Children of the Island

by Wright, T. M.

  He realized then that his anxiety had changed to fear. So he began to move faster (though not at a run; the thick underbrush wasn't about to let him run), very stiffly, very mechanically, not caring where he might be going, because he didn't know where he was going anyway. He stumbled several times, the underbrush opening small cuts on his knees and hands.

  He found himself at the grassy shore of a small lake. He stumbled face forward into the shallow water, pushed himself up on all fours, looked out, across the water, and saw a pair of dim, yellow, rectangular lights—windows, he realized—through the darkness.

  "He's a big boy, Marie. He'll be able to take care of himself."

  Marie lowered her head and shook it briskly. "No," she said, and her voice quivered with emotion. She looked up at Fred seated across from her at the small, oak table.

  "No, Jim is not a big boy. Not out here. Don't you understand that?! Out here, Jim is a very small boy!"

  "He's got eyes, doesn't he? And a brain? And feet? And hands? Small boy, my ass! I've heard of kids—five-year-old kids—getting lost out here for days and turning up okay. You have, too."

  "Yes, Fred, that's true. And I've heard of grown men—just like Jim—wandering off just like Jim—and never coming back." She glared at her brother. It was at times like these that she thought she despised him.

  He said casually, "You found your way good enough, didn't you? Well then, so can he."

  "And what if he does find his way, Fred? How's he going to make it out here from shore? Is he going to fly? Maybe he can walk on water. Do you think he can do that?"

  Fred studied her face a moment, and sighed heavily. "Jesus, okay. I'll take the damned boat back in the morning. I'll find him!"

  She shook her head again. "In the morning, you can do whatever in the hell you want. But as soon as that storm lets up"—she nodded at the kitchen window—a heavy rain was pelting it—"I'm taking the lamp and I'm going to go looking for him."

  Fred stood slowly. He leaned over, put his big hands flat on the table, and looked Marie squarely in the eye. "He's a candy-ass, Marie. You know it, I know it, he knows it. And I don't really give two shits if the damned fish have him for their damned dinner!" He straightened. He moved around the table, toward a door leading into one of the house's two bedrooms—he had already laid his sleeping bag out in it. He stopped in the doorway and looked back. "Do what the hell you want, Marie," he said, and he went into the bedroom.

  Marie, seething, could think of nothing to say. She glanced toward the window again—the rain seemed heavier. She knew that the storm would last the night.

  Jim Hart was singing—not very loud, barely above a whisper—a song his mother had taught him thirty years before. He had had occasion to sing the song only three times since his childhood, twice in Vietnam, and now here: "Hush little baby, don't say a word/Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird" . . . and so on. He sang it with a wan smile on his face. He sang it because he was scared silly, because the song comforted him, because it carried him back; and when he sang it, he felt properly ashamed.

  He was still shivering, though now more violently, and as he whispered his little song, a word came to him—hypothermia, the slow loss of body heat. Left untreated, it ended in death. He knew about hypothermia because the daughter of a friend had died of it one cold November night eight years earlier. She had gotten exhausted trying to find her way home in a freak, late-autumn snowstorm, and had fallen asleep twenty feet from a neighbor's house. She had been wearing a gray pleated skirt, red oxfords, and a sheer gray blouse. Jim had never met her, he had merely been witness to his friend's silent, staring grief.

  And so he had learned about hypothermia, and knew that he had fallen victim to it, now. One of the first symptoms, he realized, was that he didn't care very much. It didn't hurt; he felt numb, and alone, and sleepy—not altogether uncomfortable. There were certainly far worse ways to die, far more painful ways. He thought he would have preferred to have been less wet, that it would be nice if the rain stopped and the stars came out. Everyone should have a look at the stars before death came—they were a nice reminder of eternity (he decided that for a city dweller that was a pretty profound way to think).

  . . . "and if that mockingbird don't sing/Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring" . . . He had always liked his singing voice; he wished he could really sing loud now, instead of merely whisper. He thought that whatever was watching him would be impressed.

  Because he knew that he was being watched. It wasn't a guess, a shot in the dark—there must be something else alive in these woods. It was a certainty, he knew it just as he had known other things throughout his life; that phones would or would not be answered, or that old friends would appear, or that pets would die.

  He didn't know precisely what was watching him, only that it had intelligence, and that it watched with great curiosity, that—in its way—it was attempting to reach out to him.

  "And if," he whispered, "that diamond ring . . ." He faltered, then went on, "turns brass/Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass/And if that looking . . . glass . . ."

  He stopped singing. He knew that the thing had gone away, into the woods. He waited. Something else had taken its place. "Jim?" he heard. "Jim, answer me."

  It was Marie. She was leaning over him. He wasn't sure if he was really seeing her.

  "And if that looking glass . . . turns blue . . ." He thought he heard himself chuckle.

  "Jim, I can't carry you by myself. You've got to help." He felt her hands on his arms. He became aware that she was tugging at him: "Jim, please!"

  "And if that . . . diamond brass turns . . . green . . ."

  "What in hell are you talking about? Please try to stand up, Jim. Please!"

  She grabbed his hand. She recoiled. He was as cold as a corpse.

  "Wait here, Jim!" she told him. "Wait here! I'll go get Fred. Wait here!"

  Chapter 2

  The small, gray frame house stood alone on the island; the people who had built the house fifty years before had discovered that the runoff from the streams feeding the lake put nearly half the island underwater at least once a year, which made the normally two-acre-size island much too small for more than one house.

  It was a sturdy, single-story house, with an open porch, a shallow crawlspace basement (a full basement would have flooded regularly), a living room, two tiny bedrooms, a chemical toilet, and a kitchen with wood-burning stove and ancient ice chest. There was no upholstered furniture in the house (it mildewed too quickly in the moist air), only a few handmade wooden chairs and tables, and there were no beds, no electricity, and no telephone. And because it would have been impossible to reach the house in winter, there was no fireplace and no heating stove.

  It was, as Marie (the former Mrs. Aubin; also the former Marie Williams, her maiden name—a name she loathed) had explained to Jim Hart a week earlier, in an attempt to convince him to come on the hike, "rustic living at its very coziest." To which Jim had responded, "Yeah? I know what 'cozy' means. It means spiders and black flies and frigid mountain air."

  She took the cup of machine-made coffee he offered her. "Spiders? Sure." She sipped the coffee, grinned, then hurried on. "But the black flies are gone for the season. And we'll protect you from the spiders."

  "'We'?" he said. "Who's 'we'?" When she had first approached him with the idea of a hiking expedition—two days before—he had entertained the delicious fantasy that it would be just the two of them. Alone. The idea made him dizzy with anticipation. Now his shoulders slumped noticeably. "Do you mean that someone else wants to come along?"

  "Uh-huh." She nodded grimly. "Fred does."

  "Your brother?"

  "My brother."

  Jim's fantasies nearly exploded. He felt the same way about Fred Williams that, he had supposed more than once, most people felt about biting dogs and screeching nine-year-olds; he was afraid of Fred Williams, and Fred Williams made him nervous (or, as his mother had been fond of saying, "nervous and jerky," which
was, he thought, a far more apt description).

  "Fred doesn't . . . like me very much, Marie." He sipped his coffee and attempted a weak, apologetic smile at the same time. The coffee dribbled onto his white shirt.

  "He hates you!" Marie corrected. She pulled a small handkerchief from her pants pocket and dabbed futilely at the coffee stain. "But that's okay," she went on matter-of-factly, "because you hate him." She put her handkerchief away and stared quizzically at the stain. "That's going to stay there forever, Jim. It's the fabric. Why do you buy shirts like that?"

  He looked down at the stain. "I don't know," he mumbled. "A shirt's a shirt, I guess–"

  She interrupted, "So, what do you say? This weekend? It'll be good for you." She glanced quickly at his belly, which was just beginning a long, slow hike of its own over his belt. "You need the exercise, Jim. And I promise" —she held two fingers up, scout's-honor style—"we won't let a spider within five feet of you."

  He hesitated. She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Please?" she said.

  "Yes," he answered immediately. "Okay."

  "Good." She turned toward her office. "You won't regret it, Jim," she called over her shoulder.

  He wasn't at all sure about that now. Because he ached. Badly. As if every muscle in his body had been stepped on by someone in spiked heels. And although it was Marie's face over him, and her marvelous green eyes on him, and her soothing voice asking if he was all right, he found that his eyes would focus only on Fred, standing a few feet behind her, grinning as if to say what a fool he—Jim Hart—was, and what a stupid mistake it had been to bring him along in the first place.

  Surprising himself, Jim heard these words slip from his mouth: "Go to hell, Fred!—you bastard!" And he realized, instantly, that the words had been unintelligible, that all Fred had probably heard was a long, slow, and undulating exhale. Jim felt very relieved.

  "Try to stand up," Marie said.

  "I can't," Jim whispered.

  "Sure you can. You really should."

  "Why?"

  "What'd you say, Jim? I didn't hear you."

  "Why?" Jim repeated. "Why should I stand up?"

  "Because it'll get your blood circulating. Don't you want your blood to circulate?"

  Jim supposed that he smiled; he wasn't sure. He saw Marie smile.

  "He's got no blood," Fred grumbled, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "He's got gin and tonic in his veins—isn't that right, Jimbo?!"

  Jim hated being called "Jimbo"—it sounded too much like "Dumbo," or "Bimbo." "Don't call me that," he said aloud, and he felt himself moving, felt himself sitting up very slowly, saw his knees come up to his chin, saw his arms circle them. "Am I all right?" he said. "Did I get frostbite, or something?" He knew that he hadn't.

  "No," Marie answered. "We put you in the boat and brought you back here. You fell asleep for a few hours, but you're okay."

  He lifted his head slightly and focused on a bare, white wall several yards away. "Is this the house?" he asked, knowing full well that it was.

  "It's the house," Marie said.

  He felt himself grimace; shit, but if he could just shake the damned body aches, if he could just get in touch with himself again. He hadn't felt this way in a decade or so—ever since he'd last dropped acid—as if he was going to chuckle off to a fantasyland at any moment. "It's still raining outside?" he asked, hoping that Marie would understand what he needed now—a hold on reality, because the rain was reality.

  "It's still raining," Marie told him. "And you're okay, Jim. A touch of hypothermia, that's all."

  Jim looked at her and grinned slightly, as if proud of himself. "I know what that is," he said. "I had a friend once . . ." He stopped grinning abruptly. "His daughter died because of it." He noticed, then, that his body aches were slowly dissipating, as if a hundred small vises were gradually being removed.

  "You're outa shape, Jimbo," Fred told him.

  Jim said nothing.

  "Shut up, Fred," Marie said, though halfheartedly, because she knew he wouldn't listen.

  He laughed low in his throat. "You're a candy-ass, Jimbo."

  Jim closed his eyes. He imagined that he was back home, in his apartment on East 49th Street, and that the ceiling was leaking—as it always did when the woman upstairs took a shower, which was three or four times a day—and that the landlord was complaining that he'd have to raise the rent again ("It's the security problem; you know what I mean? We got to hire people, and when you hire people, you got to pay them money."), and that the odors of the deli across the street, rancid odors, mostly, were wafting up to him.

  It was awful, sure. Half the time it was disgusting as hell.

  But it was home.

  Chapter 3

  In Manhattan

  At the same moment that Jim Hart was struggling his way out of a bout with hypothermia, sixty-eight-year-old Winifred Haritson was involved in a fight of her own: her windows wouldn't open. It was nothing new. Whenever the temperature and the humidity rose—as on this late summer evening—the windows stuck. The superintendent, a man named Lou, had explained why: "The wood expands, Mrs. Haritson,"—he made pulling motions with his hands, as if stretching taffy—"especially these windows, because that wood"—he knocked twice on the window casing—"is so old it soaks moisture up like a sponge. So take my advice." He hesitated; she nodded. "Always keep the windows open a crack, anyway, then it won't be so hard to open them all the way when it gets hot like this. You understand?"

  She shook her head, and told him, in a low, secretive tone, "If I do that, Lou, they'll get in."

  "Who'll get in, Mrs. Haritson?"

  "The thieves and the muggers!"

  He sighed; he had heard all this before. "You're five floors up, Mrs. Haritson. Only Superman could get in here through those windows."

  "They have their ways, Lou. I've seen them."

  He sighed again. "I'm sure you have, Mrs. Haritson."

  She thought of calling him now, then decided that at this hour—it was 3:30 in the morning—he might curse and complain and she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, thinking he was mad at her. She gave one of the windows a final, hard-as-she-could push. It wouldn't budge. Then she realized that even if she could manage to open the windows she wouldn't be able to sleep anyway, because she'd have to sit up and watch to make sure nobody got in.

  She sat heavily in a nearby chair. Lord, but living was hard, sometimes!

  Winifred Haritson was a nobody—an aging widow who kept herself all but barricaded in her Lower East Side apartment. She had no living relatives, no cats, no canaries, no real friends. She had once been very attractive, but that had all but faded away. She realized that she was pathetically lonely, and that she would probably stay that way till the end of her days, but it was a fact to which she had long since resigned herself.

  She got out of the chair and made her way back to her small, memorabilia-cluttered bedroom. Despite the oppressive heat, she was asleep quickly.

  She had no dreams.

  Chapter 4

  It was daybreak, and Jim Hart, standing just off the house's small porch, wanted to know who it was that was watching him from shore. He called over his shoulder, "Marie?"

  She called back, from the other side of the house, "Yes?"

  "There's somebody watching us."

  "What?"

  "I said there's . . ." And he stopped. Because whoever it had been was gone now. Just like that. As if the forest had swallowed him up. Or as if—which, Jim thought, was more likely—the morning sun, just rising, had momentarily blinded him, and the man on shore had merely walked away.

  Jim heard Marie coming toward him through the tall grass that surrounded the house. He turned his head. "It's nothing, Marie. I thought I saw someone." He nodded toward shore.

  "A hunter?" Marie asked.

  He shrugged. "I don't know. It could have been a hunter, I guess." He paused briefly, then went on, "It could have been the Fuller Brush Man, for all I know."


  Fred appeared from the western side of the island. He had a makeshift fishing pole in hand and a good length of nylon line attached to it. He grinned; "Hey, Jimbo, wanta do a little fishing? I thought we'd take the boat out. You afraid of boats, Jimbo?" He hesitated only briefly. "My little sister says you're afraid of spiders, so I figure you've got to be afraid of boats."

  Jim glanced at Marie and tried to conjure up a look of betrayal. Marie looked away quickly, as if embarrassed. "Sure," Jim said. "I'll come with you."

  Fred still was grinning. "You know how to swim, Jimbo?"

  "I know how to swim, Fred."

  "Okay then, let's go." And he turned and started back to the western side of the island. Jim followed, several paces behind. As he walked, he busied himself with figuring out the best way to sit in the boat. It was a small, three-seated wooden rowboat, and he thought it would be nice if he could find a way to face away from Fred. Then Fred wouldn't have to see that he had no idea how to bait a hook, or how to cast, or how to pull a fish in—should he catch one—because his body would block the view of all that. And then he realized, in the middle of these thoughts, that he was desperate and tense, and that this little hiking expedition had turned very sour.

  Fred, keeping his eyes straight ahead, said, "You're not having a good time, are you, Jim?" There was only the very faintest trace of sarcasm in his voice. Jim decided that the question had been rhetorical; he stayed quiet. Fred kept his eyes straight ahead; the weeds here were waist-high, and the soil, spongy from the recent, heavy rains, squeaked under foot, making walking precarious. He went on, "Think of it as a learning experience, Jim." Now the sarcasm seemed to have vanished altogether. Abruptly, Fred stopped walking; Jim reacted a second too late; the front of his foot connected with Fred's heel. Fred looked around at him. "Where's your pole, Jim?"