by Lucy Treloar
‘Remember that story you told us about the lady who died? Your . . . not your mother . . .’
‘My grandmother,’ I said.
‘Right. And there was a hut.’
‘A storeroom.’
‘Yeah. A storeroom.’ She said it slowly, carving the word into herself; she would not forget this time; she would remember these details and maybe add to them a little of herself. She nodded, as if more was coming back. ‘And she died before she could be saved and was put in the storeroom.’ She paused and looked at me with questioning eyes, caught up in the story and seeing it – the thought, the living power of it. ‘And your mother prayed for a miracle and thought it would happen.’
‘Yeah.’
Alejandra drew in a deep breath and let it go, and stood squarer. ‘But it didn’t happen.’
‘No. It was too late, but she held that hope close her whole life and it meant a lot to her.’
‘I prayed for a miracle, and one came. I prayed on my hairclip. You remember that clip, the one I gave my mother the last time I saw her? Remember, Kitty? And it came true.’
‘You prayed for a miracle? What miracle was that, sweetheart?’ She didn’t answer, just stood there looking at the tilted world. I thought she might be ignoring me or hadn’t heard or had lost heart, or didn’t think the question important. It seemed like her mind was running some other track.
‘This is where I saw things from, up here,’ Alejandra said.
‘What?’
‘Oh, a couple of things. That time the man’s boat went on the rocks. You remember that time?’
‘You saw?’
‘Oh sure. I saw him from our place, from Shipleys. I knew him. Him and the one at the church. And one more. They were not . . . nice men. Luis killed the one at the church.’
‘He what?’
‘The first one. That was just before we came here. I don’t remember. One or two days. Not in the church. Luis found out about the man, what he was doing.’
‘What was that?’
‘Messing around with people passing through, waiting for the legals, waiting to be free. Only the women. He called it rent. “Just a little rent due,” he used to say. If they didn’t pay, we didn’t see them again. There was another man who came not so often. He had the prettiest ones. My mother. He collected the rent in an office. I don’t like that word. “Study” is okay. I liked how you had a makings room. I like that a lot.’
‘Sweetheart. Alejandra.’ The man who had the pretty ones – Lionel Starkweather, I supposed. I kept that to myself.
She looked at me sideways and gave a sideways smile and shook her head a little. ‘It’s okay. It’s all done now.’
‘How did Luis do it?’
‘I don’t know. He put his hand in.’ She moved her hand forward, feeling and seeing it at the same time. ‘And then he –’ she twisted her wrist ‘– did like that.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I think a knife.’
‘I suppose.’
‘The knife in the satchel.’
Alejandra looked at me. ‘He said he threw it in the water because his name was in it.’
‘It was in a way. And after the man?’
‘Cat and Josh came, and I don’t remember after that.’
‘I killed the man on the rocks, that was me. Luis just followed me.’
She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t mind if he did. He was another bad one.’
‘What did he do?’
‘I used to see him sometimes. I would have shot him if I had a gun when he came to the door. He saw me on the stairs. He knew about Luis. I didn’t mean him to see me. I was just there.’
I made some sound of distress.
She didn’t look at me. She put out her hand to hold me off, to stop me. ‘Don’t get angry. Please don’t get upset. It’s better that way for me. So don’t. For me.’
‘Okay. I’m glad we got him then. I’m glad of that.’
‘You get a good view from here. You’d see anything. Josh used to lie out on the walkway – near the end – lie flat, only I could see his hair, and he’d take aim with his rifle. He didn’t shoot but he pretended he did.’ She held the rifle of memory to her shoulder – somewhat tender and awkward – and squinted into its finder, and made the sound of a bullet being fired, a child’s approximation – pyouh, something like that, breathy and nasal – jerking the rifle and raising the muzzle, assessing the result. ‘Sometimes it was a bird.’
I said, ‘I saw him shoot a gull once, in Stillwater. He was a fair shot. I don’t know where he got those bullets. I was worried he’d find more. I hid all the ones I knew of after that, and any guns. And he went looking, I know he did.’
‘I know he did too. I was in this house when he did it.’
‘You were?’
‘I hid in a cupboard. He aimed at you a couple of times when you were out walking. I thought it might be real.’
‘But it wasn’t.’
‘No –’ gravely ‘– but I wasn’t sure. And even if it wasn’t, it could be another time. That’s when I prayed. I prayed we would be saved from him and he wouldn’t be saved at all. I got my miracle. That was you, Kitty.’
‘Oh, Alejandra, no it wasn’t. I came along for the ride. What was I thinking? That I could be useful? I was so stupid.’
‘You did save Treasure, and you saved us. That’s the truth.’
‘Look at it another way and I got you into trouble. But here we both are.’
‘Will I go to hell for that?’
‘Who would send you to hell? Who would want heaven without you, sweetheart? If there is such a place.’
‘I prayed anyway. Maybe what happened to Luis was the punishment.’
‘No, no such thing. I prayed for things too, all the time, still do, for all of you, that it would work out, that I would see you again.’
‘You know what he, Josh—’ She didn’t want to say his name, but some people have that kind of courage. ‘Do you know what he said to me?’
‘No.’
‘He said, “I know you’ve been watching.” I asked him how and he said because of the way I was around him, keeping a side eye out – that’s what he called it – staying away from him. He wasn’t stupid. Like with Cat and Luis, he knew something was going on before they did.’
‘I think he did shoot sometimes. Not at me – at least not that I know of. A couple of times I thought I heard shots and thought it was hunters I hadn’t seen coming and I went looking. They used to come by in summer. It might have been him.’
‘That sounds about right. You know what he said?’ She kept looking out over the watery land, watching the past, I supposed, and not waiting for my reply. ‘He said, “Say anything to Cat and I’ll have you deported. I know things – remember that. Agents will get Luis; you’ll never see your mother again. Kitty will go to jail for . . .” He didn’t even know what for. He said, “For helping aliens.” I told him the word he wanted was “harbouring” not “helping” and he hit me.’ She put her hand to her shoulder. ‘Then he said no, he wouldn’t, and I thought he was saying he was sorry, but he wasn’t.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said, “You could hide anything you like out here.” I told him Cat would never love him no matter what, but he didn’t believe me. I promised him because I believed what he said. And I never broke my promise until now…superstition. But I think it would be okay now. Do you think so? Or do you believe in ghosts, that he could come back?’
‘I think he’s really gone.’
She turned to me. ‘Do you think he would have done what he said?’
‘I don’t know. What he did was bad.’
‘He really is dead?’
‘He really is.’
‘Well.’ She nodded her head sharply, once, like a punctuation mark or an axe. He was gone.
She had decided to believe it.
‘It didn’t suit him out here, but what he did must have been in him. Some dogs need leads. Same with some people. They don’t realise it, though. That’s the trouble.’ I looked down at the marsh and then away over the water and I couldn’t see anything, not a speck of any other land at all. ‘An island is a kind of leash for some. Not for him.’
She started to cry and kept on, the tears flowing down her face and neck into her clothing. She pushed some aside with the back of her arm and her fingers and pressed a hand at the base of her throat to stop them in their tracks. I put an arm around her and we stayed until she was done. ‘I’m sorry for it all,’ I said.
‘I am alive, Kitty. I am alive.’ She almost sounded triumphant. ‘Every day I breathe I remember what you all did for me. You saved me, Luis most of all. I will not fail you. I will not waste this life.’
I thought about that last secret, about her lost sister, but there had been enough already for her to deal with. Let it stay buried for now, I thought, keep her safe. When they read this notebook I hope they understand why I stayed silent. There never is an end, only way points between past and future, and the future is always coming for us like a flood, like a train. These days I don’t picture Wolfe Island in holiday time, with the motorboats bustling around and white sails on the water and people laughing and talking on the docks, catches coming in. I remember the time in cold first light when we left, Cat and Luis and Alejandra and Treasure and Girl and me, the way the dark and driven water rushed over the island and across the steps of my porch like a river and how it seemed determined to wash that world away. I knew I was done with Wolfe even if some of it still remained. I wonder where good lies. The ties of affection are a sort of good, I suppose, though we make the world bend to them to its detriment. I do that. What kind of monster does not? The shape of it’s going or gone, but the world will have its way. ‘The lion will not lie down with the lamb,’ I used to say to Doree. I believe that.
It was mid-afternoon when Alejandra and I left, the sun was plummeting from the sky, burning up brighter, brighter, the closer it got to the edge of the world, and I knew it was the last of Wolfe Island and didn’t want to look back. I didn’t mind the thought; it was welcome, if anything. The marshes would last longer than I would and be home to things even when there was no place there for me.
I like the thought of it persisting and of that having nothing to do with me. I am not done, not quite. I might yet go out on the water, flood the engine, drop the oars, and wait for where it will take me. There’s a wildness in it I miss. But there are things to be done and things to hope for even while I’m waiting for the long night ahead.
We saw three geese circling in and heard the one below calling to them. Alejandra called out, ‘Kitty, see the geese,’ or I might have missed them, but we were quiet for the most part, me wondering whether a lone goose would keep calling or call once and remember and fall silent, and would there be nothing but silence when the sound it made had meant something: to itself, to the creature being called, to everything around? When we drew into the dock, feeling the heaviness of the boat in still water and the drag of the water through its sides, a quick breeze sprang up sending the rushes hushing on either side, and the sun finally drowned. The house’s eyes were winking. Kind Hart had lit the lamps to call us home, and we walked in wolf light from the dock. I felt some misgiving then, but we had only to get to the door to reach shelter on the other side.
Endnote
People sometimes ask me about the sorts of things I used to find. Each one had its own story and its own world. When I hold one of those things or touch them I imagine the things they might have been surrounded by: ferocity, ladies in crinolines, high seas, illness, the firmament of history. It helps to take the long view.
Interesting finds from the final years on Wolfe Island
-Megalodon tooth, cretaceous, south end of Wolfe Island, very rare, collection of Alejandra. Impossibly lucky find.
-Quartzite shard, broken arrowhead (?), not native to this region, western reach.
-Sewing machine, 1880 or thereabouts, washed up by storm.
-Long-arm oyster tongs – too many to count.
-Bottles, various: vanilla bottle, 1890 or thereabouts, opalesced by time, Darkness Bay, common; Coca-Cola bottle, 1965, marshland, Smiths End; poison bottle – unusual cerulean blue, mid-1800s.
-Fallen angel wing – a shell, edge of embankment, Stillwater, post-subsidence. Undamaged and rare.
-Dentist’s spittoon, possibly 1990s. (I date this from recollections of dentists’ visits, the worry over teeth, the children lying back like sacrificial lambs, mouths agape, and their bloody spit splattering those small white basins. They might have spat into that very one.)
-Four children – family for a time.
-Marsh periwinkle – once common, waterline, Marsh Road, collected by Alejandra one July of the twenty-first century, the year Catalina came.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my lovely family: David, Jack and Tash, Will, Catherine, James, Josie, Aileen, Nancy and Patricia, and, because dogs are family too, Gussie and Nell.
Thanks to dear friends: Kate Richards, Jenny Green, Trish Bolton, Dana Miltins and Clare Strahan.
Thanks to the wonderful people at Pan Macmillan: Mathilda Imlah, Danielle Walker, Cate Paterson, Tracey Cheetham, Katie Crawford, Clare Keighery, and to Ali Lavau for her sensitive editing.
Thanks to my lovely agent Fiona Inglis, and to Geordie Williamson for timely reading suggestions and for believing in the project from the beginning.
Thanks to my amazing supervisors Paddy O’Reilly and Alexis Harley at LaTrobe University, and to Sian Prior and Kelly Gardiner for their help. I am grateful for the RTP and David Myers scholarships that supported the writing.
Thanks to Sandra Leigh Price, Nina Killham and John Bartlett for their support.
The Wolfe Island of this novel is fictitious, and is located in the Chesapeake Bay on the east coast of the United States. Thanks to the people of this beautiful region, especially Smith Island and Tilghman Island, and Mary and Jim Oliver for their warmth and generosity of spirit.
I am grateful to the Australia Council for a grant to support this project, and to the City of Melbourne’s Arts House the Meat Market where I wrote this book.
A Note About Wolfdogs
Wolfdogs are beautiful but unstable and wild animals, completely unsuitable as pets. They are more stubborn, territorial, predatory and aggressive than domestic dogs, and can damage homes and injure or kill smaller animals, including children. Wolves belong in the wild, while dogs are domesticated companion animals. Nine out of ten wolfdogs are lost to neglect, abuse, euthanasia, escape and misunderstanding. They are outlawed in many parts of the US, and are prohibited in Australia. This book is not an endorsement of breeding or keeping wolfdogs. The wolfdogs of Wolfe Island would contain only a relatively small proportion of wolf blood after centuries of hybridization with domestic dogs.
For more information, visit Mission Wolf: https://missionwolf.org/wolf-dog-introduction/ or the United States ASPCA: https://www.aspca.org/about-us/aspca-policy-and-position-statements/position-statements-hybrids-pets.
About Lucy Treloar
Lucy Treloar was born in Malaysia and educated in England, Sweden and Melbourne. Her debut novel Salt Creek won the Indie Award for Best Debut, the ABIA Matt Richell Award and the Dobbie Award, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Walter Scott Prize, and was published in Europe, the UK and North America. A winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific), Lucy’s short fiction and non-fiction have been widely published. Lucy is an Artist in Residence at the Meat Market in Melbourne. She lives in inner Melbourne with her family. Wolfe Island is her second novel.
Also by Lucy Treloar
Salt Creek
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government th
rough
the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
First published 2019 in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Lucy Treloar 2019
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EPUB format: 9781760787905
Cover design: Sandy Cull, www.sandycull.com
Cover image: © Diana DiGangi
Typeset by Post Pre-press Group
The characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders for material used in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked should contact the publisher.
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