“Are you the only boat out here?”
“The only sailboat, this time of year. There’s a few lobster boats. Bugs migrate to deeper water in the winter, so it slows down about now. In the summer there’s a bunch of people here—yachts, windjammers. But you want to get off the islands in a hurry, you need a power boat. That way you can catch your flight back to Florida.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Toby laughed. “Oh, it’s not that bad. Not nowadays. Fifty or a hundred years ago, then that would be bad, I guess.”
“What the hell do people do out there?” I squinted at the islands. “Besides fish. I mean, what do you do?”
“I go back and forth. Bring supplies out to the islands. I’m a carpenter, and I do heating systems. There’s a lot of rich people around. Summer people. Used to be everyone left after Labor Day. Now some of ‘em stay on till Thanksgiving, but they don’t winter over. Summer people, I mean. Islanders live here all year round. But they don’t need me to do their work for ‘em.”
He rested the oars and lit a cigarette, cupping his hands against the spray. “Aphrodite, I’ve done some work for her.”
“How long you been here?”
Toby exhaled a plume of blue smoke. “I came in 1972. Used to be a commune out on Paswegas, it was pretty well known back then. I came and hung out there awhile, ended up staying.”
“A commune? How long did it last?”
“Not that long. Few years.”
I zipped my leather jacket, shivering. “I wouldn’t last a week.”
“People been living on these islands a long time,” Toby said mildly. “The Micmacs were here for thousands of years. But no, that commune didn’t last long. None of them ever do. I guess that’s why they decided to rename it an artist’s colony. That was more successful. For a little while, anyway. That’s why they call it Burnout Harbor.”
I made a face, and Toby said, “Hey, I’m surprised you didn’t know about that. If you’re coming to see Aphrodite, I mean. She kind of started the whole commune thing, her and her friends.”
He fell silent, smoking and staring with narrowed eyes across the reach of blue water. Finally he said, “That’s what brought a lot of folks here. People from away. Back-to-the-landers. That’s why I came, actually. I studied at the Apprenticeshop, boatbuilding, but a lot of the folks I met then, they were real hippies. There was a lot of communal-type living going on. A lot of runaways. College dropouts. Kids from Boston and New York. Even kids from California. Some from around here. They wanted to, I don’t know what—build their own yurts? Raise goats? Whereas Aphrodite was more into art and, well, kind of a spiritual thing, I guess you’d say. Oakwind, that’s what she named the commune. That’s when I first met her.”
“Wasn’t she kind of old for the whole hippie scene?”
Toby frowned. “Well, no, I don’t think so. And she was really goodlooking back then.”
I did the math in my head: Kamestos was born in 1936, so…
“Well, okay,” I conceded.
“There were a lot of artists.” Toby took a final drag on his cigarette then began to row again in earnest. “A few photographers. Couple of writer types who were friends of her husband; one of them stayed on. Everyone smoked a lot of weed. There was a lot of acid. Aphrodite owned a big chunk of land on Paswegas, her and her husband. They’d let people squat on their property, build these little shacks and stuff. A few still live there; locals call ‘em the cliffdwellers. Aphrodite’s husband, he was dead by then.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. He killed himself. I never heard the whole story. I guess he was gay, and maybe that was an issue, or maybe it was drugs? Some weird stuff went on at Oakwind, the whole place kind of imploded. Everyone just went their separate ways after that.”
I rubbed my arms. “What kind of weird stuff?”
Toby’s gaze grew remote. He turned to stare at the green and black mass of Paswegas looming in the distance. “Out on the islands, every couple of years you get a witch hunt. People go crazy, cabin fever. Winter especially. Lot of times it’s directed at a schoolteacher, someone from away. Back then there was only about forty people living on Paswegas. Today there’s less than that. So the hippies came, and all of a sudden you’ve got, like, double the population on a place that’s not real used to having company, except in the summer. It’s a fragile human ecology, just like an animal ecology; you introduce a new species, even just one person, and everything goes to hell. Some bad stuff happened. Afterward most everyone split.”
“But not Aphrodite.”
“Not Aphrodite,” said Toby. “Maybe you could get her to talk about it. But I doubt it. Okay, here we go—”
We’d come up alongside the sailboat. A carved sign adorned the stern; Northern Sky picked out in gold leaf. Even beside the dinghy it looked small. I had a flash of panic: how could something so tiny hold two people, let along bring them anywhere safely? Toby grasped Northern Sky’s rail and pulled the dinghy against it. I stood and stumbled on board. Toby followed, then began tying off the dinghy at the stern.
“You go put your stuff below,” he called. “Just slide that hatch there, I’ll be right down. Watch your head.”
The boat was a pretty little thing. White paint, gray trim, mahogany accents. Bronze portholes verdigrised from age and salt air. I still couldn’t see how two people could move around without bumping into each other or tripping over a million lines, wires, sails, buckets, God knows what.
Not to mention ice—the deck was slick with it. Fortunately it was only three steps across the bridge deck to where the companionway led down. I skidded over and pushed open the hatch then climbed down a ladder into a space so densely packed it was like walking into a broom closet.
I had to stoop to enter, and even then my head grazed the ceiling. Forward, my way was blocked by the mast and, directly behind it, a sheet-metal woodstove roughly the size and shape of a large coffee can. Beyond this was the bow, a V-shaped berth crammed with boxes, milk cartons, power cells, books, ropes, tools, a small chemical toilet.
But where I was—smack in the middle of the main cabin—everything was meticulously, if eccentrically, organized. To either side was a bench covered with frayed corduroy cushions. Above these were amazingly carved shelves, pigeonholes, cupboards, and nooks, some no bigger than the pencils they held, others large enough to support rows of books and manuals. There were hooks carved like fingers, canned goods stacked behind carven filigree. Two copper gimbals shaped like mouths held kerosene lanterns. Crocheted nets dangled from the ceiling, filled with onions and garlic and sprouting potatoes. Tucked into an alcove by the ladder were a tiny alcohol-fueled cookstove and a NOAA weatherband radio beside a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Rum and several bottles of Moxie.
“You okay? Find a place to stow your stuff?”
Toby’s bearded face appeared in the hatch. I ran my fingers across a shelf carved with rows of eyes. “Did you do this? All this carving? And this?”
At the end of the shelf hung a mask. Papier-mâché, vaguely Native American-looking: a frog, mottled brown and green and creamy yellow. It had protruding golden eyes, a wide, lipless grin. The papier-mâché was so smooth it looked like plastic, except at the edges where you could see unpainted bits of newsprint. It was beautiful, but also unsettling.
I said, “You made this too?”
“Yup.” Toby came down, and I moved to make room for him. “Just put your bags there—”
He pointed at one of the cushioned berths. “We’ll motor over. Not enough wind; we’d have to tack back and forth. Just as fast this way.”
I turned from the frog mask and put my bag down then removed my camera.
Toby stared at the old Konica. “Boy, that’s an antique.”
“I’m a photographer.” It was the first time I’d spoken those words in a long time.
“Don’t most people use digital cameras these days?”
“I don’t.” I glanced around the cabin.
“Do you have a mirror? I feel pretty gross.”
“No mirrors.” His gaze remained even, but his eyes narrowed as he added, “You don’t have a mirror on you, do you?”
“Would I’ve asked for one if I did?”
He leaned back against the ladder, still staring. Not at me; at my camera.
“There’s a mirror in that,” he said.
“Yeah? There’s a mirror in all cameras. This kind, anyway.” I was starting to get pissed. “Is this some kind of superstition? No women on board, no—”
“Put it away.” His tone was less patient now; vaguely threatening. “Here—give it to me and I’ll stow it.”
I started to snap back—I hate people touching my stuff—then shut up.
Something in his expression intimidated me. Usually I can tell if someone’s going to freak on me; there’s that smell of damage, like the smell of a spent match that signals an explosion a few moments later.
There was no hint of that to Toby Barrett.
But there was something else, just as powerful—a sense of occlusion, of an intense self-possession, like an emotional force field. Like the rocks I saw out in the harbor, their edges hidden by mats of seaweed, all their menace beneath the water.
I shoved my camera back into the satchel and handed it to him. Toby opened a cupboard and stashed the bag inside then opened another cupboard that held clothes. He picked up a heavy black wool sweater, gave it a cursory sniff, and tossed it to me. “See if that fits. It’s your color.”
I took off my leather jacket and pulled on the sweater. It was bulky and mouse eaten and smelled of cedar and lanolin.
But it was warm. I was just able to squeeze my jacket back on over it. Toby rubbed his beard and glanced down at my boots.
“You got some pretty big feet there. But not big as mine. I don’t know if I’ve got a pair of shoes to fit you. Maybe Aphrodite’ll have something.”
“I like to wear these. They’re … comfy.”
“I bet. Those steel tips look lethal.”
“They are.” I lifted one foot to display a black full-quill ostrich-leather Tony Lama cowboy boot worn smooth as eelskin by nearly twenty years of wear. I’d had the soles and heels replaced more than once. The steel tips were customized for me, no longer shining but dull gray.
“They won’t keep you warm, though,” said Toby. “We’ll see what we can find for you on the island.”
He moved back to the ladder, lifted it and set it aside, revealing a pair of doors. He opened these then stepped into a small engine room. His voice echoed back to me.
“Got to hand crank the engine. This could take a minute…”
I heard the rhythmic sound of a handle turning. There was a small sputter, the smell of diesel. Toby swore under his breath.
I turned and gave the cabin a quick once-over. The portholes were so crusted with salt that only an opaque, pearly light filtered through them. The woodstove was black from use, as was the cookstove. All of the metal flatware was tarnished. Everything had a comfortable sort of glow, but nothing gleamed or glittered.
I frowned. It was weird, but also weirdly methodical, and that was puzzling; as though there were some pattern here that just escaped my recognition. I sat on one of the berths and looked around, trying to filter out all the stuff—the shelves, the books, the tools—and concentrate on what, exactly, ordered the space around me. What made it lucid; literally, what made it shine.
Or not.
You learn to do this as a photographer. You’re always searching for light—its source, its distance; always measuring how diffuse it is, how long it’s going to last. You think about the same thing when you’re in the darkroom printing.
As I sat in Northern Sky, I began to see more and more darkness around me, despite the fact that there were no curtains drawn, despite the fact that it was early morning of a cloudless early winter day. Another minute and I began to lose a sense of perspective. The cabin seemed larger than it was; the darkness at the bow crept toward me until it enveloped the outlines of berths, bookshelves, the gimbels’ copper mouths. Everything blurred to a deep russet-brown, like a sepia image foxed with mold.
Toby Barrett may not have had something to hide, but he certainly cultivated the shadows. At the very least he wanted very much to preserve the illusion that he was safe from scrutiny, even if he was in a tiny cabin with no doors or screens.
A sudden roar shook the boat.
“Got it!” Toby ducked out of the engine room. “For a minute there I was afraid she wouldn’t start.”
He shut the doors, threw the ladder back into place, and disappeared up the companionway. I clambered after him. He was already in the cockpit, tiller in hand.
“Have a seat,” he said. An unlit cigarette protruded from one corner of his mouth. He brought the boat about until the nearest of the islands was ahead of us, lit the cigarette and took a long drag. “Want one?”
“Just give me a hit off that,” I said and took it from his mouth.
The cigarette tasted of diesel fuel and hashish. I passed it back to Toby and stared out at the dark bulk of Paswegas and the archipelago behind it. “How come you don’t use a powerboat?”
Toby shifted the tiller. He sat straight backed, oblivious of the wind and icy spray, his eyes fixed on the island. “How come you don’t use a digital camera?”
“It feels weird to me. Like a step is missing. Or a wall.”
“A wall?”
“Well, not a wall exactly. But you get used to having something between you and whatever it is you’re shooting. Maybe it’s just that you have time to worry if the picture’s going to come out or not. With digital it all happens immediately.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Maybe not bad. But different.”
I hesitated. I was surprised to hear myself admitting this. I’d never really articulated it before, certainly not aloud.
“Maybe it was just too much trouble to keep up with it all,” I said at last. “Everything changed so fast. I guess I just didn’t care enough anymore.”
“What kind of pictures did you do? Magazine pictures? Anything I would’ve seen?”
“I doubt it. I had only one book, and not many copies were printed. My stuff was pretty dark. Dead people. I shot the downtown punk scene in New York for a while, before it went belly-up.”
“A dead scene,” said Toby. He flicked his cigarette into the water.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So you must know all about Aphrodite’s photography. That’s why you’re here, right? You must like her work.”
“Yeah.” I shifted, trying vainly to get out of the wind, and bumped my knee against his. “Her pictures of the islands. She took those forty years before Photoshop, and people still can’t figure out how she did it.”
“I never got the impression she was that well known. She just had one or two books, right?”
“Yeah. But they were influential books.”
“Maybe your book will be influential someday. Maybe it’s influential right now and you just don’t know it.”
I shook my head. “No. She was a genius, even if she was only a kind of minor genius. I was just lucky. If you can call taking pictures of dead junkies lucky. I wasn’t even very good at that.”
My back was starting to ache, from the cold and being hunched against the wind. I stood, balancing myself against my seat, and gazed out at the island. It was an unwelcoming sight, thorny-looking evergreens and spiky outcroppings of black and gray stone. The buildings scattered across the rocky hillside looked as though they’d been thrown there and forgotten, falling down houses and gritty trailers.
“So that’s where you live,” I said. “What about your friend back in the bar?”
“Gryffin? No. He just comes up sometimes on business.” He craned his neck to stare past Paswegas. “You ever hear of someone named Lucien Ryel? He was pretty well known ten or twenty years ago.”
“Lucien Ryel?” I looked up in surpri
se. “Yeah, sure.”
“He lives out there—”
Toby pointed to a low gray shape on the horizon. “Tolba Island. I’ve done some work for him over the last couple of years. He doesn’t winter over. He’s got a power boat, a Boston Whaler.”
“Lucien Ryel,” I said. “No shit.”
In the early 1970s, Ryel had been the force behind the English prog rock band Imaguncula. He was famous for performing in drag, something between that guy in A Clockwork Orange and a Balinese temple dancer. He left Imaguncula in 1980 and went on to produce house music in Manchester before becoming an expat in post-Wall Berlin, where, as far as I knew, he had disappeared.
“What the hell’s he doing up here?”
Toby shrugged. “He’s only here a few weeks every summer. He’s another one came to the commune for a while, before my time. He even wrote a song about Oakwind. Liked it here enough that he bought an island too. I was never into his music. I had one of his albums when I was in college, but I never played it.”
The boat hit some choppy waves, and I clutched at my seat. “You okay?” asked Toby. “You could go below if you feel bad. You look a little green.”
“I told you, hangover.” I waited until the sick feeling passed, then said, “What is it with people buying islands?”
“They used to be cheap—you could buy an island for, I dunno, fifty thousand dollars. Maybe less than that. Not anymore. Lucien’s place, Tolba—back in the nineteenth century they quarried granite there. Cut columns and blocks for some big cathedral. When that was built, they cut it for houses. You’ve heard of a company town? This was a company island. One day someone showed up and told everyone they were shutting down the quarry. So everyone had to leave the island.”
“You’re kidding.”
He turned, adjusted the tiller, and blinked into the sun. Ahead of us the harbor of Paswegas opened up. Neon orange and red and green floats bobbed in the water. A small bell buoy clanked as we passed it.
“There were quarries on a lot of the islands here,” said Toby. “Vinalhaven, that’s where they got the stone for the Brooklyn Bridge. In the 1890s they were paving city streets, New York, Boston. They didn’t have asphalt back then, so they used stone. On Lucien’s island, you can see all these great big blocks of granite they left and quarry holes everywhere. He bought that place cheap and hired me to do his heating system. A real big modern-looking place—folks call it the Stealth Bomber. But he’s easy to work for. And he’s got deep pockets, and he only comes at the end of the summer so I see him maybe once a year. He lives in Europe the rest of the time.”
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