Beyond the Bright Sea

by Lauren Wolk

  Before I could decide how to reply, Mr. Benson went on to say, “The gamekeeper over there said the doctor disinfected every last thing before he left. Don’t know why he’d bother. They shoulda burned every bit of it down straightaway.”

  He seemed to be saying that nothing from that place should be allowed to remain, though I’d never known him to be mean.

  “The bird keeper told you that? About the leper doctor?” I said.

  Mr. Benson nodded. “He moved into the hospital after they cleaned it up. Used to come over from time to time for a square meal and a chat, though he hasn’t been lately.” He gave a snort of laughter. “Perfect fellow for the job. Looks like a sandpiper, head to toe.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Little, skinny fella,” Mr. Benson said. “With a nose like a beak.”

  I pictured the big, flat-faced man we’d met on Penikese.

  “From down south?” I said.

  Mr. Benson shook his head. “A Mainer,” he said, “born and bred.”

  Not the birdman we’d met out there. Not even close.

  Osh came through the door with a sack of groceries. “Benson,” he said, passing by.

  “Daniel,” Mr. Benson said, nodding. “Crow.”

  And we headed back down the lane toward the skiff.

  I let my feet decide where to put themselves as I followed Osh down to the beach, my mind busy with other things.

  If the bird keeper was a little fellow from Maine, then who was the big southern man we’d met?

  As we sailed back through the Narrows and toward home, I told Osh what Mr. Benson had said.

  “Maybe the old bird keeper left and the one we met came out to take his place,” Osh said.

  Which was possible, I supposed.

  But my gut told me a different story, and I decided to listen to it.

  It did rain that afternoon and all night into morning, too. Not a gale. Just a long, gray rain that fell straight and soft on a flat sea.

  Osh decided I should go to Miss Maggie’s for lessons. “She’ll come out here if you don’t go there first,” he said, and I knew he was right. Rain always brought her to our door, draped in a long oilskin, skirts wet from crossing over. “Save her from getting soaked.”

  So I put on my own poncho, pulled up the hood, and headed out into the gray. It was mid-tide, so I was not much wet when I made land and was otherwise dry inside my poncho. The rain on my hood made the world very small, and I found myself filled with thoughts as I walked.

  When I reached Miss Maggie’s place, it was empty, which was odd on a day like this. “Miss Maggie!” I called, wandering around to the barn and in where the horses and the cows stayed dry on days like this. Mouse was waiting for me in one of the stalls, curled up in the manger. “Mouse,” she said when she saw me lean in over the half door.

  “Good morning, Mouse,” I said. “Good morning, Cinders,” which she answered with a snort and a shake of her head. “Where’s Miss Maggie?”

  But they either did not know or would not answer.

  I asked her milk cows, too, but they just blinked their big, peaceful eyes at me.

  I looked all around the barn, calling, but no one else was there.

  At the big door I could see sheep grazing in the distance and, beyond them, Miss Maggie, coming home.

  I went out to meet her halfway.

  With all the rain and the hood shadowing her face, I couldn’t see her tears, but I could hear her crying. Her hands were brown with mud.

  “Hawks,” she said. “Or maybe an owl. Something got Snowdrop. And she’s dead.” She was talking about the littlest of the lambs, still small and frail while the others had grown to be sturdy young sheep, full of play. Miss Maggie rarely named the lambs, since it was harder to butcher something with a name. But she’d intended to keep Snowdrop for her wool alone. Now, something else had done the butchering.

  “I buried what was left of her,” Miss Maggie said, marching past me. “Come help me with the grooming.”

  As I followed her toward the barn, I thought of the headstone on Penikese. The little lamb carved there. And suddenly my own twelve years felt like a long time, as if I were young and old at once.

  Inside the barn, we shed our ponchos and, armed with a curry comb and a dandy brush, each took a horse, Cinders for me, a roan named Clover, in the next stall, for Miss Maggie.

  We talked while we worked, mostly because we had things to say but also because it calmed the horses. They loved the grooming, but sometimes they were a little shy of the dandy brush when we came close to tender spots.

  I told Miss Maggie about the sailboat leaving Penikese at dusk and how Mr. Benson had described the gamekeeper. “That man we met was no sandpiper,” I said. “More like a bulldog.”

  “Well, it’s odd, I’ll admit that, but does it matter?” she said. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with you or what you went there for.”

  So I told her about the thump I’d heard at the hospital.

  “Osh thought it might be a cat jumping or the building making its own noise,” I said, “but I don’t think so.”

  Silence for a while. Nothing but the sound of the horses shifting as we worked, Miss Maggie sneezing at the dust stirred up by the dandy brush.

  Then, “So what do you intend to do about it?” she said.

  I didn’t need to think about my answer. “Go back out there,” I said. “And look some more.”

  “For what?”

  “For whatever I can,” I said. “There’s something I’m supposed to do. I just don’t know what it is.”

  After a bit, Miss Maggie said, “Perhaps it’s time to let that go. Maybe tell your heart to listen to your brain for a change.”

  I didn’t much like that advice.

  I soaked a rag, wrung it out, and began to wash Cinder’s face. “Why were you crying about Snowdrop?” I asked.

  After a moment, Miss Maggie stepped into the doorway of the stall. “Of all people, you should know the answer to that.”

  I stopped what I was doing and turned to face her.

  “I do,” I said.

  She looked at me for a long moment.

  “All right,” she finally said, nodding.

  She returned to Clover, and I could hear him shifting and sighing as she worked on his dusty coat.

  “When do you mean to go back out there?” she said through the wall.

  “As soon as the rain stops.”

  After a moment, she appeared in the doorway again. “I’ll be waiting at the Neck,” she said briskly. “And tell Osh the garden can look after itself for a little while.”

  “The garden needs tending,” Osh said when I proposed sailing to Penikese as soon as the weather cleared.

  “Miss Maggie said it can look after itself for a while.”

  He was filling a pail with wood ash from the fireplace. He used it to feed the plants and frustrate the slugs.

  “She did, did she?” He climbed to his feet and dusted off his hands. “And I suppose she’ll be coming with us again?”

  There. He would go. I smiled. “Of course,” I said. “Like the Musketeers.”

  “All for one,” he said.

  “She’ll be waiting at the Neck when it stops raining,” I said.

  And, later that day, when the clouds tore apart in the freshening breeze, she was.

  Chapter 16

  I was relieved when we sailed into Penikese Harbor and saw no boat at the pier. We hadn’t seen one sailing nearby, either, so I expected we’d have the place to ourselves. For a while at least.

  “The birdman hasn’t come back, then,” I said.

  Osh said, “Not yet.”

  He climbed out of the skiff and offered a hand to Miss Maggie, who surprised me by taking it. I followed, and we pulled the boat up on t
he sand.

  “So, here we are,” Osh said. “What now?”

  “We find out what made that thump.”

  “I didn’t come for the thump,” he said. “I came for woadwaxen.” He’d brought a canvas sack this time.

  “I’ll help with that,” Miss Maggie said. “You go on ahead, Crow. We’ll see you there.”

  “But any sign of that man and back you come,” Osh said.

  I promised I would. And I meant it. That birdman was a scary fellow, and I had no intention of meeting up with him again.

  I started off walking but was soon running down the old grassy lane, up and over the hills at speed, fueled by a strong mix of curiosity, a little fear, and what my legs wanted.

  In no time at all, I was at the hospital, Miss Maggie and Osh still foraging in the distance.

  I climbed the steps to the porch and knocked on the big door. Softly at first, then harder.

  Again, from somewhere inside, a noise. This time a series of smaller thumps, like someone was knocking in return.

  This time, the door was not locked.

  I pushed it open. “Hello!” I called. “Hello?”

  From above I heard the knocking sound again. And something else: a muffled growling.

  I pictured a huge dog, hungry for someone like me to open a door and set it free.

  I thought about waiting for Osh and Miss Maggie.

  I turned to go back into the yard until they arrived.

  But then I heard a bigger thump and something breaking, and I hurried into the hospital and up the front stairs without another thought.

  “Hello?” I called as I climbed.

  The knocking sound drew me toward a long hallway, all its doors closed.

  I opened the first one to find nothing but an old bed frame and a small table topped with a washbowl and pitcher.

  I stood in the hallway, listening, and then crept past the next two doors to where the knocking was loudest.

  I admit that I was scared as I reached for the knob.

  And I was scared as I slowly pushed the door open.

  And I was scared when I saw who was waiting for me inside, though more for him than for myself.

  There, on the floor, was a man rolled up in a bedsheet, from his chin to his ankles, and tied tight in a rope, too. His mouth was stuffed full of rag tied in place with a kerchief so all he could do was growl and moan. Only his feet were free to move at all. It was his boot, its hard edge tapping on the floor, that I had heard from below.

  Beside him were an overturned table and a broken pitcher.

  When he saw me in the doorway, he closed his eyes and went limp and quiet but for a pitiful sobbing deep in his throat.

  I removed the gag first, as quickly as I could, and threw it aside.

  The man began to cry properly when I did, gasping and sobbing so hard that I couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

  I realized that I was talking, too, as I tried to free him. “It’s all right now,” I said, over and over again. “It’s all right now, mister. It’s all right now.”

  “I don’t know you. I don’t know you,” he stammered as I worked on the knots in the rope. “Is he—where is he? Is he gone?”

  “He’s not here,” I said. “I’m Crow. And I’m going to get you out of here.”

  The sheet was filthy, soaked with all the things a body does, and the stench in the room was terrible. I pulled apart the knots in the rope that bound him and rolled him gently until he was free of the sheet and could finally move, which he did slowly and carefully after being bound for days.

  I stood back and watched him work the blood into his arms and legs, flex his fingers, crane his neck this way and that, crying all the while.

  He was a small man. Thin. With a sharp nose. Like a bird.

  “You’re the bird keeper,” I said.

  He quieted down at that, rubbing his face with his hands and sighing again and again.

  “I am,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Would you please step out for a moment. Please. I wonder, would you step out, please.” And he began to cry again, but less urgently.

  I went back into the hallway and closed the door behind me.

  After a bit, he opened it again and stood there, wrapped in a blanket, his clothes on the floor in a heap behind him.

  “Are you—” I began, but he held up one hand and edged past me, down the hallway and then the stairs as I followed, out through the door and across the yard, faster and faster, and over the edge of the bluff as I watched, across the rocky beach, falling twice but scrambling again to his feet, shedding the blanket as he went, and straight into the sea.

  I followed him, gathering up the blanket and shaking it clean, while he splashed madly in the waves and then sat in the shallows and scrubbed himself with wet sand, head to toe.

  Then he slowly rolled onto his knees and worked his way carefully to his feet, covering his private parts with his hands.

  He was terribly thin and pale.

  Blood from his falls trickled down his wet legs, one knee already swelling.

  I handed him the blanket and turned my back.

  “Grab hold of my shoulder,” I said. “I’ll go slowly.”

  His hand felt like a claw.

  Several times, as we made our way over the rocks, he nearly fell, and I knew I’d have bruises on my shoulder from his grip.

  I heard Osh calling my name and I called back, “Here! Here!” as loudly as I could, but when the gamekeeper gasped and began to tremble, I said, “It’s all right. That’s Osh. That’s just Osh,” but he refused to take another step until Osh and Miss Maggie appeared at the top of the bluff.

  When they saw us among the rocks below, they hurried down, Osh taking the gamekeeper in his arms and carrying him like a child onto the soft sand at the foot of the bluff, where he laid him down.

  Miss Maggie dropped to her knees beside him and tucked the blanket around the man, who was shivering, though the day was warm. “My Lord, you’re nothing but skin and bones,” she said, pulling off her hat and tucking it beneath his head. “What happened to you?”

  Osh stood tall above us, watching, listening.

  I kept one eye on the bay, the other on the man’s face as he slowly began to collect himself and eventually said, “I’m Sloan. The gamekeeper.”

  “You’re the gamekeeper? Not that other man?” Osh said.

  Mr. Sloan shook his head. “Last time I sailed to New Bedford for supplies a man at the wharf asked for a lift to Cuttyhunk. Said he was a pilot coming over for work. And I thought nothing of it. Didn’t mind the extra mile to drop him there before coming home. Thought I’d stop at the inn for a meal and some company.”

  He stopped and sat up, the sand making his wet hair white. Pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and drew a long, shaky breath.

  “But when we were halfway across the bay he told me he wanted to go to Penikese instead. Said he had some business here, which made me laugh. ‘What business?’ I asked him. ‘There’s no business on Penikese but birds and rabbits.’ To which he said I could either take him here or he’d throw me into the bay and leave me to drown.”

  Mr. Sloan shook his head sadly. “I’m not a big person. Or young anymore. And I can’t swim a lick. So I brought him to Penikese, God forgive me. I’m not sure I would have, though, if I’d known how long he’d keep me locked up while he did . . . I don’t know what. I don’t understand what he was doing here. Or why he had to pen me up like that. For what?”

  “We don’t know,” Miss Maggie said.

  “Or why he tied and gagged me every time he went out anywhere,” he continued, as if she hadn’t said anything. “I ask you,” and here he looked at each of us in turn, “where was I going to run to? And who was going to hear me call?”

  “We would have,” I said. “Wh
en we were here the first time.”

  “That was you?” he asked. “Then, too?”

  Miss Maggie nodded. “We sailed over from Cuttyhunk. We . . . had business of our own.”

  Mr. Sloan sighed. “I heard you knocking. I was tied to a chair and I tipped it over, to make some noise. Hoping you would hear me.”

  Miss Maggie looked at Osh and he at her.

  “She heard you,” Miss Maggie said, nodding at me, “but that man came just then and ran us off. I’m sorry we didn’t come back sooner.”

  But Mr. Sloan shook his head. “No, it’s better that you didn’t. He was different after that. Worse. And angry. No telling what he would have done if you’d come back.”

  He worked his way back up to his feet. “If you don’t mind, could we maybe go somewhere else now?” He looked around fearfully and began to stagger up the bluff. “I have some clean clothes in the hospital, but there’s nothing else I need so much as to be off this island before he comes back.”

  Osh helped him to the hospital, and we waited outside while he went in alone.

  It took him no time at all to dress himself and pack his bag and join us again in the yard. He looked better in clean clothes, though some blood was seeping through at the knee and his hair was still wild with sand and salt.

  “I owe you a debt,” he said. “I would have died here if you hadn’t come.”

  Miss Maggie ran a hand over my head. “You can thank this one,” she said. “She’s the reason we came back.”

  “And I will,” said Mr. Sloan. “You just tell me how and I will.”

  “On Cuttyhunk,” Osh said, turning toward the harbor. “Time to go.”

  But I had one more thing to do first. “I’ll catch up with you,” I said. “I just want to look in the cottages. For a minute. That’s all.”

  Osh nodded. Miss Maggie said, “For a minute. But no more. And then you come along.”

  “What’s there that you want?” Mr. Sloan said. “Those old shacks are empty and not a thing left in them.”

  But he turned without waiting for an answer and followed Osh and Miss Maggie slowly down the lane.