by Abby Geni
Even then, Bird Season on the Farallon Islands was notorious. The archipelago was as yet untenanted—a bare, stripped sculpture of stone, a nautical hazard, a spooky silhouette against the dusky horizon. Passing sailors had returned to the mainland with tales of more birds than there were stars in the sky. Hundreds of thousands of eggs, there for the taking. (The gulls had not yet achieved their current supremacy. The ruling force, throughout the summer months, had been the murres.) Doc Robinson had heard these stories. It did not concern him that the murre eggs looked nothing like chicken eggs. They were not smooth, ivory, palatable orbs. Instead, the murres laid green-blue spheres the size of softballs, with leathery, freckled hides. Often their eggs were marked by what appeared to be letters in an unknown alphabet. It would not do to cook them outright: the whites were translucent, the yolks as red as blood, and they tasted fishy. Unappetizing, to say the least.
However, they could be used as a substitute in baking. Doc Robinson gave up on gold. He voyaged to the Farallon Islands and collected a couple thousand murre eggs. Upon his return to California, he made a passel of money and retired in triumph as cakes, muffins, and soufflés once again appeared on menus.
Thus began the onslaught of the eggers. Anyone who wanted to make a few bucks followed Doc Robinson’s example, renting a boat and heading out to sea. There wasn’t enough gold to go around, but for those who were greedy and reckless enough, there were more than enough murres. The men soon took to wearing “egg shirts” with pockets stitched onto every available bit of fabric. In this garment, one person could carry two hundred eggs. The hapless birds were unable to defend themselves against these unaccustomed predators. There was no governmental oversight, no sense of environmental balance. Nobody paused to consider what would happen if the vast majority of murre eggs on the planet were harvested and consumed.
But the islands, then as now, were a dangerous place. The work was risky. The book painted the picture for me clearly: a man’s body weighted down by the uncomfortable heft of two hundred fat eggs. His balance would be affected. He might stumble on the rocks. Guano coated the pathways. Waves washed in, filling the air with spray. Bruises and broken bones were common. A certain percentage of the eggers vanished. They took a wrong turn and were claimed by the sea.
With a sigh, I put the book aside. I began the process of extricating myself from the mattress. The baby was kicking determinedly at my midriff, urging me to rise, pulling me back into the present, away from stories and shadows.
I AM STILL realizing the simple fact of my pregnancy. This idea shines in my mind at all times, throwing everything else into sharp relief. The baby’s movements are forceful now. A punch to my rib cage. A scrape down my spine. Sometimes, in a room filled with biologists, I will have the sensation of listening to music that no one else can hear. I will close my eyes, absorbed by the interior flicker and pulse of life. The sensation is so intense, so all-consuming, that I will lose track of things. The world will fall away. I will forget where I am: in the cabin, on the islands, on the surface of the earth—I might be anywhere. The universe seems to be condensed inside my body, encompassed and circumscribed by my own skin.
I have been aware, all along, of how I should feel about my situation. Ennui and despair. Confusion and fear. If Andrew had lived, I might now be planning an emergency trip to the mainland. I might be scanning the yellow pages—our beat-up, obsolete copy—looking for abortion clinics. I might be counting the minutes until the alien invader could be removed from my body.
But Andrew did not live. He drowned. The islands took him away.
And so, this does not seem like his child at all. The two things feel entirely unconnected. There was an assault, an act of violence, somewhere in the past. There is a marvel, a gift from this place, here in the present. The memory of the attack—dark and hateful—is like an old star, disintegrating, crumbling into dust, barely visible alongside a powerful new sun. As the weeks have worn on, what I have experienced, more and more strongly, is wild, wordless, unreasoning joy.
The baby will be mine—mine absolutely.
33
CHARLENE CAME BACK today. That is, she came and went.
The islands had not been the same without her—no swish of red hair, no musical laugh, no warm, diffident presence at the dinner table. I had missed her. I wanted to verify with my own eyes that she was all in one piece, hale and hearty, completely recovered.
Still, my enthusiasm was somewhat tempered. In truth, I was not sure why she was bothering to return. As glad as I would be to see her, her actions did not quite add up. She had said she wanted to collect her things—but Galen had offered to ship them to her. She had said she wanted to say goodbye to everyone—but she could have done this over the phone. Or not at all. I had the distinct impression that she had some other agenda. What it might be, I could not imagine.
The others showed no excitement about her visit. Perhaps they were as baffled by her behavior as I was. Lucy had been up too late the night before, catching and tagging the storm-petrels. She stomped back and forth to the kitchen to refill her coffee cup and glowered when anyone made too much noise. Forest had concocted a new scheme for calculating the total population of the rhinoceros auklets. It was hard to keep track of the exact amount of these elusive birds, since they dug deep burrows and were secretive by nature. Forest, however, had a mathematical equation and a graph paper chart. He was far more interested in visiting the study plots and trying out his new system than he was in seeing Charlene. Even Mick was all biologist that morning, scientific and detached. He sat at the table with Galen, filling out an order form for more flea collars, which we sorely needed.
In general, Galen and I have been getting along well. He has softened toward me since our midnight heart-to-heart. Recently, he even showed me his collection of seal stones. Over the years, he has amassed a pile of them in a battered plastic tub. He did not invite me inside his private museum—his bedroom. We are not yet at that level of intimacy, it seems. Instead, he hefted the bucket out into the hallway and beckoned me over to see its contents. With a welcoming smile, he urged me to pick through the rocks, which I politely did, though they were all exactly the same, black and smooth, weathered and rounded, fitting in the palm of the hand.
By noon, the biologists were all gone. Nobody else stayed to meet the helicopter. Forest went to the rhinoceros auklets, Lucy and Mick to the murre blind. One corner had come loose in a wind-storm, and they were trying to come up with a way to fix it without making undue noise and spooking the birds. (If the murres were startled, they would rise en masse. Their eggs would be undefended, and the gulls would move in for the kill. One thoughtless act by the biologists could lead to a catastrophic event.) Galen spent a while fiddling with a little green notebook, scribbling in it furtively. Then he stumped off to observe the tufted puffins—and, presumably, to avoid an encounter with the intern who I now know reminds him of his late wife.
I must have dozed off. I do nothing but sleep lately. I had settled on the couch, with a view to the east, where the helicopter would eventually appear. But the sun was in my eyes. The air vibrated with light and heat. My head grew heavy. And then someone was shaking me awake.
I caught a glimpse of hair—a sweep of rust around a freckled face.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Charlene said.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The sun had moved in the sky. There was a foul taste in my mouth. Outside the window, the helicopter had appeared. Its wings were motionless. Perched on the helipad, that glass bubble glinted in the light. The pilot was visible inside, a shadowed figure hunched over a newspaper. In my sleep-addled state, this struck me as funny—like a limo driver cooling his heels in a high school parking lot, waiting for a bunch of teenagers to finish their prom.
“Come on,” Charlene said. “Help me pack.”
I followed her to the door of her little bedroom. I tried to follow her inside too, but of course there wasn’t space for me. Charlene’s room had once been a cl
oset, and the bed—a tiny twin—allowed a gap of only a few inches on all sides. After a moment, I crawled onto the mattress. Charlene flitted around me, filling a suitcase with her pillows and teddy bear.
“You look good,” I said approvingly.
“Yup.” She flexed her elbow. “The dislocation has been healing fine. No more sling for me! My concussion wasn’t too bad, either. Sometimes my head aches in rainy weather, but that should pass.”
“Great,” I said.
She tugged a pair of jeans off a shelf and looked them over with a grimace. After holding them to her nose, she tossed them into the garbage can.
“How is it?” I asked. “Being back on the mainland?”
“Oh, fine,” she said.
“Do you miss us?”
She lobbed a sweater at me. “Do you want this? It used to be my favorite, but I can’t see wearing it out in public.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
I waited for her to reciprocate, asking questions about us, about the islands, but she did not. Instead, she kept busy, moving around the room.
“Do you have to go right back?” I asked. “Can you stay for dinner?”
“The pilot’s waiting. My parents are paying him by the hour.”
Something about her was different. She looked as though she had been varnished. After a while, I realized that she had makeup on. It was subtle, but I could tell—a darkening of the lashes, the cheeks unnaturally rosy. There was an odor in the air, too. Lavender and incense. Charlene was wearing perfume.
Finally she spoke. “Is Galen around?”
“Sure. I think he’s at Dead Sea Lion Beach. I could go—”
“No, no.” She waved a hand airily. “I wanted to ask him something, that’s all.”
“You could leave him a note.”
“It’s nothing,” she said.
But she seemed somehow defeated. I wondered whether she had come all this way just to talk to Galen. I wondered why.
She upended a heap of socks onto the bed. They all appeared to be mismatched, and many had visible holes. She sorted through them, flinging pair after pair into the garbage can, her lip curling in disgust.
“Charlene,” I said.
“Hm?” she murmured, intent on her task.
“The day you got hurt,” I said.
“These are Mick’s,” she said.
“Why was I wearing Mick’s socks?”
“Were you alone on Lighthouse Hill?”
“Alone?” she asked, now starting on a collection of underwear.
“On the hill. When you fell.”
At last, Charlene gave me her full attention. Her hands were suspended in midair, holding a black cotton bra with a rip in the right cup. She gazed at me with the look I remembered, as focused and inquisitive as a bird.
“I need to know,” I said. “Was anybody with you?”
Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated.
“I don’t remember anything about that whole day,” she said. “Nothing. My doctors said it’s not unusual with a head trauma.” She frowned. “Sometimes I get flashes. The hill, the rocks. The morning light. But when I actually fell—” She shook her head. “I don’t remember. That may never come back.”
“Right,” I said softly.
There was a silence, broken only by the chatter of the birds. I glanced toward the window in time to see a spray of feathers—a gull brushing the glass.
“That’s actually what I wanted to ask Galen about,” Charlene said. “Now that you mention it.”
“What is?”
In a convulsive gesture, she reached up with both hands and tugged at her red hair.
“I thought he might know what happened,” she said.
I gave her a searching look.
“He and I have talked on the phone a few times,” she said. “From the hospital, mostly. I kept getting the feeling that he knew more than he was letting on. I asked him directly once or twice, but he would never quite—”
She broke off.
“I was hoping he would be here,” she said.
“I see.”
A gull squawked outside—a chick, from the sound of it. Charlene seemed to recollect herself. She flashed me a smile that did not quite touch her eyes.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m going to be fine.”
I was not sure how to respond; I had not fully followed her train of thought. But she did not seem to expect a reply. She knelt down, tugging a box from under the bed. I had the sense that she was avoiding my eyes.
Within the hour, I found myself accompanying her to the helicopter, both of us in hard hats and ponchos. Charlene would shed her flea collars and mask as soon as she was safely away from the islands. The pilot saw us coming, and the rotor began to spin above my head, lazily at first, then with greater intensity. It was enough to disturb the gulls, who took flight, a geyser of wings and beaks. Their cries were deafening. I was carrying one of Charlene’s suitcases, while she struggled with the other. The pilot threw open the helicopter door. Charlene screamed something, and he screamed back, but the avian clamor was such that I did not catch a word.
Then Charlene turned to me. She tugged down her mask so I could see her face, which wore an amiable expression. She leaned in and planted a kiss on my cheek. I wanted to say something to her, some final words of affection. But before I could come up with anything meaningful, I felt a hand on my belly. Charlene’s touch was gentle, yet she moved unerringly, pushing through the layers of sweaters I was using to cover up my bump. Her palm was warm.
“Congratulations,” she whispered.
She withdrew her hand.
“You should leave too, Melissa,” she said. “You should leave soon. It’s not safe for you here.”
34
MICK AND FOREST are no longer able to make their nightly jaunts to the coast guard house. Until recently, these evening trysts did continue. Waking in the night, I would hear voices outside my window. I’m not sure how often the two of them engaged in these perilous nights of love. Sometimes it seemed that they were out there every day, and sometimes it was more like twice a month. Now and then, waking to the sound of Mick’s soft chuckle, I would smile to myself and reach for my camera. Each time, though, I resisted the urge to snoop. Somewhere under my bed, piled among the debris I had accumulated—jeans too tattered to wear without revealing the color of my underwear, a seal stone I had found on the shoreline, books falling apart under the influence of mildew, watertight tubs filled with precious caches of undeveloped film—there was a digital camera full of glorious images. On the evening that I’d taken those photos, I had promised myself that I would leave well enough alone. I would give Mick and Forest the privacy they so obviously craved.
Now, however, the situation is different. Bird Season means that Southeast Farallon is a battleground, strewn with enemy combatants. Mick and Forest would have to be crazy to sneak to the coast guard house under these circumstances. In the darkness, they could step off the path into the nesting areas. Within seconds, they would have attracted the rage of the gulls. I can picture the scene. The crunch of an eggshell. The squawk of birds. Mick and Forest might try to run. The gulls would take to the air. It would become a free-for-all. Birds would come whizzing in from every corner of the islands—the avian version of a feeding frenzy. Mick and Forest would be found in the morning, bare skeletons, their flesh picked clean.
Over the past few weeks, there has been friction between the two men. This is hardly surprising. They are lovers who cannot indulge in lovemaking. (I still don’t understand why they can’t do their business, safely and discreetly, in the comfort of their shared bedroom.) At mealtimes, they will often engage in little bouts of grouchiness. A discussion about who should pass the salt will devolve into a war of polite, irritated words, both men flashing hard, fixed smiles. Once or twice, I have even caught them arguing—really arguing—when they think they are alone.
All of us are tense. Perhaps it is the loss of Charlene—her
geniality and ease. Perhaps it is the aggressiveness of the birds seeping into our own behavior. There have been more spats and disagreements than usual. Galen and Mick have quarreled over the proper procedure for tagging the storm-petrels. Lucy and Forest have fallen into door-slamming over whose turn it is to do the dishes.
But Mick and Forest are a special case. A few days ago, I came home from a walk and heard Forest shouting at the top of his lungs. Standing at the back door, I couldn’t make out a single word. His voice had climbed into the realm of watery hysteria. A moment later, Mick came barreling outside. I had to jump to get out of his way. His face was flushed, his eyes glittering like coal. He did not seem to notice me hovering there. He was in too much of a state. He strode off in a rage.
I AM STILL busy with Galen’s book. Every so often, he will ask me about my progress—eyebrows raised, a pointed glance—as though the text is somehow important for me. Ever the dutiful student, I have been hard at work. I have learned about the reign of the eggers. I have learned, too, about the appearance of the lightkeepers. I have studied the history of my adopted home.
On a blustery afternoon in May, I took the book upstairs. I settled in my chair, rather than the bed, so I would not doze—my spine awkwardly bent, my shoulders taut. The baby was jammed inside my uterus at an uncomfortable angle. Flipping through the pages, I read about the lightkeepers.
In the 1800s, it seemed, there had been no lighthouses along the Pacific coast. None at all. Ship captains either had to voyage in daylight or cross their fingers and pray. The Islands of the Dead were such a flagrant hazard to passing boats that the government began to pay attention. Nautical travel was on the rise. It was absurd that the place had yet not been marked with a lighthouse. A crew was sent to remedy this situation.