In the Midst of the Sea

by Sean McCarthy

  Cassie.

  Diana had asked who Cassie was, but Sam had gone quiet for a minute, staring at the well, and then told Diana she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  Now, ahead of her, she ran down the main road of the cemetery, her footsteps loud in the quiet. Everything had been so quiet the past month or so that it was hard to believe it was the same island as it was in the summer. Samantha looked back, eyes playful, and then she turned and dashed off to the left. Diana followed her with her eyes as long as she could, but the cemetery sloped slightly down and her view was blocked by a tree.

  She called out to her, but Samantha didn’t come back. Diana picked up her pace, but she hadn’t hit the point of worry. Samantha played this game often with her, and this time of year, the cemetery was mostly empty except for the occasional groundskeeper. But something felt different about today, and she wasn’t sure what. She called out her name again, and then she broke into a jog, the cold air biting her hands, already chapped. She made it past the tree, and could see clearly down the slope, but Samantha was still nowhere in sight. Diana called her name out, louder, and now broke into a full run, her thoughts spinning. Panic setting in. Foolish to be daydreaming, foolish to let her out of her sight. Even for a second. That’s all it took—one second—isn’t that what they were always saying? One second, then gone. A hand from the bushes, a car on the side of the road. She raced between the graves, still calling out to her and now almost crying, and she had almost reached the far side of the cemetery, when she heard giggling from behind her. She spun around. Samantha was sitting there, not twenty feet away, her knees up, and her back to a large headstone, rounded on the top. Diana felt the relief flood through her body.

  “I scared you, Mummy,” she said.

  Diana struggled to catch her breath. She started toward her. Wanting to hug her, but also wanting to spank her. Threaten her life.

  “Don’t,” she said, “Ever. Do that again. I call out to you? You answer me. You understand me?!” she shouted. The little girl nodded, eyes wide. And then her lips trembled and she started to cry. Diana got down on her knees, the earth frozen beneath her, and pulled her close. “I love you too much,” she said.

  Samantha wiped her nose on Diana’s coat, and Diana hugged her tighter.

  “It’s okay,” Diana said. “Okay.” She stroked the back of the little girl’s head. She looked at the headstone behind Sam, and was taken aback a moment. Dorothy and Edward Barlow. The old aunt, and her husband, dead almost sixty years before her. Diana had never visited the grave with the girl before—she knew it was out here, but not exactly where—and she wondered if Ford had. She looked up then and she realized they weren’t alone. There was a man in the distance, standing in the middle of the cemetery, in between them and the house. Dark coat, hemmed in at the ribs, white shirt and black tie. From the distance he looked to have a beard, or at least some sort of whiskers, and it looked like he was holding a pocket watch in his hand, the chain clipped to his vest. But he wasn’t looking at the watch, he was looking at Samantha and Diana. He almost looked like something out of an old cartoon, a carpetbagger or traveling snake oil salesman. She must have passed him while she was running, but she couldn’t have passed him without seeing him. Could she? She had been looking all about her, and it would have taken him several minutes to get to where he was standing. But she must have passed him. And he was watching them. She didn’t like him watching them. Diana lowered her chin, and kissed Samantha’s head—the girl getting her sobs under control—and when Diana looked up again the man was gone.

  9

  The Journal of Elizabeth Veronica Steebe

  June 16, 1871

  Sin City. Or so Hiram and the others have dubbed it. The company broke ground on a new building. They call themselves The Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company, and four of the owners are islanders, none of the them strangers to Trinity Park here—Captain Grafton Norton Collins, William Bradley, Captain Ira Darrow, and, of course, Captain Shubael Lyman Norton. Mr. William S. Hills is from Boston, and the “Honorable” Erastus P. Carpenter is from Foxborough. Their fortunes dwindling with the sorrowful plight of the whaling industry, these men, no longer able to harvest the seas, apparently see fit to harvest our community. They have already erected several buildings, more than one questionable in nature, in and around Cottage City, and now they are building an enormous hotel down near Ocean Park, overlooking the water—the Sea View they plan on calling it—and Hiram reached out to the people during the camp meeting in an emotional appeal for soul searching, imploring upon everyone to band together and take a stand against it. It was bad enough that one house of ill repute after another was going up so close to Trinity Park, but now they were building them, breaking ground, here on a Sunday, scraping the filth from their shoes upon the day of the Lord.

  Hiram had fire in his eyes as he spoke. His anger, frustration, has been rising for years now, but to be honest there doesn’t seem much hope of turning things around. There were a few hallelujahs and Mrs. James Cowley fainted in her chair in a state of heightened ecstasy, but the majority of our brethren appear given in, believing we need to learn to live with the new people. But Hiram will not count himself as one of them. “The Lord called us to this island, this woods, this ‘Place of Great Trees,’ overlooking Nantucket Sound,” he said, “to make this place holy and to keep it so, and to share our love and conviction, proudly and openly, among one another. And not,” he said, “to allow these imposters, these men who had once called themselves our brothers, to waltz over our faith and to create a Sin City. It has been that way ever since the first circuit rider, the Reverend Jesse Lee, pulled ashore to the island, to preach the ministry of John Wesley himself. Since Reformation John Adams organized his sparsely attended camp meeting high on West Chop. And,” Hiram added, “since the venerable Reverend Pease held our first camp meeting here among the towering oaks. And now,” Hiram said, “the burden is upon us to honor and protect their vision. And to see it through ’til judgment.”

  The people listened attentively, but all the while we could hear the hammers, the noise causing Hiram to shout all the louder, his voice carrying and shaking through the trees, tents, and cottages. The buildings on Circuit Avenue have all sprung up quicker—it seems as if there is a new one every day—than any of us ever could have ever imagined, and the company has already built its own church—an interdenominational building—they have dubbed “The Union Chapel” but Hiram says it is a ruse, a ploy from the Devil to pry the good from the hands of God. The Sea View Hotel is being built to serve as his domain, to house the transitory faithless all under one roof. “They will come from far and wide,” Hiram says, “to partake in the debauchery that is now becoming Circuit Avenue—the once honorable Circuit Avenue—and the Devil will be pleased. Already the tavern down on Lake Avenue is being worked by women who have fallen from Christ,” he says, “lifting their petticoats for any man with a coin.”

  I have seen these women, sitting precariously on the rail of the balcony high above the tavern, on the evenings when Hiram and I have taken a walk to the water’s edge, “bluffing” as it is known, on our moonlight stroll to view the moon and the sea, and the picturesque Lover’s Rock as it swallowed by the tide. These women always smile and wave, and always seem quite friendly, but Hiram has insisted we not acknowledge them at all. For just one look, just one connection with the eyes, can be the downfall of any man. “The Devil’s powers are strong,” he says. And despite the ten p.m. curfew here in Trinity Park, the fence gate closing at ten, Hiram likes to walk to the water later at night sometimes, too, after the builders are gone, to monitor the progress the sinners have made. He says nothing would please him more to stroll down there one evening and find the entire thing engulfed in flames. Burning to the ground. A modern day Gomorrah, he calls it, and he says he is beginning to wonder if God is now setting the final stage, the final stage for the final battle. Armageddon, he whispers.

  July 2, 1871

 
Hiram had an altercation with a man on the wharf late this morning, the architect of the hotel. A Mr. Samuel Freedman Pratt, a fellow Bostonian. The island is now much more crowded than it has been in months, throngs of people arriving on the ferry boats, some for the services, others for the upcoming holiday and the recreation land that is springing up all around us. Hiram was not well when he woke—I could tell by his eyes—and he refused any breakfast, informing me that he was fasting. He prayed for an hour before collapsing to the floor, so full of the spirit that he was apparently unable to speak or to move, and then when he finally rose, he told me he had some business in town. He told me he wished me to remain inside the cottage today, and wash all the linen, and then he spent a good five minutes gazing in the mirror, at first not moving again, not at all, just staring—an empty gaze—and then adjusting his tie and his hat before heading out the door toward Circuit Avenue.

  He had me quite anxious, watching from the window, so once he had begun to round the circle, close to exiting the campground, I grabbed my umbrella and decided to follow. Hiram says he likes to think while he walks, to commune with the Lord, and despite his impressive height, he never moves very quickly. He walks with a limp, his leg lame from the war, and always looking straight ahead, and the people clear a path for him as he makes his way. He is a commanding figure and the people that know him know better than to interrupt him while he is walking in communion with the Lord, but there were many people out and about today, the cottages all bustling—the camp dwellers fanning themselves and taking cool drinks on their porches and front lawns—and twice as I followed, I lost sight of him.

  Everything is in bloom now, the flowers bright and matching the many colors of the cottages, and it is my favorite time of year. Nearly all of the camp dwellers come and go with the season, either back to Edgartown or back to the mainland, but Hiram and I recently winterized our cottage, selling his family home on South Water Street in Edgartown, and now plan to stay here year round. It is our business to stay, he has told me, to remain through the darkest days of winter to watch over things and keep this place sacred, shrouding ourselves in pleasing grief and mournful joy.

  Hiram stopped inside the Arcade Bldg.—where the offices of Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company are located on the first floor—but after less than a minute, he was back out the door, and crossing Circuit Avenue. At that point, I was quite certain I knew where he was heading. The hotel by the sea.

  Even from the distance, I was amazed to see the structure towering as high as it is, wooden beams and scaffolding climbing into the sky. It is a magnificent sight to behold from the distance, and I found my heart fluttering in awe, but Hiram has warned me not to be fooled. The Devil comes in many packages, he has said, some grand and some small, and nearly all initially enticing to behold. Enticing until you look closely, he says, to see his things for just what they are, to see them once stripped of their pomp and their grandeur, to see the bare workings of what would be their soul if indeed their soul were to exist. I see, he has told me, tapping his temples. The Lord has given me the gift of sight, and I see clearly through men, machines, structures and nature, to the essence of what exists within. Some may consider it a curse to carry such a burden, he says, but I consider it a blessing. The trust of God placed in my head, my eyes and my hands, to see through it all, and make it all right. Hiram has told me many times, and told the people at large, that he had his first vision late in the war while he was convalescing following the battle at Chancellorsville. He had been severely wounded, twice in the leg, and once in the chest, and he spiked a high fever while his wounds fought infection. The doctors later told him he came close to losing his leg—the beginning signs of gangrene—and more than likely would have lost his life, but Hiram says it was then that the Lord intervened. Here was Glory himself, magnificent red robes and bathed in white light, Hiram said. He stood at the foot of Hiram’s bed, and raised his scepter high above him. He had a higher calling for Hiram to answer, the Lord said, than that of the war. His time would come, but it had not come yet, and with that he breathed a great wind down upon him, a wind that roared through Hiram’s body, cleaning as it did, and within a day, his fever had broken, and within a week his feet were on the floor, the hand of God beckoning from the door of the old schoolhouse they were using for a hospital. A miracle, the doctor said, but Hiram said no. With the Lord there were no such things as miracles for with the Lord, anything was possible. It just was.

  Hiram returned to the battlefield, but this time with no fear, and until the war’s end never was he grazed by a bullet, nor touched by the shrapnel of a cannonball exploding, again. While others around him fell by the dozens, Hiram marched on from the final battle of Appomattox Courthouse, to his studies in Methodism off island at Boston University. And here he marched still, as I watched from behind, down the worn path that bisects Ocean Park, and on to the Sea View. God marching with him.

  Hiram was no stranger to Mr. Pratt. He has been to see him several times at the company offices dating back to the day when the offices stood in the old storehouse building where now they construct the Sea View, and he has implored upon him for years, at first civilly, pragmatically, and later with the fire leaping from the tip of his tongue, the need to see the error of his ways, the evil he is bringing to Wesleyan Grove. Mr. Pratt does not see it, and constantly reverts to the Union Chapel to prove his case in point. An octagonal house of God, he says, with four doors, facing east, south, north, and west, welcoming everyone. And such is the problem, Hiram has reminded him, he welcomes everyone, both the good and the wicked.

  In the distance, I could see the crowds passing along the plank walk that runs along the shore—men, women, and children, some stopping for refreshment at the pagoda building, taking a moment to escape the sun, others bustling about at Tivoli Dance and Recreation Hall, and others still continuing on along the beach in the direction of Old Edgartown, all looking happy, at peace—and I must admit that for a moment, I stopped, something feeling to drop deep inside me, wondering why it can’t be so for myself and for Hiram. Why the search for the higher good cannot in itself, ever take a holiday. But never would I utter these thoughts to Hiram. For a holiday with the Devil will lead to torment for eternity. Of this, he says, we must be certain.

  Hiram found Mr. Pratt near the water’s edge, the head of the wharf, the framework of the structure rising high above them. Mr. Pratt was leaning over a table, presumably spread with the plans for the building, and he at first appeared to be paying Hiram no mind. Mr. Pratt is a man small in stature, and Hiram towered over him. Mr. Pratt was down to his vest, his tie gone, and his collar undone, his sleeves rolled to his elbow. His hat was pushed high at an angle as he studied his prints, and his eyeglasses had slipped to the end of his nose. I was near the pagoda building, mixing in among the crowd, and though I could hear Hiram’s voice, steady at first and then beginning to tremble, gradually getting louder, I could not clearly decipher all of his words. A crowd had begun to gather about the men—workers and tourists and members of the campground—and yet Mr. Pratt still appeared to be paying Hiram no mind. If he spoke at all, and I believe he did not, I could not hear him, and his silence only appeared to be provoking Hiram all the more. Hiram slammed an open hand down upon the table, and though he was a distance away, his back turned to me, I could see his eyes, I knew the look that burned inside them—I have seen them like this enough times before, the rage consuming him completely, leaving him with nothing left inside. Mr. Pratt first turned his gaze to the hand, the fingers splayed upon the table, and only then did he look up and confront Hiram. What he said, I know not, but whatever it was, it set Hiram’s words into actions, and he raised his hand as if to strike, shouting as he did, and now I could hear him quoting Scripture, Corinthians 11:13-15—“For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves
as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.” He finished the verse and then he smote his open hand forward.

  He did not get far. Mr. Pratt leapt backward, and Hiram, on his bad leg, lost his balance. Two of the workers lunged forward, coming between Hiram and the man, and one brought a clenched fist up from his side, striking Hiram in the abdomen, and when Hiram doubled over, this man hit him again, this time in the jaw. This man was as tall as Hiram, but well-muscled, and wide across the shoulders, quick in his movements, leaving Hiram not a second to respond, he hit him a third time in the side of the head. People were running about, and some of them were shouting, and Mr. Pratt had stepped in front of the worker, his hands on his shoulders, pressing him backward, and he, shouting, too. Hiram was now down on his knees, and soon disappeared behind the swarm of the crowd.

  Mr. Pratt was still shouting at the man who had struck Hiram, and the man was looking down as if in shame, a dog to its master. It was necessary to push my way through to get to Hiram—two men from the camp were down on one knee beside him—one holding up fingers before Hiram’s eyes and asking him to count. He looked in a daze, and his eyes looked unfocused, but the focus returned as soon as he saw me. The confusion was instantly replaced with fury. He got to his feet, unsteady at first, brushing the men from the camp aside, and brushing the dust from the sleeves of his jacket, he stepped forward and took hold of my arm, pulling me along as we pushed out of the crowd. “I told you to stay home,” he told me.

  It all happened very quickly, and though people with whom we were familiar called out regarding our well-being, Hiram paid them no mind. He was staring straight ahead but muttering words beneath his breath. Words directed at me. Disobedient. Insubordinate. Filthy.

  He directed me to sit in the chair in our bedroom when we returned to our cottage, dolls on the chair and dolls by the windowsill, watching me. And then shutting curtains and the window that looked out upon the tabernacle, he removed his strap.