by Amanda Dykes
“They were an invitation to come here,” Ed says. “As close an invitation as I needed, anyway. So I switched directions and headed north. Worked when I needed to, walked whenever I could. I must’ve looked like Moses himself, with a beard long as the Nile and covered with the grime of the road, when Bob found me. I’d reached the end of the country, the end of my rope, the end of having hope to ever help someone, after all that with Michael. I had only a soiled newspaper clipping and a simple rock from a grave site to my name. And there Bob came, whistlin’ down the road, pocket bulging.”
Ed closes his unseeing eyes around the memory. “Bet you can just see it. Bob comin’ upon a person new in town from away. Far, far away. So far he don’t rightly know where he’s come from or where he’s going or why he should even keep on or whether he will. Gangly fella without a cent to his name, looking like ten thousand yesterdays piled in a heap, sittin’ on a rock at the jetty.”
Ed pauses, and Annie realizes this is her cue. This is a dance, as it should be. He offers a story, she receives it, shows she’s going to care for it. “Yes,” Annie says. “That sounds like Bob.”
“I bet this does, too. He pulled a wad of cash from his pocket. He was on his way home from hauling in the day’s bugs.” He uses the Mainer word for lobsters. “Melvin down at the dock had paid him thirty dollars even. Come to find out later, that was all the money he’d got all week, but Bob looked at me and said, ‘Here’s thirty dollars. It’s yours if you’ll help a guy out.’”
“And . . . did you go with him?” Annie loves picturing this. A younger Bob, seeing right into somebody the way he always has.
“Yep. Didn’t care so much about the money as the other thing he said.”
Annie’s eyes flick side to side as she recalls. “Help a guy out?”
“It probably didn’t seem like much to him. But to me . . . they were the words of life. A chance to do something good for someone, though I knew deep down it was him doin’ something good for me.
“It was then I took to this island, nowhere else to stay.” He inhales deeply, soaking this place in. “When the world gets to feeling too awful big and dark, it’s time to get on an island.”
Annie nods. “I can see that. An island would offer some . . . refuge, after all you’d faced.”
Ed’s smile is slow and knowing. “That’s what I thought, too. I needed away from it all. But I tell you what, a few decades on a piece of land surrounded by sea tell a different story.”
His voice holds a spark of invitation, just waiting for her to ask.
She obliges. “Oh?”
“It’s not the isolation that’s medicine for the soul. No, ma’am. See, an island is a world unto itself. And if God can keep the tides comin’ and goin’, if He can use the sky itself”—he leans forward, elbows to knees, truncating the last three syllables into exclamation marks—“to pull back an entire ocean, just roll it clean away twice a day, easy as pie . . .” He whistles down like a waterfall. “Why, then He can walk us through this life. Did it at the Red Sea. Does it for us now. One step at a time. There’s little here to get in the way of seein’ that, and boy, did I need to see it.”
This unsettles Annie. These words might crack right into her thinly ordered universe. She had grown comfortable with the idea of God only being a creator, someone who maybe watched things from afar off. But this God that Ed speaks of . . . He seems close. Powerful.
She clears her throat and tries to encourage him on in telling his background. “It made a good home, then?”
He takes the subject change in stride.
“Yes. I couldn’t afford a house, so I pulled planks from the sea. Maybe the country denied me a home, but the waves went so far as to do the sanding down for me and deliver my materials right to my doorstep.” He gives a wry laugh. “Maybe it wasn’t much to speak of for most, but it felt like a mansion to me. With meaningful work to do and the sea singin’ me to sleep . . . I think I became a small bit human again.
“When Bob found out I was livin’ out here on the island in a driftwood shack, he and some of the others came over and built this cabin. Brought the logs over from his family land up the mountain. Just towed ’em behind his boat, and before I knew it, this here house was mine. The house that Bob built.”
Annie can almost feel the walls smiling, keepers of another of Bob’s secrets.
Ed blows his cheeks out and stands, moving toward the door. “Best be gettin’ on,” he says. “Else the water will swallow us all right up.” It’s jarring, to be summoned out of his tale so abruptly, like waking from a vivid dream in a world before her time.
The man is up and out the door, hat on head, shoes in one hand, clam hod in the other, ready to be filled with the day’s bounty. Wind whips around him, and he stands tall nonetheless.
Annie has to work to keep up with him as she and Jeremiah follow. They stop first on the south end of the island, where he plucks a solar lantern from a tree branch. “Tell me somethin’.” He places his hand over its light sensor. “This shining?”
The lantern blinks on, bright as can be.
“Yes,” Annie says, and looks across to the next island. Sure enough, Everlea Estate stands there like a grand Victorian lady. “Can I ask why you put the lamp here?”
He tucks it behind the tree, on the ground, where Sully won’t see it. “Just thought she’d like a sign of life, alone out there on her island. Sometimes a body likes to be reminded there’s a heart beatin’ close by.” He slides his foot over to it, pushing loose dust up against it, and chuckles. “Guess old Ed doesn’t know as much as he thought.”
He leads the way back across the island, and as they arrive at the sandbar, which is quickly narrowing in the rising tide, she thanks the man. The haze of his story world has cleared in the bluster out here, and there’s a question pressing in.
“Mr. Ed,” she says, “how was GrandBob involved with you and Hosea?”
Ed stops, back to her. Drinking in the air, drinking in the past.
“Hosea’s father deserved to be honored,” he says at last. “Your Uncle Bob helped me find a way to do that.”
She waits, hoping he’ll explain. What way? She pleads the question silently, something telling her his answer is just the tip of the iceberg.
“Best be gettin’ back to the cabin.” He points at her. “You left your knapsack.”
Annie grabs her side where her bag should be hanging. He’s right.
Warily watching the rising water, Jeremiah says, “I’ll go. You start back. I’ll catch up.”
Annie’s torn—Ed tromping over the thin line of sand, Jeremiah jogging back to the cabin.
“Go on,” Ed hollers back at her. “Time’s a-wasting.” He chuckles, and takes the rest of his story on with him.
She starts to run after Jeremiah.
“Annie.” Ed’s voice is solemn again.
She turns to see him, back to her, head hung in thought. He then lifts it to the sky, letting the beginnings of soft rain baptize his deeply mapped face with fresh life. He waits, as if trying to choose his good-bye. “How does a blind man, with no boat, who can’t swim, cross an ocean?”
Is this a riddle? “I don’t know. How?”
The way he turns and faces her, eyes alight with a sight sprung from his darkness, makes her hold her breath to hear his words and hear them good.
“One step at a time.” He winks, tips his worn-down fedora toward her like the gentleman he is, as if he’s spreading all the warmth and welcome of the south right at her feet. “Answers are right in front of us, most times. ’Specially when something seems impossible. You’ve just got to open your eyes.
“And,” he adds, in the tone of an afterthought, “don’t wait too long to go there.”
“Go where?” Annie takes a step toward him.
“The growin’s. Bob’s island. I think you’ll find some answers there.” He sinks his callused feet into the wet sand, and a slow grin starts as he shakes his head in appreciation. “Mm-
mmm.”
He sets off. In a chain of movements that should have been stilted and harrowing, his leaning in to the driftwood cane, stepping out and digging his toes into his Maker’s earth, Annie’s breath catches. The more so as a song starts—“Be Thou My Vision”—rolling in deep and slow in his rich voice. She watches his complete abandon, haunted by the fullness of the song of this man with two letters to his name and a million to his story.
The blind man walks on, leaving her in an unleashing sky.
fifteen
Annie pounds up the small rise, into the wooded part of the island. The rain is bucketing now. She passes the driftwood shanty, finally curves into the cabin clearing, and blinks away water—only to collide straight into something solid and warm.
Hands wrap around her shoulders, steadying her.
“In a hurry?”
Jeremiah’s eyes swim with mirth. She stares, momentarily caught by the way the rain falls on his face, clean and rugged. He tips his head toward the overhang over the porch. It’s shallow but gives them some protection from the rain.
“Thank you,” Annie says, catching her breath, “for coming back for my bag.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” He nods toward the house. “Ed’s taken it captive in there.” He mutters something about Ed being up to his old tricks.
“What’s that?” Annie asks.
“Nothing.” He lifts his baseball cap, then sets it back in place. “The man just sees more than he lets on.”
Annie can agree with that. His words would not soon leave her. Still, if they find a way in, maybe they would still have time to make it to “America.” She jiggles the doorknob to no avail. “The sole resident of an entire island, with an ocean for his personal moat, and he locks his door?”
“Some habits die hard,” Jeremiah says. “The man was in charge of securing an entire college building for a decade.”
The wind punctuates that thought with a gust, shoving rain sideways at them.
“How long does the sandbar stay open?”
Jeremiah snaps his fingers. “I forgot to check the sandbar hours when we came. Was the neon Open sign flashing when you last checked?”
Annie rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“I do, and I think we missed our chance,” Jeremiah replies more seriously.
Annie shivers. “When does it . . .” She searches for the right term. Open back up was about to come out, but she didn’t want more of Jeremiah’s clever remarks. “When’s the next low tide?”
Jeremiah checks his watch. Annie looks on—it’s ten thirty. They’d passed nearly two hours with Ed, and it had seemed only a few moments.
And now they were stuck.
“Around eight tonight. We will be able to get across a while before that.”
Annie, hands planted on her hips, spins around, surveying the lay of the land. Trees, trees, boulders, rain . . . and a locked cabin.
Jeremiah shifts his bag, and a thought strikes Annie. A hand flies to her mouth. “Your mail,” she murmurs. “I’m so sorry. I’ll help you deliver it, I’ll make up for this—”
“Relax,” he says, and starts to walk back up the path. “How’s it go? Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor—”
“Nor gloom of night,” Annie fills in for him.
“Right. None of that will stay us couriers from our rounds. Doesn’t say a thing about tides. Or forgetful people-detectives who leave their belongings in locked cabins.”
“This could turn into a pretty bad storm though, yeah?” She tries to keep her voice casual, all the while recalling Bob’s tales of fierce nor’easters that swept down the coast with a vengeance. Or thunder squalls, pouncing out of nowhere and churning those waves into giants to be reckoned with.
“This?” Jeremiah waves the notion off. “It’s nothing.” He veers to the right, toward the driftwood shanty. “This’ll keep us.”
Once inside, he pulls up a stump and sits in front of the hearth, motioning for her to take the stool.
But Annie is doing the math, looking around the place warily as the wind howls its warning moan. Eight hours, it laments. Eight hours before I release you back to the world. . . .
She gulps. “Be right back.” And ducks out, returning with an armload of mostly dry wood.
Jeremiah gives an approving nod. “Good thinking,” he says. “Where’d you find that? I’ll go for more.”
“Underbrush,” Annie says as she sets to laying the fire. One log horizontal, two logs leaning on it to form a lopsided tent of sorts. Just the way Bob taught her. “In the trees. If you dig a little, it’s not so damp down there.”
Jeremiah lingers a moment, his gaze on her.
“Could you get some tinder while you’re at it?” she asks, stacking the rest of the wood near the hearth to dry out and laying some twigs inside the log-tent for kindling. She stands up and looks around. “What are the chances we’ll find some matches here.”
Jeremiah gives a quick light whistle to grab her attention, and when she looks he tosses her something small and metal, pulled from his messenger bag.
“A lighter?”
“Mrs. Blanchard’s pilot light. The way the wind takes to her house, I learned fast to carry that with me always.”
When he returns, he’s got a huge armload of wood, and Annie’s got the fire going.
“The chimney smoked a little at first,” she says, “but I think it’s all clear now.”
They settle into their makeshift seats, and Annie rubs her arms through her sweater, warming goose bumps away.
“So, you forage a lot for firewood in Chicago?” Jeremiah leans back and crosses his arms.
Annie laughs. “Yeah, in the concrete jungle, for my fifth-story walk-up with no fireplace.”
Jeremiah’s grin adds more warmth to the room. “So how’s a city girl know how to whip up a fire like that? Wait, let me guess. Bob.”
Annie smiles. “Yes, and no. Bob taught me the basics when I was a kid, but a year in the Alps living in a drafty stone hut drove me to the woods for kindling.”
She rarely—no, never—talks about her time in Alpenzell. The shame had a way of flooding in whenever she thought about it. But Jeremiah waits, head tilted, asking for more of the story.
“I spent some time there working for a village, right after college,” she says, thinking that’s about all he’s going to get. But he just waits there, listening. Maddeningly.
And maddeningly, part of her wants to tell him. To confide it all and leave it once and for all. If that’s even possible.
She sighs, remembering the beauty of that place. Not unlike Ansel, actually, with its tall pines, wind whispering through bending boughs, snow running in veins down the mountains. Cobbled homes and humble, hardworking people. One crack in the dam of memories, and they’re flooding the place as she tells Jeremiah.
“They were in trouble,” she says. “They had one employed person in the whole village, and that was the mayor. The rest were retired artisans, all the young people lured away by jobs in cities. It was a town ‘on the verge of extinction.’ I thought . . . I don’t know. I’d gotten good grades, studied how people thought and worked and how societies built and thrived.” She lifts a shoulder, drops it. “I thought I could help.”
Jeremiah leans forward. “And . . . did you?”
“I hoped so . . . at first. We put on an artisan festival that summer. People came from all over to buy the yarn, watch it being spun, taste the cheeses. . . . And they kept saying, ‘I wish I lived here.’” She smiles. “You’d understand if you saw the place. Enough people said it, that this idea I had . . . it was drastic, but it didn’t seem completely preposterous.”
“What was it?” Jeremiah looks truly intrigued.
“I thought we could use the village funds and all the empty cottages as incentives.”
“For . . . ?”
“To draw people in. Promise them a free home, and a small moving stipend, if they’d relocate.”
Jeremiah
leans back, crosses his arms, thinking. “It sounds . . .”
“Stupid? Naïve? Shortsighted? I know.”
“I was going to say creative.”
Remorse drags her tone down. “I drained the town’s funds in advertising and stipends. And do you know what happened?”
Jeremiah shakes his head.
“People came. Stayed a month, two, maybe three. And then . . . they left. Just up and left for their real homes, back in the cities that had stolen the village’s life to begin with.”
Jeremiah blows out his cheeks, exhaling and shaking his head. “People are jerks sometimes.”
“Yeah. I was the jerk. I should have realized. . . . It would have been so simple to put in some protective clauses—minimum commitments, sole residencies, that sort of thing. I mean, I study people. I should have seen what would happen. How not everyone loved that place like I did. How they just wanted easy summer homes, and they left the place poorer than when they came.”
The wind is slowing, rain taking on a steadier rhythm above them and finding its way through the narrow cracks, giving the room the feel of a cave.
Jeremiah’s face is thoughtful. “What happened to the town?”
“Alpenzell? They’re better off without me, for one thing. I took a job in Chicago, where I couldn’t hurt anyone.” Couldn’t help anyone, either, but she tried not to think about that. Whenever that little ball of fire inside ignited, driving her to do something big, she knew just how to tamp it down and turn her attention back to the computer, to skate across the surface of society and never plunge in again. She wouldn’t do that to a place again—especially not a place as dear as Ansel, tempted as she was to give in to the ideas spinning in her mind for this place.
“I saved up. Paid back their funds. And vowed never to do that again.”
“Do what?”
She hangs her head, shame washing fresh over her. “Put people on the line like that for a poorly considered idea.”
Jeremiah’s eyebrows lift as he considers. “I think it was a pretty good idea, honestly.”
“Tell that to those empty cottages.” She stands, hoping to steer this talk away from painful things. “Speaking of empty houses, it’s crazy that Ed built this place.”