by Lucy Treloar
I strode up the marsh road and took the path to the gut’s edge and slung the drone into its depths. It sank fast.
‘Hey!’ a voice came from behind. I swung around. Girl was already planted four square and growling before me. It was some khaki-clad birder coming up the path, binoculars and cameras slung across his chest, a baseball cap and heavy sunglasses against the glare.
‘Where’d you come from?’ I said.
My tone would have pulled him up even without Girl between us.
He pointed down the path to Deadness beach, or in the direction it used to be. ‘Back that way.’
‘Dangerous waters.’
‘Good charts,’ he said. ‘You seen a drone around?’
‘That was yours?’ He held up the control. ‘What was it for?’
‘Birds,’ he said. ‘Survey for the Audubon Society. The picture went dead when it was going up a road.’
‘It would have. I shot it. Should have run your survey past me. If I’d known . . .’
‘Who are you?’
‘Wildlife officer. I always shoot a drone if the eagles don’t get it. I don’t allow them. They frighten the birds. You should know that.’
‘Not if you’re careful.’
‘Better take more care next time then.’ I turned away. I looked back once and he was standing by the gut looking in. It was his problem now, and if that was the stranger foretold by Luis’s lone goose, we’d seen him off.
The closeness of the night after Josh’s last run and our relief over the drone were short-lived. Alejandra told me Josh had moved out: ‘to that little shanty up the gut’. Tobe’s shanty. No good would come of him brooding over there, separated by water.
‘Why’d he do that?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. He’s been staying in another room, but he went into Cat’s. She didn’t want him in there. They were yelling at each other. It made Treasure cry, Kitty.’
‘That’s no good.’
‘No. Then he came out and got his things and left. Will your boy mind?’
‘No, he wouldn’t care.’
Josh turned solitary. I was solitary myself, but a person who becomes solitary when they have not been before needs watching. A cause had given him shape and now that was gone. He wore his army fatigues and a football t-shirt or sweater. Sport or war, his clothing seemed to say, it was all the same to him. He could never belong here with so few people about. I thought he was a person of short-term purposes, good for a moment, a crisis – a house fallen, a gut overrun, a boating disaster – when his energy had a reason and a use. And now there was no point in him travelling to the main. But what would he have seen to upset him so? People see things differently. A storm is not entertainment or a leaking roof to some, but a falling world. That is the sort of thing I mean.
I saw it a few weeks later, such a simple thing: Cat and Luis and Alejandra squeezed together on their sagging porch sofa, passing the baby up and down. Treasure was trying to smile. Her tiny mouth wavered, and they were working so hard to help her. I was standing below laughing at it all. I don’t know if the sun was shining, but in my memory it was. They were a family – that’s what I saw. Cat said something and Luis laughed and their faces were lit up. They looked into each other’s faces without hesitation. They held the world at bay; they dared it. I looked up the gut hoping Josh had been spared this. He was on the shanty deck watching, rocking from one foot to another. He leaped into his small skiff and rowed fast down to the landing. We kept an eye on him, pretending not to.
He came towards us.
‘Do you want to hold her?’ Cat said. ‘Come on up.’
He ignored the question and looked along the line of them. ‘I’m beginning to see it.’
‘If you’d like to. She’s your daughter.’
Treasure began to fuss on Alejandra’s lap. Luis took her and held her to his front and patted her back.
‘Sure. I’d like to hold my daughter. Thanks for offering my daughter to me. I wouldn’t want Luis to miss out. You take your time, buddy.’
Luis peered over Treasure’s head. ‘She asked you. You only had to say yes. Here.’ He held Treasure out.
‘Yeah. Well. Actually I’m busy. Maybe another time. Okay if I use your computer?’
I said, ‘Go ahead.’
He went the long way around by the bridge over the gut, perhaps so we weren’t watching, but was gone when I returned to my house. I don’t know where he went then. Afterwards, if I passed him, he could more or less meet my gaze, but there was nothing behind it. The next week, my season’s makings were crated and taken to the main (everyone but me holed up inside for the day). I felt lost afterwards, as I always did. I didn’t know what to think about. My hands were restless. I was emptied of ideas and new ones weren’t coming in yet. I spent a few days bringing my notebook up to date – a good feeling – and not long after, towards the end of autumn, another visitor arrived.
Chapter 13
Girl sat up, immediately and utterly alert. She gave her yip of alarm: someone was around.
‘Girl?’ I said. Down in the makings room I was cut off from the dock and relied on her. I set down the wire I was twisting and Girl made for the French doors that stared up the marsh road, the fastest route outside. We went into the day: tarnished silver sky and pewter sea. Girl rushed to the house corner and looked towards the dock, head to tail straight and glaring. She barked again and sounded a howl with nose raised – that would be for the other house. I hoped they’d have the sense to stay inside. I reached her. A man was striding our way and he didn’t hesitate at the sight of us. Either he had a gun or was not right in the head. Why else so boldly approach a person and a dog he’d never met?
He was not the usual sort of hunter, and if he was one, he was not after animals. He was medium height and his jeans were in a dapper style, ironed and of a uniform colour. He wore a navy jacket and a blue silky scarf at his throat. He had the bristling pinkness of a fine hog, though he was in good shape. His hair was sandy and his moustache large and bristling, a shelter for his tight little mouth. In another setting he would have been unremarkable.
He kept coming.
‘Girl,’ I said. I didn’t want her shot. My gun was on the shelf by the front door, and that made me the fool. She waited close by my side.
‘Are you Kitty Hawke?’ the man said when he was in speaking distance.
Girl took one step towards him and stiffened. The man stopped.
‘I am.’
‘The artist?’
‘Some say. I don’t sell from home.’
‘Excuse me?’ He looked uneasily back towards the Watermen. ‘Oh . . . I’m not a buyer.’
‘I still don’t know your name.’
After the slightest hesitation he said, ‘Harrison Andover.’ That wasn’t true. He wasn’t as smart as he thought; he couldn’t help giving himself away. ‘Are you the only person on the island? That’s what I heard.’
‘No. I’m sure you know that. Only a fool would have missed the smoke from the other house.’ He looked about, so I knew he hadn’t noticed. ‘Are you a fool?’
‘I am not,’ he said testily. Well, it’s good to know the length of a person’s fuse, I’ve always thought. He had a short one.
‘I didn’t think so,’ I said.
‘Who are the other people?’
‘My granddaughter and her boyfriend, visiting.’
‘What for?’
‘Why would you care to know?’
He eased one shoulder inside his jacket. Girl and I were still. ‘I’m of a curious disposition.’
‘As am I.’
‘Do they have any visitors currently?’
‘No.’
‘Or any visitors in the past?’
I shook my head.
‘Or expecting?’
‘Why wou
ld I know who they might be expecting?’
‘Runners perhaps?’
I shook my head again. A long way behind I saw a movement, Alejandra running through the door, onto the porch, down the stairs – I couldn’t look directly – then another person – Luis – leaping after and scooping her up around her middle and rushing her back inside. Thank God.
‘Harbouring fugitives is a crime. You would know that,’ he said.
‘I have heard that. Not sure why you’d mention it now. I get very few visitors. You’re the strangest thing I’ve seen in a while, but I suppose you’re not a fugitive.’
‘No.’
‘You’re a hunter then. Girl is never wrong. Why you would want to frighten me is what I’m wondering.’
‘Not my intention.’
‘We both know that’s not true. You can rest easy. It didn’t work.’
He blinked once. ‘I’ll look around if you don’t mind.’
‘I can’t stop you, but I don’t know what you’d be hoping to find.’
‘Nothing in particular.’
‘And that’s what you’ll find. Good luck to you, Mr Andover.’ I went inside and watched from there.
He walked some way up the road to the point where you see the sweep of marshland starting, the wind bending its surface this way and that, the walkway, the tide-covered road, and the distant ruins of Stillwater, and thought better of it and turned back. He might have been considering coming in that way by boat, see who might be holed up out there. Well, let him try. He came back down the road and I kept abreast with him through the length of my house, with Girl going to each window to keep watch, making that rumbling sound deep in her chest. There was something about him that was worse than first appeared. I went onto the porch and leaned over and called to him. ‘Hey, mister.’ He turned and held his hand to his brow as if there were a burst of sun. ‘Try the other end if you care to. But be careful. It can be treacherous. The name of the town is Stillwater. We have a backward sense of humour round here, so you know.’
‘I’ve got a chart.’
‘Good luck to you.’
‘I will find them,’ he said.
I had never met such a person before. Evil is not a word to use lightly, but it came to mind then. I didn’t know where it was inside him, only that it was there in the flatness of his eyes and his hard, steady voice, his implacability. He turned away, done with me, and went on.
I grabbed my jacket from the door and the gun from its shelf and waited. Andover walked down to the harbour and around it without haste or delay and up the stairs to Shipleys, where he knocked on the door. Cat answered. From here, they were still and silent as makings, and stiff in their bearing, and therefore eloquent in their way. He descended the stairs, walked around the curve in the road, pushing at the doors of the tombstone houses, poking his head in and withdrawing at the sight. I could not determine his mood, whether rage-filled or thwarted or satisfied. He returned to his boat, a regular boat with a good-sized engine from the sound. He swung it around and puttered out, not too fast. Girl and I ran down the road and I banged on Shipleys’ door.
Cat pulled the door wide, drawing breath to speak her mind. ‘Oh, Kitty,’ she said. Her face was bleak.
‘Where’s Luis?’
He came downstairs with heavy footfall, Alejandra in tow. It was as if he had been stove in, and all his worry and dread was exposed. He had thought himself safe here, and he was ashamed of that.
‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Who was that man? No one good, I’m sure. He wanted you.’
‘Did he say that?’ Luis said.
‘Not by name. He wanted to know who’s on the island.’
‘You don’t have to say, Luis,’ Cat said.
‘No you don’t,’ I agreed. ‘I don’t know who you are exactly but I know what you’re like. I’ll do anything to help. He’s a hunter. He won’t give up, Mr Harrison Andover.’
‘Harrison Andover?’ Luis said with contempt. ‘Cat, would you mind Alejandra while I talk to Kitty?’ Without a word she took Alejandra’s hand. Luis and I went outside.
‘I can’t tell you everything. We have a connection with him that he wants to destroy, and he must destroy me to do that. He wants me.’
‘Alejandra too. He said, “I will find them.”’
He shut his eyes. I put a hand to his elbow and he righted himself. ‘He, this Harrison Andover – which is not his name – is a department official we have crossed paths with. He was bad to my mother. They thought she was a no one; a mother, a cleaner, a common illegal. She had to pretend with him, like a game, and he used her. I don’t know what he’ll do. We know some things he did. He might suspect some things about us. He works for Josh’s father, but I don’t know how. I don’t know why Josh’s father wants us. Something political – about my father, because of my father. I am afraid they will use us or send us back to my country. I am afraid they will kill us.’
‘Can you claim asylum?’
‘It’s the government that’s trying to catch us. There is no asylum for us. We have to run before he comes back. He’s on his own, so they might not know that he came; he might be acting alone.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘I don’t know. If he tells someone—’
‘You’re not just runners.’
‘Not exactly. But we must run again, and hope.’ He looked weary, almost despairing, the way Tobe had looked one summer’s end when returning to the main. I had let myself pretend he was all right. I failed him; I would not fail Luis now.
‘Get me a jacket of yours, something you’d wear.’
‘What?’ he said.
‘He wants a young man. I’ll be one. And a hat. Quick.’
I pulled on his black puffer and twisted my hair into a knitted woollen hat.
I ran home, picked up my bike and gun, and rode as fast as I ever have to get to the walkway, and I started out along it. There was Andover’s boat tracking the shore. He might have been heading around to Stillwater or looking for a way to come in by surprise. There was no reason to stay close to Wolfe otherwise.
I kept on, hoping I was right that Andover didn’t have a rifle as well. It was hard to stand tall, to expose myself that way. Halfway along I shot above the bulrushes. A few geese lifted – not so many this year. I shot again, away from the rising birds, for a moment watching their lumbering take-off and the way they stretched and lengthened like Girl when she was pointing, the grace of them. The boat’s engine dropped. Andover’s head turned, scanning the island. I began walking, almost casually, and took another shot. If Andover had any sense he would have seen the trap I’d set. As if I had only just seen the boat, I dropped from sight behind the wooden slats. That did it. Andover turned the boat and drove it towards the shore. It looked pleasant from out there, I knew. Even though the sand beaches had gone, there was the inlet the walkway was supposed to bridge, and muddy embankments that a person might moor at. The boat kept on, fast. I turned away and then I heard it hit. I looked through the slats in the walkway. The boat was yawing on its base. Andover was slumped sideways. The boat heaved in the water, settling as it filled, as if with final breaths. He was still. I didn’t want to watch anymore. The waves began lipping and rolling into the boat across the hidden jetties. There was nothing to be done now; a rescue dinghy was at least an hour away. The boat would be ground to matchsticks in a couple of days.
I felt strange, terribly heavy. The walkway was long. My legs were not mine, my sight was not mine, it was not this time. When Bette and I were small, a neighbour died and we heard she’d been laid out on her kitchen table – the table we’d drunk juice at when visiting with our mother. All morning we kept watch as people crunched over the shells of dead oysters to the kitchen door. We crept in at lunchtime when it was quiet. Her daughter Linda was in a rocking chair reading a novel, one finger playing with her mousy hair and s
moothing a hand down the front of her floral dress, easing herself in it. The cover showed a swooning woman gazing up at a long-haired swarthy man.
Linda put her finger in the page, and said, ‘Come on in, girls, and take a look. You won’t see her again this side of heaven’s gate. Come pay your respects.’ So we went closer, wondering how that payment was made. No one had mentioned money; it would be embarrassing if we were beholden. Mrs Lacey had a spotted kerchief wrapped about her head, but her slack mouth hung open a little way and I could see her yellowish teeth. Her eyes were silver and I knew they had been transformed and she saw everything and knew everything, my darkest mutterings of jealousy and hate. We flew through the door, letting it slam, and all afternoon we washed our hands, washed them, trying to wash that visit away. But it was too late. We knew death was real now. It sometimes seems I’ve spent my life trying to return to the day before, my final one of innocence. If only I’d known the contentment of it. I felt hopeless now, saturated in the dreary violence of what I had made happen. I had lost something and I would never get it back.
Luis was waiting on the marsh road. ‘You knew that would happen.’
‘Not for sure.’
‘You saved us the day we arrived.’
‘Yes. There are things out there waiting to tear you up. He said he had charts. Old charts are worse than no charts, something my daddy told me, worth remembering. What will you tell Josh? Alejandra saw him and she’ll likely say something,’ I said.
‘Tell him we had a visitor, Harrison Andover, who looked around and went away.’ He glanced at the swaying boat and the slumped man.
We went back to my house. Alejandra was there. She climbed onto Luis’s lap the way she used to. She pulled the front of his jacket over her face and hid there. I was shaking. I made some sweet tea and we drank it. Alejandra came out of herself when Girl came nudging for her dinner and went to feed her.
‘Fathers,’ Luis said. ‘Josh’s father is part of it. This “Andover” worked for him.’