by Boyle, T. C.
“Tell me about the house again,” she said. “And our bed. What’s our bed like?”
“Oh, it’s first-rate, splendid, grandest bed in the world. A big old sleigh bed, made of mahogany, with a mattress as soft as, I don’t know, butterscotch pudding with whipped cream on top—”
“And just as cold?”
“Not with you in it, not anymore. And it’s got the very highest quality Army blankets tucked in tight and my grandmother’s quilt spread over top of them. And pillows. Pillows like your mother’s breasts—”
“Herbie—”
“Or my mother’s, anyway. And there’s a stove there, right in the bedroom, to keep you warm through the night—as soon as I can get the stovepipe hooked back up, that is. Plus, the room’s big, biggest room in the house, and the house is practically new too, built by Captain Waters and his caretaker not twenty-five years ago with choice planks from the wreck of a ship carrying, of all things, lumber, can you imagine? I guess they just abandoned the old one at that point—whether it was too small or falling apart, I don’t know. But I’ll show you the ruins of it, amazing, really, the way a place can go to wrack and ruin in no time, everything buried in sand like in that poem, what’s it called? You know, the one from your Oxford Book. Lord Byron—”
“Shelley.”
“Shelley, yeah, Shelley. But the place, our place, has views you could only pray for if you were back there on the mainland”—he was whirling round to point now, walking backward without even breaking stride, feet pumping, the mud nothing to him—“all balled up in that shithouse life that never stops, automobiles and trains and lunch counters, everybody running around like they’re in a race, some marathon to nowhere . . . and you’ll see, it’s head-on to the wind, like a big inverted V laid out on the ground, with a courtyard in the middle and fences to keep the blow out. And the sand, of course. Because the sand’s like snow out here, you’ve got to understand that, sandstorms coming up out of nowhere and piling up drifts against anything they can’t carry off. And—but come on there, girl, we’ve got to get up top so I can show you over the place and then hitch up the horses and bring everything back up the hill before it’s black dark. You wouldn’t want your books to get all wet and moldy, would you, your library, I mean, and how many did you say you packed up back there in New York, a thousand?”
She tried to shrug, all in good fun, banter, banter with her husband, but she was struggling too hard to waste the extra motion. “Half that.”
“But still,” he said.
* * *
The place was cold and dark, a long rambling succession of rooms and doors upon doors that could have been the set for a Mack Sennett picture with clowns piling out everywhere except that there was practically nothing in them but for the odd chair or cot, the table in the kitchen, the sleigh bed in the master bedroom. Herbie set their things on the kitchen table and bent to the stove to get it lit, then took her by the hand and skipped her through the rooms—and here was where the shearers stayed and there, across the courtyard, was the smithy and the storage shed he was going to convert into a taproom just as soon as he got the chance, their own private taproom, and how did she like that? Prohibition? What Prohibition? On their own island? And out there, beyond the fence? Those were the shearing sheds. And the barn. Where the horses were.
“Do you need help?”
“No, I’ll bring it all up in two trips with the sled. It’s nothing. Really.”
“In the dark?”
“Yes, in the dark.”
She wanted to know if she should see to making something for supper, their first supper in their new home, and he could barely contain himself, his feet jumping in place as if to some jazz band playing in his head, and yes, yes, that would be splendid, grand, and maybe she could put the kettle on for some tea?
So she made use of the hand pump at the sink and filled the pot and set it on the stovetop while the firebox coughed and roared and chewed up the wood she fed into it stick by stick. The place was clean enough, spare, almost Essene, the floors scrupulously swept, the counters dusted, dishes washed and stacked, not at all what she would have expected from a bachelor’s residence, and she wondered if it had been spruced up specially for her. But no, her husband was like that, orderly, precise, finicky almost to a fault. Though the place could use a woman’s touch, she could see that. Curtains wouldn’t hurt. A few pictures on the walls. A carpet.
Herbie had been alone here since the first of the year, but for Jimmie (who’d been out on the island as long as the rocks on Green Mountain, or so she gathered). Bob Brooks had relieved him so he could whisk his bride off to Yuma before coming back as full-time caretaker with an option to buy in, but Bob Brooks had a whole host of other concerns to look after, not to mention a murder trial to attend. And Jimmie, apparently, was incapable of doing the job himself, though she couldn’t fathom why. Maybe he was untrustworthy. Maybe he was a drunk. Or a dope fiend. Or lazy. Or just one of those men who never seem to grow up no matter how old they are.
She began sorting the groceries they’d hauled up in their packs, vegetables and dairy mostly, because there was no garden out here and no cow either and after the first few days milk was going to have to come out of the can. And cheese. They’d have to husband their cheese—or wife it, if that was a verb, and why shouldn’t it be? Eggs too. Herbie had carried the eggs in his pack, six cartons of them, because she was afraid of the responsibility, and as she folded back the canvas flap and lifted them off the top of his pack, she saw—or felt, rather—that a few hadn’t made it intact. Which in that instant gave her the inspiration for the first night’s menu: omelettes aux fines herbes avec fromage naturel et pain de l’épicerie.
Six of the eggs in the top carton were broken, but she was able to spoon them out of their shells and set them aside in a blue ceramic mixing bowl she found on a shelf above the sink. Then she set about putting the rest of the groceries away in the pantry and the cold-storage room beyond it: the eggs, milk, cheese and vegetables went here, alongside a hanging slab of bacon and a whittled sheep carcass that looked—and smelled—none too fresh. The canned goods, sacks and sacks of them, were down at the beach still, but the basics were here on the shelf, tomatoes, pork and beans, sauerkraut and a line of big brown crocks set against the wall that contained, as she was to discover, sugar, flour, spaghetti, noodles and the like. After she’d put everything away she went to the bedroom to unpack her clothes.
The walls were dark—natural wood—and damp to the touch and the room smelled of cold ash and boards bleached and pounded by the sea. The kerosene lamp gave off its own astringent odor, the wick blackened but the globe wiped as clean as if it had just come off the shelf at the hardware store. There was a dresser in the corner—the top two drawers empty and with clean oilcloth laid down for her, Herbie’s clothes neatly folded in the bottom drawer—and it took her no more than a minute or two to arrange her own things and tuck them away, since the majority of what she’d brought along was still down below. In the dark. She lingered over the bed, hesitating over which side was his, before deciding to lay her sheerest—her only—peignoir over the pillow on the left. It was a gift from Anna for her wedding night, the sort of thing she wasn’t really comfortable with, or hadn’t been, but Herbie—as if he needed encouragement—had really come alive when he’d seen her in it that first night. And then she’d switched off the light and he’d come to her and after that it wouldn’t have mattered what she was wearing.
She was thinking about that, about Herbie and their first night together and the nights since, studying herself in the mirror, wondering if she should put on a dab of lipstick, rouge, perfume, and trying to do something with her hair—it was a mess, flattened across the crown by the kerchief and teased out on the ends by the wind—when she heard the sound of the horses in the courtyard. She wasn’t much for makeup in any case—she was plain and she knew it and makeup just ma
de her look like a circus clown, or that was how she felt, anyway—and it was almost a relief to duck away from the mirror and slip out to help him haul the things up off the sled and onto the covered porch that ran the entire length of the building.
“It looks like I’m going to have to make two more trips,” he said, sliding a cardboard carton of books across the dried-out planks and bending immediately for another. “I guess”—the cardboard giving up a sharp frictive whine as it rushed across the planks—“we brought more than I’d bargained for”—bending again, lifting, sliding—“but it’s all to the good because you never know when the next boat’s going to come by and it’s nice to think you’ve got what you need when you’re on your own. We won’t be starving. Not anytime soon.”
She was working right beside him, unloading books, canned goods, bedding, a pair of matching suitcases her mother had given her as a wedding gift, the exhaustion she’d felt earlier gone now in the excitement of the moment, his things and hers—theirs, conjoined. “Couldn’t you leave some of it for the morning?”
He stood up, stretching, and gave her a look. “The fog comes in, it can leave things pretty wet.”
“What about a tarp? You must have a tarp of some sort. And if we bring up the perishables, the food, all the food, then the rest can wait. Can’t it?”
He was still standing there, the night opening up to infinity behind him. “I didn’t even carry you over the threshold,” he said. “Shame on me. Shame on us.” And then, before she could protest—there was so much to do and what about the horses, what about his back, with all this lifting?—he was tipping her backward into the embrace of his arms and kicking through the door and he didn’t set her down till they were in the bedroom and he was pressing her to him for a long lingering kiss. “You’re right,” he said finally. “Absolutely. Our first night in our new house and here I am worrying about, what—baggage! What am I thinking? Have I gone nuts?”
So he went on out to the barn to unhitch the horses and drag a dusty and somewhat perforated canvas tarp—Army issue—out of the rafters and haul it down to the beach and when he came back the table was set in the kitchen, a candle burning there in a saucer and the aroma of her omelets riding the air. They sat a long while over supper, Herbie chattering on, his internal motor spinning and spinning again and no neutral on the shift lever, praising the house, the island, her cooking, her—her most of all—and so what if the omelets were scorched on the bottom and the fines herbes had been reduced to salt and pepper and ketchup out of the bottle? He didn’t care and she didn’t care either. It was enough to be there together with no place to go and no one to please but themselves, and when she rose to clear up he wouldn’t hear of it. “Not tonight,” he said, his voice sunk to a whisper. “We’ve got other things to do tonight. Better things.”
And then he took her by the hand and led her out of the kitchen and through the house to the bedroom, where the foot of the sleigh bed rose up like an undulating wave and the black silk peignoir lay limp across the pillow. The house was utterly still. There was no sound, nothing, not even the wind. He held up the peignoir to her and kissed her, kissed her deeply. He wouldn’t let her go into the other room to change and when she’d changed he wouldn’t let her turn the lamp off either. Not yet, anyway.
The Mice
That first week was an idyll, the two of them alone in an untamed place and nothing in the world to intrude on the slow unfolding of a peace and happiness so vast she couldn’t put a name to it. She woke each morning exhilarated, everything new, the hills enfolded in fog and the fire going in the big cast-iron stove in the kitchen, Herbie there already with the pot of coffee, and she, in her robe, bending to kiss him before seeing to the flapjacks and bacon or French toast layered with butter and awash in maple syrup, breakfast, breakfast for two. Then there were the walks. Each morning, after breakfast, he took her out over the island, showing it off, the cliffs falling away to the churn of the sea, Prince Island rising out of the waves like the humped back of a whale—and whales too, actual whales, spouting right out there in the harbor. There were the caves up on Eagle Cliff with their Indian pictographs worked into the rock, the elephant seals stretched out on the beach like enormous stuffed sausages, the caliche forest with the haunting twisted shapes of its petrified trees. Wildflowers. Open space. And the sheep, the raison d’être of the place, running off wild in every direction.
In the afternoons, he would see to his chores and she turned her attention to putting the house in order, no hurry, no compulsion, just a long slow descent into the drifting rootless pleasure of arranging things, moving what little furniture there was, seeing what chair or table looked best beside the window or set against the wall in the far corner. She took a long while arraying her books according to category on the shelves in the living room, hung her pictures, washed every jar she could find and filled them with the stalks of dried flowers for the simple beauty of them. Nights, there were the dinners she prepared for him—mutton and rice, a fish he’d caught, mussels marinière—and then the quiet time when they sat before the stove reading aloud to each other, and finally, bed, and the dark and the feel of him there beside her. She called him Adam, he called her Eve.
When Jimmie came back it was as if a marching band had clattered across the courtyard and into the house, cymbals crashing and horns blaring—she was that used to the quiet and the sound of their own two voices. The first night he talked their ears off about people she’d barely heard of, the Vails and Vickers and their families and hired hands and all the fine points of the little feuds and grievances of this one or that. Herbie had shot and dressed a sheep, the old spoiled carcass, or what was left of it, tossed out on the compost heap for the ravens and the dwarf foxes that trotted around the island like dogs, and she’d made a credible leg of lamb with mint jelly, roasted potatoes and peas out of the can fancied up with pearl onions.
“Bobby Burgos, that works the horses out there?” Jimmie was sunk into his chair at the table, waving his fork like a baton, as if he were about to get up and lead the band off in another direction. “Got thrown and broke his shinbone, clean snap you could of heard all the way over here—you notice the Coast Guard boat? They come for him three days later but he just waved them off, tough old bird—”
Herbie, her Herbie, fingertips drumming and feet tapping under the table, let out a sigh of resignation and sympathy both. He was handsome as an actor, his face smooth and unlined and his hair going to silver at the temples, and she could have sat there all night just watching him, though there were the dishes to clear up and coffee to brew and the dough for tomorrow’s bread to knead and cover and set aside to rise. He cut a slice of meat, chewed and bolted it, and now he was waving his own fork. “I suppose so,” he said, “but I don’t really know the man, since I haven’t had the chance to get out to Santa Rosa yet, or did you forget? Tough’s what you want out here, though, isn’t it?” He looked to her now, grinning his wide lit-up grin and giving her a wink of complicity. “But while you’ve been out there having your vacation—”
“Vacation? They worked me like a dog.”
“I potted that old tom you couldn’t seem to hit, though you must’ve gone through half a box of cartridges.”
“You got him? Where?”
“Out behind the barn. He was just sitting there licking himself and I slipped into the house, grabbed the .22 and let fly.”
“Tom?” she said. “What tom? You’re not talking about a cat, are you?”
“Feral cats.” Herbie had uncorked his last precious bottle of bourbon—or what somebody claimed was bourbon in this eleventh year of Prohibition—and he took a moment now to pour out a measure for each of them. “The last people out here before Bob, the people after the Russells? They let their cats go wild, and the cats went on breeding, of course. And then you’ve got your boaters coming out here with a litter maybe they don’t want, figuring they’ll set them free
on the island instead of putting them in a sack and drowning them. Like any decent person would.” Another wink. The light of the lantern shone through the glass and the bourbon gave up its color. “Here’s to the memory of Old Tom!”
“Here, here!” Jimmie crowed.
The liquor went down all around, a burn in her throat and then in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t understand. Don’t you want cats here? To keep the mice down? You yourself said they were all over the place.”
“Ah”—he held up a finger—“that’s where you’re wrong. The mice belong here, they evolved here, this is their home. Who was that mouse man from the college, Jimmie?”
“Walter.”
“Right, Walter. Walter Franks. He came out here, I guess it was mid-January, studying them, you know? Well, guess what? They’re a distinct subspecies of the deer mouse, unique, found nowhere else. We can’t have cats killing them. Plus, have you seen how cute they are?”
“Cute? Mice, cute? They’re pests, they’re vermin. Whoever heard of a cute mouse?”
Herbie was watching her, grinning still, but his eyes seemed to harden ever so slightly—were they having a disagreement, their first disagreement, and over mice no less? “You wait,” he said, and he brought his hands together on the table, intertwining his fingers and leaning back to crack his knuckles, “you’ll see.”
* * *
A week slipped by. The wind came on, a two-day gale that picked up every grain of sand on the island and deposited it somewhere else, mostly in their clothes and the bed and the dishes on the shelf, so that she itched all night and whenever she chewed anything it had a fine grit to it, then the fog settled in and it was as cold and gray and damp as the night Scrooge saw Marley’s ghost, but it was all bliss to her. The days took on a rhythm all their own, a rhythm dictated not by the subway and the work schedule she’d kept at the New York Public Library these past ten years—nine to five, five and a half days a week—but by the sun struggling up out of the water in the morning and settling back into it at night.