by S. M. Parker
“Ha! Exactly. The brain is a powerful tool, Rilla Brae. And mine is weak. It’s pretty easy for me to project my worst fears onto a place, and I’d like to not do that while I’m out here, please and thank you.” He takes a bite of Gram’s biscuit and his face softens.
I pretend like my head isn’t crammed with questions and slather jam onto a biscuit half. I offer Sam the jelly when I’m finished.
Sam waves off the jar. “I’ve never been a big fan of condiments. I take my berries round and my bread plain.”
“My gram made it. Boysenberry. It’s wicked good.”
“Wicked good, huh?” I nod, and he laughs.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just that using the words ‘wicked’ and ‘good’ next to each other like that is a contradiction in any other part of the world. You realize that, don’t you?”
“We’re not in another part of the world. We’re Downeast with some wicked good biscuits.”
He smiles and smooths the jelly onto the soft doughy middle of his roll. When he takes a bite, he chews slowly, almost intimately. Some part of me thinks I should look away, but I don’t.
He winks open one eye. “This, Rilla”—he holds up his jellied bit—“is a testament to embracing the unexpected. I had no idea I was starved for biscuits and homemade boysenberry jam, but I think it’s all I’ll ever want to eat for the rest of my life.” He takes another bite, and a slow, deep smile relaxes his features, closes his eyes. “Damn. This is amazing.”
“Even with the jelly?”
“I was talking about the jelly.”
“Gram’s specialty.”
“Is it weird that I’m in love with your grandmother?”
I smile. “There is literally nothing weirder.” Okay, not true lately. But still.
“I would like to marry her, please.”
“I don’t know about that. No man’s been good enough for her yet.” Gram never married my grandfather or even lived with him. She wanted to be a mother but never a wife, as scandalous as that notion was when she was pregnant with my mother. “I’m not sure she’d have you.”
He feigns being offended. “What? I’m a great catch. I mean, I’m riddled with baggage—same as anyone—but still, great catch.”
“I’ll be sure to let her know.”
“Please do. Put in a good word for me. And maybe ask her to bake up another batch of these rad biscuits.”
“Rad, huh?”
“So rad.”
“Are you trying to outdo my regional linguistic flair?”
He laughs. “Maybe add to it. Like, these biscuits are wicked rad.”
My smile deepens. “Work the sea and she’ll make them for you every day.” I look out toward home, hope Gram isn’t worried about me. I should have radioed in when I got to the island.
Sam reaches for another biscuit, and I pull a leaf of young goldenrod from its stalk. I bring it to my nose, trying to coax out the smell of honey the plant will produce weeks from now. Today it smells only of green. I slip the leaf between my palms, rub back and forth. The grinding is said to make good fortune rise. My father taught me how Maine’s indigenous people used the goldenrod seed for food, but I don’t know if this species is edible. But could it be a descendant of the old woman’s garden? A seed that has set roots with each spring? “I found some photos online. Of the island.”
“Yeah?”
“There was this one woman, an older woman by herself in a—”
“Rocking chair.”
“You know her?”
“I know the photo. There aren’t many photos that exist of the islanders. Believe me, I’ve studied them all.” He waves his hand. “You were going to say something about it and I interrupted you. I’m sorry.”
His apology surprises me. A boy who apologizes for interrupting a girl might be as rare as photos of the island. “She had a vegetable garden in front of her house, some raised beds.” I pluck another early goldenrod from its stem. “I was just thinking that if she grew herbs, this plant could be part of a kind of floral footprint she left behind.” It’s impossible not to think of Gram’s floral footprint at Fairtide, all her gardens, each with their own purpose. Each flower and vegetable telling its own story, thanks to the bees.
“Floral footprint, I like that.” Sam smiles wide. “The university has mapped out where each resident lived, where they kept their livestock, but we don’t know a lot about the gardens and I don’t know anything about plants. You?”
“Some.” If she grew herbs, maybe she was a healer. Something about this feels right. “Sam? Why did the islanders leave? What happened out here?”
Sam reaches in his backpack, pulls out a moleskin journal, its elastic straining from all the added pages. “What happened was the end.” He passes me the book. “This is the beginning, or as much as we know.”
I flip open the neat pages. Taped to the first page is a printed photo—a group of children, their youth nearly a hundred years old now. Some faces black, some white, some brown. The children are thin in the way of children then. I search the faces for my girl, but the kids are years younger than she appeared. The little ones wear the same wary look, shared across the squint of their eyes. None wear shoes. Their shirts are thin and worn and ill-fitting, slouching around the neck or rising too high at the arms. These children stand so close to one another in a line of seven, shoulder pressed against neighboring shoulder as if for protection.
Their faces are drawn in the way a hard life can wear at the softest of edges. Even childhood edges.
“These kids lived out here?”
“They did.”
Sam moves to my side as I read the names etched in eerie white ink against the aged black-and-white photo. I recognize some last names, families who still work this sea.
“The state sent census workers out here in the summer of 1931. That’s when most of these photos are from. That official visit is why we have a list of the residents’ names, ages, races.”
I tap my thumb against the grainy photo. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“What in particular?”
“How could there be so much diversity on this tiny island? Saying it’s an anomaly is an understatement.”
“Because Maine is ninety-five percent white?”
“Exactly.” I can’t take my eyes from the photo, the children with their backs to the sea.
“The island was an anomaly. It was settled by the descendants of Benjamin Darling, a black man who purchased Harbor Island in the late seventeen hundreds.”
Harbor Island sits just beyond Malaga, a sister in the sea. So many Maine maps name it Horse Island.
“Darling’s descendants moved to Malaga around 1860. Eventually some Abenaki people came to live here. Some Irish and Scottish fishermen too.”
“Ahead of its time.”
“At the wrong time.” Sam nudges his pencil at the corner of the moleskin. “It’s all in there. I’ve included copies of some newspaper articles written around the time the census workers arrived. Real yellow journalism stuff. Be prepared. And I’ve made notes about the island’s history in the margins.” He leans in, flips to a random page, nods at his scribbling. “See? There.”
Oral history has been lost due to enduring feelings of shame, embarrassment. Malaga remains a racially and culturally charged subject. Former governor publicly apologized to the Malaga descendants who’ve begun to come forward in recent years.
Then, a headline from the Bath Enterprise: NOT FIT FOR DOGS—POVERTY, IMMORTALITY AND DISEASE . . . IGNORANCE, SHIFTLESSNESS, FILTH AND HEATHENISM . . . A SHAMEFUL DISGRACE THAT SHOULD BE LOOKED AFTER AT ONCE.1
In the margin, Sam has scribbled: eugenics used to sway public sentiment.
My grip on the journal tightens. I want to accept this loan. “You’re sure? You don’t need it for your work?”
“I have every photo, every word memorized.” He taps his pencil to his temple. “I keep them with me every day.”
“Only if y
ou’re sure.”
“I’m more than sure.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s no trouble.”
I wish my dad were here more than ever. So we could talk about Malaga with this person from away who knows so much more than I do about our own backyard.
I flip the page and there’s the old woman, sitting in her rocker, daring the camera to steal her soul. Her gardens are tall with tomatoes, sprawling with running squash vines. And flowers, too. I see the small dark heads of marigolds companion-planted to keep the bugs off the tomatoes. And a blossom so familiar. A bloom no different from the Flame I found on my boat. The coincidence rakes my spine. “This one.” I point to the full hem of the woman’s dark skirt. “This is the photo I saw.”
Sam leans over my shoulder. “The matriarch.” It’s eerie how my skin flames with cool bumps. “I like to think the islanders came to her for everything: advice, comfort, wisdom.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
He shakes his head. “It was only eighty years ago. You’d think we’d have records for everyone on Malaga, but the islanders where solitary people, living off the grid for a reason. Census records tell us a lot, but no one’s been able to identify that woman. And the shame of what happened here has kept descendants from coming forward. Even now.”
What shame did this woman suffer?
“We might not know her name, but we know she was strong. All the islanders were.”
“Had to be.”
Sam nods. “Exactly. Think about how difficult it must have been to live out here then. Everything was harder. Fishing was harder; the winters were harder. Medicine, money, all harder to come by.”
“Maybe that stuff wasn’t important. At least not as important as their freedom—to live life on their own terms.”
“That’s the most fascinating part, Rilla. The islanders were strong-willed, enduring. Even if they looked poor to mainlanders, they chose to live their secluded life over anything the mainland could offer. Their poverty was nothing compared to their wealth of spirit. I’ve got mad respect for them.”
“So why did they leave?”
“They were forced off the island. The only reason we even have photos or any documentation at all is because of that census visit. Governor Plaisted wanted to assess the size of Malaga for development. When the newspapers started writing articles about the poverty of the Malaga community, well, that’s when things got bad. Poverty was considered a disease then, the poor afflicted with feeble brains. They were thought inferior, and the governor claimed they had no right to live on land that held so many developmental prospects.”
“So, what? Like eminent domain?”
“The state didn’t need it. Three weeks after his visit, the governor posted a notice of eviction. In the end, the islanders didn’t own the island, even though they’d been living in the area since the Civil War. None of the nearby towns wanted to be associated with Malaga after the press began a hate campaign against the so-called squatters. When no town claimed the island, the state took it.”
This all sounds impossible. The old woman must have known this hate was rising around her. Did she read the papers? Did the network of fishermen keep islanders informed of mainland news? “How did you learn about Malaga? I mean, how are you even here? How do you know all this stuff ?”
There’s a short silence that’s filled only with the lapping tide, the shouting gulls. Then, “I was twelve and living in Arizona’s southern desert when I found this old book in my parents’ shed.” Sam laughs, in a way that’s more sad than funny. “Kind of a survey on the states. I had to hold the spine just right so it wouldn’t crack and fall apart when I opened the book. It had a section on Maine and its fishermen—way back in the day, like the 1850s—and something about this coast felt like the last frontier to me. When I found that section about Maine’s islands . . . well, it kind of . . .” He trails off, lets the sea fill the quiet between us. “I guess you could say it showed me how big the world could be—you know, for me. If I let it be that big. That book’s the reason why I came to Maine for school, applied for this internship.”
“A book you read when you were twelve?”
He laughs. “Twelve-year-old boys are very impressionable.” He looks out toward the horizon though it’s clear he’s seeing something bigger than the sea. “I was . . . well, optimally impressionable at that age. I never stopped researching Maine’s maritime history, and when I came across Malaga’s story, I wanted to meet the people who never got a chance to be heard.”
I want that too. In this moment, it’s all I want. “It seems like a good thing to want.”
“Maybe, but there’s a reason why no one talks about this place.” He nods to the portfolio. “Read what’s in there and you’ll see. Sometimes it’s easier to keep secrets buried than to live with our truth.”
I don’t even realize my knuckles have drained white from gripping the moleskin until I look down. “I’ll read every word.”
“That reminds me.” Sam pops open the front pocket of his pack and pulls out a book. For a second I think it might be his old, cracked encyclopedia from the desert, but he passes me The World According to Garp. “For you. In case you want to revisit the Under Toad.” Sam’s smile is soft, like he knew full well I had no idea the Under Toad was born in a novel but he doesn’t want me to feel bad about it either.
I swallow down something that feels bigger than gratitude. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank John Irving. The man’s a master.”
“I feel bad I didn’t bring you anything.” Dad and Gram raised me to return kindness with multiplied kindness, and gift giving is no exception.
“You’re a funny one, Rilla Brae.”
“Funny how?”
“Funny because you can’t see that you’ve brought me biscuits and saved my very borrowed boat from utter destruction.”
These things are nothing. Dad called them “expected and necessary gestures of polite society.” He’d say it in a bad British accent and pretend at a pipe at his mouth.
“And you came here with your curiosity and conversation. Those are gifts I don’t even know how to pay you back for.”
Huh. I pull the books to my heart because I can’t find words to thank him for the Under Toad, for allowing my father to reach across death to find me in this way.
“I saw it at the used bookstore in town and thought of you. I would’ve bought you a fresh and clean and new copy, but . . . well, there’s zero pay in internship work.”
“Come work for me.” My offer surprises me, and doesn’t.
Sam lets out a quick laugh. “Work for you? You have treasure that needs excavating?”
“Sort of. Well, okay, no. I need a sternman for the summer. Someone to help me haul lobsters off the bottom.” I need someone to be me in the way that I helped my dad.
He laughs fully now. “I know nothing about lobstering. I almost lost my boat to the perils of the granite shore, if you recall.”
“I never said you could drive my boat.” I throw him a quick wink. “And it’s okay if you’re a newbie. I’ll teach you what you need to know. You bring a strong back and we’ll figure out the rest. We go out before the sun rises, so you’d have your afternoons free to come out here.”
“Done.”
“Done? Just like that?”
“Just like that. Hell, if I don’t jump at everything life offers me, what’s the point?”
His enthusiasm. I think that might be his real gift.
“Can you be here at six o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“Will you have biscuits?”
“Warm ones.”
“Then, Rilla Brae, you’ve got yourself a sternman. An incompetent one that hails from the dusty desert of Arizona, but a sternman nonetheless.” Sam stands and extends his hand. I stand across from him, and we shake on our promise, even if it feels like more.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After dinner, Gram disappears to h
er attic to paint and I head to bed. The sun sinks down the sky, trailing its pinks and oranges as I text Hattie:
Me: Found a sternman so you don’t need to bag chum
Hatt: Thank GOD!
Me: Hang tomorrow?
Hatt: Rodents of Unusual Size couldn’t keep me away
I smile, throw on Reed’s old Red Sox T-shirt, which is soft with age and wear. As I climb into bed, I grab the moleskin and pull at a piece of paper sticking out of the top. An inventory list written on a piece of University of Southern Maine stationery. My fingers trace the blue-and-gold seal at the top, how it’s proudly embossed on the page. I envy Sam, the way he carries his university with him. I imagined it would be that way for me at the University of Rhode Island. That the moment I was on campus, I would be home, my identity linked to my education, my future. But now I think that’s the Rilla Brae who may never get a chance to exist.
I focus on the simple list, written in Sam’s steady, neat hand. There are check boxes next to the names of tools, some having eleven marks next to their names. Eleven days. It seems like nothing, a hiccup of time, yet the last eleven days have filled with the unexpected and morphed into eleven lifetimes.
I’m careful with the pages of the binder as I turn to the photo of the two-room schoolhouse with its fresh white trim paint and sturdy lines. All of its windows straight, their panes unbroken. On the school’s front porch, thirteen children pose: small boys in smart vests, a young girl with a doll. No one looks like my girl from the shore, as if it’s even possible for her to live then and now. Under the photo is a notation about the missionaries from Massachusetts who made the school a reality. My heart buckles.
The school. The children. All gone now.
There’s another photo of the same children standing on a ridge, the open sky behind them. The features of the children on the right blur under the shade of a tree just beyond the photo’s frame. The children pose dutifully in their finest tiny sweaters, overalls, and dresses. The youngest girl still clings to her doll.