the beach, the sun clung to the horizon like a giant red ball that had been sliced in half and laid flat across the line where ocean met sky. The water looked flat and oily. Tiny swells limped into the beach and fell as if so tired they couldn’t travel another inch. High cirrus clouds stretched across the heavens in a mackerel-scale pattern, their edges tinged with purple and pink. The jagged edges meant weather would move in soon, raising the specter of the newscast from the night before. We needed the rain, but I didn’t need lightning chasing me down the beach.

  The thought of driving through a downpour didn’t appeal to me either. I had no idea how the dune buggy would do with prolonged exposure to wet weather. The power came from batteries. A drop of water in the wrong spot could leave me stranded miles down the coast, standing next to a dead vehicle and scanning the tree line for the glowing red eyes I was sure would be watching.