Fortune's Rocks

by Anita Shreve

  He rights himself and puts his hands on his hips. “And how are your father and mother?” he asks. “Well, I trust?”

  “Oh, yes, very well,” she answers. “And Mrs. Haskell and the children? Are they with you on this holiday?”

  “No,” he says. “I must be at the clinic in an hour, and I have given most of the others the afternoon off. It seemed pointless to send for Catherine when I could not join her in the festivities. In any event, I shall be with her in York tomorrow.”

  Olympia crooks an arm over her forehead to shade her eyes from the light. She is forced to look up at Haskell in order to speak to him.

  “And how is your work at the clinic?” she asks.

  “Difficult,” he says without hesitation. “There has not been sufficient time for me to reorganize the staff in the way it must be done, and I am still awaiting supplies and medicines from Boston, which have been unpardonably late in arriving.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” she says.

  “Oh, I think we shall manage all right. Although I shall be dreadfully short-staffed this afternoon,” he adds, putting his hands into his trouser pockets. He seems to have recovered his breath. “May I accompany you back to wherever you are going?” he asks. “I should welcome an opportunity to greet your father if he is here with you.”

  His eyes scan her face.

  She turns, and they begin to walk toward the bonfire. The beach slopes precipitously, and she is nearly as tall as he is. She imagines that her gait is self-conscious, her movements stiff and unnatural, for she feels unnerved in his presence. Haskell, however, seems considerably more relaxed and occasionally bends to pick up a shell or to send a flat stone skipping across the waves. After a time, he asks if he can stop for a moment since his boots are filling with sand. He puts the boots down where they stand, out of reach of the incoming tide, and says he will collect them later, which she thinks reflects rather more trust in human nature than perhaps is prudent. They walk together again, and though there are a thousand questions she wants to ask the man, she finds she is rendered silent. Voluble in her imaginings, she is inarticulate in his presence.

  The sea that day is a brilliant aquamarine, a color seldom observed off the coast of New Hampshire, where the ocean most often presents either a deep navy or a gunmetal gray appearance. Indeed, so rich and lovely are the water and sky and light together that Olympia thinks that Nature, in her generosity, must be in a celebratory mood herself on this, the one hundred and twenty-third anniversary of the country’s independence.

  “Have you eaten?” she asks.

  “The food at the Highland, I am sorry to say, is remarkably poor, despite the high standard of the service. I think they need another cook.”

  “You are in luck today, then, for the clambake is providing a savory meal for everyone. Do you know about this tradition?”

  “I heard about it at breakfast and have watched the staff slink away in their finery all morning. I’m quite glad to be offered a meal, as I’m sure the dining room is like a ship deserted. Your face is growing pink,” he says. “I think you should have worn your hat.”

  They walk side by side, the walking irregular and slow-going in the sand. Occasionally one or the other of them stumbles, and a sleeve brushes a sleeve or a shoulder a shoulder. The heat causes a prism of air above the sandy beach that distorts the view. Waves surprise them, and Haskell yelps once from the cold, which is always a shock upon the tender skin of the ankles, no matter how often one visits this part of the coast of New England.

  In the distance, Olympia can see that the festivities have gathered some momentum in her absence. Men and boys are playing with balls and nets and racquets. Nearer to the water, where the sand is harder, several couples have set up wickets and are engaged in croquet, although it seems a fruitless enterprise since all the balls naturally roll toward the sea. Beyond the seawall and the fish shanties, hucksters hawk their wares from carts: ice-cold tonics, Indian baskets, ice-cream cones, and confections of all sorts.

  She stops suddenly, unwilling to reenter the crowd so soon. Haskell strolls on for a few paces before realizing that she is behind him. He walks back to where she is standing.

  “What is it?” he asks her. “What is wrong?”

  Her eyes skim the tops of his shoulders, his braces making indentations in his shirt. She is perspiring all about her collar and wishes she could unbutton it. She sees a blue-and-orange-striped balloon rise above his right shoulder.

  The balloon ascends slowly into the thickish air — a massive thing, both gaudy and majestic. The balloon gains height and floats in their direction. Two men are standing on the parallel bars suspended from the balloon. They wave to the throng below. Olympia wonders at the view of Fortune’s Rocks the men must be having, and for a moment, she feels envious and wishes to be aloft with them.

  “Olympia, are you not well?” Haskell asks again.

  He stands so close to her that she can see the pores of his skin, smell the scent of him mixed with the starch of his shirt. There are perspiration rings under his arms. She wants to lie down. She watches as the balloon begins to ascend more rapidly and to pass overhead. And then she is startled by the sight of the aeronauts cutting loose from the balloon and falling to earth with parachutes. They scarcely seem to drift. In the distance, she can hear the muffled elation of the crowd.

  Slowly and without preamble, Olympia takes hold of Haskell’s hand and lifts it to her throat. She opens his fingers and presses them against her skin.

  There is a long moment of silence between them.

  “Olympia,” Haskell says quietly, withdrawing his hand. “I must say something to you now. In a moment, we shall be at the fire and with your father, and there will be no more opportunity.”

  Her breath catches in her chest.

  “I have reproached myself a thousand times since that day at your house when I took liberties with you,” he says. “When I was photographing you. I felt then that I could not help myself, though it is pure cowardice to hide behind the excuse of helplessness now.”

  She shakes her head slightly.

  “It is unpardonable, unpardonable,” he says heatedly. “And I do sincerely ask your forgiveness, and you must give it, as I cannot work properly for thinking of it and of the harm I have done to you.”

  All about them, children squeal and run, oblivious to the drama that is taking place so near to them. Gulls, ever hopeful of a discarded morsel, swoop dangerously low to their heads. Haskell opens his mouth and closes it. He shakes his head. He turns once quickly toward the sea and then back again.

  The aeronauts land on the sand. The balloon continues to fly overhead.

  “I am going now,” Haskell says. “If your father has seen us together already, please tell him that I have been urgently called away. And it is true. I am going now to the clinic. I will not visit you again. You understand that. I will not call on your family, however awkward that may prove.”

  And because she thinks he truly means to leave her then, she reaches for his arm; and though she catches only a small bit of his shirt cuff, it is enough.

  “I shall go with you,” she says calmly. She does not feel reckless. She is sure of her words and clear about their implications. “You yourself have said you would be dreadfully shorthanded this afternoon.”

  “The clinic is no place for . . . ,” he begins, but then he stops. They have already had this conversation.

  “I trust I can fetch and carry as well as the next person. Did I not prove myself the night of the shipwreck?”

  “Olympia, you will regret this,” he says gravely.

  She looks out toward the horizon, where the balloon is only a speck. She wonders where it will finally land.

  “Then allow me at least to have it before I regret it,” she says calmly.

  He opens his mouth as if to speak, but then hesitates. “No, I cannot allow this,” he says finally, and leaves her.

  • • •

  She watches him w
alk away until he is only a blurry dot on the sand. When he is almost out of sight, she begins to follow him. For a time, she walks at a normal pace, and then she breaks into a run.

  SHE WAITS, as they have agreed, at the back of the Highland while he fetches a carriage from the stables. She stands, with sand in her boots, praying that she will not encounter anyone known to her or to her father, for she will not easily be able to explain her presence by the road nor, if Haskell were then to appear, her intention to accompany him in the carriage. She hopes her father has had enough to drink that he will take his customary Fourth of July nap on the sand by the seaweed fire, as do many of the men on this day, a democratic falling-out if ever there was one.

  Haskell comes around the corner in a small buggy with a canopy that bobbles wildly on the rutted dirt road. The coach is painted bottle green and has yellow wheels. On its side is written, in chaste script, The Highland Hotel. He has gathered from his room his physician’s satchel and his jacket and hat, and he presents such a pleasing aspect to her eye that despite her nerves, despite the fact that she has begun to tremble at the audaciousness of her actions, she cannot help but feel a gladness in her heart at the anticipation of riding beside him. He steps down from the carriage to help her up.

  They drive the length of the winding road between the bay and the ocean, passing many cottages and stone walls and carriages that jostle along the hard-packed dirt surface, much as they are doing. Men on bicycles ring their bells at them and tip their hats, and a family of Gypsies with begging tins tries to stop the buggy. This part of the world is flat, demarcated only by stone walls, clapboard cottages, a few trees, and low scrub pine. They pass a large party of revelers in a hay wagon, and as they make the turn at the end of the coast road, she sees again the lifesaving station. She wonders if the crew inside are allowed to partake of the festivities, and then thinks not, since Nature in her whims and frenzies knows not a holiday. At the very least, she imagines that the officers will have to be on the lookout for errant bathers who might be swallowed up by the breakers.

  Behind the lifesaving station, the sun glints off the ocean with such ferocity that she cannot see her father’s house on the rocks at the end of the beach — which is fine with her since she does not much want to be reminded of it just now. She turns her head toward the bay, which presents a calmer prospect with its flotilla of sloops and yawls at anchor. She can see the brown and ochre Congregational church tower, the weathered fish cooperative, and the long pier that attracts commercial and pleasure vessels alike. Farther inside the bay are many skiffs and tenders with gentlemen at the oars and ladies sitting stiff-backed in the stern, enjoying their gentle outings under frilled parasols.

  In a short time, they leave Fortune’s Rocks and enter the marshes, a watery labyrinth of long reeds, rare birds, and pink and white lilies. She likes best to travel through the marshes in a skiff at sunset, or rather in that half hour before sunset when the rusty light of the lowering sun sets the grasses ablaze and turns the water a metallic pink. Sometimes, on these solitary excursions, she will deliberately lose herself amongst all the shallow passageways, finding a kind of quiet thrill in the ginger-colored reeds. The challenge is then to make her way back through the watery maze, and she remembers only one time when she discovered herself at an unproductive dead end and had to summon help from a boy who was fishing along the harder ground of the shore.

  Silently, they travel through the village of Ely with its stolid wooden houses built a century earlier by men who shunned adornment. In the center of the village is a butcher’s shop with a meat wagon parked to the side, a blacksmith’s shop, an apothecary, the town pump. Because of the holiday, there are no people about. Indeed, the stillness is almost eerie, as if a contagion has decimated the population, although Olympia knows it to be a fever of high spirits that has infected the people here and has caused them to flee their village.

  They follow the trolley route into Ely Falls, where the buildings are darkened by soot from the mills. They do not speak much, some pleasantries, which sound strange on her tongue. She tries to attend to the world around her, but her mind remains preoccupied. Both the beauty of the marshes and the bustle of the city seem, as they ride to the clinic, mere scenery or chorus to the real drama at hand: the silent, unspoken one played out by Haskell and her.

  The main street of the city is thronged with shops, all decorated with yards and yards of festive bunting: druggists, confectioners, saloons, milliners, watchmakers. They pass a chowder house, a shoe factory: Coté and Reny. Over the shops are more French names and some Irish: Lettre, Dudley, Croteau, Harrigan, LaBrecque. Turning a corner, they come abreast of a parade in honor of the holiday. Olympia notes the men in Napoleonic costumes and the marching bands, the fire brigades on safety bicycles. The parade ends, they discover when they are forced to make a detour, at a two-pole big top that seems to have attracted at least half the city.

  The mill buildings themselves are massive and dominate the town. Most are brick structures with large windows, stretching all along the banks of the Ely River. Beyond these factories is the worker housing, row upon row of boardinghouses with a drab, utilitarian appearance. Perhaps the blocks of houses once looked fresh and appealing, but it is clear that the buildings, which have neither shutters nor paint, have been left to ruin with few attempts at repair.

  They stop before an unprepossessing brick edifice, one of many in a row. Haskell helps her down, and he swings his satchel from the floorboards. She walks behind him to the front door, where he puts his hand upon the latch. He hesitates and looks about to speak.

  She shakes her head quickly to forestall his words. “Do not trouble yourself about me,” she says. “It is all right what we have done.”

  Although they both know — as how could they not? — that it is not all right. It is not all right at all.

  • • •

  It is the noise Olympia notices first. In a large room, which she takes to be a waiting room, she can hear a group of small children squealing and shouting as they chase one another through the aisles. Near to them, a woman who seems to huddle into herself is alternately crying and cursing. Men in varying states of dress and undress roughly cough up phlegm, and a mother, in a harsh voice, scolds a group of boys who are trying to crowd all together onto a scale. Olympia hears as well the irritated mutterings of patients who have been kept waiting on the holiday, and the moans of other patients who are clearly in pain: an old woman weeping, and a younger woman, in labor, grunting in a terrible manner. These people sit or lie upon a series of wooden benches that resemble church pews in their arrangement; and the entire gathering seems to her like nothing so much as a bizarre and noisy congregation waiting rudely for its minister. As Haskell strides purposefully through the room, a kind of order begins to descend, as though the patients can already perceive their relief. Haskell speaks immediately with a nurse who has on a starched white muslin cap and a blue serge dress with sleeves Olympia assumes once were white but now are dotted or smeared with blood and other substances she does not want to think about. The nurse holds a sheaf of papers in one hand and a watch chained to her belt in the other. It is an unfortunate posture, as the implication seems to be that she is scolding Haskell for being tardy.

  “The holiday is worse than a Saturday night for the drunkenness and injuries resulting from inebriation,” the nurse says to Haskell in an accent of broad vowels that Olympia recognizes as native. “There are seven patients who have come in with food poisoning from a tin of tainted meat, and there are three boys who fell into the runoff from the Falls, and what they were doing trying to cross the river there, I cannot tell you, but they are, as you might say, all battered to pieces. And as we are short-staffed today — well, there is no wonder we are in such a state. Oh, and there is a child, the Verdennes boy, who came into the clinic not an hour ago with the diphtheria croup, and I am sorry to say that he has passed on, sir.”

  (The half hour she detained Haskell on the beach, Olym
pia thinks, with the first of many small shocks of that afternoon.)

  Haskell looks disturbed, but not overly so. Perhaps he knows that the child would have died even had he been there.

  “This is Miss Olympia Biddeford,” he says, turning to her. “Olympia, this is Nurse Graham,” he adds by way of introduction.

  Nurse Graham, who looks to be in her mid-twenties, narrows her eyes at Olympia, but her scrutiny is fleeting. She has other, more pressing matters on her mind.

  “I promised my family, sir, that I would be finished at two o’clock,” she says.

  “Yes, of course,” Haskell answers. “Is there anyone in the back?”

  “Yvonne Paquet is here, sir. And Malcolm.”

  “Enjoy yourself then,” he says, turning then to survey his flock, who now have fallen mostly silent and are watching him with great interest. Haskell takes in air and holds it, and then lets his breath out in a long, slow sigh.

  “Let us begin,” he says to Olympia.

  • • •

  The clinic occupies the ground floor of what was recently a textile warehouse. It has several rooms, one of which Olympia has ample opportunity to examine, since it is the chamber in which Haskell has set up his temporary office. In it are a desk and a cot and many cabinets filled with medicines, which Haskell frequently asks her, as the afternoon progresses, to fetch for him: quinine, aconite, alcohol, mercury, strychnine, colonel, and arsenic. There is an eye chart and a scale with many weights, an atomizer, a graduated medicine glass, and long metal trays of instruments — knives and needles and scissors. She notes a large glass bell jar, a microscope, and several flannel-covered bags, the purpose of which she never discerns. On a stove nearby are pots of water boiling continuously.

  Nurse Paquet, a sallow and sullen girl not much older than Olympia, interviews the patients while Olympia functions as a nurse attendant, fetching bandages and medicines and tonics, cleaning instruments and returning them to the boiling water, and, once or twice, holding a limb or a child’s hand while Haskell goes about his business. The first patient he sees that day is a man who has lost his arm to a spinner, which mangled it up to the elbow some weeks before. Haskell begins to unwind the man’s dressing with the most careful of motions. He speaks in a soothing voice, trying to distract the mechanician with queries and jokes, and Olympia deduces that securing a patient’s trust and cooperation is the first order of business in any treatment. Haskell is, she observes that afternoon, a gentle, not to say tender, physician.