Scone Island

by Frederick Ramsay

  Summer residents referred to Henry Potter as the mayor of Southport. He accepted the honorific with as much grace a Down Easterner could. That is to say, he wasn’t rude to the men who invaded his space every year with their sailboats and motor launches and New York accents. He would be the last of the Potters, he’d often declared. He’d never married, had neither siblings nor close relatives, and his parents had sailed to their reward years ago. When he died, there would be no more Potters on Scone Island or the near mainland either—well, none he’d claim at least. There was that librarian that he took to Pine Tree Island on Labor Day back in the day and who had had to leave town, but she’d never said anything so that was that. He’d lived all of his sixty-plus years on Scone Island in Southport with the other half dozen families who inhabited the island mostly year round. He was the proprietor of the island’s general store and the operator of the battery-powered ship-to-shore radio that tracked the local fishermen, lobster boats, and could be used for emergencies to call the mainland and the police.

  At the turn of the century when the fancy folks from New York and thereabouts first came to the island with their plans to buy up the land and turn it into a limited access summer resort, they tried to buy or force out the few families who lived in Southport more or less permanently. Their efforts failed. Down East lobstermen and trawler operators were not impressed with city people, their money, or their plans for the island.

  So, over the years, the little resident community had existed cheek by jowl with the summer folk. Work boats were moored beside expensive sailboats and motor yachts. In the winter the pleasure boats would be pulled ashore or stored on the mainland, but the work boats stayed. During the first two decades of the island’s corporate life, a steam launch made a daily round trip from Bass Harbor, then known as McKinley, to Southport during the months of June through August. The stock market collapse of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression occasioned by that economic cataclysm put an end to the launch, along with the luxury of live-in servants, plus many of the island’s residents who hadn’t the foresight to sell short. Thus, in the years following, the summer visitors came to depend on the locals for mail and grocery delivery and, of course, their ship-to-shore radios.

  Chapter Seven

  Much to Ruth’s annoyance, Ike insisted he check in at the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office in Ellsworth before they drove the last leg to Bass Harbor and the boat ride to Scone Island.

  “It’s professional courtesy,” he’d said. “A cop thing.”

  “Then I should have dropped in on the people at the University of Maine, right? Professional courtesy, you know.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous? You think? Tell me, what’s the difference?”

  “Propinquity.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m on the ground, a cop in situ, you could say. Look, if a problem arises in the University of Maine or the local community college, the fact there is another university president in the area doesn’t materially help them, but if something goes bad in the county, a crime is committed or attempted, another cop in the area is an asset the locals would like to know about. I would expect their sheriff to let me know if he showed up in Picketsville for any length of time.”

  “I could help a college in trouble.”

  “You could, but would they ask? Would you?”

  “No, I guess not. So, what took you so long?”

  “The sheriff gave me a rundown of the locals, residents—stuff like that. A man died on your island four days ago; did you know that?”

  “Who? How?”

  “Some man named Harmon Staley reportedly overextended his relationship with a bottle of bourbon and fell off a cliff at a place called Cliffside. Ring a bell?”

  “No, don’t know the name, but I remember the house. It’s the big one at the north end of the island. I can’t remember the name of the people who used to live there, but I’m sure it wasn’t Staley. I haven’t been on the island since I was a little girl and frankly I don’t remember much about any of the people. There was a nice woman who was a good friend of my aunt. Um…I’ll think of her name in a minute…and there were the locals, Mr. Potter and the two Gott brothers, but that’s pretty much it. The police weren’t suggesting foul play or anything, were they?”

  “No, he wanted to give me a heads-up.”

  The last bit wasn’t entirely true. The Medical Examiner’s report had two or three puzzling entries that had the Sheriff scratching his head and he’d asked Ike to keep an ear to the ground and send back anything he might pick up. Ike said he would.

  “Smithwick.”

  “What?”

  “Mary Smithwick was the name of the woman I met who was a friend of Aunt Margaret. She has a place over on South Road near where a path that cuts across the middle of the island meets the road. I think that’s right. She had a married sister who had the place next door to her. Funny how things come back to you—it was the sister who was mixed up in something that nobody would talk about.”

  “Really? What?”

  Ruth shrugged. “I have no idea. I told you, nobody talked about it. When we were kids, we used to pretend the husband was a Russian spy and was hiding on the island. We’d snitch the grown-ups’ bird glasses and watch him through the hedge.”

  “No one bothered to ask what a Russian spy would be doing lurking about on an island four miles off the coast?”

  “It didn’t seem important at the time. Hey, you can smell the ocean now. You used to smell more than ocean. The place used to be known as McKinley. It had a cannery and it smelled like fish when I was here last.”

  “With a name like Bass Harbor, that can’t be true anymore. Any place that is called Bass Harbor has to be a yuppie vacation spot complete with outlet stores and wine bars, not a fishing village. If it were still fish it would still be called McKinley. Was it named after the twenty-fifth President, or somebody local?”

  “The former. The story goes that when the government first established a post office in the town, they had to name it. I guess they wanted to do something for the sitting president. So, yuppies and wine bars? You are playing Populist ideologue again. What’s up with that? You are a Harvard graduate and as much as anyone I know, a beneficiary of upper crustiness. Why do come down so hard on your own kind?”

  “Two reasons, white privilege guilt and a father who, more than any living man, qualifies as a ‘yellow dog Democrat.’ It’s genetic, I guess.”

  “Well it’s unbecoming.”

  “Here’s the pier and that must be your Walter Gott looking at his watch. Are we late and is there such a thing in these parts?”

  “We are and there is. People who fish and lobster for a living live by the tides. You miss one and your day is shot. Lateness is not much admired.” Ruth eased out of the car and hobbled over to the lobsterman when the wind gusted up and nearly blew her over. “Whoa, there’s a breeze today. Captain Gott, I’m sorry we are late. Ike has never driven this distance and calculating time and traffic got away from us.”

  “Yawp. Is that there your baggage?” Ike had begun offloading the bags and boxes from the trunk and rear seat. “Sure is a lot of equipment for a week or so, ain’t it?”

  “My goodness, Ike what is all that stuff? I packed a bag and so did you. What’s in the boxes?”

  “A few extras. Mr. Gott—”

  “Captain,” Ruth said.

  “What?”

  “The correct address is, Captain, Ike.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “I am. And as a resident or as a visitor, we must observe the niceties.”

  “Fine. Captain, I understand from Doctor Harris here that the few appliances in the cottages run on propane. Is that correct?”

  “Yawp.”

  “And there is ample supply at Doctor Harris’ cottage?”

  “Henry Potter said they was.”

  “And is the means of tapping the line for additional units, should I need
one, also available?”

  “Can’t say as I rightly know. All them houses is different. You fixing to install something or another?”

  “Yawp, I mean, yep. Is there a hardware store in Bass Harbor where such a device can be had?”

  “McEachern and Hutchins out on Tremont road will have her, I expect.”

  “Good. Then if I need one, you could fetch it out to the island for me on one of your grocery runs?”

  “I could, yawp.”

  “Fine. Let’s get aboard and see this wonderful island of yours.”

  “`Tain’t mine, you know. Belongs to a whole bunch of folks including the lady here.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Ike, you did not answer my question. What’s all this stuff?”

  “Things to make your stay pleasanter, madam.”

  “You brought an ice cream machine, a case of booze, and a crate of chocolate bars?”

  “Better.”

  “What could possibly be better than that?”

  “Patience. Captain, cast off, or sail ho, or whatever.”

  Walter Gott piloted his boat and his two passengers out of the harbor and windward of the Bass Harbor Light and set a course east nor’east to Scone Island. Walter and his brother, when they weren’t attending their lobster pots, provided ferry service to the island for the summer folk. They also picked up and delivered grocery orders the folks would give him every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. He inspected Ike and Ruth out of the corner of his eye. “Looked like city folks,” Walter would say to Henry Potter later. “That there couple don’t strike me as your typical pair. First off, the lady looks like she needed a good meal and a dose of the wife’s tonic. Worn to a frazzle is what she is. And the man, well he looks a puzzle and that was for sure. Big fellah, no doubt about that. Maybe a gangster or something. Tough, if I’m guessing rightly.”

  Henry told him the lady was the niece, some removed, of old Miz VanDeVeer who died last winter and left her place to her, and she’d been in the hospital or something. The fellah with her was her whatchamacallit, her significant other. And Walter should show some respect because he heard he was maybe a police.

  Chapter Eight

  The jeep bounced over the last stretch of dry streambed, its motor straining against the grade, wheels spitting rocks into the underbrush. Neil Bernstein clenched his jaw against the shocks that rocketed up his spine. Another twenty yards and he would be back at the clearing and could make camp. Tomorrow he would tackle the rock face that towered five hundred feet above him. But right now, he only wanted to stop, unload the jeep, pitch camp, and settle in for the night.

  He had been coming to this remote stretch of the Rockies off and on for years. This particular climb was a favorite. It is not a smart thing to climb solo no matter what your skill level might be, so he often brought Krissie Johansen along. As a single parent she was reluctant to take the sort of risks that could have made her daughters orphans. But to please him, she’d tried climbing once. After an hour in which she managed to scale perhaps twenty-five feet of an easy climb and ruined a twenty-five-dollar manicure, she’d given up. The exhilaration he felt when he pitted his body against an uncompromising sheer stone face eluded her. She could not understand how people would put themselves through such a bone-wearying exercise and take the risks involved. But she did understand its importance to Neil. So, on the occasions when she could send her girls to their grandparents for the weekend and accompany Neil, she’d stay back at camp and read, sunbathe, and watch him as he advanced slowly upward like a bug on a wall. With the both sets of grandparents unavailable, she’d begged off this time.

  It was just as well, he thought. Something…the tickle on the back of his neck, a warning perhaps…nothing substantial, but Neil had survived a decade with the Company because he paid attention to those little tweaks and tingles. He didn’t like to think he might put Krissie in harm’s way. It was probably nothing, but you never knew. Premonition ran in the family, in fact. His grandfather, he remembered, could tell you what the weather would be by the ache in a knee shattered at Guadalcanal in another age and had claimed he’d predicted the Jets winning Super Bowl III. Neil wondered about that. Earlier in the week, Neil’s neck seemed to be saying, “You need to get out of Dodge,” and as he had leave time accrued and because Halmi told him it could be weeks before he had anything new for him, he drove west to his rocks. He decided not to mention to Halmi he’d be alone. He didn’t need the lecture about how stupid it was to climb solo.

  He pulled up in the dry, shallow creek bed and killed the engine. Off to his right the ground rose gently to the rock face. At its foot, nearly three acres of treeless mountain meadow glistened in the late afternoon sun. Neil clambered awkwardly from the jeep, his legs and back stiff from the long drive. He stretched, threw his arms back, and took a dozen deep breaths to work out the kinks. Grabbing his bedroll and backpack, he climbed the embankment and turned to the slight rise forty yards away where he usually made camp. A new stand of shrubbery and aspens bordered the creek bed and effectively screened it from the meadow. Neil stepped from this cover and paused. In front of him the rock face rose almost perfectly perpendicular. He walked toward it absorbed in its majesty, in its challenge. At the campsite he paused only long enough to drop his equipment and glance around. He thought he saw movement in the trees edging the far end of the meadow. Probably an elk cow and her calf inspecting the meadow grass for possible danger.

  The rock face captured his attention again. He stood and stared, only vaguely aware of the bird’s songs, the rustle of the aspens in the afternoon’s gentle breeze and the rumble of a motor, probably an airplane, in the distance. He walked to the face and looked straight up—beautiful. Tomorrow at first light he would pit his skill and strength against it, but now he only wanted to study and admire it, to plan his attack. To his left, twenty or thirty feet up, he saw a seam that rose diagonally across to his right. He would work his way along that, he thought, and then take the next fifty feet with pitons straight up. He stepped back to improve his view. The details higher up eluded him. He would have to go back for his binoculars. No bother; he had the rest of the afternoon and evening to work out the ascent. Neil strode back toward the jeep to retrieve the rest of his gear.

  The clearing was quiet, but the motor he’d heard before, if it was the same one, seemed nearer and more distinct. Now he recognized the pulsing chock-chock-chock of an older model helicopter and wondered idly what it was doing way out here—police, Forest Service? He paused at the campsite to smooth out his ground cloth and spread his bedroll.

  Sunlight glinting off something metallic brought him up short. He could make out the upper part of the jeep through the trees, but the flicker seemed to come from a point further down the track. He searched the underbrush but failed to see anything. Frowning, he quickened his pace. As far as he knew he was alone, but that did not mean someone else could not be there. Although remote, this particular rock face was fairly well known to the climbing fraternity.

  He saw two men when he got to the edge of the meadow and trees. They were working their way up the ravine toward him. Their appearance disturbed him but he couldn’t think why. Both wore camo, the new digitalized version, and looked more like soldiers than hunters. But nowadays, who could say? He’d seen an ad for camo diapers—for newborn survivalists, he supposed. Both men sported a beret bearing some sort of insignia.

  Neil had run across all kinds of people in the wilderness—many odder in appearance than these two. Ordinarily he would not have been concerned. A camaraderie exists among hunters, climbers, backpackers, and outdoors people generally that transcended politics and personalities, especially deep under the forest’s canopy. In that environment, they all shared a common set of values and goals. That special bonhomie did not, however, extend to the dirt bikers, snowmobilers and the other occasional noisy, beer-swilling intruders into the wild that one came across at its fringes. But in a remote place like this, the chance meeting
of another human being did not constitute an occasion for alarm. Even so, Neil felt a sudden stab as the two men approached.

  He hurried the last few feet to the jeep and began unloading his gear. Somewhere in it he packed his government issue Sig Sauer that he always carried on the road, “to shoot snakes” he’d explained to Krissie. She couldn’t know that a M-11 provided an awful lot of fire power for snake killing. He could not remember which of the duffels he put it in—not a mistake he would normally make. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed the men were now only thirty yards away. And now Neil also realized what had disturbed him before. The men were not carrying backpacks; they were not carrying anything—no canteen, no compass—nothing. You did not get this far into the wild without something. And they were fresh—as though they had just stepped out of a taxi around the corner, their pants creased and neatly bloused in their boot tops. Then he saw the guns holstered at their hips.