She owed Dan so much. He had been a good husband, and if possible, an even better father. He’d taught Josh how to fly a kite, how to walk on stilts, how to tell a gull from a tern, and how to handle the difficult quill pen. Why, already Josh was learning the alphabet, his shaky letters a constant inspiration for praise from Dan. The two spent long sessions bent over the trestle table with their heads side by side. And when the ink spilled, there was patience instead of anger; when the letters were inept, there was encouragement instead of criticism.
But most evenings when the lessons were over, Dan remained in the house only a short time before donning his coat and hat and heading toward the solace that alcohol seemed to provide. Then Laura would wander about the house restlessly, touching the countless luxuries Dan had bought for her—the zinc sink, the brass roasting kitchen before the fireplace, and at its top the clockjack for turning meat. Sometimes her fingers skimmed along the mantel as she paced the quiet room and stared at the pieces of whitewear that Dan had insisted upon her having so that she need not be constantly melting down and recasting the pewter, which was forever breaking or bending or springing holes.
Then he started bringing her presents, coming first with fragrant soap and discouraging her from the drudgery of making her own. When she protested, he made light of his gift, insisting it was inexpensive, since every candler on the island made it with the same materials and processes used in candle making. When a ship from France put in, he came home and presented her with a colorfully painted and varnished sugar box and tea caddy made of the new French toleware.
But she knew why he’d been bringing her gifts more and more often, and these constant offerings created an evergrowing sense of guilt within Laura. For even while she accepted them, she was wondering how to break away from the good life he’d provided her and her son, without bringing lasting hurt to all of them.
Rye returned from his trip to the mainland to find a check had been delivered—from Dan. House rent. Rye stubbornly refused to cash it, bellowing to Josiah that it’d be like accepting rent for Dan’s use of Laura!
She, meanwhile, needed someone to talk to, someone who could help sort out the mixed emotions of a woman who pondered her duty to one man and resisted the temptation to seek out another man, whose busk was still pressed to her heart by day and whose image filled her dreams by night.
Laura discarded the possibility of going to have a talk with her mother. Her married friends, too, were out, for they were Dan’s friends as well. That left Laura’s sister, Jane, who lived on Madaket Harbor, a half-hour’s walk to the west.
Jane’s husband was a commercial fisherman who followed the seasonal schooling of fish on and about Nantucket—in March, the herring that crowded the island’s channels, in April, the cod and haddock off the east end of the island. But now Laura knew John Durning’s ketch would be out taking cod off Sankaty Head, so she and Jane could talk privately.
Laura took a warm hooded cloak and crossed the hills west of town paralleling the high cliffs along the island’s inner curve, happy to be once again on the salty heath, though the day was overcast and threatened rain. With Josh skipping ahead, she followed Cliff Road as it bent between the strung-out sections of Long Pond. As she approached the hills on the northwestern edge of the island and looked out beyond Madaket Harbor, Tuckernuck Island was scarcely visible through the dimming drizzle that was falling. She shivered and hurried on.
Jane’s house was a weathered gray saltbox to which two linters had been added as her family grew, for Jane had six children, all under nine, and on any given day at least three extras seemed to be underfoot, until it seemed children squirted from between the wallboards! Jane managed the noise and fighting with surprising calmness, taking in stride the spats she was asked to arbitrate, the constant demands for food, and the cleaning up that inevitably followed the children’s treats of milk and jam tarts.
The moment Laura walked into Jane’s house, she knew it was a mistake to have chosen a rainy day for a confidential talk with her sister. The weather had chased all six of her nieces and nephews inside, and it seemed as if each had brought along a battalion of friends. Josh was in his glory, for he was immediately included in their game of hide-the-thimble, which sent the tribe scrambling to every corner of the keeping room, sometimes even across Laura’s and Jane’s laps, as the children probed the two women’s pockets, their ears, their high-topped shoes, and even their chignons in search of the hidden thimble.
Jane laughed and abetted their scramblings by suggesting likely hiding places, while Laura grew more and more impatient. But just when it seemed that no chance would come to broach the subject, Jane herself introduced it.
“The whole island’s talking about you and Rye ... and Dan, of course.”
“They are?” Laura looked up in surprise.
“They say you’ve been meeting Rye secretly.”
“Oh, it’s not true, Jane!”
“But you have seen him, haven’t you?”
“ Yes, of course I ’ve seen him. ”
Jane studied her sister for a moment, then confided, “So have we. He looks wonderful, doesn’t he?”
Laura felt herself color, and she knew Jane watched her closely as she went on.
“He stopped by here, brought some little things he’d carved for the children, though he didn’t know we’d had the last three. Surprised him plenty to see us with enough to man a whaleboat.” Jane chuckled, then her expression sobered as she leveled her hazel eyes on Laura. “He’s been seen out walking the moors a lot, and they say he haunts the shore with that dog at his heels, looking like a lost dog himself.”
The picture of a forlorn Rye walking the islands with Ship at his heels at last made Laura’s face crumple. “Oh, Jane, what am I to do?” She covered her eyes, which were suddenly streaming tears.
A child came squealing past, but Jane ignored him for once and laid a sympathetic hand on her sister’s hair. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to keep everyone from getting hurt,” Laura sobbed miserably.
“I don’t think that’s possible, little one.”
At the endearment, Laura grasped her sister’s hand and held it against her cheek for a moment before lowering it to the tabletop, where she held it between them. “I have made them both miserable then, if what you say is true. Rye, wandering the hills with the dog, waiting for me to tell him yes, and Dan leaving the house every night to drink away his fear that I’ll tell him no. And between them, Josh, who doesn’t have any idea Rye is his father. I wish I knew what to do.”
“You have to do what your heart tells you to do.”
“Oh but, Jane, y ... you haven’t seen the look on Dan’s face when he comes home at the end of the day bringing me another gift, hoping ... oh, it’s just awful.” Again Laura dissolved into a pool of tears. “He’s been so good to me ... and to Josh.”
“But which of them do you love, Laura?”
The red-rimmed eyes lifted. The trembling lips parted. Then she swallowed and looked down again. “I’m afraid to answer that.”
Jane refilled Laura’s teacup. “Because you love them both?”
“Yes.”
Jane moved her hand across the tabletop and gently rubbed the back of Laura’s. “I can’t tell you what to do. All I can say is this: I was married already when ... well, when you and Rye turned from children into adolescents. I saw you both growing up before my eyes. I watched what happened between the two of you, and the way Dan followed you with the same look he’s probably got in his eyes now when he brings you gifts in an effort to win your love. Laura dear ...” With a single finger Jane lifted Laura’s trembling chin and looked into her troubled brown eyes. “I know how it was with Rye and you long before you married. I knew because John and I were so happily in love at the time that it was easy for me to recognize it in someone else. The two of you couldn’t keep your eyes off each other—nor, I suspect, your hands either, when you were by yourselves. Would I be out of
line to ask if your misery now’s got something to do with that?”
“Jane, we haven’t done anything since he’s been back. He ... we ...” But Laura stumbled into silence.
“Ah, I see how it is. You want to.”
“Dear God, Jane, I’ve fought it.”
“Yes.” Jane’s pause was eloquent. “So Rye walks the hills with his dog, and you come to my kitchen to cry.”
“But I was married to Rye for less than one year and to Dan for four. I owe Dan something!”
“And yourself—what do you owe yourself? The truth, at least? That if the false rumor of Rye Dalton’s death had never reached Nantucket, you would no more have married Dan Morgan than you would’ve at the age of nineteen, when you chose Rye over him.”
“But what about Josh?”
“What about him?”
“He loves Dan so much.”
“He’s young, resilient. He’d bounce back if he learned the truth.”
“Oh, Jane, if only I could be as ... as sure as you.”
“You’re sure. You’re just scared, that’s all.”
“I’m legally married to Dan. It would require a divorce.”
“An ugly word. Enough to scare anyone raised in these Puritan parts, and enough to make the most benevolent of do-gooders scorn you on the street. Is that what you’re thinking?”
Laura shook her head tiredly and leaned her forehead on the heel of a hand. “I don’t know what to think anymore. I had no idea everybody on the island has been watching Rye and me so closely.”
Jane pondered for a long, silent moment, then squared herself in her chair, drummed on the tabletop with a palm in much the manner of a judge lowering a gavel, and mused, “They say Rye has become a familiar sight wandering the moors. If you were to run into him out there, who’s to say it was no accident? And who’d be there to watch?”
“Why, Jane—”
But before Laura could say more the door opened and John Durning swept in, robust and big-voiced, booming a hello to his children and plopping a forthright kiss on his wife even before he slipped out of his yellow oilskins. With a smile and cheery hello for Laura, he stood behind Jane’s chair and put his wide hands on the sides of her neck, kneading it with his thumbs while teasing, “And what’s waiting at home to warm a man’s body in weather like this?”
Jane craned around to grin up at him. “There’s tea, among other things.”
The affection between the two of them was so obvious, and the way they enjoyed each other and teased made Laura remember how it used to be with Rye when he’d come sweeping into the house. It had been like this—the smile, the bold caress, the words with second meanings. The simple events of every day had been enhanced to something sublime simply because they were shared.
If you were to run into him out there someplace, who’s to say it was no accident?
And though it was undeniably tempting, Laura astutely avoided the moors after that day.
***
The sight of the listless, wandering Rye Dalton and his dog had indeed become familiar to the islanders. The pair could be seen at day’s beginning and day’s end, trekking along the myriad paths of the inner island or along any of its white, sandy shores, the man in the lead, the dog tramping faithfully at his heels.
In the dew-spattered dawns, their silhouettes were often etched against the colorful eastern sky as they sat atop Folger Hill or Altar Rock, the highest points of the island, with the panoramic view of the white-rimmed spit of land and the restless Atlantic beyond. Or if the dawn was murky, it was not uncommon for the old fishermen who lived in the tiny weatherbeaten cottages along ’Sconset’s shores to see the pair emerge from the shrouds of mist at the ocean’s edge, ambling listlessly, heads down, the man’s hands buried deep in his trouser front, the dog giving the impression that were it possible, she’d have imitated her master’s posture.
At other times the inseparable pair ran along the hard-packed shingle, Rye’s heels digging deep into the flat-washed sand, his footprints disappearing as waves lapped behind him while Ship, with her tongue trailing from the side of her mouth, galloped just within the surf, keeping up with the man who seemed to run with a vengeance, his breath beating ragged while he pushed his body to its physical limits. Exhausted, they’d fall, panting, onto the sand flats, Rye lying supine, studying the deep sky, the dog searching the undulating horizons as if for sails.
Evenings, they could sometimes be seen standing on the high bluffs overlooking deserted Codfish Park, where in spring and fall, when the cod ran, fishermen hauled up their dories and lay their catch out to dry on the wooden “flakes” below.
Mornings, just after high tide had strewn the Atlantic’s offerings on the island’s southern shores, Rye and Ship often encountered kelp seekers, rummaging through the tide wrack for oarweed and tangle, though Rye would scarcely be aware that others occupied the same stretch of beach he haunted.
Other times, he and Ship picked their way around the boulders on Saul’s Hill, scattering flocks of blackbirds which in days of old had been such a nuisance that each male islander was issued a quota he must kill before he was allowed to marry. “Ah, Ship,” the man sighed, reaching blindly for the dog’s head. “If only I could simply kill five hundred blackbirds and be free t’ marry her.”
A day came when not a breath of wind stirred, while the two stared at a nearly calm sea. Ship’s ears suddenly perked up, and the hair along her spine bristled. She turned, alert, on guard, checking behind her for the source of the sudden, violent hissing sound that came out of nowhere. But there was naught to be seen, only an eerie sibilance as of something letting off a giant eruption of steam. The rare, unexplained sound emitted by the ocean was called a rut by the old-timers. Yet none knew its origin, only that it was sure to be followed by shrewish winds that would work their way east and bring rain.
And true to its prediction, before the day was out, the sky had lowered to a menacing greenish-gray. It found Rye and Ship watching the wild, broken waters of Miacomet Rip, where hidden currents tugged and sucked at the island’s feet while the winds tore at the man’s hair and whipped it about his head like spindrift.
There followed three days of punishing rain that lashed the island from the south and kept Rye and Ship indoors. On the fourth morning, though, the rain had disappeared, leaving in its wake a fogbank so dense it obscured even the scalloped curves of Coatue Peninsula’s shores.
The three days’ forced confinement had left Rye jumpy and irritable. Therefore, when in late morning of the fourth day the sun broke through and blue sky spread slowly from west to east, Josiah suggested Rye go up to Mill Hill and negotiate the exchange of barrels for flour that was periodically made between the cooper and the miller, Asa Pond.
Shortly after noon, Rye set out on the errand with Ship in tow, grateful to be free of the cooperage once again. The island looked crisp and fresh-washed after the rain. The cobblestones along Main Street shone brightly in the high sun, and along the narrower lanes gay splashes of red and coral geraniums spilled from windowboxes. Rye thought of the geraniums beside Laura’s door and wondered if they bloomed, too, but with an effort he put her from his mind.
With Ship at his heels he walked past Sunset Hill, where the home of Jethro Coffin, one of the island’s first settlers, had been standing for almost 150 years now. He passed along Nantucket Cliffs, beyond which the pale green waters marked the bar and the darker blue told of deeper waters in the sound beyond. Above, a pair of white mackerel gulls pursued a single black one, the ragged shred of their voices tossed aloft in the August afternoon.
He moved on toward the four “post” windmills of Dutch design that rode the breasts of four hills to the south and west of town. Asa Pond’s mill had been built in 1746 of timbers taken from shipwrecks, but as it came into view over the hill, it appeared ageless, its four lattice-veined arms backed by new linen sails, now facing southwest, from which a gentle breeze blew. Like its sister mills, it was at once graceful and u
ngainly; graceful for its gently turning arms whose sails, like those of a windjammer, could be reefed in high winds; ungainly for its long tail pole extending from the rear, tike the rump of an awkward beast squatting on the ground. This thick wooden spar projected from the structure and rested on a wheel by which the entire building could be turned to face windward. The wheel had worn a deep circular rut into the earth, and Rye now leaped over it, crossed the circle of grass, and climbed the ladder to the grinding floor high overhead.
Inside, the mill was adrift in bran- and corn-dust, ever present in the air as grain was poured down the hopper to the grinding wheel and meal was sifted by apprentices into varying grades of fineness. The elevated floorboards vibrated constantly from the thumping of wooden gears as giant pins meshed with oak pinions on the windlass drive. To Rye’s nose the grain scent was pleasant, but he peered across the dust motes to find Asa with a handkerchief tied over his nose and mouth while he worked. The miller raised a hand in greeting and pointed to the doorway; the noise of the grating millstones and the thud of gears precluded speech. Following Rye back outside, Asa pulled the hanky from his face while they stood at the base of the building, conducting their business in the pleasant summer sun while the vanes creaked a quiet accompaniment.
***
Josh, too, had been restless and bored during the three days of inclement weather. As soon as the sky began clearing, he begged Laura to take him out bayberrying, one of his favorite things to do. When she patiently explained that the bayberries weren’t quite ripe yet, Josh pleaded for another walk to Aunt Jane’s. When that suggestion failed, he thought of his other favorite diversion, a trip to the mill, where he was sometimes allowed to ride aboard the spar while the oxen turned the building into the wind. But to this Laura answered almost gruffly, “No, I don’t have time. The garden needs weeding, and right after the rain is the best time.”
“But, Mama, Mr. Pond might—”
“Joshua!” She rarely called him Joshua.
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