Blaze Island

by Catherine Bush

  She couldn’t hide her surprise at the sight of Caleb, come all the way from Pummelly.

  “I was at Cape House, right, the old house I’m fixing up, this side of the sinkhole.” Caleb freed the red jerry can from its bungee cord trap. “Sinkhole’s big as a crater. Track around Green Cove Pond was some muddy. Lost two big windows at the house.”

  Ruby was saying something about wires being down on the road between Frenchman’s Head and Shallow Bay. A town crew was working, but if they had to wait for a proper hydro crew from the other side who knew what day that would be, given the likely state of things over there.

  “Loading ramp took a hit when the ferry came in to dock last night,” said Aidan Burke, one of the ferry captains, waiting beside his tall truck. “The jammed ramp won’t go up again. Managed to get over to the dock this morning, some debris on the road but passable. Boat’s still in her berth and there’s a bit of coverage over on bayside but can’t get through to transport and unlikely anyone will be in a rush to think about us, let alone fly someone up to look at our boat or send another.”

  “So we’re all castaways,” said Ruby, without seeming fussed.

  No phones. No power. No boat. No water from the taps. Gasoline vanishing. On the island, they were used to the ferry breaking down. It broke with some regularity and sometimes took days to fix or for a replacement boat to be found. In winter, ice sometimes froze the bay impassably or the wind got up so high that crossings were cancelled for a week or more. They were used to supplies dwindling in the general stores and in Pierce’s supermarket, the only one on the island: no more meat or eggs or milk or store-bought bread or fresh fruit or vegetables come all the way from Ontario or California. Caleb and his mother were better off than most, with their own eggs and at least part of the year their own milk and cheese and vegetables. Even now, if the power outage were to last, his mother had ways to keep things cool in the old root cellar tucked into the hillside behind their house. They always kept a store of water on hand. If the contents of their freezer thawed, well, they still had the meat and fish they bottled each year.

  Outside Bakeapple House, Teresa Blake, lithe and short-haired, in jeans and a T-shirt, was beating rugs hung over the laundry line with a broom. Forehead furrowed, she threw all her weight into each thwack.

  “How’s it going, Teresa?” Caleb called after parking the quad in the empty little gravel lot.

  Teresa stopped her beating long enough to say, “How’d you get through?”

  Presumably she’d heard about the broken road. If so, did this mean that Anna and the men had given up expecting him?

  “Came through the barrens. How was the night here?”

  “House swayed a little. These guests, my goodness, you’d think they’d never been in a bit of wind before.”

  Teresa was not quite his mother’s age. Like his mother she’d once worked a government job in town. When Caleb had come to make the reservation for the old man, he’d caught her smoking in her vegetable patch with a sinewy woman named Kim from somewhere on the other side, the two of them vexed as teenagers at being caught. Caleb had seen them together before, walking along the road, slim Teresa, Kim with a motorcycle helmet slung over one arm, or sitting out on Teresa’s bridge, arms brushing. In the last few weeks, sightings of Kim had ceased, and Teresa, in his last encounter with her, had been brittle and snappy.

  “Are they in there now?” Caleb asked.

  “Oh, no,” Teresa said, “they’re off.”

  “Off?” The word in his mouth nearly swallowed him. “Off where?”

  “To check on their plane and see if they can find some coverage. I don’t know what they’re thinking. No one else has any. Even on the battery-operated radio — mostly static. Can’t be good over there, can it? Margaret and I keep checking. But one of them, the one with the hair, says his phone is special. So they’re after setting off with that woman, Anna, who seems to have some sense. I lent her my car. I’ve no idea when they’ll be back.”

  The wave of relief was equally head-pounding. Not off as in off the island.

  Like Cape House, Bakeapple House had been built by a long-ago ship’s captain. Inside, a mahogany staircase rose in a fancy curve to the second floor. Teresa had told Caleb how her ship’s captain, Noah Flett, rich off the salt fish, had modelled his stairs after some he’d spotted on a trading trip through the Bahamas. Her house was grander than Caleb’s but his had better views. It seemed wildly unfair that her windows should be intact while his were broken.

  Inside, voices drifted from behind the closed door that must lead to the kitchen. Margaret Hynes’s voice for one. A generator chugged from the far side of the house. Smells wafting through the door made Caleb salivate. Fish broth. Biscuits. Really, on a day like today Margaret ought to be taking the men down to the beach, lighting a fire, and treating them to boiled tea and fried pork chops.

  A commotion outside the front door snagged his attention. Roy Hansen was the first to enter, his appearance notably changed from the day before. He was still wearing the same corduroy jacket and sneakers, though there was no more silk cravat in his top pocket. His mane of hair looked windswept and uncombed rather than artfully dishevelled. He had the same air of authority but behind his sunglasses, his large face was taut and gloomy, cheeks unshaven. Len Hansen and Tony McIntosh stumbled through the door behind him, Anna at the rear. Caleb tried to catch her eye.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Could be better.” Without pausing, Roy passed Caleb and sank into a large, velvet-covered armchair in the middle of the sitting room.

  “The road beyond here has a sinkhole in it,” Caleb said. They might already know this, but he wanted to account for his tardiness. “On the other side of it, we’re virtually cut off, road’s gone, brook’s a river. I had to make a great circle through the Burnt Hills, got stuck in the mud, was some struggle to free myself.”

  “Is that where your PI is?” Len Hansen asked Anna, his voice carrying from the hall. Caleb had no idea what a PI was.

  “Out in the hills beyond,” said Anna.

  Len Hansen looked not quite as worse for wear as Roy, as if he’d combed his hair with his fingers. He kept patting the pockets of his crinkly jacket, likely searching for his phone. Tony McIntosh, who had the same scruffy air as the day before, went to join Len on the blue loveseat. “Did you find any coverage?” Caleb asked.

  “A little,” Roy said. When he looked up, his stare bored into Caleb. “We waited for you. Or some word.”

  “Yes.” Caleb licked his lips. “Well, it took a bit of time to get here this morning. Apologies. No phone service, is there.” He didn’t know where to look. “So how are things out, you know, in the world?”

  “Not good.” Roy’s gloominess was a miasma creeping through the room.

  From the loveseat, Len said, “Roy’s son appears to be missing.”

  “Well, now, I’m very sorry to hear that,” said Caleb.

  Roy said nothing, skin forming sinkholes beneath his eyes.

  From the doorway, clad in jeans and a smoke-coloured sweater, Anna said, “He left a note for his housemates saying he was off to a wildlife refuge —”

  “If he’d come with us, this would never have happened,” said Roy.

  “There was a huge storm surge along that part of the Massachusetts coast,” Anna continued. “Apparently the land’s still underwater, cabins and motels were swept away. His car’s missing and he hasn’t called or texted anyone. Roy received a message from his wife who’d had a message from his housemates.”

  “Roy,” said Len. “I still think you’re leaping to conclusions. All you know is you haven’t heard from him.”

  “Naoko asks him to let us know he’s alive, what kind of child doesn’t respond under such circumstances?”

  “Maybe there isn’t any reception where he is,” Caleb said. “Service is out. Like here. Or else his phone died.” Maybe the son didn’t have a special kind of phone, like Roy’s. There
were perils to having a special kind of phone — news reached you that you didn’t want — just as there were perils to not having one.

  “He could borrow someone else’s phone,” Roy said. “A thirty-foot storm surge washes ashore right where he’s supposed to be, water comes in for miles, utter inundation, scores of bodies dragged out to sea. Naoko tells me he went that way. What am I supposed to think?” He staggered out of the chair, leaving waves of disturbance in his wake. “Why would he do something like that?”

  “Presumably he didn’t know there was going to be a storm surge,” said Len, while Tony flexed his fingers on the wooden armrest of the loveseat. “Roy, the young man has a point. Could be his phone is dead and there’s no power to recharge it. Or there’s no service.”

  Roy was staring furiously out the window as if he wished to alter either the weather or the view. “So —” he swerved back to the room, “what’s with the meeting?”

  “I need to speak to Anna for a moment,” said Caleb.

  It was a relief to be away from Roy Hansen’s unrest, behind the French doors to the dining room, which Anna shut with a sharp click. She was somewhere between his age and his mother’s. She lived in the UK but wasn’t born there. That time Caleb had run into her on top of Bunker Hill during her first visit to the island, and asked her where she was from, she’d given a funny smile and, brushing the mauzy air from her eyelashes, said, The island of no trees. When Caleb asked if this was a real place, Anna, in her yellow rain jacket, had replied, Isn’t it fascinating that all the shops on this island are named for the women who run them? Then she took off along the path, back towards the old man’s house, a woman, but girlish and as nimble-footed as a fox.

  “Sorry to be late,” Caleb muttered, his stomach rumbling. “Where did you manage to find service?”

  “Near the ferry dock.”

  “Are they going to be able to fly out today?”

  “Roy wants to fly to Boston but I’ve a feeling nothing’s going to be moving in that direction, is it. We stopped by the airstrip. The plane seems all right, except Roy noticed a dent in the fuselage that wasn’t there before. Likely something flew through the air in the night and hit it. Obviously he’s upset about that.” They’d found Alf Harder at his house, Anna continued. He’d told them that without a phone signal there was no way for him to get hold of Gander flight control or for Roy to get a flight plan. Alf had his doubts as to whether the Gander airport would be open at all. Nor was there enough airline fuel on the island for a proper refuelling; with the ferry out of commission, there’d been no dangerous goods run that morning, which would have brought fuel over. “Alf doesn’t think the St. John’s airport will be open either, from what he gathered watching the news last night before the power went out.”

  “Text message for you,” said Caleb, scrabbling in his pocket for the note addressed to Anna from the old man.

  As she unfolded the crumpled paper, Anna’s forehead kinked. “Tomorrow,” she said. She didn’t smile, she licked her lips. “Now Alan wants to postpone the meeting until tomorrow.” This news seemed to unsettle her in a way the first postponement hadn’t.

  “Hard to imagine they’ll be going anywhere, especially if they don’t have fuel,” said Caleb. “And if he wants to meet them in at the cabin —” Caleb was guessing this; in his note to Caleb the old man had said he was heading that way — “well, those paths will be some muddy, Anna. Treacherous even. Likely it’s best to wait another day.”

  From the kitchen, Margaret Hynes exclaimed. Then came the softer echo of Della Burke, her niece, whom Caleb had gone to school with.

  “Tell Alan I’ll try. Did you speak to him this morning?”

  Caleb shook his head and told Anna, without supplying further details, that he’d received a note as she had.

  “I’ll say the trails aren’t passable. He’s trapped out there. Or something. Roy won’t be happy —” Anna’s singsong voice held tightness in it. It was odd to feel a kinship with her, both of them compelled to follow the old man’s orders, whatever they were. “He wants to get off the island as soon as he can.” With a sigh Anna said, “You’re going back to Pummelly now, are you?”

  Caleb hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I guess.”

  “Alan asks if I’ve seen Agnes. Agnes Watson. On the island. If you see him, tell him I haven’t. Have you?”

  “No.” This was news. First, that Anna seemed to know Agnes Watson, who had also come to visit the old man. Second, that Agnes was somewhere on the island and the old man didn’t know where she was.

  Len Hansen and Tony McIntosh were on the moist lawn, Len pacing as if walking along a wire, Tony puffing on a cigarette. Flushed with relief at the thought that he was done — with luck, for the rest of the day — and leaving Anna to return to the parlour where Roy must be, Caleb scuffed through the front door, just as Len said something about someone named Conor, trapped in a motel in North Carolina.

  “Well, you asked him to go down there, didn’t you?” Tony replied. “To check on that spiffy new estate of yours. What did you expect?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to stay overnight and get in a car accident,” said Len. “Anyway, he wanted to go. He built the place.” There was petulance as well as anxiety in his voice.

  “Sure hope it has pumps, Lennie, pretty exposed out there on Hatteras Island.”

  Both men turned at the creak of the door. Across the road, the harbour waters quivered, seaweed high on the rocks, a wooden stage, was it Edwin Harvey’s, half-pitched into the water. Woodsmoke rising from the houses that weren’t using gasoline generators pricked at Caleb’s nostrils.

  “So what’s going on?” Len asked, thrusting his hands into two of the many pockets of his sports jacket.

  “Anna’s going to talk to you.” Already Caleb felt surrounded as the men stepped close. It wasn’t exactly menace but the power these men brought from elsewhere rose like a slippery wall.

  “Tell us,” said Tony, whose bluntness wielded its own kind of power.

  “Well now, it looks like the meeting may be postponed until tomorrow.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Len.

  Sometimes things that felt impossible became possible. Caleb knew this from experience. Things that you never wanted to happen did. His power, it seemed, was to be the one to announce that.

  “Because of the storm. The flooding and the like.”

  “You got through, we got across the island. Granted we had to get around some downed wires, but we did,” said Tony. After sucking his cigarette down to the filter, he dropped it under one foot and dug his heel into the grass, rubbing the fist of his other hand through his slicked-back hair.

  “Well, yes,” Caleb agreed, eyeing the crushed stub. “But now gas is rationed. It’s running out. You haven’t seen the bogs on the paths out in the hills.”

  “Bogs,” said Len.

  “Did you come from out there?” asked Tony.

  “Thereabouts,” said Caleb warily. “Only not as far.”

  “You came on that thing.” Tony pointed at the mud-spattered quad. “Could we get to where he is on that?”

  “That’s right, yes. But you won’t all fit on a quad.”

  “You can find us another one. Or the woman who runs this place can. We’ll pay whatever we need to for gas. Or Len will. What I’m getting at is, if your director won’t come to us today, why can’t we go to him?”

  A tumult rose in Caleb’s brain. Whatever they were supposed to be doing together, the old man wanted it done tomorrow.

  Len stared at the quad, his body retracting. “That’s a lot of mud. And he mentioned bogs.”

  “Anna says you work for the company,” Tony said to Caleb. “What exactly do you do?”

  “I’m the site manager.” Caleb touched one of the business cards the old man had given him, deep in the recesses of his pocket.

  “What does that mean?” Tony demanded. Everything he said came out serrated, as if he wished to cut Caleb open like
a steak. Or hit him with a stick.

  “I look after some of the structures, do transport and the like,” Caleb said desperately. Should he hand the bent business card to Tony? The old man had told him they were to be used in emergencies. Was this an emergency?

  “Can we walk to where your director is?” asked Len. He at least was looking around, taking in water and road and the brilliant revelations of the sky.

  “Well, now, that would be a very long and muddy walk.”

  “Here’s the thing.” Tony fixed his bluntness on Len. “It’s a sad business, whatever’s happening with Roy’s son, I get it, but why should we wait till tomorrow? You need to seize the reins here, Lennie. Let Roy concentrate on the personal stuff and sorting the plane while we light out for the territory. We’ve got someone who can take us to this guy, their HQ — seems there’s something in what they’re developing. Even a patent if you make the right investment. They’ve got the goods, you got the jets to offer as a delivery system. You can make the move as well as Roy can. If you guys piss off, I swear someone else is going to muscle in here. You and me, Lennie, what do you say?”

  So much passed across Len’s face.

  What was Tony’s relationship to the Hansens, Caleb wondered. They seemed to know each other, yet they didn’t exactly strike him as friends. In his cheap leather jacket, Tony seemed a creature of another species.

  “So you can take us where we need to go?” Len loomed over Caleb.

  “Yes,” Caleb said, heart stuttering as a gull screamed. Why had he said that? Could he?

  Uncertainty didn’t leave Len Hansen. Certainty didn’t seem to come naturally to him. Caleb, too, felt as if he were falling off the edge of a cliff.

  “Okay, yeah, I guess that’s a plan then,” said Len.

  “Lennie!” exclaimed Tony, before dropping his voice. “Show some enthusiasm. It’s proactive brilliance.”

  “We’ll go now?” asked Len.

  “They’ll be serving you your dinner soon,” said Caleb.