From Away

by Phoef Sutton

  The summers were full of comings and goings then, since our schedules never coincided exactly. So, there would be a lobster feast on Charlotte’s arrival and another when I left. And George, the only one of the three of us who’d been able to get a real degree and a real job, would always make it for the shortest time. He’d try to get there at the end of summer so he could help Mom and Dad drive back to Virginia. That was why he died in the accident, too.

  They were pulling another all-nighter—well, you know the story by now. Dad was a good driver; it wasn’t his fault. They were in Maryland, only a couple hours from home, when a trucker in an eighteen-wheeler fell asleep and plowed into them.

  In an instant your mother and I were alone. The Kehoe family had exploded like a firework, and we were remnants of ash floating to the ground.

  Charlotte was twenty-five, out of college, and living in our parents’ house between jobs. She was waiting for them to get home, coffee on the perk, a carrot cake in the oven, so she was awake when the call came. I was in my dorm room at Georgetown, and the instant she called I rushed to her. I never went back to that dorm.

  We sat alone in the house that morning, watching the sunrise, not knowing what to do next, where to go, who to see. Things haven’t changed much since then.

  The bright beat of Jonathan Richman’s “That Summer Feeling” came over the car stereo, clashing rudely with these memories. I switched it off. A single headlight glared in the rearview mirror. I flicked it to the night setting. The light still seemed unnaturally bright.

  As it came closer, it glowed brighter. Brighter and more phosphorescent than any headlight had any business being. I felt the muscles of my stomach tighten.

  “You okay?” Charlotte asked.

  “Just, that’s very weird.”

  “What is?”

  She didn’t see it.

  The light grew brighter still. It seemed to flood the car, to attach itself to every surface, till everything seemed lit from within, about to burst into flame. I gripped the wheel, trying to keep the car on a road I couldn’t even see anymore. In an instant the light passed on, flying through us and shooting ahead, like a guided missile on its way to a target.

  I swerved onto the shoulder and hit the brakes. The wheels locked and hydroplaned on the slush; we slid sideways to a halt.

  “Jesus!” Charlotte cried. “What happened?”

  “You better drive. I think I fell asleep.”

  “Well, Jesus. Jesus, Sammy. God.”

  I opened the door and felt the cold rain on my head like a blessing. I opened the back door and climbed in next to you.

  “Hi, Unca,” you said.

  “Is she okay?” Charlotte asked from behind the wheel.

  “That was fun, Momma.”

  I snuggled up to the hard plastic of your car seat as Charlotte pulled back out onto the road.

  “Sorry I woke you up, kid,” I said.

  “I was already waked up. The light waked me up.”

  I looked toward Charlotte; she had the music up louder, she hadn’t heard. “You saw the light?”

  “Yeah. Wasn’t it pretty?”

  I took your tiny hand in mine and whispered, “It was, wasn’t it?”

  I laid my head on the side of the car seat, and you shifted around so I could share your pillow-bear.

  The snow stopped with the sunrise so that by noon, when we finally reached Rockland, the weather felt almost balmy, even though it was fifteen degrees colder than it had been in Virginia.

  The state of Maine only ran one ferry in the winter months, so we had a two-hour wait after I put the car in line. Nothing much had changed in the five years since I’d been to Rockland, except for the big new ferry terminal. It was typical of Maine to replace the terminal but not the rusted old ferry boats, which had been making the circuit among the islands of Penobscot Bay for thirty years and more.

  We killed time eating candy bars and reading you Dr. Seuss books until you had to go to the bathroom and discovered the wonders of modern technology in the form of an automatic toilet that flushed itself when you stood up. This enchanted you so much that you had to go potty fifteen times in the next hour.

  The boat, when it finally arrived, was an old friend, the Capt. Ethan Showalter, the smallest of the ferries, only used on the frequent occasions when the larger boats broke down. We climbed into the Mustang and waited, feeling the usual suspense about whether we’d make it on board this trip. There were fifteen cars in line and a big freezer truck besides, but the ferry boys are as skilled as my mother ever was at squeezing the most out of limited space. They whistled and waved and cajoled, and we finally found ourselves nestled so tight against the freezer truck that I couldn’t open my door. But we were on board, and that was all that mattered. We were leaving the mainland behind.

  Extruding ourselves from the car on the passenger side, we raced up to the pedestrian deck, breathing in the bracing mixture of salt air and diesel fumes I remembered so well. We cleared the cabin just in time to see the old Owls Head lighthouse go by, reaching out to us from its long spit of sand, the last contact with the continent.

  The breeze was cold and cutting, so I held you on my lap, wrapped in my jacket, and sat on the wet metal deck watching the sailboats float by us. The sea was rough, with cruel gray chops that made the ferry bob and twist in ways I’d never experienced before; I exchanged green glances with Charlotte, but you just laughed and cheered as you saw a seal pop its doggy head out of the water. Leaping from my lap, you ran to the rail, attached yourself to a clump of other racing children and dashed down the stairs. Your mother and I shifted over to where we could watch the kids darting between the parked cars; strangers playing an impromptu game of tag. We watched, but we weren’t worried or concerned, as we would have been if you’d run off at a park or a mall back home. That was one of the blessings of the island. It was a place out of the past, where kids could run and play without fear of Stranger Danger, since everyone knew everyone else and watched out for everyone else. A place where a kid could ride a bike to a friend’s house on his own. Where a woman could go for a walk after dark. It was like Home Base in a game of tag; there, you were always safe.

  I squinted into the wind, the cold bringing tears to my eyes, and took Charlotte’s hand. With a nod of my head, I indicated familiar faces on the deck. Earlene Gillis’s grandmother was on the bench. The incredibly old man we always used to see marching in the Labor Day parade was standing by the rail. A lobsterman crony of our old friend Neil Amudsen, name of Carl or Ken or something, was sitting on the top step. No one we knew well, but recognizable just the same, and comforting.

  Charlotte, always friendly, always good with people, went over to chat with them. I was going to follow her when you ran back up the stairs, at full steam, and butted smack into my crotch. I twisted in time to avoid a painful impact.

  “Carry me!”

  I hoisted you up onto my hip, brushing your wild hair out of your eyes.

  “I saw a witch,” you said.

  “You did? Did she fly on her broomstick?”

  “Not that kinda witch. The Hansel and Gretel kind. She cooks kids in a pot. Wanna see?”

  You pointed over the rail, and I saw a fat, pimply-faced, mustached middle-aged woman leaning against a pick-up, biting a cigarette out of a pack of Kools.

  “It’s not polite to stare, honey.”

  “Not in a pot, in an oven, I mean. She keeps ’em in a cage first. Then she makes ’em in a pie.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Well, don’t you believe it.”

  “You know what I’d do, if she tried to cook me in a pie, I’d cook her in a pie!”

  “That sounds fair.”

  “But I wouldn’t eat it, ’cause that’ud be gross.”

  The bell clanged as we passed the boathouse on Fisher’s Island, and the ageless Yankee couple that always sat out there waved as we went by. I taught you the Fox Island Wave, a big arc
ing sweep of the arm from side to side, visible at long distances, so you could wave back.

  We were in the Channel now, a corridor between populated islands that ended with Fox and Hog and Brown’s Head Islands. Houses big and small were scattered among the heavy green trees and granite rock of the coastline. American flags whipped in the frigid breeze. Dories and punts and Boston whalers bobbed in the choppy water, hanging onto the few splintery gray floats that hadn’t been pulled up for the winter.

  I’d never seen so few boats in the water here. I’d never seen so few of the brightly colored lobster buoys on the surface. I was used to the bustle and industry of the summer months, but I knew only the most industrious lobsterman was still hauling this late in the year. Winter was mostly for the big shrimp boats, not the one- or two-man lobster boats that stayed close to shore, hauling traps from sun up to sun down.

  Familiar rocks and roof lines began to roll past us, and I felt a flood of memory; it was a progression, a ceremony that brought me back to youth, to when I was your age, Maggie, to before that, to before I could even remember, since my folks had been bringing me here since I was a baby, and I couldn’t remember the first time I’d seen these sights. They had been with me always, like the faces of my parents. No matter where I am, I can close my eyes and see the view from that ferry.

  Fox Island was on the port side now, its coastline squiggled with hundreds of tiny inlets and waterways. I saw it from above once, in a small plane, an island the size of Manhattan but with an outline so wrinkled you’d go through a whole pencil trying to trace it. It has a population of around a thousand in the winter and two thousand after Memorial Day. When the Summer Jerks come.

  Only the natives would be here this time of year; fishermen mostly, and a half dozen lawyers to handle their lawsuits. And now the Kehoes.

  I was surprised to see one lobster boat on the water after all. It was just ahead of us, hauling a full trap up with its hydraulic. Charlotte was with me again, and I asked her if she recognized the boat; a remarkably clean craft, made of fiberglass, shiny and brilliant white on the gray sea. Charlotte said she didn’t, and she couldn’t imagine who would be ambitious enough to still be at it this close to Christmas.

  “Not making himself any friends,” she added. Lobstermen were a close-knit community, and it didn’t pay to be conspicuously more or conspicuously less hardworking than average. To be accused of trying to show the others up was a fairly serious breach of etiquette.

  But it was nothing compared to what we saw next. As the fisherman dropped the trap back into the water and looked up at the passing ferry, I saw that she was a woman. Well, I’d never seen a woman lobsterman—I didn’t even know the word for such a thing. Some men took their wives out as sternmen, but they usually found the subsequent ribbing so humiliating they never kept it up for long.

  This woman was out on her own with no man at the wheel. In her thirties, I guessed, wearing a gray cable-knit sweater, her long, dirty-blond hair swept back in a ponytail, her pale face turned red by the chafing of the wind, her eyes…could I really see that they were a piercing sea green from this distance? She didn’t smile at the boat as it passed, just waited for it to go by.

  My hand tightened on the rail. The boats were parallel now, and our eyes met. I smiled broadly, and she gave me a look of surprise and laughed once before she turned back to the wheel and drove her boat to the next buoy.

  “I think I’m over Anne,” I said.

  Charlotte laughed. “Jesus, you’re a piece of work.”

  Well, I knew you would be more sympathetic. “Did you see the pretty lady, Maggie?”

  “I wanna boat,” you said.

  “Do you know who she is?” I asked your mother.

  “Nope. Maybe she’s from away.”

  “Come on. It’s weird enough they let a woman haul. They’d never let an off-islander do it.”

  We were interrupted by a sudden rush of activity as people hurried to the rail and pointed. The ferry landing was in sight now. On shore, the parking lot was crowded with on-lookers; waiting to see who got off the boat was the social event of the day during the long winter months.

  “Izzat where we’re going?” you asked.

  An elderly couple, white-haired retirees from Connecticut, I would guess, stood next to us and beamed at you. You’re such a beautiful child, you produce smiles like that wherever you go. I knew people usually assumed you were my child and, I hope you don’t mind my saying, it was a misunderstanding that secretly pleased me every time.

  “Yep, that’s where we’re going,” I said.

  “We used to come here with Grandma and Grandpa every year,” Charlotte said.

  “And dead Uncle George?” you asked.

  “And Uncle George,” I said, noticing curious looks from the elderly couple next to us.

  “He’s dead, though,” you went on, sounding as cheerful as ever. “And Grandma and Grandpa are dead too!”

  “Yes.”

  “And one day I’m gonna be dead!” you hollered.

  “She’s a realist,” I tried to explain to the elderly couple as they moved quickly away.

  Then there was the dash to the car deck, with everyone wedging themselves back into their cars and waiting while the ferry settled itself between the barnacle-encrusted pylons and the metal ramp was lowered in place. The cars drove off, leaving the ferry riding a little higher as each one reached the broken asphalt of the parking lot.

  I followed the big truck off, waving to the ferry watchers and seeing the startled smiles on their faces as they recognized us. The gossip would begin as soon as we passed. Word that we were back would hit town before we did.

  “Should we stop and chat?” Charlotte asked. It was very important for Summer People to observe proper decorum with the townspeople and never give offense. Otherwise, broken windows and suspicious fires had a way of occurring in their homes during the winter months.

  “Let’s settle into the house first,” I said. “Then, we’ll go calling.”

  “One problem with that,” Charlotte said, passing the last juice box back to you. “I don’t have a key, do you?”

  Here. Exhausted. Locked out. Mom and Dad never made mistakes like that.

  SIX

  I felt my heart lift with every spin of the tires that brought us closer to town. We passed the boatyard. The old ice cream stand. The sheriff’s trailer. The fire department. Everything looked just as we’d left it, as if it had been stored away and had just been unpacked and dusted off for our arrival. A Christmas present forgotten long enough that it seemed like new again.

  It was a good ten degrees warmer this far off the coast than it had been on the mainland, and the hardy souls we saw on the streets were wearing only jackets, keeping their fingers warm with cigarettes rather than gloves. I lifted my hand from the wheel and waved at each car as it passed. The people in the cars always waved back. Small-town courtesy at its purest.

  Main Street on Fox Island is a block of wood-frame houses on one side and the harbor on the other, buildings mostly two stories high with gabled Victorian roofs, their wooden shingles turned steely gray from the salt air. A few were now painted a vivid yellow or red in a show of garish enthusiasm that was new to the island. The harbor was crowded with all manner of boats, from pleasure crafts to working boats to Boston whalers to big fishing trawlers.

  We remembered we’d need food, so we parked in the harbor parking lot below the great stone eagle, a monument to the days when this island had been one of the nation’s centers for granite quarrying. The sea air hit us with renewed freshness as we stepped out of the car, and you rushed to the water’s edge, balancing on the end of a pylon and calling to a group of seagulls who looked down on you with the indulgent interest of a superior life-form.

  We saw Neil a half-hour later as we were steering the fully stocked shopping cart out of the town’s only grocery store. He was sitting with a pack of friends in front of the hardware store. Fishermen sat there every day, a
s they had sat for a hundred years or more, only exchanging a wooden bench for plastic lawn chairs and floppy oilskin hats for colorful baseball caps with boat manufacturers’ logos.

  “Sammy Kehoe!” Neil climbed out of his chair and moved to me with his always slow, rolling gait. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  I smiled and thumped my old friend on the shoulder, remembering that social hugs hadn’t quite reached this part of the country. “Just around, you know.”

  “Stayin’ for Christmas?”

  Before I had a chance to answer, Neil’s attention was caught by Charlotte, and his face lit up as he hurried to give her a bear hug. Times change, I thought.

  Neil backed off, smiling his lopsided smile, and noticed you, sound asleep in your car seat.

  “Who’s the little one?”

  Well, I thought, there’s a detail we forgot to tell people about.

  “That’s Maggie, my daughter,” your mother said, proud as always.

  Neil’s face fell, just for a second, but he rallied courageously. “Didn’t know you were married Charlie, congratulations.”

  “I’m not.”

  We might have left it at that, if you hadn’t spoken up.

  “My daddy’s dead. So’s my grandma and my grandpa and my Unca George.”

  Neil didn’t seem sure what to say to that.

  “We were only married for a short while,” Charlotte said, as we pushed the shopping cart across the street. “He died in the war.”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Neil said. Then, “Which war?”

  She barely missed a beat. “Bosnia. He was with the, you know, U.N. peacekeeping forces.”

  “Jesus,” Neil said, loading the groceries into the trunk. “I didn’t know about any of this. I’m sorry. Don’t know what the fuck we were doing over there anyway.”