by Amanda Dykes
A quick shine around of the lantern flings ghoulish shadows of a workbench and stool. An old canoe hangs from the rafters, creaking back and forth in the breeze. The paint on its hull looks freshly sanded, revealing bare wood beneath.
“Roy’s boat.” Jeremiah looks at her warily, as if unsure whether to say more. “Bob’s letting me try to restore it. I hope that’s . . . okay.”
It’s a moment before she realizes he’s waiting on her reply. “Oh! With me?”
“Well, you are his granddaughter. By rights, this is yours.”
It’s strange, looking at this vessel created by a man she never met . . . a man whose very blood runs through her veins.
“Yes, of course. It looks like it should be at sea,” she says.
“So do you.” Jeremiah’s eyes crinkle into a smile at the corners.
“Ha. I beg to differ.”
Jeremiah shrugs and steps aside as she explores the space.
In a far corner of the boathouse—the one marked by fire—the walls are cloaked in black, artifacts of hungry flames. A ladder stands there, stacks of wood shingles bundled in neat rows next to an orange power drill.
Jeremiah gestures to the corner. “I’m hoping to have it all repaired by the time Bob gets home.” A flicker of doubt crosses his face, but Annie is tempted to hug him for the way he speaks of Bob’s homecoming as if it’s a certainty.
“And here”—Jeremiah strides to the center of the barn-like space—“is your dragon.”
It’s a large block of something, as wide as ten of her and reaching nearly to the rafters, draped in paint-splotched drop cloths. Its shape is oddly lopsided, like it’s trying to be a perfect cube, but chunks of whatever is beneath are missing.
Annie approaches and with a tentative look at Jeremiah, lifts a corner flap.
Her pulse revs up, breath catching.
She runs her hands along the edge of the drop cloth until she has a wide grip on it, then flings it up into the air. Dust rains down, around, and upon them in sunlit shafts. Annie coughs, waving away the cloud, and the cloth pools into a pile on the ground.
Layer upon layer of containers are lined up in near-perfect precision. Some humble brown cardboard. Others, pristine—if dusty—hatboxes that look as if they’ve come straight from Bloomingdale’s. A dented oblong tin, lid secured in twine. Some are just oddly sized lumps, wrapped in packing paper or newsprint, scrawled with an address. The packages speak of every walk of life. They look to have hailed from shanty towns and mansions and everywhere in between. Each one, like those in the closet inside the house, marked with a number.
“Rocks,” Annie breathes. Jeremiah flashes his gaze to her.
“You knew what they are?”
She shakes her head. “No, not these. But there’s a closet inside packed full of boxes just like this.”
“They’ve been here since you were a kid?”
Again she shakes her head. “Those in the closet weren’t there when I was here. But these . . .” She picks up one from the corner. A neatly opened flap of the brown packing paper is postmarked 1964 and reveals a Knox Gelatine box inside, its lid open to reveal a Sedona-red rock inside. “It looks like these have been here awhile.” She narrows her eyes. “How did you know what was in them?”
He looks sheepish, shrugs. “I’m the postman.”
“That means nothing.” Annie shoots him a look that says she can see right through his nonexplanation. “These are from decades ago. And they’re addressed to . . .”
She squints in the low light to read the address. Postmaster, Ansel-by-the-Sea, Maine. “Oh.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have looked. But when you find something like this”—he sweeps an arm over the scene before them—“in a place like this”—she follows his gesture at the shadow-dancing walls—“sometimes you just have to snoop.” He stuffs his hands in his jeans pockets. “And it is addressed to Postmaster.”
“A job you did not come here to take,” she reminds him, replacing the box.
“And yet, here I am.” He pulls that dimpled half grin.
“But what does this have to do with Bob?” she asks, serious again.
“No clue,” Jeremiah says. “But there’s one thing I do know.”
Annie waits, listening.
“Town meeting tomorrow. If you want the best chance of finding out, that’s the place.”
The next evening finds Annie walking Market Road, white buildings adorned with flower boxes spilling over with red geraniums and blue lobelia. Its European feel ushers her back to evenings spent walking the streets of Alpenzell.
She shifts the still-warm pie over to one hand, shielding her eyes against late sunlight to scan the buildings around the square. Jeremiah had warned her that to “get in” with this crowd, she’d need two things: to be born and raised in Ansel, and to bring food. Since she had no chance at the first, she’d spent extra time on the second, pulling out an old family recipe that was famed around these parts. She checks her watch—6:50. A respectable ten minutes early.
She crosses the green and enters the library. At least . . . she thinks it’s the library. Last time she was here, it had just been an old railcar, pulled from the abandoned track behind Birchdown Mountain and outfitted with floor-to-ceiling shelves along its walls. Now the old red railcar appears to be the foyer for a new building rising up behind it.
She steps inside and crosses the narrow space to the double glass doors, through which she sees a small clutch of people have already gathered. A woman presides at a table in front of three rows of chairs framing an aisle. They appear to be in session. Had she gotten the time wrong?
Pulling the door open as quietly as she can, she winces at the sound of its creak. Immediately, all eyes are on her.
“Can we help you?” The woman at the front looks at Annie over wire-rimmed glasses.
“I’m so sorry,” Annie says. “I thought I was early for the town meeting, but—”
“You are, dear,” the woman says, her voice softening a bit. The brass nameplate in front of her says Margie Lillian. “This is a meeting of the Ansel Keeping Society. We adjourn in five minutes, at which time the town meeting shall commence.”
Annie is caught off guard by Margie’s formal speech.
“You can wait outside in the foyer.”
Annie withdraws, thankful for the shadows of the railcar, its humble comfort. She takes a seat on a long wooden bench next to the glass doors, and drinks in the magic of this small space. She imagines the journeys the railcar must have been on, the people it must have carried in its heyday. The children flooding it for story time when it was the little library on the green.
It’s fitting, she thinks, for the keeping society to meet here. They are the keepers of history in towns too small to warrant full-on historical society meetings, and it appears they’ve turned the railcar into their own display room of artifacts. A worn calico day dress with sprigged yellow bouquets presides at the head of the room from behind a glass. It looks more like something a southern farm girl would wear than a lady from the wilds of Maine. The front door is flanked by oil portraits depicting the beloved town mascots from the sixties: Homer the Maine coon cat and Johannes the dolphin. Bob used to tell her tales of the unlikely friends who skirted the harbor together. One picture shows Homer crouched over the seawall, resting a paw on Johannes’s bottlenose. In the other, Johannes buoys himself enough to rest the underside of his dolphin beak on the cat’s head, as if dubbing him knight. For a time, the pair drew in crowds from nearby towns, who came just to eat popcorn on the harbor benches and watch their antics.
Annie makes a mental note to return to further study the displays when she can spend some real time in this treasure trove. It’s things like this that send her heart skittering, wanting to preserve the character of this place, to plumb its history and preserve its future.
No. A sharp pang at the memory of what she does to places like this when she tries to help stops that train of thought cold. Redirec
ting her thoughts, she again practices in her mind what she’ll say to these people who know her so little and yet know more of her own family’s story than she does.
The door creaks open, and Arthur steps out. He flips the Keeping Society sign over from its suction cup hook on the glass, so that it now reads Ansel-by-the-Sea Town Meeting.
“Come on in, Emma.” He winks. “Just kidding. I mean Annie.”
She follows him inside, where small groups are talking throughout the sun-bathed room. Sully, white braid swinging down her back, is making the rounds with a silver platter.
“Scone?” she says to a man who is holding up his cell phone as if it’s a beacon. He pushes a button, and the colored screen freeze-frames on an image of Sully with a hopeful open-mouthed smile.
“Remarkable,” he says, turning the phone in his hand.
“Did that contraption just take a picture of me?”
“Sure did. Pre-market technology. Everyone will have one within a year from now, if you want my guess.”
Sully waves him off. “Who needs a phone that takes pictures? That’s what cameras are for. Passing fad, if you ask me.” She raises her platter until it’s nearly in his face. “Care for a scone?”
“Why, sure, Miss Sylvia. Thank you kindly.”
Sully scurries off, radiant to have found a taker, and Annie watches as the man takes a bite—or tries to. He crunches down hard on it, and the triangular pastry crumbles to smithereens. He fumbles, trying to catch the downpour of crumbs, and drops his phone in the process.
Annie grabs it and hands it back as he brushes crumbs from his button-down white shirt. He looks out of place here, more Wall Street than Ansel. Mid-fifties, hair salt-and-pepper and combed with care.
“Thank you.” He offers a handshake. “Richard Wilkins. People call me Rich.”
“Annie Bliss.” She shakes his hand, and points at his cell phone. “Do you have service here?”
He laughs as if she’s just told the joke of the century. “No, ma’am. No one in Ansel does. That’s the draw of the place, you know.”
He grins and gestures to an open seat near his when the lady up front hammers her gavel like she’s a judge. Margie Lillian stands, turns to face a flag hanging from the railing of the loft above and behind her, and begins to lead them in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Arthur twists in his seat in front of them to face Rich. “Looks like we might get by without seeing that rascal.” He raises his eyebrows in glee, but just then, the door creaks open behind them and in strides Spencer T. Ripley.
“Spoke too soon,” Rich grumbles back to Arthur.
“Pardon me.” Spencer gives a quick bow to the lady up front. “Are we open for public comment?”
“Does it look like we’re open for public comment?” Ed chimes in from across the aisle.
“If you’ll have a seat, please,” Margie says coolly.
Margie takes attendance for the three selectmen present—herself included—and gives the agenda. One man stands to give a state-of-the-roads address, citing multiple potholes and one oversized sinkhole from the winter. Another man gives an update on the upcoming Lobsterfest.
“We’ve got vendors coming from all over the state,” he says, and the room buzzes with excitement. “Of course, we’re hoping to bring in the usual revenue, but more than that, we hope to attract new folks to these parts for good. So Starboard Home Realty has generously offered to be our main sponsor and will be hosting open houses all that weekend.”
Rich leans in to Annie and whispers, “This town’s dying.”
Annie’s pulse picks up. “What do you mean?” She whispers, too, not wanting to incur Margie’s wrath.
“Can’t keep the young people here. No jobs. Tourists only come in summer, and not so much anymore.” He shrugs.
“Is there something you’d care to share with the group, Mr. Wilkins?”
Rich stands. “Yes, ma’am, if you’re amenable to it.”
Margie Lillian checks her watch, and the agenda paper in her hand. “If it’s relevant to the issue at hand, proceed.”
Rich scoots past Annie, up to the microphone at the end of the center aisle. He leans in and clears his throat, as if he’s about to give an address to a coliseum.
“I propose to offer the services of my Skyblaster 3000.”
The audience exchanges befuddled glances.
Margie slips into monotone questioning mode. “And can you tell us what a . . .”
“Skyblaster 3000,” Rich says, feet shifting as if he’s a kid in line for a roller coaster.
“Yes. Do tell us what that is, please.”
He pulls his hands from his khakis and waves them overhead. “Picture it.” His voice sounds as if he’s attempting the drama of a movie trailer, but he doesn’t quite have the timbre to pull it off. “Lobsterfest. Epic summer festivities. People drawn from miles around. Why?”
Ed cups his mouth and pipes up. “For the lobster!”
Rich points at him. “Yes. For the lobster. And because of the light, streaking across the sky, summoning people from far and near. Sixty thousand lumens, pulling them in.”
Arthur hangs an elbow over the back of his metal folding chair and shifts to face the man in the aisle. “Why’d you up and buy a searchlight, Rich?” Then he twists to face Annie and whispers loudly, “That guy is always buying some new gadget. Came to us from New York and seems like he wants to bring that whole city here, one gadget at a time.”
Ed chimes in again. “Why’s he do anything? He’s rich!”
A wave of laughter curls over the small crowd, appreciating the pun.
Rich draws back a little. “I . . . bought it for hunting.”
A dark-bearded man stares at him. “You don’t hunt.”
Rich raises a finger. “But I might!”
“And you bought a searchlight? What are you hunting? Godzilla?”
Another voice pipes up. “They make hunting lights, you know. The kind that aren’t so powerful they’ll chop down the whole north woods.”
“Go big or go home.” Rich shrugs.
A woman across the aisle pauses her knitting and shakes her head. “City folk. You can take them out of the city, but you can’t take the nonsense out of them.”
“Listen,” Rich says, his smile good-natured in spite of their jesting. “The fact is, we’ve got a powerful searchlight that we can use to make a big impact during Lobsterfest. Take it or leave it.” He steps away from the mic, then leans back in. “But I hope you’ll take it.”
He returns to his seat, whispering “Skyblaster!” as he fists his fingers in triumph and winks at Annie.
The lady knitting stands. “Public comment?” she asks. Margie Lillian gestures her toward the microphone. Spencer T. Ripley looks irked. He hops to his feet and lines up behind knitting lady.
She begins to speak, standing at least two feet from the microphone.
“Lean in, Mrs. Blanchard,” Rich urges. “This is being televised.”
“For who, young man?” She plants a hand on her hip. “Most of the town is here!”
“It’s your moment.” Rich winks. “Lean in.”
She obliges. “I don’t think we need a searchlight, Rich.” Her voice is so kind, like molasses, that her words come out sounding like a favor rather than a censure. “Look at everything we have already. The tides—biggest in the country! The lobster—best there is. The stars—which we wouldn’t want to drown out. Part of the reason people come to Ansel is because there’s no light pollution here. Not even streetlights.” After a pause she continues. “And the growin’s. People always like to see the growin’s.”
Annie has never heard of the growin’s. It sounds strange, even for Ansel. She makes a mental note to ask about it later.
With a smile Mrs. Blanchard sits down, and Spencer T. Ripley steps up to the microphone.
“Good evening,” he says with a polish that clashes with his youthful face. “As you know, the Committee for Excellence in Maritime Poetry i
s in the final stages of planning the First Annual Summit for Excellence in Maritime Poetry. As a courtesy, I come bearing the latest developments. . . .”
He drones on, and the more intense he becomes about the details of his summit, the more detached the audience seems. Annie almost feels sorry for him. After speaking of agendas and breakout sessions for both iambic pentameter and free verse—“If you can believe that!”—he finally closes his black portfolio. Just as he’s about to duck away from the microphone, something he says makes Annie sit straight up. “Our plans remain unchanged for the presentation of the lifetime achievement award to your very own Robert Bliss. The committee sends their well-wishes for his swift recovery and looks forward to his acceptance of this prestigious award.”
He directs that last bit at Annie, whose face warms red. She’d been to the hospital again today, praying the very same for his swift recovery. She can tell the whole room has put up a wall between themselves and Spencer. She’s teetering on the edge of it—wanting to earn their trust but desperate to learn whatever history Spencer knows about Bob.
“If there are no other public comments at this time—”
Sully hops up, platter in hand, and steps to the microphone. Margie gives a reminder that public comment should be limited to three minutes, and Sully dives in fast.
“There’s a light coming into my windows at night,” she says with disgust. “Now, you all have been most welcoming to me since I came off the mountain, but try as I might, I can’t get to sleep because of that light.” She goes on for several minutes about her conundrum, and when she’s given the thirty-second warning, she starts moving around the room, distributing her scones and ignoring Rich’s whispered hisses to get back to the mic.
Annie leans forward, asking Arthur, “What’s she doing?”
“Smart,” he says. “She’s extending her time by distracting them.”
“But the scones are . . .” Annie stops herself. She doesn’t want to be unkind.
“Worse than eating dirt? Doesn’t matter. Food’s important to these folks.”
She thrusts one at Annie, who takes a tentative nibble of the artifact as Sully returns to her microphone and points at Ed.