The Island - Part 2
Title Page
Chapter VI - Stranded
Chapter VII- The Station
Chapter VIII - Bad Things
Chapter IX - The Others
The Island
by
Michael Stark
SMASHWORDS EDITION
PUBLISHED BY: Michael Stark on Smashwords
The Island
Copyright © 2012 by Michael Stark
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced without the author’s written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Forward:
This is Part 2 of the Island. If you’ve not read Part 1, go back and read it first.
You should be reading this free. If not, talk to your vendor or come see me at http://www.michael-stark.com/ for a list of places where you can get it free.
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Chapter VI - Stranded
I brought Angel in and tied her alongside the dock. Fears of tour boats running over her had faded with news of the ban. Any craft within miles would be headed to a real port, Ocracoke, Hatteras or south maybe, to Wilmington. With fenders in place to keep her from rubbing against the heavy wooden pilings, I set about getting ready for nightfall.
Elsie and Daniel had bunks aboard the boat. Bunk might have been an exaggerated term for what amounted to four inches of foam rubber laid over plywood. I doubted either would be complaining by morning. I knew what it felt like to sleep aboard with water lapping at the sides and Angel rocking gently. The effect went beyond soothing and ventured into the land of the comatose. I’d probably have to drag them both out come daylight.
I stretched a tarp across the cockpit, using the boom to make a tent over the exposed seats. The skies looked clear enough. The wind had picked up a bit too, meaning no dew-covered seats to dry with the backside of my pants. Not that I made a habit of drying seats that way. It’s just the way life worked. No matter how much I dried them with something else, within minutes of plopping down in the pilot’s seat my rear would be cold and wet. The tarp would rectify that problem before it became a problem. It would also keep the wind out of the cabin and leave it warmer for the old woman and the boy.
Once I had the boat secure, I grabbed the tent from the cabin and headed for the shore. A quick search along the undergrowth at the edge of the beach revealed the small opening that Joshua and the girl had used earlier. I eyed the break suspiciously and poked around the twisted mass of dead wood and weeds. The entire shoreline looked like a perfect haven for rattlesnakes and copperheads. Eastern diamondbacks could grow to seven or eight feet along the swampy coastline. I might have come to the island expecting to die, but I didn’t want to do it with a pair of holes gouged into my leg and my skin rotting off.
Inside, the path led through a thicket of brush and pine, rising gently for about twenty yards. Thick, hairy vines wrapped around many of the trees. The same plant, poison ivy, also grew as a shrub underfoot. I gritted my teeth and stepped inside, edging along a tiny walkway that was more game trail than footpath.
I emerged into a long, wide clearing, ringed by trees and carpeted with grass that looked more like a lawn than a field. Here and there aggressive and fast growing weeds popped up a thin, reedy head, but for the most part, the grass rose only a few inches high. Had anyone asked me to describe the place with one word, I’d have chosen glade. Most of the clearing lay in cool shade with the dying sun dappling the far end in wide swaths of golden light. Trees loomed again in the distance, but spaced far apart and devoid of the tangled growth along the beach. Nestled in a little green nook on the left side, gravestones cast long thin shadows across the grass. Unlike modern cemeteries where the tombstones stood in perfectly aligned rows, these rose like old and crooked teeth. A few looked to have given in to time and wind and collapsed. Others leaned at crazy angles as if threatening to join their fallen brothers.
Like the town, the graveyard had been abandoned, and it showed.
Wonderful. Not only did I get to sleep on the ground. I got to sleep with the dead.
The thought of eating with them had even less appeal. I had no idea where the center of the old town might be, but given the size of the island, it couldn’t be far.
I made short work of the tent, placing it at the edge of the sandy soil between grass and tree line and set about gathering firewood. The task proved easy enough. A past storm or series of them had washed tons of debris and dead wood up into the twisted tangle of trees and vines just up from the shore. I drug in large branches, even parts of trees downed or snapped in half by wind or water.
By the time I had finished, the sun had drifted low on the western horizon. Cool air settled in as the shadows grew. The bite in the wind carried the promise of a chilly, if not downright cold night to come. Elsie and Daniel passed by at one point, on their way across the opening to the graveyard. I let them go and worked on clearing debris away from a sandy spot I intended to use for the fire. Half an hour later when they came strolling back, I had a small, but warm blaze crackling and popping. Both looked cold. I waved an invitation toward the fire, but the old woman declined with a shake of her head.
When the flames died down, I scooped sand over the coals to keep them from blowing sparks into the nearby brush and to keep them smoldering. After the meeting, I’d rake the sand away, toss on a new batch of firewood and have a roaring fire going in a fraction of the time it would take to build a new one from scratch. Satisfied that the camp was as secure and comfortable as I could make it, I headed back to the dock to both hunt out a jacket and gather up Elsie and Daniel.
. To my surprise, Elsie had put together a veritable feast, with the left-over ham from lunch serving as the main course. She had stirred up a huge bowl of potato salad to go with it. A pot full of green beans sat next to it. Behind the ham lay a plastic grocery bag half full of freshly baked bread.
I looked at the pile of food sitting in the cockpit and grinned.
“I had more down there than you thought, didn’t I?”
She snorted.
“You got a mess down there is what you have. I’ve never seen stuff thrown around with such carelessness. One thing you are not, Hill William, is organized.”
I ignored the comment and pointed to the bread.
“Never mind where you found the stuff to make that. How did you make it? The whole cooking arrangement on this boat is a two burner stove.”
She rolled her eyes.
“See? That’s what I’m talking about. Do you even know what a Dutch Oven is?”
“A big pot with three legs,” I countered.
“Do you know how to use one?”
I scratched my head. She had me there, even though I didn’t want to admit it.
A grin of triumph slid across her face, but it didn’t last long. A scowl slid in to replace it. She wagged a bony finger at me.
“You need to do something about your bathroom facilities.”
The last word came out in exaggerated syllables like fa-cil-i-ties, all of them delivered with Elsie’s gray eyes glaring at me over the edge of her spectacles.
“I quit squattin’ a long time ago, Mr. Hill.”
“I wasn’t expecting anyone on this trip to be squatting anywhere,” I shot back.
“That’s cause you’re a man,” she said smugly. “Men never think of anyone but themselves - like this ham. You might be fine sitting around a fire gorging on a piece of meat, but most people want a bit of fixins. An
d most of them don’t want to crawl in a little corner to do their business either.”
I opened my mouth, and then promptly closed it. I’d seen how Elsie had stood up to Dwight Little, using nothing more than that little finger and sharp tongue to turn a monster of a man shaking with anger into one chastised and sulking. I had no desire to end up feeling like a schoolboy again.
Daniel stood behind her. He actually looked like he might grin. I wrinkled my nose at him and gathered up as much of the food as I could carry. Ham in one hand, potato salad and bread in the other, I glanced at the boy and motioned towards the seat locker next to me.
“Grab a flashlight out of there. We’ll need it coming back.”
I led them up the path through the thicket, and past my camp. Elsie noted the huge pile of wood I had dragged in next to the tent and smoking coals.
“It sure looks like someone is planning on staying warm tonight,” she said and shot me another glaring look.
I took a deep breath, looked up at a star forming in the darkening sky, and wondered what I’d done to get on her bad side.
Finding the others proved easy. One of them had built a huge fire in the middle of what turned out to be little more than a loose collection of buildings. Calling the place a town implied streets, sidewalks, signs - at least in my mind it did. Calling it a ghost town drew those same thoughts into images straight out of TV westerns. I half expected to see hitching rails, a saloon with a weather beaten sign creaking in the wind, even sage brush rolling down a dusty road.
In that manner, Portsmouth came off a bit disappointing. The buildings were spaced a good distance from each other. Hard packed, sandy lanes ran between them. Too narrow to call streets, too wide to call paths, they stood out like white veins against a wide open expanse of carefully clipped grass and trees so evenly spaced and healthy that the entire area carried a landscaped feel to it. Aside from architecture a century old, the structures stood straighter and probably cleaner than the days when Portsmouth actually had residents.
The place looked like a museum, which it was. The Park Service and local historic groups not only did the maintenance, but also watched over the old village during the summer months. The place even carried what had to be the only ban on the entire island. Campers could set up a tent virtually anywhere on Portsmouth except here, among houses built in an era when people lived simply and the ocean both gave and took life.
I winced when I saw the fire. Any other time, any other night, the meeting might conjure up a park ranger with a scowl on his face and a ticket book in hand. Hell, he might have even brought handcuffs.
Nine figures moved behind the dancing flames. In the dwindling light, it took a bit to find the familiar faces of the two who had greeted me at the beach. Joshua and the girl stood on the opposite side of the fire. Both had donned heavier, warmer clothing.
Although the meeting had evidently been planned as a social gathering, the people attending stood out in two obvious groups. Joshua and the girl had two other couples close by. Several feet away, two men and a woman sat in camp chairs pulled up close together. Looking at them, I felt old. While forty-two wasn’t exactly over the hill, neither group had anyone who appeared even close to thirty. I glanced at Elsie, wondering if she felt like a school teacher among a new kindergarten class.
Joshua waved. He seemed big on waving. I decided to humor him and waved back. He detached himself from his group and came around the fire. I introduced him to Elsie and Daniel.
She took one look at him and put her hands on her hips. “Joshua, now that’s a fine Bible name. But I have to say, you look more like a Moses to me.”
He laughed and began his own introductions.
The girl who had been with him at the beach still wore her ponytail. She was pretty in a hard kind of way. I don’t mean that as jaded. The woman had virtually no extra weight on her, leaving her face angular instead of rounded. She reminded me of a workout and diet guru, the kind of person who always fussed over extra calories and needed to lose another ten pounds. He introduced her as Denise Marten.
The two men with them were as different as two people could be. One was short, thin enough to be anorexic, and had the kind of features a graphic artist would love - high cheekbones and a nose carved so sharp that half his face glowed in the firelight while the other half dwelt in the land of shadows.
The other man stood half a foot taller and weighed at least a hundred pounds more. Joshua introduced him as Keith. He looked soft and out of shape. Where Devon came across as brooding and jittery, Keith could have doubled as Santa at Christmas. All he needed was a big white beard. He already had the belly, and the kind smile.
The two women, he introduced as Kate and Jessie. Kate stood taller, had shoulder length blonde hair and calculating eyes. She offered a trite smile when I nodded. Jessie’s hair was dark, longer and kept straying across her face in a wild, windblown tangle. She didn’t smile. She grinned at me, and then hugged both Elsie and Daniel. I couldn’t tell if she was simply one of those touchy-feely people who spread hugs and smiles from an internal need to be accepted, or if she was genuinely friendly.
Elsie settled that dilemma when she turned and breathed.
“That’s a good girl right there.”
The final three sat in folding camp chairs eight or ten feet away. They neither rose nor stopped working at the edges of pouches I assumed contained dinner. The woman sat in the middle. She had short dark hair, big eyes and an equally big smile.
She waved a plastic knife.
“I’m Kelly,” she said and pointed left then right. “That’s Zack, this is Tyler.”
Tyler looked up through a mop of dark hair. Describing his position as sitting stretched the term considerably. He looked more like he was trying to lie in the chair, with his ass perched so far forward it nearly hung off the front. Six inches of underwear lay bare above the top of his jeans.
“Sup?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” I replied.
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
I sighed, not wanting to start off on the wrong foot with anyone. Tyler though, invited the worst in me.
“To sup is to eat,” I told him. “Like I said, go ahead.”
I turned to Elsie before he could say anything else.
“Want to spread out here? I didn’t think to bring a tarp so I guess we’ll be sitting on the grass.”
Given her earlier mood, I expected a sharp retort, something reminding me again that I was male and rarely thought of others. Instead she smiled sweetly, her eyes full of humor.
“Yes, this will do,” she said and glanced towards Tyler. “I wouldn’t mind getting about the business of supping myself.”
Elsie’s dinner drew appraising looks from around the fire. I could understand why. The kayakers looked to be dining on military surplus MRE’s. The spread in front of Joshua’s crowd appeared equally skimpy and ill tasting with the bulk of it consisting of packets of dried noodles and soup.
“She cooked enough for everyone,” I said. “Save your packages. This stuff will go to waste if it’s not eaten tonight.
I didn’t have to offer twice. Faced with sterile, freeze dried food that would take rehydrating to be edible and a cast-iron stomach to be palatable; it didn’t take long for the line to form. I handed out thick slices of ham. Elsie scooped out large portions of beans and potato salad. Daniel even chipped in, passing out chunks of fresh bread.
I could have just as easily been passing out magic beans, with Friendly Potion Number 9 stamped on the side. Elsie accomplished something that evening much stronger and longer lasting than filling empty bellies with good food. She single-handedly tore down the walls that exist between strangers and erased the strain of meeting people for the first time. She did it, not with her wit, nor her sharp tongue, but with an afternoon of cooking and baking that provided the first common ground between us. Even the sudden tension I’d managed to build between myself, Tyler and his drooping pants vanished quickly.
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What began as three well defined groups occupying their own space, rapidly devolved into something more akin to a welcoming dinner. Conversation ebbed and flowed, becoming as infectious as the disease we feared. Laughter punctuated the deepening night like exclamation points scattered across a written page. Personalities emerged as tension faded. Devon who had seemed gloomy and withdrawn earlier, turned out to be the comic of the group, rising at one point to dance a jig around the remains of the ham before falling to his knees to worship the Gods of Pork and Salt.
Joshua, who had surprised me on the beach earlier, increasingly came across as quiet and introspective. Kelly, the lone girl in the group of kayakers, proved adept at extracting details out of people without coming across as prying. Once they discovered that Elsie had grown up on the island, she swiftly became the focal point of dozens of questions, and kept the group enthralled with tales that stirred life into a museum constructed of houses too clean, too pretty and too empty.
Colder air settled in as the evening progressed. The wind had been light all day, but by the time plates were empty and bellies were full, the breeze had freshened, coming stronger out of the north. The fire danced and billowed, casting wavering shadows across a nearby cottage. As the wind grew, people shifted closer to the fire, seeking warmth and reassurance from the flickering flames.
At a lull in the conversation, Joshua stood up and stretched. He looked like a caveman in the firelight with his tangled, wind-blown hair and dark beard. He and the ponytail girl didn’t fit as a couple. He seemed like he could be happy with a club and a couple of furs for clothes. She looked as if tolerating the situation was the best she could manage.
The two who appeared most at odds were Devon and Kate. She stood two inches taller than him, and sat slightly apart from the rest as if creating space between herself and the commoners. She rarely spoke. When she did, her sentences came across as aloof and detached. Devon on the other hand, bounced back and forth between party animal and brooding loner. Try as I might, I couldn’t piece together the spark that brought them together, much less held them together.
The Island - Part 2 Page 1