On Hurricane Island

by Ellen Meeropol

  Damn. Where is it? And how did he miss that? He’ll have to find it, before Henry discovers that a critical piece of evidence is missing.

  8. GANDALF, 5:46 P.M.

  It is hard work, not giving in to the sickening waves of apprehension, to the accelerating spirals of fear. Using her brain is her only hope for escape, so she will keep it sharp and agile by solving puzzles. Like determining the time of day: the slanting shadows, at least a 30-degree angle, suggest late afternoon, but then she gives up. Not knowing the latitude makes precision impossible. Whatever the time now, when 6 p.m. comes and goes, Jess will start worrying. Obsessing about exactly when that moment will arrive is marginally easier than anticipating what will happen in this room when it gets dark. There is no lamp, no visible switch on the wall or hanging chain to control the ceiling light fixture. Gandalf isn’t exactly scared of the dark, that would be irrational, but at home Jess does not object to having a small night-light in the hallway.

  She paces the room. How do people stay sane locked up with no work, no books, and no one with whom to share life? Before Jess, Gandalf would not have added that last necessity. Before Jess, she never understood all the commotion about falling in love; there were always women, and rarely men, available for the occasional get together. Then, sixteen years ago, she and Jess found each other wandering alone through the formal gardens at the university president’s house. The mandatory September faculty reception meant two excruciating hours for anyone missing the gene for scholarly gossip or the inclination for brown-nosing. A week later she was in love and she finally did comprehend the fuss.

  But until now, she has not begun to appreciate the enormity of the price of human connection. She cannot stop crawling around in Jess’s mind, sharing her agony of imagined scenarios. When Gandalf does not call home and interrupt the evening news, Jess will begin imagining an accident. She will picture Gandalf lying at the bottom of a cliff among twisted metal airplane parts, in a ravine, bleeding and stunned with broken limbs akimbo. Or maybe abducted and held for ransom, her bound and gagged body hidden in a dank basement in a Detroit suburb, gagged with a dirty sock. Or even her slim corpse, raped and stuffed into the trunk of a yellow taxicab driving towards the river.

  A new idea strikes her, and she sinks to the bed, unable to catch her breath. In addition to picturing all the accident scenarios, Jess might also be fighting off some very different fears: Gandalf lying on a blanket under a weeping willow with a lover she arranged to meet at the conference. Jess might wonder if there is really a conference or if it is all an elaborate deception. If Gandalf is breaking her heart, the way her ex-husband did. Gandalf rocks back and forth on the bed, as if she can stifle the possibilities by not speaking them.

  “Pssst.”

  She must be imagining the noise, but it comes again. Pssst. The sound appears to originate in the floor. She looks around the perimeter of the room, low along the walls.

  “Anyone there?” The whisper is louder this time; it comes from under the bed.

  Gandalf leans forward until her hair touches the floor. Under the bed, in the center of the shadow where the wall meets the floorboards, is a darker space. Sloppy workmanship left a two or three centimeter gap between two boards in the pine molding.

  Swallowing hard, Gandalf answers, “Who’s there?”

  “Norah. Who are you?”

  “Gandalf.”

  There is silence for a moment. “Is that a code name or something?”

  “No. It is my real name. Are you a prisoner too? What is this place?”

  “Shhhh,” Norah says. “They’re probably bugging our cells. Come closer to the hole. And whisper.”

  Lifting the cot away from the wall, Gandalf reminds herself to be cautious and skeptical in case this Norah person is a plant. But maybe she can get some information while taking care not to reveal too much.

  What is she thinking? She has nothing to hide.

  Gandalf squeezes next to the wall. She sits cross-legged on the floor and brings her face close to the hole in the molding.

  “What is this place?” Gandalf asks again. She has to know, while at the same time she does not want to know, cannot bear to know. There is no way it can be good news.

  “I’m pretty sure we’re in a detention center for citizens suspected of subversive activity,” Norah says. “Of domestic terrorism.”

  Terrorism? Images flood her brain: military brigades, platoons of soldiers with assault weapons sweeping through dusty foreign streets, IEDs and mountain caves. These are images that belong on the evening news, certainly not in her life.

  “I do not understand,” Gandalf whispers. “I haven’t done anything.”

  There is silence for a moment before Norah answers. “Yeah. Me either.”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Why? You got someplace to go?”

  Gandalf feels slapped. Who is this woman?

  “I’m sorry,” Norah says quickly. “My twisted sense of humor. It’s just that all the normal things, like the time and what day it is and work and walking the dog, disappear in this place.”

  Gandalf studies the cadence of the woman’s words. Her New York accent is both familiar and disconcerting. There might not be much difference between the two of them and that is even more frightening. “Are you from the city?”

  “Brooklyn,” Norah says. “Red Hook. You?”

  “East Village. How long have you been here?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. I didn’t start keeping track right away. I expected to be released any minute. Two weeks, I guess, maybe three.”

  Gandalf’s breath catches. Three weeks? “But why? What do they want?”

  Norah’s sigh squeezes through the small hole and expands into a bubble of anxious air around Gandalf’s face. “I don’t know about you, but they probably picked me up to sabotage the case I’m litigating. They don’t even interrogate me much anymore. Just leave me to rot in here.”

  Interrogate? Gandalf’s back twists in spasm. She stretches out prone on the floor, her feet under the cot and her head resting on her arm. She pushes aside the wood shavings littering the floor and moves her face closer to the opening.

  “So they kidnapped you to prevent your case from going forward?”

  “But it won’t work,” Norah says. “Someone else at the Center will take over.”

  “The Center?

  “Where I work. The Human Rights Litigation Center in Manhattan.”

  Gandalf idly brushes the wisps of wood curls into a small pile. “So why bring you here?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. They already tap the Center’s phones and monitor our emails. I don’t know what more they want.”

  What more? What did they already get? And what kind of interrogations does she mean? Interrogations suggest a swinging bare light bulb, a single wooden chair bolted to the cement floor. Leather restraints and cigarette burns and pliers, images from every documentary film on torture that Jess ever convinced her to watch.

  “They’re trying to intimidate us,” Norah says.

  “Is it working? Are you scared?”

  “Terrified.” Norah is quiet for a moment. “Why’d they take you?”

  Gandalf rests her head on her fisted hand. “It is all a mistake.”

  “This whole concept is a mistake.” Norah’s voice grows cross. “I mean, kidnapping U.S. citizens and taking us to some secret prison?”

  “But with me, they kidnapped the wrong person. I am a mathematician. I am not political; I don’t even sign petitions.”

  “Maybe they think you have expertise or information critical to national security.”

  National security? That makes Gandalf want to laugh and cry at the same time. “I develop algebraic models to quantify extreme weather patterns, hurricanes mostly. It is totally benign stuff, equations, of interest only to academic mathematicians.” She pauses. “Where are we, exactly?”

  “Somewhere in Maine, I think. I was meeting with donors in Boston
when they picked me up. We drove about five, six hours. Then a boat.”

  “I was kidnapped at JFK.” Gandalf pictures the white metal room, black hood, Troll and Blue eyes. “They brought me here in a small plane. The guy in charge told me we were on Hurricane Island.”

  Norah doesn’t respond.

  “What? Have you ever heard of it?” Gandalf asks.

  “No.” Norah’s voice is small. “I was just thinking that I’m glad you’re here. It was awful being alone in this place.”

  The pictures in Gandalf’s head have grown too intense, too demanding, and she has to ask. “Norah, did they torture you?”

  There is only silence and it stretches forever.

  Gandalf closes her eyes to stop the prickling. Something touches her cheek, and she jerks. A small dark finger pokes through the opening in the wood molding. Gandalf hooks Norah’s finger with her own, hanging on tight.

  9. AUSTIN, 6:52 P.M.

  Austin pauses in the doorway, blasted by the evening newscast. Pops points to the television screen.

  “You seen what’s coming at us? Maine hasn’t had a storm like this since ’54. I ever tell you about Edna?”

  Austin groans loudly. Pops’s monologues always start with that phrase: I ever tell you about.

  He ignores her. “Edna caused forty million dollars’ damage in New England. Fifteen million bucks in this state alone. Portland got six inches of rain in six hours, and the rivers went wild, washed out roads and bridges. Eight people drowned. And the oddest thing? It was this very same week in September.” He shakes his head. “Got a real bad feeling about this storm. We could be in for a major disaster, and you can bet Washington won’t be much help this time either.”

  “What about your darling Evelina?” Austin asks. “God’s gift to maritime Maine?”

  “Evelina will do what she can, but one woman in Congress?” He shrugs with an exaggerated gesture. “We’ll manage. Hurricanes or nor’easters or lobster poaching, no matter. Mainers take care of our own.”

  “Hurricane or no,” Gran calls from the kitchen, “folks got to eat. Austin, come set the table. And show some respect for Evelina. She’s done good things for this place.”

  “Not to worry,” Pops says. “Over dinner, I’ll tell you all about Edna.”

  In the kitchen, Gran hands Austin a basket of rolls. “You know, Evelina sponsored the bill about that new funding for special ed. Ask your cousin Anna and her kid with the sack on her spine what they think of Evelina.”

  Austin barely remembers Anna or her kid. But admitting that would just bring a different lecture from Gran, the one about the importance of family.

  “Sure,” she says, taking plates from the cupboard. “Whatever.”

  Twenty minutes later, Pops looks up from his plate and waves his fork towards the ordinary dusk visible through the kitchen window. “Looking outside now, you’d never believe what’s heading our way.” His fork jabs the air to punctuate his words. “It was the exact same with Edna.”

  “Come on.” Austin swallows a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “You’re making this up, aren’t you? Don’t tell me you remember the weather on an ordinary September day like sixty years ago? How old were you?”

  “I was fourteen, but I remember it like last week.”

  “Before you get started, Ray.” Gran turns to Austin. “How was your day? You left here before dawn.”

  Austin wishes she could say something about the math professor who doesn’t seem like much of a terrorist, or about how creepy Tobias makes her feel when he stares at her. But she’s not allowed to talk about work.

  “Nothing exciting. I ate my lunch at the quarry. Gran, do you remember that time in high school when Gabe and I played hooky and went swimming in the quarry out on Hurricane? You went ballistic. What was the big deal?”

  Her grandparents exchange glances. “It was dangerous,” Gran says.

  “Come on. You never worried when we swam in the Storm Harbor quarries.” Austin can tell that Gran is hiding something. “The funny thing is, that day we discovered an old carving in the granite. Leaves and branches and two initials—MEC and AF—and the date 1914. I saw it again today when I was eating my lunch.” She looks back and forth between Pops and Gran. “Do you know who those people were?”

  Pops looks at Gran and reaches for the chicken. Gran presses her lips together.

  This time, Austin refuses to give up. “I’m curious about those initials. Any idea why they’re hidden away like that, carved in a crack so it’s hard to find them? What’s their story?”

  Pops passes the chicken to Austin. “These islands are full of stories.”

  “I know they are. So what’s the scoop on MEC and AF?”

  Gran’s face morphs into her teacher-know-it-all expression. “Terrible things have been happening over there for a century. The trouble at the quarry, then the fire at the rich kids’ camp. If you ask me, those Washington folks are tempting fate, building out there again. Hurricane Island is bad news. Always has been, always will be. You learned about all that in school.”

  “But who were MEC and AF?” Austin shakes her head. “And how can a pretty little island full of spruce trees and big rocks be bad news? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “A lot of things don’t make sense. And the Washington folks’ craziness is none of our concern.” Pops pats Gran’s arm.

  Actually, Austin doesn’t know exactly what happened on the small island, the trouble at the quarry. In school they learned that the granite industry fell apart overnight, something about foreigners and a strike and a bombing that destroyed the quarry company. Now the ruins are choked with kudzu, and every time she passes them she wishes someone would just tear them down. There’d been terrible accidents too, with injuries and deaths. Pops once told her that every island family had lost at least one member to the quarrying business and the worst disasters took place on the smallest island, so rustic and isolated. But whenever she asks about their family—who they lost—Gran goes all stony-stubborn and Pops mumbles something about Gran hating to talk about it. Then he changes the subject, just like he’s doing right now.

  “Why won’t you tell me about the initials?” Austin asks. “What do they have to do with us?”

  Gran looks down at her lap, and Austin can’t see her face. Then she pushes her chair away from the table, stands up like she’s a hundred years old, and walks out of the kitchen.

  Pops gets up too. “Let it be, Austin,” he says. “I know you didn’t mean to upset her. And I get it, about your job. They pay good wages and you want to get off this island and see the world.” He follows Gran out of the room.

  Not the whole world, just Texas. Ever since she can remember, Austin has wanted to go there to look for her father. “He never could get used to Maine weather,” Austin’s mom used to explain on her rare visits. But she’d get pissy when Austin kept asking and the discussion usually ended with her zinger, “All that man ever gave you was your name.”

  Maybe so, but that’s more than her mother left her. One morning when Austin was four, Mom dumped her with Gran and Pops and took the early ferry to Rockland. The first few years Mom showed up every Thanksgiving, ate enough turkey and pumpkin pie for three lobstermen, and promised to send for Austin as soon as she had a good job, or a bigger apartment, or things settled down with her boyfriend. After a while, she stopped promising. Stopped visiting too.

  Austin carries the dishes to the sink and turns on the water. When she was younger, it made her furious to think about her mother abandoning her like that. But recently she feels a kinship with her. More like she’s a sister or something. Because now she gets it, why her mother had to leave. Some days, Austin thinks she’ll die—fade away from boredom—if she doesn’t get away.

  The window above the kitchen sink looks across Hurricane Sound to the little island. Dusk outlines the dark hill with a rim of peachy orange. Sure, she loves these islands, how sunset reflects on the bay, and the noon sun warms the granite stone agains
t her back. But she needs more than water and rocks in her life. And whatever happened a hundred years ago with foreigners and strikes and bombings, one thing is clear: there’s no MEC or AF around these islands for her. Gran and Pops are dear, but they aren’t enough. And Gran is hiding something, which makes the secret feel important and weighty, and Pops is helping her hide it. Austin bets it’s about the initials and people in their family. Maybe it’s even about whatever drove her mother to abandon a four-year-old child, because that’s the most unusual thing about her family.

  Yes, Austin promises herself as she scrubs a greasy plate with the soapy sponge. She is going to escape this jumbled pile of rocks and spruce and go far away. But before she leaves, she is going to figure out what happened to MEC and AF on Hurricane Island, and what it has to do with her.

  10. HENRY, 6:55 P.M.

  Henry has no idea why he took the phone. Sitting in his leather swivel desk chair, he places the device in the precise center of the blotter and stares at it. Why, instead of entering it in the digital Detainee Possessions Inventory with her laptop and other effects, did he omit it from the list and slip it instead into his pocket? He has never before broken the chain of evidence. So stupid, and it’s not even his first mistake today. Totally against protocol, he told the new detainee the name of the island. He folds his forearms across the blotter and lets his chin rest on his hands. Inches from his nose, the phone’s matte metal trim reflects a red light. Flash, flash, pause, flash, flash.

  Damn. The flash is the blinking red light attached to his computer. After the advanced Homeland Security course, Tobias insisted on installing an alert system on Henry’s home computer to notify him in emergencies.

  It takes three tries to log on to the secure website. He’ll complain to Tobias about that tomorrow. There’s no question the guy is technologically gifted, but the additional layers of passwords and firewalls are out of control. Ever since Tobias returned from the last course, he’s been acting like a television spook. Henry teased him once about his Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio, but Tobias didn’t laugh. He takes himself way too seriously, even alienating the military guys assigned to the facility. Recently the other men have been complaining about the assignment rosters, saying that Tobias gives himself all the cushy shifts in the surveillance room. Something else to deal with.