I peered at the photo. “Well, it looks like she worked over the finished prints. Touched them up with colored pencils, or maybe pastels. It must’ve taken her forever.” I shot him another look. “Didn’t you ever wonder about that? How she did these?”
“Not really. She never cared what I thought. And, well, she’s my mother. Did you spend a lot of time wondering about what your mother did?”
“No. But I spent the last thirty years wondering how your mother did this.”
“Satisfied?”
I took a step back from the wall. The way the photos were hung made the two windows, with their views of the real islands, look like part of the sequence.
I liked the illusory islands better.
“Yeah,” I said at last. “I guess I am. But…”
I glanced around the room, frowning. “Her other pictures—the ones from the other book. Mors. Where are they?”
“She destroyed them.”
“What?”
“She burned them. Or, I dunno, maybe she tore them up and threw them into the ocean. It was a few years after I was born. I don’t remember it, but I remember hearing about it years later. There was some kind of a big scene, with—”
He stopped. I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach. “But—why?”
“I don’t know.” He looked away. “Something bad happened. You know about Oakwind? The commune?”
I nodded, and he made a grim face. “Well, this was after Oakwind split up, but I gather it had something to do with that. There was a lot of bad blood there, between her and—well, her and just about everyone except for Toby. It didn’t start that way, but…”
“But why would she destroy those pictures? They were taken, what? In the 1950s.”
He shook his head. “Cass, I have no clue. I wouldn’t bring it up, though, in the unlikely event she talks to you again. Not unless you still want to drive back to New York tonight. You hungry?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I’m heading down to the Island Store to get a sandwich. Want to come?”
I wanted to stay, but I wasn’t sure he’d leave me alone there. And even if I wasn’t hungry, I needed a drink.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “One minute.”
He waited as I made a final circuit, looking at each photo. Then we went back down to the mudroom.
“My mother’ll be off for a while with the dogs,” he said and pulled on a heavy coat. “They won’t bother you. Mostly they just sneak around looking for a soft place to sleep. But if you were expecting Aphrodite to make lunch or something—uh, she doesn’t do lunch. She barely does dinner. She does cocktails, after-dinner cocktails, pick-me-ups. A lot of pick-me-ups.”
He opened the outer door, looked doubtfully at my leather jacket. “You going to be warm enough?”
“I’ll be warm when I get back to the city.” I swore as the zipper caught in Toby’s sweater. “Your helpful fucking friend already gave me this—”
I yanked the zipper free then opened my bag, grabbed my camera, and slung it around my neck. “And you know what else?”
We crossed the moss-covered yard, heading back to the harbor. “I could use a pick-me-up too.”
11
Instead of going through the woods, Gryffin cut down toward the water. There was no sign of Aphrodite or her dogs.
“This isn’t the way Toby took,” I said. I had to pick among wet rocks and clumps of seaweed, my boots slipping when I tried to climb over a granite mound.
“I like to see the water,” said Gryffin. He stopped and held out his hand to get me over the boulder. I ignored it, and he shrugged. “That’s the whole point of coming here, right? For the water.”
“You tell me. Did you go to school here?”
“School? No.” He seemed amused. “They only have a one-room schoolhouse here. It goes up to eighth grade. After that, kids used to go live on the mainland and go to school in Machias. I don’t think there’s any kids left here now.”
“Is that what you did?”
“I went to the Putney School. In Vermont.”
Nowadays, tuition at Putney will set you back nearly thirty grand. Even back in the ‘70s, it would have cost a nice bit of change.
“Isn’t that where Dylan’s kid went?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think so. But that was after my time.”
The tide was coming in, covering the gravel beach and lifting black strands of kelp from the rocks. I saw another sea urchin shell, almost as big as my fist. The bottom had cracked open and the shell had filled with sand. I sifted the sand through my fingers then pocketed it.
Gryffin started for where a thin line of birches ran up the hillside. When he reached the first tree he paused to stare out to the islands. His profile was sharp, his dark hair tangled in the collar of his coat. The light showed up more gray than I’d noticed earlier. It wasn’t a conventionally handsome face—nose too big, eyes too small, weakish chin—but it was an intense one, eyes narrowed and mouth set tight, as though it were a constant effort not to lose his temper. Deep furrows in his brow suggested this was a habitual expression.
I wondered what he looked like when he really did lose it. My fingers brushed the spiny little mound in my pocket. I thought of hurling it at him, just to see what would happen, but the shell was so fragile it wouldn’t do much good. Instead I popped the lens cap from my camera and shot a few pictures. Gryffin looked back.
“What are—hey, stop that!”
“What, is there a family ban on photography?”
He didn’t reply, just turned and began walking again. I lowered the camera and followed in silence up the hill, to where the birches joined bigger trees, oaks and maples. Some of the birches must have been really old. They were huge, their trunks charcoal gray. Not much moss here, just drifts of leaves with a film of ice and scattered patches of thin snow. The ground crackled underfoot, like walking on crumpled newspaper.
“So, you come up here a lot?” I asked.
“Not a lot. A couple times a year. Usually in the summer, or earlier in the fall. I had to go to a show in October, otherwise I would’ve been here a few weeks ago.”
He didn’t walk particularly fast, but his legs were so long I had to hurry to keep up. He kept his head down and his glasses jammed close to his face. He looked like an overgrown teenager, gangly and wary. “I mostly came to see a friend of mine. Ray Provenzano, he lives on the far side of the island. He was a friend of my father’s. Another poet. Also a book collector—that’s the delivery I told you about.”
“I know his name. Vaguely,” I said.
“Yeah, the Strand’s a place you might still find Ray’s books. Here, we’re at the road again.”
He crashed through a clump of underbrush onto the rutted roadway. I picked my way more carefully, watching that my camera didn’t snag on anything, finally stomped out onto the blacktop.
“See where we are?” Gryffin pointed. “There’s the Island Store.”
“How do you get to see your friend on the far side of the island?”
“There’s roads—tracks, anyway—all over the place. Not a lot of cars, that’s true. Everyone uses three-wheelers or four-wheelers. ATVs. In the winter they use snowmobiles. Hear that?”
A sudden roar like a chainsaw erupted from the woods behind us. “That’s a four-wheeler. A few of the old-timers, they still have their old beaters to get around in. Ray, he has a four-wheeler here. Not that it goes anywhere unless his flunky, Robert, drives it. Not that he goes anywhere.”
“How come?”
“Ray made him himself persona non grata a while ago. He was hiring teenage boys from Burnt Harbor to come over and paint his house. I don’t know what went on exactly.”
He sighed. “Anyway, the kids’ families didn’t like it much. Next time he came over to Burnt Harbor, he was ambushed. Spent the rest of the summer in the hospital. He didn’t press charges, so … everything’s kinda blown over. But he doesn’t go off-island much anymore.”
“How does he get his groceries?”
“He has a teenage gofer. Robert.”
“You’re joking.”
“No. Hey, Ray knows if he tries anything again, he’s dead. Here we go.”
We’d reached the Island General Store. Gryffin held the door for me and we went inside.
Reggae music blasted from the kitchen. An enormous Newfoundland dog lay on the floor, sound asleep.
“Hey, Ben.” Gryffin reached down to rough the dog’s head. Its eyes remained shut, but its tail moved slightly. “Where’s Suze, huh? Where’s Suzy?”
I looked around. A woodstove with no chimney hookup was covered with coffee thermoses and Styrofoam cups. I could smell pizza baking, and stale beer. There were shelves of canned goods and boxes of pasta; in a smaller back room, cold cases of beer and milk. An ice-cream freezer. Behind the wooden counter, cartons of cigarettes; on a high shelf accessible by a stepladder, bottles of rum, whiskey, brandy, sake. An open doorway led into the kitchen.
“Sake?” I said.
“Summer people,” said Gryffin. “Suze’s got a pretty good wine list too.”
I eyed the comatose Newfoundland. “What’s with all the big dogs? I thought this was golden retriever country.”
“That’s Southern Maine. This is the Real Maine—Rotweilers and half-breed wolves. You can ask Suze. Hey, Suze!”
A petite woman walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She was obviously Paswegas Island’s groove supply. I pegged her to be about my age, bleached blond dreadlocks streaked pink and green, windburned cheeks, pale blue eyes, a front tooth with a tiny chip in it; gray cargo pants and a multicolored cardigan over a T-shirt that read they call it tourist season: why can’t we shoot them? She had the kind of milk-fed face that would have seemed open if it wasn’t for a deep wariness in her eyes, the web of broken capillaries around her upturned nose.
“Hey, Gryffin. What’s up?” She had a raw, husky voice, as though she spent a lot of time shouting. When she noticed me she did an exaggerated doubletake. “Whoa. Incoming stranger.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” I went over to a beer case and grabbed a 16-ounce Bud. Suze scowled. Then she started to laugh.
“Nice manners.” She turned to Gryffin. “She with you?”
“Kind of.”
“Figures.” She glanced at the counter. A set of keys rested beside a stack of paper plates. “Shit. Tyler left his keys again. He’s gonna be wicked pissed if he gets all the way over to town before he notices.”
Gryffin looked toward the harbor. “Want me to go yell at him?”
“Nah. He’ll figure it out. What you up to, Gryff? Seeing your ma for the weekend?”
“Maybe. A few days.”
“Gonna go see Ray?
“Yeah. How’s he doing?”
There was a blast of cold air as the door opened. Two guys entered, eighteen or nineteen, wearing Carhart coats and reeking of cigarette smoke. In the kitchen a phone rang. Suze went to answer it. Gryffin followed her. So did the big dog. The newcomers walked past me, heads down, and went to the beer case. One of them looked curiously at my camera.
“Hey, Suze, you got a pizza going yet?” he yelled.
Suze’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “Yeah, in a minute—”
The new customers went into the back room and studied the beer cooler as though it were a Warcraft cheat sheet. Otherwise the place was empty.
I picked up a bag of Fritos and bellied up to the counter. Keeping an eye on the back room, I palmed the forgotten keys, slid them into the pocket with the sea urchin, then set my beer and the bag of Fritos where the keys had been. Then I stepped over to the window and picked up a copy of the local paper.
It wasn’t that local—the Bangor Daily News—but at least it was that day’s news. With no mailboat, I figured Everett Moss must bring the papers over from Burnt Harbor. I scanned the headlines—national news mostly, none of it good, and some cautiously optimistic predictions about the state’s deer season. I flipped to the local section. A bean supper in Winthrop, an investigation into welfare scams, more bad news for the Atlantic salmon fishery.
And, at the bottom of the page, a brief item.
body washed up at seal cove
The body of an unidentified man was found washed up on a private beach just north of Seal Cove in Corea. The body was discovered just above the high-water mark by an appraiser working on a neighboring house. Cause of death will be determined following an investigation by the State Medical Examiner.
“Hey, Suze.” One of the customers ambled back to the counter. He plunked down a six-pack and a box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. “I’ll take a couple slices of pepperoni or whatever you got going.”
I replaced the newspaper and wandered toward the register. A glass case under the counter held nothing but bottles of Allen’s Coffee Brandy—pints, liters, big plastic gallon jugs. The guy with the beers noticed me eyeing the case and shot me a grin.
I nodded at him, hoping this wouldn’t be misconstrued as part of a Maine courting ritual, then crossed to the other side of the room and pretended to look at a shelf of rental videotapes and DVDs. A darkened doorway opened onto a set of stairs. Beside it a curling bit of cardboard read paswegas historical society. I peered up the steps, but it was too dark to see anything.
A few other customers entered and made a beeline toward the back room. I waited to see if one of the newcomers was keyless Tyler. So far, no. After several minutes Gryffin reappeared.
“I ordered us both a turkey sandwich. That okay? She’s making them now.”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks.” I inclined my head toward the little crowd around the counter. “Lunchtime rush?”
“You got it.”
The door opened again. A young woman came in with two small children. The kids ran over to the ice-cream freezer and began rooting around inside it. The woman walked over to one of the young guys.
“Hey, Randy. You seen Mackenzie?”
Randy shook his head. “Kenzie Libby? No. What’s going on? I heard she was missing or something.”
“Her father hasn’t seen her. Someone said she was down to Burnt Harbor last night.”
“At the Good Tern?’
“I don’t know.” She looked over at the kids. They were both facedown in the ice-cream freezer, their feet dangling behind them. “Brandon! Zack! Get your butts outta there—”
The kids extricated themselves and ran to their mother. Suze came back out of the kitchen, carrying sandwiches and slices of pizza. The woman with the kids bought a pack of cigarettes and left. The remaining customers filed over to the register, paid for their food, and did the same. When they were gone, Gryffin placed a bottle of apple juice on the counter.
“You hear about that? Mackenzie Libby’s gone missing,” said Suze.
“I heard,” said Gryffin as he paid for the sandwiches. “I saw her last night, at the Lighthouse. She checked me in. She was there too,” he added, cocking a thumb in my direction. “Not with me, though.”
“You see her?” Suze said to me. “She’s usually in the office there after school gets out.”
“Yeah, I saw her. Gothy little Suicide Girl type?”
“Yup. That’s Kenzie.” Suze took note of my camera. “You from a newspaper?”
“No.” I looked at her T-shirt. “I’m a tourist. But I’m out of season.”
“Always open season on tourists.” Suze shook her head. “I just hope she didn’t get messed up with one of those kids running a meth lab over by Cutler.”
“You get a lot of that?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s all over the state these days.”
“Any around here?”
“Here on the island? God, I hope not.”
“Hey, never hurts to ask,” I said.
Suze snorted. “Nice.” She bagged our sandwiches, a bottle of juice for Gryffin, and my beer. “Well, have fun. That may be work if you’re hanging out with Gryffin.”
; We went outside. “What, you’re no fun?” I said.
“Not much.” The door banged shut behind us. Gryffin set down the bag and buttoned his jacket. He raised an eyebrow as I snagged my beer. “Isn’t it a little early for that?”
“Beer. It’s what’s for breakfast.” I cracked it and took a sip. “Your mother would know.”
We trudged back uphill. “What’s with all the coffee brandy?” I asked. “Looks like Suze is stockpiling the stuff.”
“That’s Allen’s Coffee Brandy, the Maine drug of choice. It’s lethal—70 proof. That’s how a lot of people up here get their Vitamin D—they mix it with milk and get an extra buzz from the caffeine. Kills more people than heroin does.”
I took another pull at my beer. “That’s disgusting.”
“Pot kettle black.”
“I hate sweet shit,” I said.
He angled off toward the path I’d first taken with Toby. I let him get a few steps ahead of me, then slid my hand into my pocket. I found the keys I’d nicked, felt around till I located the hole in the bottom of the sea urchin. The keys just fit, though a bit of the shell broke off as I poked them inside. I removed the sea urchin from my pocket and held it, a spiky little fist in my palm. Then I set it down at the edge of the road a few yards from the store.
It blended in nicely with gravel and rocks and dust-covered moss. “Bye-bye,” I said and hurried after Gryffin.
We walked without speaking, skirting the pine grove and taking a different path toward the water. I finished my beer, reached over to tuck the empty into the paper bag Gryffin carried. A flicker of distaste crossed his face, but he said nothing.
“So,” I said. I was feeling better. The beer made me feel warmer, and everything had that benign, soft-focus look it gets when you drink in the middle of the day. “This commune everyone talks about. Any of those guys still around?”
“Oakwind?” Gryffin stopped to shake a stone from his shoe. “Not really. Most of them were clueless as to how to actually build a house, so their places fell apart over the years. There’s a couple of them left.”
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