Appaloosa Summer (Island Trilogy Book 1)

by Tudor Robins

  **********

  I sit bolt upright, gasp for air, then hold my breath to listen. There was a sound. But all I hear is the humming of the ceiling fan; the sawing of the crickets floating through the screen.

  I blink. The shadows are in the wrong places, and the door isn’t where it should be. I’m dizzy with disorientation.

  My heart flutters under my ribcage, and there’s a slick of sweat on my forearms and, when I reach to rub it, at the back of my neck.

  Where am I? My eyes find the crack in the curtains, revealing the moon long and low over the fields outside. The cottage.

  My breathing evens, pulse slows. It’s OK. I’m OK. I’m in the big loft bedroom at the cottage. I’m all alone. There’s nobody here.

  Why is the fan on high? With the covers off, goose bumps rise in my arms.

  Why did I come here?

  What have I done?

  As soon as the panic recedes, emptiness takes its place. No tears; just an expanding ache in my chest. I miss Major, Slate, Chester. I miss my dad and my persnickety mom and even Craig; who I have never before thought about in the middle of the night.

  Snap out of it. This was my choice. And, anyway, being back in Ottawa wouldn’t solve anything.

  I shake my head. “Suck it up, buttercup.” It’s strange to be able to talk out loud in the middle of the night, without worrying about waking anyone else up.

  Maybe some warm milk. The worn stair treads are soft under my feet.

  In the kitchen the hum and beep of the microwave are familiar, friendly. Microwaves everywhere follow the same soundtrack.

  I curl my fingers around the warm mug, and a memory jumps into my head. My mom, in a robe, lit only by the under cabinet glow in our kitchen, warming milk for me. “This should make you sleepy. It always works for me.”

  We didn’t always fight.

  I pad out to the living room, my bare feet scuff-scuffing on the wood floors.

  I curl up on the sofa facing the picture window, and sip my drink, and let the ever-shifting water of the moon-bathed river mesmerize me.

  It’s hypnotic, and I’m nodding off when a ship skims into view.

  Slipping, gliding, motoring through the night. It would be near-invisible – just an inkier patch of dark in the pitch of the night – were it not for the strings of lights outlining the bow and stern; pinpricking the space in between with flickering dots of incandescence.

  A fairy ship.

  With it comes the noise; a rhythmic thrum. Something I can feel, as well as hear. The working of the huge ship’s engines reverberating through all the layers of water, and rock, and earth, and man-built foundation, and floor between it and me.

  Turbines turning, pistons pumping, doing whatever all the parts of an engine that massive do. One thing’s for sure; they aren’t quiet.

  This is different. This is magical. This is me, not in Kansas anymore.

  The thought takes me back to bed, and into sleep, until I’m wakened by light seeping in around the edges of the curtains, and the realization that I need to get up soon and go to work.

  Chapter Six

  Showered, dressed, wide awake, I walk into chaos Carl and Betsy style. Chaos with a smile, and a calm tone of voice, and an assurance everything will be OK.

  What should be a quiet morning, with just one room occupied overnight, has been turned upside-down by one of the guests – the husband – sauntering casually into the kitchen to ask what time he and his wife should leave to catch the ferry for their nine-thirty appointment in Kingston.

  Carl looks at Betsy, and Betsy looks at Carl, and they both look at the clock with “five minutes ago” written all over their faces. The nine o’clock weekday ferry is one of the busiest ones leaving the island, and it’s nearly eight now.

  While I’m thinking no way, too bad, so sad, Carl and Betsy switch smoothly into high gear.

  Carl is smiling and pleasant. “Well, the thing to do if you want to make that ferry is to give me your keys. I’ll take your car in now, and put it in line, and Meg can drive you into the village when you’re ready.”

  The man frowns. “Really? Is that necessary?”

  Betsy nods. “Yes, you see, that’s one of the main commuter ferries. Lots of the Islanders who work in Kingston will be trying to get on it, and there will already be a line-up. Carl needs to go soon to make sure your car gets on.”

  I tackle the dishes already piling up by the sink from Betsy’s early morning breakfast-making activities, and observe while Carl takes the keys, and Betsy sends the man back upstairs with strict instructions for him and his wife to be ready to go in half an hour.

  When it’s just Betsy and me again, I point to a picture frame hanging on the kitchen wall. It contains a list headed “Words to Live by” with sayings underneath like, “It might never happen” and “A problem shared is a problem halved” and “Perfect is the enemy of good”.

  “You’re missing one.” I scrub at a Pyrex dish, trying to scrape free a stubborn bit of baked-on coffee cake. “How does it go? ‘Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part?’ Isn’t that it?”

  “I know what you mean.” She’s setting up the coffee maker to have a fresh pot ready when the tardy travelers descend. “But, I’m afraid, when you run a B&B it actually does.”

  “People – even people who are normally very organized – tend to switch off their brains when they’re on holidays.”

  “They come to an island to get away – to forget about everything – they don’t think of schedules, or ferries, or real life, until the last minute, which can sometimes be too late.

  She winks, and smiles. “Then it’s up to us to try to make it right for them.”

  OK. I thought my first lesson would be how to make a bed. Or a tutorial on using the washing machine. Instead, I’ve been subtly asked to re-arrange my thinking on customer service.

  “In other words, the customer’s always right?”

  Betsy laughs. “You got it. Except when they’re not; which only happens on very rare occasions.” The phone rings, and she reaches for it. “Yes? Great. Thanks for doing that. See you soon.”

  She hangs up and turns to me. “Carl’s got their car in line, and he says they’ll make it with about five spots to spare.” She looks at the clock. “As soon as they come down you’d better leave; I’ll pack up their breakfast to go.”

  Then, as an afterthought, adds, “That’s fine right? You don’t mind driving them, do you? Because I can go …”

  I interrupt. “No, it’ll be fine.” I’m still not supposed to drive without a licensed driver in the car, but clearly at least one of the guests is licensed, and Carl will drive back with me, so it’s all good. “It’s my pleasure.”

  She nods, smiles. “You’ll do just fine here, Meg.”

  It’s a nice way to start my career at the B&B. Skimming along the tire-smoothed, faded-out asphalt on a beautiful day; sunny with big, blue skies, floating white clouds, a soft breeze nodding and swaying the crops and pastures we speed by. Lovely, lovely, lovely; a picture postcard of summer.

  The McLellans – the tardy guests – chat to one another, pointing out new calves frolicking next to their mothers, red-tailed hawks swooping hopefully over fields.

  I slow as we pass a girl riding a sturdy buckskin horse, and she raises her hand in a half wave.

  “So nice to see, isn’t it?” Mrs. McLellan asks. “I’ve always wanted to learn to ride but it’s just one of those things I’ve never gotten around to.”

  I ride. In fact I show. In fact I had my own horse. Until he died … I bite my tongue, nod, and make a “hmmm” noise, and keep driving.

  Just because I’m sad, doesn’t mean it’s OK to dump my grief on innocent guests, who’ve paid for a getaway.

  In fact, I’m sure that would be on Betsy’s list of words to live by: “Listening to your problems is not part of a guest’s ideal B&B experience.”

  See? This job is good for me. Focusing on o
ther people leaves less room for grief.

  The McLellans are charmed when we slow down to pass a tractor, and the farmer tips his hat. I sketch him a wave.

  “Do you know him?” Mrs. McLellan asks.

  “Oh, no ma’am. That’s just the way it’s done on the island. It’s rude not to wave.”

  “Too bad. He was a nice-looking young man; not much older than you, I wouldn’t have thought.”

  I smile. She reminds me of my grandmother with her “nice-looking young man”. It’s a generational thing, I guess, talking that way. What I don’t know is whether it’s something that’ll die with her generation, or whether someday I’ll start talking that way too. Wearing “slacks” instead of pants, and replacing “hot” with “handsome” or “nice-looking”.

  As we enter the village, we cruise down a long line of cars before reaching Carl, and the McLellans’ safely parked car.

  I find their eyes in the rear-view mirror. “None of these people we’re passing will make it onto the nine o’clock boat.”

  Their eyebrows rise. “We never thought of it being busy.”

  “Well, not to worry. Carl’s got you sorted out.”

  I pull up beside their car, and pop the trunk so Carl can transfer their luggage from his car to theirs.

  “Go find a place to park,” Carl tells me. “I’ll meet you at the bakery.”

  I open my mouth to explain I can’t – not on my own – then shut it again. Things are different here.

  This is the island. Police have to come over on the ferry with all the other cars. They drive off the ramp, and down the main street, in full view of everyone in the village. Most island kids drive farm machinery before they hit double digits; I don’t think a sixteen-year-old with her G2 license driving three blocks to the closest parking spot is going to make any waves.

  So I break the rule, and I don’t get caught. I ease Carl’s car into a wide-open spot alongside a row of white-painted rocks on somebody’s front lawn, then walk the few short steps to the bakery with a spring in my step and a smile stretching my cheeks.

  A beautiful morning, a successful solo drive, and now the bakery. Cinnamon, chocolate, lemon and yeast; my mouth waters at the combination of these smells together. I sit on the rickety wooden bench outside the front door and breathe in the warm, sweet scents, and watch the world go by.

  Coming here was so the right thing to do.

  “Morning.” I raise my eyes. Mrs. McLellan’s nice-looking young man is tipping his hat to me for the second time today.

  “Where’s your tractor?” Meg. You. Are. An. Idiot. Could I think of a stupider thing to say? Slate would nail me for that one.

  This guy’s not Slate, though. A deep, slow smile starts in one corner of his mouth, and travels all the way to the other corner, lighting up the rest of his face as it goes.

  “Funny girl.” He gives me an extra little nod before shouldering his way through the door and into the delicious smells of the bakery.

  And, while I don’t know exactly what he means, or if it’s good or bad, I do suddenly see that he is a very nice-looking young man.

  Chapter Seven

  Another night, another heart-racing, sweaty, midnight awakening.

  I lift my hand to wipe my sticky forehead, and the small braid I didn’t even realize I was holding, falls into my lap.

  I stare at it for a minute. Why have I even kept this? What it really shows is how desperately I was trying to save myself as my horse went down under me. Gripping so hard, I ripped a chunk of his mane out, while he fell and died with strangers around him.

  I should have gone to him. Should have gotten up and pushed my way through; crawled if I had to.

  But I didn’t.

  Slate said it, Craig said it, the vet said it; he was dead before he hit the ground. He didn’t feel anything. He probably died happy – lifting for a jump – the thing he loved most.

  Sometimes the thought comforts me; just not in the middle of the night.

  Not now.

  I pull the noisy chain on the bedside lamp. Fumble for my paperback splayed on the floor. Read until my eyes droop shut.

  “Are you OK, Meg? You look tired.”

  I press my fingers to the thin skin under my eyes where I noticed dark, bruise-like smudges in the mirror this morning. “I’m fine,” I tell Betsy. “Stayed up too late reading.”

  Not exactly a lie.

  “I hope so. It’s going to be a busy day.”

  “Yes. Fine. Absolutely. I can do it.”

  By six o’clock, three of my fingernails are broken into jagged stubs, and my left arm aches from wrist to shoulder, but every window in the house is clean. The back of my neck is sunburned a roasting pink, but the vegetable garden is free of weeds. My eyes are red, and still sting a bit, but the onions and green peppers are chopped for tomorrow’s omelette breakfast.

  By the time I get back to the cottage, I’m too tired to make anything resembling a real dinner. Two pieces of toast. A sliced apple. A tin of cream of tomato soup that’s been in the cupboard for I-don’t-know-how-long. It means I finish the dishes quickly, then stand at the kitchen sink, hands immersed in sudsy water, zoned out as I watch the last rays of the setting sun pick out the peaks of the ripples in the bay.

  Which is when it comes. A howl; long and mournful, carried clear across the fields and meadows of the island. But how many fields? I try to picture the coyote that set up this howl. Is he alone or with a pack?

  Yip-yip-aroooooo…Yip-yip-arooooooo… The howls come again, this time in varying registers, overlapping one-another.

  A pack, then. Out there, somewhere, celebrating a kill, or marking their territory, or maybe just saluting the rising moon.

  Also out there is my bike, abandoned in the gravel after I used it to ride up the driveway to secure the gate, which was swinging in the ever-strengthening wind.

  I sigh and step out into the intensifying dusk, and a gust of building wind. It’s a struggle to wrestle my bike into the shed past a precarious pile of boogie boards and a three-person inflatable hot dog. While I’m inside, the door blows shut behind me and I stand, frozen, in the dark while another round of howls whips up.

  Is it my imagination, or are they closer?

  As I’m walking back across the yard, a solitary howl drifts in from the east; soft at first then building, gathering, swelling in volume and intensity.

  It’s so beautiful it feels wrong to walk, move, do anything else but just listen to it – soak it in – but the hairs on my arms, standing on end, and the adrenaline quickening my breathing, urge me otherwise.

  Go. Move. Now.

  I scoot inside the cottage and lock the door behind me.

  Time to face the new reality of my evenings, which are solitary and very quiet. After that last howl even the coyotes have given up.

  We have a TV, but the channel selection is rock bottom. I can watch The Bachelor, Gone Fishin’, The Bachelor, a re-run of the Winnipeg Just for Laughs Comedy Festival or The Bachelor. I do a final run up, then down the channels and find one more station offering a blurry, interference-laced episode of – yup – The Bachelor.

  I have a laptop, but no internet connection, and the service on my cheap cell phone is spotty at best.

  I could call Slate, but what would I say? ‘I’ve learned how to clean windows without leaving streaks?’ or ‘Just this morning I collected the eggs for tomorrow’s omelettes straight from Betsy’s chickens?’

  I can just hear her: ‘You know how to party Megsters!’

  Instead I thumb out a text:

  Have already been driving (and already cleaning). Already met a guy, too – don’t get excited – not what you think: cowboy. Talk later.

  I press “send” and leave the phone positioned on the coat hook/shelf in the front hall, where it seems to get the best reception. The message will go eventually.

  I hesitate, then pick the phone up again, scroll to the message my mom sent yesterday, asking how the first day of w
ork went. Reply:

  Work is good. Cottage is clean. I am fine. How is Chester? Oh, and Dad, too. Bye for now.

  With the social part of my evening behind me, I grab a Diet Coke, and a bag of Doritos, and tromp up the stairs to bed, to the book I half-finished at two o’clock this morning.

  As I settle into my bed to read, I mentally edit my text to my mom:

  Eating chips in bed. Delicious! Crumbs everywhere.

  Another howl rises through the now-dark air outside, and my smile disappears. I need a good sleep tonight and those howls aren’t the lullaby I’m looking for.

  “Don’t!” My voice bounces back to me under the low eaves of the long room. I shake my head. It’s over. There’s no way to change what happened to Major. Why can’t my night-time brain accept what my daytime mind knows?

  I go back to the beginning of the page, to re-read all the words I didn’t take in the first time. I’m fine. This is good. I’ll let the story distract me.

  Which would be a great plan, if it wasn’t for the tear drop staining the paper before I even get to the bottom of the page.

  Chapter Eight

  There’s no sleeping late, here. While the fields surrounding the cottage never stop humming with noise, at dawn the buzz intensifies from soft cricket songs, and gentle owl hoots, to the trills of tree swallows and bobolinks. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

  Even the waves seem to lap at the shore a little more loudly and, as soon as it nudges above the horizon, the rising sun spotlights my east-facing window.

  I yank my hair into a pony tail and swap my sleep shirt for a t-shirt and running shorts. When I step through the screen door, the boards of the porch are soft and already sun-warmed under my sock feet. I toe my running shoes on, and skip every second step on my way down to the gravel driveway.

  It’s a gorgeous time to run. It’s been a hot spring, and the summer’s stoking up to be no different. By mid-morning, the air pulses with heat.