Wolfe Island

  A light snow was falling and everything smelled fresh when I arrived in Blackwater. The ruts of soil were frozen hard beneath my feet and the snowy grasses rustled. I could have fallen down there and hugged it and never got up, but I kept walking away from the bus stop, taking a moment to get my bearings, the light being milky with snow which blurred street signs and colours. All the prettiness of that town had been drowned and picked clean; all its bones washed to the shore and become apparent and more like Wolfe. My markers were gone. There was just the old brewery, fancied up into apartments upstairs and shops below. I was all right then, back somewhere familiar if it was not exactly home. The snow’s big wet flakes melted on my cheeks and caught on my eyelashes and I wiped them clean and pulled my hair back and tucked it away. It was all rough and tangled and snagged to my hands. What a sight I must be.

  I headed for Doree’s. In one of my imagined homecomings it was night and I curled with Hurtle on her doormat. It was the middle of the afternoon when I stood between her flags and rang the bell by her bright red door.

  Doree’s high call came from inside – ‘Coming.’ The door opened, and the screen door, and there was a pause. ‘Oh my God. Kitty. It’s you. Thank God it’s you. What’s kept you this long? What has happened to you?’ She put her arms around me and drew me in, very gently, as if she thought I might crumble or fall. I must have looked worse than I felt. ‘Honey, no offence, you could use a bath.’

  ‘My dog.’

  Doree looked past me to Hurtle, who appeared resigned to whatever would happen next – she seemed to expect something bad as inevitable, more or less. She didn’t even bother standing or stepping forward. She’d begun to separate from me already, sparing herself my turning against her. A dog can tell you their whole life without a word if you pay attention. They are eloquent in their way. ‘That’s yours?’ Doree said.

  ‘Hurtle. Here, Hurtle, come on, sweetheart,’ I called. She stepped forward then to my side and I put my hand on the side of her head and held it to my knee and crouched and put my arms around her. She pressed against me and I felt the soft quiver of despair running through her. ‘I hope she can come in because if she can’t neither can I.’

  ‘Always room at the inn,’ Doree said and stepped aside so we could enter the light and warmth and stillness and calm of her house. ‘What happened to Girl? I hardly recognise you without her. It’s like you lost a leg. Oh, pet.’

  ‘Dead. A man shot her.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I shot him.’

  ‘Stop talking now. Never tell me such a thing. I won’t hear another word until you know what you’re saying.’

  ‘I saved a pup, though.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I gave her to someone who needed her more than me.’

  ‘Girl’s last pup. Oh, that’s hard. You just went at life straight, didn’t you? Looks like you crashed.’

  ‘The path went wrong. I couldn’t stop it, Doree. I tried.’

  ‘Never mind that now. Come on, I’ll run you a bath.’ She took me upstairs, slowly, and ran me a bath. I sat on a wooden stool watching the hot water steaming in. What a miracle that was. She helped me out of my clothes and I didn’t care. ‘You need to eat more,’ she said. She went away and came back with a cup of hot chocolate, which I drank in the bath, and a pile of buttered toast. Hurtle sat on the bath mat and we shared the toast.

  ‘I ran out of everything, even dog food. I lost my wallet.’

  ‘Should have rung.’

  ‘No phone. I didn’t know if I was wanted.’

  ‘Only by Hart. He put out a missing persons thing on you.’

  ‘Did he? Why ever for?’

  She gave me one of her sideways eyebrow-raised looks and pursed her lips and went out and came back with a pile of clothes. I said maybe she could let him know I was okay. I’d go and see him when I was ready. I couldn’t think about that. I scrubbed myself until I was pink and scratched-looking, and got out and ran some fresh warm water and heaved Hurtle in. She scrabbled and snapped and I told her it would be okay, I would never hurt her, and my voice seemed to calm her even if the water did not. I towelled her dry as best I could and she began to look more respectable despite her air of betrayal.

  Doree made waffles served with whipped butter and maple syrup using her famous Wolfe Island waffle recipe. (She had a trick of substituting some flour for corn starch – it helped to keep the waffle crisp, she said.) Hurtle and I ate half a one each. I couldn’t speak. I was drifting emptiness. I fell asleep at the kitchen table. Doree made up a bed for me in my old room from the week when Treasure was born. She had the sense not to ask too much.

  In the morning I said, ‘We should, I don’t know, talk about – arrangements . . . I can’t . . . My house, Wolfe . . . I don’t know if it’s there still.’

  ‘Honey –’ she put her hand on my arm ‘– there is no need. You take your time.’ She took me out and showed me her pride and joy, her new oyster farm skiff, hauling it out of the depths off her dock. ‘Everyone’s got one,’ she said. ‘Best thing anyone’s tried.’

  ‘I knew a guy at Stillwater did the exact same thing.’

  ‘Nate Strudwick,’ she said. ‘Writer.’

  ‘That’s it. That’s him.’

  ‘He could buy a few oysters these days. No need for a boat.’

  ‘The book made it?’

  ‘Sold an app. Sold a couple, I think. Monitoring water quality for the home oyster farmer. And mussels. There’s some gizmo goes with it to treat the water. He bought an island, I believe. Hell, maybe he still grows his own oysters.’

  ‘He bought his own island?’

  ‘They are pretty cheap around here.’

  ‘He did grow a sweet oyster,’ I said.

  She gave a little sniff. ‘I never cared for them. Except as pets.’

  ‘And the books?’

  ‘That’s the killer. Still hasn’t been published and it’s the only thing he really cares about. He says if he was still on Wolfe he would have done it by now. Apparently there are too many distractions on the mainland. A friend told me that.’

  ‘Maybe he’s right.’

  ‘You should come out next week. We’re sowing oysters; we collect old oyster shells from islands and people’s yards and throw them back in the water.’

  ‘What a fairytale world you live in.’

  ‘I get a kick out of it. We’re thinking of checking out Wolfe.’

  ‘It was covered in shell.’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind if we . . .’ She left a delicate pause there.

  ‘What would I do with them? They’re not mine.’

  ‘I meant to say – I’ve been past. Your house is the last one standing. I didn’t land, but you could still walk it if you wanted.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  ‘Did you hear about Josh? I suppose you didn’t; I don’t know how you would have.’ Doree looked at me in her measuring way. I was eating breakfast in the kitchen. ‘Bacon? Hash brown? Some more syrup?’

  I shook my head. ‘Josh?’

  ‘Cat’s boyfriend.’

  ‘Right.’ Just hearing his name brought that day back, him sliding across the water in his sinking boat, his bleeding arm. ‘What about him?’ I couldn’t look at her, and thought about the sound of my voice, whether it had betrayed me in some way, and when I glanced at her and saw her casual gaze in another direction I knew that it had.

  ‘He came up here one day, soaking wet and freezing.’

  ‘Here? Why here?’

  ‘He’d had a boating accident. He had a cut on his arm. That’s what he said it was. It wasn’t.’

  ‘I don’t understand. When was that?’

  ‘Just before the big storm. A couple of months ago now – remember that? Were you all still out on Wolfe then? It would have been something if y
ou were.’

  ‘Yeah, it was some storm. Water running across the whole island just about. He and Cat broke up. He was upset about it. We left the next day. Town had been evacuated when Cat and I came through. But how did he know to come to you?’

  ‘Kitty girl.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know who was on Wolfe.’

  ‘Cat – and Josh. I should have told you that. There was some trouble he’d got himself in.’

  ‘And some other people.’

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘Alexander and Louise.’

  ‘Alexander and Louise. Those names I don’t know.’

  ‘I suppose not. It wasn’t their real names. And the names you called them I never knew. They weren’t their names either. Not even Cat and Josh knew their names.’

  ‘He told you about them when he came here?’

  ‘A long time before that. Last winter. Come on, Kitty. You can work this out. You know about me, if you think about it.’

  ‘Wait.’ I took a moment, my thoughts lurching, trying to keep me above water. ‘They came here because they knew you?’

  ‘I knew Cat was Claudie’s girl, would have known if she hadn’t said a word, her being the dead spit of you. I suppose she could have been a by-blow of Tobe’s. Not his style, though, to abandon a girlfriend. It was a teacher at Josh and Cat’s school who had the connection to me; he needed to lie low for a bit, Cat too. I suggested Wolfe to keep them safe for a while.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘You know the rules. You knew them then or you would have said something. If you don’t know, you can’t betray.’

  ‘Who started that?’

  ‘Someone who’d seen things, a long time ago.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Josh was okay, you’re saying?’

  ‘He was. Well, he was alive anyway. But upset. Angry. Yelling about Cat and someone else. I can’t remember the name he used. It was Alexander I guess.’

  ‘Luis.’

  ‘That’s it. He was going to tell his dad. He was a mess. You know who his dad is?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ I shook my head.

  ‘Homeland Security adviser, immigration official, I forget. I’m talking high up.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Tell me, Kitty, did you have trouble?’

  ‘Did we have trouble . . . I can’t even . . .’

  ‘Tell me later. But did they make it? Tell me they made it.’

  ‘Luis.’

  ‘No. Oh, he was a good kid. They caught him?’

  ‘They killed him. I have to go out now. I need to be on the water. Come on, Hurtle.’

  We went outside. The screen door banged behind us and we were down the stairs and gone.

  The boat was waiting in the harbour, not so many months since we’d left it there. There was not a mark on it, and it felt so much like part of me that it made no sense, as if the last months had been nothing. It should be a haggard old thing, scored and knife-wounded, thinned out in places so it hardly kept afloat. I took it out, feeling the grain of those old waves beneath me, the roads they made if you understood them. I felt the shift where Sutters used to be. I’d know it in my sleep. In the distance there was a hummock, a stark tree trunk, a foundering house, a chimney topped by an eagle swivelling its head in that abrupt way: You are nothing to me. I circled and circled it in large even swoops, over the waves, noting the fierce black lines of jetty beneath me and the Watermen staring the length of the staggering docks. The eagle took off and circled, flying helix to me, not sparing a glance. I turned back before I reached Wolfe.

  You might not believe all this, but it is true just the same. The world is inexplicable in its miracles and horrors. Writing the last of my journey into the notebook reminds me of that. I couldn’t write at Doree’s. Sometimes I sit in my boat, the water shifting ever so softly. It feels like it’s holding me. The words come out not too haltingly. Perhaps they’re lulled, as I am, by the movement. I read some sections of the notebook and it comes back to me. Other parts I skip over quickly.

  The grip of life and death is everywhere, and despite everything I’ve been through and everything I’d caused my heart has kept beating. Hart – I haven’t said much about him, though I’ve thought of him often. He’d been in touch more than once, Doree told me on the third morning.

  ‘Oh?’ I said, casually. ‘How was he?’

  ‘He was worried. He was asking about you.’

  ‘Was he mad about the Silverado?’

  ‘He didn’t mention it.’

  ‘I took it. I left a note. He knows it was me. He probably wants it back.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d mind. It’s you he cares about.’

  ‘Oh. Tell him I said hey, next time he calls. I have to go now.’

  ‘You should talk him to him, Kitty. Set his mind at rest.’

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ I said.

  ‘Where you headed?’ And when I gave a look she threw up her hands in surrender and said, ‘I’ll be at the shop if you need me.’

  I whistled up Hurtle and put her on a lead (I had never needed such a thing before; she was a different sort of dog) and we walked around to Hart’s. I stopped on the street. I imagined going around the side and finding him lying on a chair in watery sun. I’d go over and kiss him and put my hand on his chest and feel the beat of his heart. You wouldn’t believe his eyes. He could have had a decent political career on his eyes alone; he was a good-looking man. I’m sure his mother thought so. Those years on Wolfe took it out of him.

  I couldn’t make up my mind to it. Hurtle began straining towards a leaf. I began to lose my nerve. The front door opened.

  ‘Kitty.’ It was Hart.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Hart.’

  He goggled at Hurtle.

  ‘Hurtle,’ I said.

  ‘There must be a story there,’ he said.

  ‘There is.’

  ‘Would you like to come in, Kitty?’

  ‘I think I would. I should tell you now that the Silverado’s gone.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘Doree told you.’

  ‘Police. They found it burned out, got the chassis number.’

  ‘I didn’t think of that. It wasn’t me.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. If it was, I thought you’d have your reasons; if it wasn’t, I was worried. You’ve been a missing person. Did you know that? People have been looking for you.’

  ‘Not all of them for good reasons.’

  ‘No? You’ll have to tell me.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘I thought you’d have Girl. I told them you would.’ He took a couple of careful steps closer.

  ‘Oh God. A woman with a wolfdog. Police asked me a couple of weeks ago. I don’t exactly remember. I showed them Hurtle. That was the end of that. I thought they might be looking for me for . . . some other reason.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, just some things. People. Never mind now.’

  ‘You mean it would be better if I didn’t mind.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I see.’ His face was as alive with thoughts as ever, roiling their way across him like weather systems, arriving, being considered and discarded in rapid sequence. ‘You’ve been in danger then.’

  ‘Some – but less than others, as it turned out.’ I just took him in for a moment. ‘It’s good to see you, good to be home.’

  He let out a great breath and his expression stilled. ‘May I – I hope you don’t mind – I will have to hold you in my arms for a moment to be sure it’s really you. Can I do that?’

  ‘You may.’ I moved towards him and he towards me and we came together and it would be a great lie if I told you that it was anything other than a pleasure and relief. I really felt I had come hom
e and forgot in that moment the many things that word can mean and was purely content.

  ‘But you’re not.’

  ‘Home? Not really. I’ll have to find a place.’

  ‘Well, come on then. Never mind about the truck.’

  ‘You don’t seem very pleased to see me.’

  ‘Being careful. You startle so easy, Kit.’

  I sat quietly on the porch that night, my old jacket pulled around me and Hurtle by my side. I liked the cold air on my face. I planned on taking the boat out to Wolfe Island, on my own but for Hurtle, because life changes. And I thought of being out there on a warm spring day and puttering its roads again in an old wooden skiff, and looking down and seeing their ghostly presence and the fish nosing their verges and crabs (if there were any) sidling about the stone markers, glaring as the vast shadowy bottom of the boat slid across the sky above them, filling it, gliding away.

  I imagined the land – rank from drowned grasses, rotting grasses, sodden timber, and waters turned brackish and brown as tea, and rain falling on lone trees, and water and soil running loose. Fish swimming up roads, crabs finding new homes beneath drowned stairs and fallen shacks and one day walking in through doors opened by sea. The old ladder-back chairs floating to the ceiling. Fish, maybe sharks, nosing through the front door, washed open, into the kitchen and looking out of the windows, surprised.

  The truth is not that I was lonely or sad out there, whatever people might choose to believe. I was as contented as I’d ever been. The thin snow might beat my window, the fire might need wood, the wind might moan, but I had Girl at my foot and my makings table busy with life and the lamp above swaying just a little (the house alive to the land it rested on), the glow of it feeling its way into the darkness, the tussle between them apparent only to a noticing eye. Sharp feeling was gone; it might never have been. It was the keenest gift of that time.

  I would look in at my makings room, if it still existed, and see what I could salvage from the house. That might take time. I couldn’t go back for good. I knew that already. It wasn’t my Wolfe anymore. There’s a photograph of Girl I always liked. She’s picking her way up a shadowy gut at wolf light – that between time – dark in the half darkness, lifting her feet in that high prancy way, looking up, her yet-darker shadowy twin stretched on the ground beside her. I’d look for that making of the boy in the skiff, the way he paddles along, flicking those oars at the end. It’s jaunty, you know? I thought Hart might appreciate it. I’d like him to have it.