Bright Island

by Mabel L. Robinson

  Her mother called her from the shed. “Come out here, Thankful. You’ve a caller wants to see you.”

  For one stifling half-awake moment Thankful thought that it was Robert, returned to torment her. She staggered to the door strewing her books, catching the gray shawl about her head. It was Limpy! He stood there by the door balanced on one leg, reproachful. His great white body was sleek in the cold twilight, his wings its color. He looked at her and flapped them.

  Thankful took the pan which her mother held out to her and caught a coat from the peg. “Has he been here every night?”

  Her mother nodded reluctantly. “Aye, he’s a lazy bird.”

  Thankful walked out toward Limpy who lifted heavy wings but changed his mind when she shook the scraps. “Small wonder he doesn’t know me,” she said bitterly, “when I’d forgotten him.”

  But her mother was back in the kitchen.

  Limpy ate the scraps in gulps while Thankful shivered over him. When he had finished he rose with a long screak and sailed into the dark. Thankful’s eyes followed him. “You’ll eat out of my hand tomorrow night,” she said. “But I wouldn’t force you tonight.” She shivered again. It was bitter cold. And Robert had nearly taken away so much from her!

  The oven door was open and inside its warm cavern Thankful could see the brown pot of beans, its crackle waiting to be skimmed. Her mother was cutting across the round loaf of steaming brown bread with heavy string so that it would not crumble. The kitchen had the Saturday night fragrance which had so haunted Thankful at school. She stood contentedly by the stove waiting for her father’s step. Then she reached into the oven with padded fingers and pulled out the sweet-smelling beans. They filled the deep dish with the pork, transparent and rich, on top. She ate slowly and long with a deep savoring of home.

  Thankful slipped back into the rhythm of the days as if she had never been away. Except for a sharpened awareness in her senses. She found herself taking nothing for granted, the snugness of the house against the gnawing cold, the threat of the booming waves, the clean thin air, even the winter fog which shut them in with a dank gray blanket colder than snow. She realized them sharply now and put them away for dull days to come.

  It grew steadily colder during the week, and Thankful watched the ice gather, crunch in the tide, pile up, and finally fill in the cove with its rough blocks. Jonathan had hauled up his powerboat, and Thankful felt as if a lifted drawbridge cut her safely off from the land. No mention was made of the day after New Year’s when she was due at school.

  No more snow fell, and the island lay under a thin icy crust. Each morning until the wood shed was filled, Thankful and her father creaked through it to the clearing. The steady work hardened her. Her muscles stopped aching and so did her heart. She seldom thought of Robert, so little was he associated with Bright Island. He had gone as lightly as the dragonfly and left as slight impression. Except that even yet she could not bear to hear the radio. Her father sat over it by the hour, and her mother hummed its tunes. Selina would be pleased.

  “Bring down the books I lent Robert,” her mother said. She had not called him Robbie since he left. “We could have a try at Harvard ourselves.”

  Thankful went into the cold empty room which might never have held Robert, and brought down the pile of her mother’s books. They sat over them enjoyably and though Thankful grew sleepy sometimes from her hours in the winter wind, she got back some of her old zest in them.

  Over higher mathematics Mary Curtis balked. “Too niffy-naffy for me,” she said. “I cannot abide them. But elsewhere I’m still in the lead.” And would be, Thankful thought ruefully, for a long time.

  “Would you like to go on to college, my girl?” Her mother leaned her floury hands on the table and eyed Thankful keenly. “I understand from Robert that only two years would be needed there.”

  Thankful stopped scowling over a problem to look at her mother with amazement. “I wouldn’t if I could,” she said, “and anyway I couldn’t.”

  “Might,” said her mother looking relieved. “Might as far as money goes.”

  “If I had a million,” said Thankful, “I wouldn’t waste it that way. And I spent all you gave me on clothes. You ought to see them!”

  “Like to,” but Mary Curtis did not go back to her work. “There’s something I’m minded to tell you now that the yammer and yawl is over.”

  Thankful rested her chin in her cupped hands and lifted puzzled eyes. “What about?” she asked.

  “The island. Bright Island.” Her mother wasted no words. “Your Gramp left it to you. It is ours as long as we live, of course, but then yours.”

  Thankful’s fingers made white dents in her cheeks. “Mine?” she whispered. “Mine?”

  “Yours, and your children’s,” her mother affirmed. “His will read To my granddaughter, Thankful, the only true islander of the Curtis brood. He’s right, too. But that didn’t hinder the boys from getting bleezy over it. They wanted to sell it to a yacht club. Aye, we had great doings that you knew naught of. But they’re over it now.” Mary Curtis straightened as if a burden were gone. “Though the girls will be blethering about it the rest of their lives. But they keep it under cover, and there’s no ill will toward you, my lass.”

  Thankful still stared at her mother under dark brows. Bright Island was hers, hers to stay on as long as she lived, and for her children after she had left it. She need never live with the girls on the mainland if—sometimes in dark hours this dread clutched at her—if she were left alone. The island belonged to her just as she belonged to the island, always and inseparable. She felt her own youth and its age in her together and found the confusion hard to bear.

  Mary Curtis helped her. “Say naught of this to your father. He takes it hard, too, that the boys were cut out. Though he’d take it harder if they sold the island.” She chuckled. “It’s a man’s world, Thankful, and they like to think they lead us. You would never be a good follower. Your Gramp knew it.” She handed her the colander. “Now pick me out some sizable potatoes for baking.”

  In the dank cold cellar, Thankful picked out, discarded, chose automatically. She did not know that she was chilled until her mother opened the door and told her to hurry. The horizon of her life had widened so suddenly that she was dazzled. She could not see its edge. She washed the potatoes at the sink and heard her mother say, “And so when you think it over, if you want to go on with your learning you could sell off a piece and manage fine.”

  Sell off a piece! Would she cut off her own hand and sell it? The confusion quieted into clarity and exactness at this one problem. For more years like this last, she had no desire. A dulling of what had been sharp and enjoyable, a tearing down of what the island had built up in her, an obscuring of her own values. She felt these things vaguely but surely. “I have thought,” she said. “I belong here.”

  Her mother nodded, and whether she agreed or not Thankful never knew. But she did know that her mother had given it to her to make her own decision, and she was grateful. She had enough to do now with all this glory on her hands. School bore but a small part of it.

  On New Year’s Day Mary Curtis baked a large chocolate cake. When it came out of the oven, its fragrance drew Thankful to the kitchen.

  “The end piece?” she begged, hanging over it.

  “No,” her mother said, “not a crumb. It’s for Selina.”

  Thankful looked aghast. “Then you might as well give me the end slice. For I’ll not be getting back to Selina until it’s stale.”

  “That’s as it may be,” Mary Curtis said. “But you get none of this cake unless Selina gives it to you.”

  Thankful moved uneasily to the window. The thermometer outside said zero, the bay bore out its reckoning. Ice out to the streak of open channel. Thick enough to last the winter through, too, unless an unexpected thaw set in, and Thankful saw no signs. What could let the drawbridge down now? Unless Dave … but that promise lightly made meant nothing. For years the island had been maroon
ed by ice with no interference from outside.

  Yet even as Thankful watched, the narrow dark shape of the cutter churned up the channel. “You knew”—she swerved on her mother—“you knew they would come. Oh, I don’t want to go! I don’t want to go!”

  “It’s no matter what you want,” her mother told her. “You’ll finish what you’ve begun. Now stop skirling like a gull and get your things together. They’ll be an hour getting in.”

  “But why,” wailed Thankful, “why, when they have never come before do they have to bother us now?”

  “No bother at all,” said her mother briskly. “We’ll like it brawly getting papers and mail now and then. It’s a new rule for the islands. Don’t stand there looking doited.”

  Thankful bestirred herself. And suddenly as she pulled off her island clothes she felt excitement pour through her like new wine. She dressed by the window that she might not miss the cutter’s advance. It was edging about to point its sharp nose at their old pier which reached farthest out into the cove. Dave was out there, Dave who had promised to get her out no matter how thick the ice. For once she wished that you couldn’t depend upon Dave to keep his word. And yet there was that high excitement rushing her on to be ready for him. And a little crowing like a young rooster because she could go that way and Robert couldn’t!

  She had brought almost nothing with her, knowing that the island could furnish her with everything she needed there. She was ready in her coat and hat long before the cutter had sliced its way to the end of the pier. Her father had heard it and left his wood chopping to come in and watch where it was warm. They stood together at the window and Thankful felt some of her own excitement in his tense body.

  “God’s sake, look at ’em climb!” he muttered.

  The scooped bow slid up over the ice and crashed down through it by its own weight. Patiently it backed out of its crevice, mounted the ice bank, and crushed it into a jagged aisle through which it edged its way. Slow, persistent power, lowering a new drawbridge over which she must pass. She could feel the thrust of her own muscles when the cutter drove itself through the ice. A good name for it, she thought.

  Mary Curtis put a glass of milk and a fresh cookie into her hand. “Better have a snack even if it is early,” she advised. “Who knows when you’ll eat?”

  “Or what?” said Thankful mournfully. She crunched the buttery raisin-sweet cookie as if the school fed her on bread and water.

  Her mother reached for an empty coffee can. “Too bad about you. I meant to give all these to Dave, but I might save a few for you.”

  Thankful observed the can. “Look at the size of Dave’s box. Four times as big as mine!”

  “Aye, and who’s giving you a ride?” A piece of twine made the box safe.

  “Who wants a ride?” sighed Thankful and set the glass of milk down.

  “Finish that milk,” commanded her mother. “You know well you’ll like it fine pounding through that ice.”

  Thankful felt an ecstatic leap of desire to be out there in the fierce cold, grinding implacably down the ice channel to the swift rush through free water. The weight on her heart at leaving her island, hers as never before, was eased by the way she was leaving it. Dave had helped her out again.

  “He was a good egg.” She tried this on her mother. “I won’t crab about the cookies.”

  Mary Curtis chuckled. “You mix your figures a bit, my lass. That’s the school. Well, here you are. We’d best be leaving.”

  They loaded up and started for the old pier. Thankful felt the winter cold gnaw through her smart coat as it never had under the old sheepskin. But she had no regrets. Dave had been proud to take Selina aboard.

  She trod the rotten boards of the unused pier with sure feet and stood waiting to be pulled aboard at the last rush of steel bow. Dave leaped past her with a bundle of papers and mail, hugged her mother, and rushed back with all her odd bundles.

  “Up with you!” A hand from the men leaning over the rail, a shove from Dave, and she was up the short rope ladder.

  “Watch that cake,” her mother called.

  “Who’s it for?” shouted Dave.

  “Selina!” cried Thankful.

  Dave swung the box dangerously over open water.

  Thankful grabbed it. “You’ve a batch of cookies that would fill a wood box,” she said.

  Dave crowed, patted his stomach, and waved thanks to the two figures on the beach who had already turned back against the biting wind. Their bent heads pushing against it touched Thankful through her excitement. She knew well that within an hour they would both be busy about their own concerns, but somehow for a flash they seemed to need her youth between them, canting forward with them.

  “Nice hat you’ve got,” said Dave in her ear, and never mentioned the coat. But she liked the glances of the other men though Dave assured her that they were attentive only because they so seldom saw a girl on board. Perhaps, she thought, and was glad that she had worn her good coat. She felt oddly different from the girl who had sat by herself on the deck while Selina captivated the officer. More grown up, surer of herself. She had a vague sense that after all Robert had made her a gift, even if it lacked a printed label. But she was not ready to be grateful to him.

  Dave mentioned him only once. “Heard your friend spent the whole day getting back and threatened to sue the railroad because he nigh onto froze to death.”

  Thankful tried to look sorry, but she saw him too clearly huddled in his fur coat, scolding the conductors and brakemen. She had too sharp a memory of Dave’s wink as he marched by the window after his tiff with Robert. No, she would never worry about Robert again. But Dave should not have the satisfaction of knowing it!

  At noon she had dinner in the cabin with the officers. Dave sat at the end of the table but the steward placed Thankful next to the captain. A big blowsy man who mumbled his words into his beard or his food so that she could understand only now and then. But there was hot roast pork, and boiled onions, and enormous potatoes. They do themselves well, small wonder Dave’s so big, Thankful thought, and found that her glass of milk had not even turned the edge of her hunger. Over the rice pudding the men warmed into digs at each other which brought gruff laughter. Thankful laughed too. She was used to a tableful of men.

  Just as they finished, and it was a rapid meal heartily eaten, Captain Gilkie spoke straight at her. “Dave’s a smart sailor,” he said. “He’d go far if shipping wasn’t dead. A few more years and this bay’ll forget what a keel looks like.”

  Thankful felt the bitterness of his words and tried to probe into them. Did he mean that Dave’s work was hopeless in its future? Dave, who was due to have a promotion? Who knew the sea and how to master it as she knew her island? She looked up into his massive face, bewildered.

  The wrinkles creased about his eyes. “Look like your grampa, b’God. There was a man that knuckled under to none. Got out just in time, though, if he meant to keep it up.” The gloom came back. “No place on the sea for an able man these days.” He shoved back his chair and they all rose. “But we’ll keep an eye on young Dave. You better, too. He’s a good feller to hang on to!” He chuckled and went off lighting his pipe.

  The cutter was already moored to the dock when they came out of the cabin. A few men scurried around, pinched and blue with the cold. Broken ice slashed unceasingly against the piles of the wharf, but already it seemed less cold to Thankful. Less cold and less clean with the musty dampness of the old dock. She felt again the deep urge to go back instead of away, and knew that she would always feel it when she had to leave her island. It would be too long now before she would see it. She looked mournfully up at Dave and saw that he was loaded with her bundles ready to go ashore.

  “Rest of the day off,” he explained. “Mind if I take you back to school? Nothing else to do,” he added hastily.

  “Oh, Dave! Then I could show you the school and everything. Wait till I telephone for the school bus.” Thankful tossed her sadness overboard,
and started for a telephone booth.

  “Hold on! School bus nothing!” Dave was lordly. “We’ll spend no time waiting.” He hailed a taxi.

  “You’ll spend a good deal of something else,” Thankful prophesied, but she liked the idea.

  They dashed off through the traffic and Thankful was pleased to note that Dave sat on the edge of the seat. He held the box of chocolate cake on his knees.

  “Selina may not be back yet,” Thankful offered.

  Dave paid no attention. His worried blue eyes were following the cars which whisked by. When they turned into the road by the sea he relaxed his stiff shoulders.

  “That so?” he said, and Thankful had forgotten what he meant. “Well, I wouldn’t mind so long’s I got another good look at the lad with the fur coat.”

  Thankful ignored him. She wondered herself how she would feel when she saw the lad with the fur coat. Back there in school she would have no defenses against his charm. That background where he reigned might, from its very power to magnify him, draw her back as one of his subjects. And she did not want to be subject to that kind of person.

  “I’m here,” said Dave.

  “Why so you are!” Thankful thought how queer it was that with Dave you never had to be wary about anybody’s dominance. They just went along together. She began to feel a little reassured about this first meeting with Robert. If only Dave would behave himself, she thought, half hoping he wouldn’t.

  But she need not have worried. Dave held the taxi while he took Thankful’s things into the hall. Selina’s feet flew over the stairs so fast that they scarcely touched until Dave’s iron arm fended her off. He looked a little alarmed, but pleased at the warmth of her greeting. In the confusion of arrivals he towered immovable, his blue eyes missing nothing. Selina admired him openly. Robert was nowhere in the crowd milling about the wide hall.

  Dave presented the chocolate cake to Selina, almost, Thankful thought with some resentment, as if he had made it himself. And Selina seemed to feel the same way about it. But in spite of her urging he would not stay. Better not, Thankful thought, with that taxi ticking away at the door! He shook hands formally with them both and edged his way out leaving his officer’s cap on the table. Thankful ran after him with it and found him mopping his forehead while the taxi driver tried to persuade him to go back for his hat.