“They get them back out, right?”
“That’s what the boat hook’s for.”
I huddled in the stern while Toby went below. After a few minutes I heard the rumble of the engine turning over. Smoke spewed across the water. Toby hopped back up on deck and stood beside me at the tiller as the Northern Sky nosed away from the pier. I tugged the watchcap over my ears and looked across the harbor to the beach.
The men stood in that same small group. A few watched us pull out. The others had turned to watch four dark figures walking slowly down the road from the crest of the island. Two of the figures carried a stretcher. Behind them walked a heavyset man in a black overcoat, and a tall lanky figure. Ray Provenzano.
And Gryffin.
“Look,” I said.
Toby turned. He ran a hand across his brow then raised it in a wave.
On shore, the tall figure stopped. He lifted his head and gazed across the water then slowly lifted his hand. His voice came to us, garbled by wind and the throb of the engine.
“What’d he say?” I asked Toby.
“‘Be careful.’”
I watched as the figures on shore grew smaller and smaller, until they were no bigger than the rocks and, at last, became indistinguishable from them, disappearing completely as we rounded the point.
21
You can get used to anything, even hanging. Even cold. Still, I thought longingly of the little woodstove I’d seen down in the Northern Sky’s cabin. When I asked Toby about it, he looked at me dubiously.
“Think you can get a fire going? It’s tricky. Time you did, we’d probably be there.”
I reluctantly agreed. We’d left the point behind us. Now Paswegas was a green-black hump, like a breaching whale. There was no real chop, but a lot of long swells. It didn’t make me feel sick, more like being in a gray uneasy dream that I couldn’t quite wake from. Now and then a big wave would catch us sideways, flinging frigid water over the bow. I started counting these to see if there was a pattern, and yeah, every third wave was big, and every twelfth wave was really big. I helped Toby pull up the dodger, a small awning that covered the cockpit, and ducked under it as another wave slapped the boat. It wasn’t much protection, but it kept the worst of the spray from us, and some of the wind. My feet were swollen inside my boots. My face felt as though it had hardened like cement.
Churning sea thrust against roiling sky. The sky pushed back. We fought both of them. A few gulls beat feebly against the clouds. I went below and got my camera, returned to the relative shelter of the dodger and did my best to keep my balance while I shot that unearthly expanse of gray and white and sickly green. Islets rose from the water, some little more than big black rocks, others crowned with salt-withered spruce or birch. I saw tangles of bone white driftwood on rocky beaches, and dead seabirds, creosote-blackened pilings ripped from God knows where. I thought of photos I had seen of Iceland, of volcanic islands rising from the sea.
Who would ever live here? I thought. And answered: I could.
“Cass.” I capped my camera and put it back beneath my jacket. “Come here, I’ll teach you how to keep a heading. The currents are okay for the moment.”
He showed me how to read the compass, its face tilting beneath a transparent plastic dome; how to hold the tiller steady.
“I’m going below for a second.” He raised his voice above the wind and pointed. “That’s where we’re headed—”
A long black shape skimmed the broken surface of the water. “That’s Tolba. We’re sailing a line of sight—not sailing, motoring. So you just keep heading in that direction, okay?”
I minded the tiller while he went below. It was like fighting with a live stick, but I figured Toby wouldn’t leave if he didn’t think I could hold my own. He returned a minute later with two coffee mugs, a liter of Moxie and a bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum.
“See if this warms you up.”
He poured Moxie into each mug, added a slug of rum, and handed one to me. I took a sip and nearly spat it out.
Toby looked hurt. “You should try it with a little squeeze of fresh lime. Nothing finer.”
I fished beneath my anorak until I found my Jack Daniel’s. Toby finished off his mug and set it down. The deck was treacherous with spray, but he moved easily, keeping the tiller steady. The freezing mist had turned to a fine, steady rain. After a few minutes, Toby shook his head.
“We’re dragging,” he yelled above the wind. “The dinghy. Here, I’ll need you to take over again—”
He opened a storage box and removed a bleach bottle that had been cut to make a scoop, turned and placed my hands on the tiller. “I’ve set it so we’re going into the wind now. That’ll slow us down while I bail. Keep that heading.”
He ducked out from the cockpit and headed toward the stern. I watched him lower himself down into the dinghy and begin bailing then turned my attention back to the tiller.
Ahead of us, Tolba Island rose against the mottled sky. It was like watching a photograph develop: bit by bit, details grew clear. The finely etched tips of spruce on the island’s heights; slashes of white that were ancient birches; a sweep of blood red stone that gave way to a pale, red-pocked strand; a granite pier projecting into the water.
It was big; far bigger than Paswegas.
I looked back to check on Toby.
He shouted, “How you doing?”
“Okay.”
“Almost done here! Hang on—”
Exhaustion seeped through me like another drug. My gut ached from coffee and speed and alcohol. If I crashed now, I’d be down for the count. I fingered the film canister in my pocket that held the stolen pills. I had enough speed to last me another day or two if I rationed it. I had the Percocet for when I needed to sleep. If I held off till I got back to Burnt Harbor, I could hit the road and get as far south as Bangor that night, find a Motel 6 and crash there. Not exactly deluxe accommodations, but better than the Lighthouse.
The Lighthouse…
I thought of that first night in Burnt Harbor, of Kenzie’s white face disappearing into the shadows, like a moth.
She was looking for you, Robert had said. She said you were nice.
Well, that was her first mistake.
She said you were going to give her a ride.
My stomach turned over, but not from the swell. I fumbled for the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
She wasn’t running away. I knew that. Robert knew it too. She’d been looking for me, but she’d run into someone else. I thought of the boat I’d glimpsed that night in Burnt Harbor—its running lights, one red, one green; then darkness, its engine silenced. I remembered the animal crouched in the tree, its wild maddened eyes.
Fishers never leave the mainland.
“Whooee! Wicked cold out there.” Toby ducked beneath the dodger, shaking sleet from his anorak. He stuffed the scoop back into its bin and patted my shoulder. “You seem to have done okay. Here.”
He took the tiller and angled it slightly. The Northern Sky turned toward the far end of the beach. “Now we’re not going into the wind, we’ll make better time. If you can handle it for a few more minutes, I’ll go down and fire up the Coleman stove and heat us up some coffee, how’s that?”
“Sounds great.”
He grabbed the mugs and went below. I stood, brooding, as we drew closer to the island. Great reddish boulders were scattered on the rocky shore. On the cliffs above the beach, spindly stands of evergreen and birch. A glitter among the trees indicated a house or outbuildings.
Toby returned with two steaming mugs. “Here you go.”
I stared at the island. “It’s so big.”
“Don’t forget there was a whole village once.”
I raised the mug to my face, pressing it against my cheek until it burned. “I can’t believe you just come and go from here.”
“Not often. Fishermen do it all the time.”
“Yeah, and freeze to death for a living.”
“You think we
have a choice? Places like Paswegas, we’re like Custer’s Last Stand. People from away, developers—they’re killing us. They move here from New Jersey and New York and they don’t want to let us hunt our own land anymore. The fishermen can’t catch fish. Red tide kills the clammers. We get your Lyme ticks, and your Nile mosquitoes … every bad thing we used to hide from, finds us now. Away isn’t ‘away’ anymore. It’s here.”
He didn’t sound angry the way Suze had: only resigned and sad. I sipped some coffee and scalded my tongue. Didn’t feel bad at all.
“I saw something,” I said. I backed up against the dodger, out of the wind. “Back on Paswegas. An animal, in those pine trees by Aphrodite’s house. I think it was that thing you told me about. A fisher.”
“What’d it look like?”
“Kind of big, or biggish. Black-brown, like a little bear but with a long tail. A lot of fur. It snarled at me.”
“Was it on the ground?”
“It was in a tree. Aphrodite’s dogs came running up, and it climbed away or jumped off or something. I’m sure it was a fisher.”
“Huh.” Toby sipped his coffee and steered the boat toward a long pier that seemed to be made of rusty metal. As we drew closer, I saw that it wasn’t metal but stone, the same bloody color as the boulders on shore. “It does sound like a fisher.”
“When I mentioned it to Suze, she thought I was crazy. She said it was impossible for a fisher to get out to one of the islands.”
“Well, that’s true. But if you saw it … people see things all the time. Wolves, mountain lions. Not on the islands, but back there—”
He cocked his head toward the mainland. “People report them to Fish and Wildlife, but the feds don’t want to admit they’re back in Maine. Once they admit we got mountain lions and wolves living here, you have a whole lot of issues about endangered species. Also a whole lot of pissed-off farmers and hunters, ‘cause the wolves and cougars eat their livestock, and they thin out the deer herd. But they’re here, all right.”
I felt a faint tingling on my neck. “So it’s theoretically possible for a fisher to be there, even if no one’s ever seen one before?”
“Sure. I mean, moose have swum out to the islands, and coyotes and foxes. Back a hundred years ago, there was one or two winters so bad there were places where the reach would freeze, and animals could walk over. You don’t usually find big pine trees on the islands anymore—they were all cut for lumber, or to make masts. Plus they don’t like the salt air. But there’s a few big pines on Paswegas, and there’s a couple of really big ones here on Tolba. So you could have porcupines, and maybe you could have a fisher. Anything’s possible.”
I finished my coffee. “You got any food down there?”
“Yeah, go and poke around in the galley, you’ll find something.”
I went below. It wasn’t exactly warm, but it was out of the wind and rain. Quiet, too. Well, not quiet, exactly, but the sounds were different. Rain slashing against the porthole windows, mildly ominous creakings, the drone of the engine. I sat and pulled a blanket around my shoulders. After a few minutes I went to the galley to see what I could find to eat.
There was enough rum and Moxie to qualify as an alternative energy source, but not a lot of what you’d call food. A few sprouting potatoes, a couple cans of tomato sauce. I found a half-full bag of green apples that seemed okay, also a box of blueberry Pop Tarts. I ate an apple then wolfed down Pop Tarts while rummaging through cupboards to see what more there was.
String, a corkscrew, plastic condiment packets. A bottom drawer held a first-aid kit, fishing line and hooks, matches in a waterproof tin. Aspirin, Ipecac, Benadryl. I shoved them aside and saw something else.
A flare gun.
I picked it up. About five inches long, made of plastic, with a black barrel and orange trigger. I checked the barrel. There was a single red canister inside. I held it, thinking, put it into the drawer and went back up on deck.
“Find something?”
“Some Pop Tarts.”
“Yeah, I bought a case of those for Y2K.”
I stood beside him at the tiller and watched black water slop against blocks of rose-colored stone. In the sleety mist it was hard to tell where the pier ended and the beach began. Granite blocks blended into boulders, boulders faded into reddish sand indistinguishable from stunted trees killed by salt and cold. A line of spruces well above the waterline glowed a green so deep it was almost black. Here and there, a black gleam as of eyes gazed back from the trees. A house.
“Is that where we’re going?” I asked.
“That’s it. Mr. Ryel’s Dream House.”
I thought we’d pull up to the pier. Instead, the Northern Sky angled off toward a pair of round floats. A lobster buoy bobbed nearby.
“Take this,” said Toby, leaving the tiller to me. “I’m going to cut the engine. Try to keep us from drifting away from those floats.”
He went below. The engine died. The only thing I could hear was the roar of the wind and the crash of waves on the rocky beach.
“This is a good mooring,” Toby shouted as he headed toward the stern. “We’ll tie up here and take the dinghy to shore. The boat’ll be safer if the weather gets rough.”
“Will it get worse?”
“Don’t know. It seems to be dying down now, but that could just be the eye. Whyn’t you get your stuff from below. That way if we end up staying over at Lucien’s place you’ll have it.”
He started to tie off the boat. I climbed down to the cabin and got my bag, put my camera back inside, checked to make sure my copy of Deceptio Visus was still safe. I opened it, flipping through the pages until I found the prints I’d made in the basement, the contact sheets and the other two. Aphrodite’s photo of the naked man I now knew must be Denny Ahearn, and Denny’s photo of Hannah Meadows. I looked at them then put them aside and stared at the snapshot of Gryffin.
I shut my eyes and recalled his face as I’d first seen it, the emerald flaw in his iris. The green ray. I thought of the photo in Aphrodite’s room—a different green-flecked eye—and the larger picture of Hannah Meadows in Toby’s apartment. Painted eyes, one with a green star inside it.
I couldn’t make sense of it. There was no sense to it, not to anyone except the person who’d shot those pictures.
I’ve heard alcoholics say they can recognize another alcoholic without ever seeing them take a drink, that they can read a book or hear a song and know that the person who wrote it was a drunk. I’m not crazy 24/7, but I’ve been crazy enough that I recognize someone else who’s nuts.
Especially another photographer. Like Diane Arbus. She was a genius, and maybe I’m not. But I know what she saw out there when she looked at the world through her viewfinder. I know what she saw when she killed herself. Just like I know what I saw when I watched Aphrodite die, what I felt: the stench of damage like my own sweat, and my own reflected face like a flaw in her iris.
I rode a wave of grief that left nothing in its wake, not memory or remorse or rage. When it passed I looked down and saw Gryffin’s photo still in my hand. I slid it into Deceptio Visus and put the book into the bag with my camera. I went back on deck.
“We’re all set,” announced Toby. His cheeks were white with cold. “You got everything? Grab one of those life jackets.”
The rain had nearly stopped, but the sky remained nickel colored, swollen with cloud. I fished out another Adderall and washed it down with a mouthful of whiskey. There was something behind those clouds, something behind that black lowering bulk of granite and stunted trees, something I couldn’t see yet. I got the life jacket and waited in the stern by the dinghy. Toby returned with another life jacket, the canvas bag, and a toolbox.
“I think this is everything. You sure you’re okay?” His brow furrowed.
“I think so.” I picked up the boat hook. “What about this? Can it come along?”
“Yeah, sure, go ahead and bring it. Just don’t leave it behind.”
We
loaded the dinghy then rowed to shore. It was rough but not scary. Or maybe I was just getting used to it. I scanned the sea for signs of another boat, saw nothing but a few floats. No planes in the sky, no sign of the mainland; just a few black shapes that seemed to flicker above the dark water. Fish, I thought, or maybe dolphins or seals. Toby said they were rocks.
“Another reason Denny never leaves,” he said, pulling at the oars. “Summer it’s okay, but winter—forget it.”
We reached the shore and got out. I helped him pull the boat well above the highwater mark, kicking through tangles of seaweed encrusted with dead crabs. When we were done, he straightened and shaded his eyes, staring out to sea.
“I don’t see Lucien’s boat.” He frowned. “Huh. Denny must’ve moved it.”
I hoisted my bag and the boat hook. Toby dug a cigarette from his pocket and looked at me. “So. What do you think?”
It was beyond desolate: it was where desolation goes to be by itself. Stone pilings reared from the water, skeletal remains of a dock. I couldn’t see a house. Surf-pounded stones lay on the beach between skeins of weed and blackened driftwood. Farther up, those huge blocks of blood red granite were the only jolts of color in a scoured gray world. My entire body ached with cold and fatigue, but somehow that seemed like the right way to feel here. It was a place that had the flesh stripped from it. Just above the shoreline reared a stand of dead trees—cat spruce, said Toby—trunks bleached white and every needle stripped from their branches. Overturned tree stumps surrounded them, roots exposed like tentacles, and the wing of a seabird, its feathers eaten away so it resembled a shattered Chinese fan.
And everywhere, red granite. Not boulders or rocks but immense blocks and overturned pillars, Greek columns covered with lichen, poison green, blaze orange, white, half-carven angels and a monolithic horse and rider.
“This is incredible.” I walked to an angel whose face was veiled with black mold and ran my hand across its eyes. “It’s not all rotted away.”
“That’s why they call it granite.” Toby took a drag from his cigarette. “Back when everyone left here, they just packed their clothes and what they could carry. Obviously they weren’t going to cart off the granite. They left things you wouldn’t believe. When Lucien built his place, I found saw blades and drills. Beautiful stuff; I’ve got some of ‘em back in my place. Not to mention the carvings. They had a hundred guys out here quarrying the stuff, but there were men stayed in the sheds and just carved stone. You know how you see all those memorials from a hundred, hundred-fifty years ago? Well, a lot of them were carved here then shipped out to Boston and New York. Angels, statues … if the carvers made a mistake, they’d just leave it here.”
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