Osprey Island

by Thisbe Nissen

  Nineteen

  THE SHORE RECEDES, AND I TOO ON THE SHORE

  Much harm has been done by guessing at a bird’s motives, and assuming always that he is in mischief. I have rejected all conjectures of the sort, and accepted only what has been thoroughly proved, and reported by trustworthy witnesses.

  —OLIVE THORNE MILLER, The Second Book of Birds

  BUD CHIZEK WAS AWAKENED the next morning by a phone call from Chip Gruder down at the ferry. “Don’t suppose you got any idea why one of your trucks is sitting in my No Parking five-a.m.to-midnight zone, mainland side?” Chip said.

  “Mainland?” Bud repeated groggily.

  “Yes, sir.” Chip’s inquisition voice was practiced; the man had three sons of his own, and he’d seen it all before. “We in for another summer of your staffers running wild, Bud?”

  Bud was in no mood for a coy ferryman, especially not before he’d had his morning coffee. He told Chip, “I’ll handle it.” They’d had some problems in the past with this sort of thing. Lodge waiters getting drunk, driving over to the mainland for a movie, or getting a motel room, or getting in a fight, winding up in jail. Once, a Lodge worker had just disappeared altogether, took off, hopped a bus or a train from Menhadenport, had his roommate mail his clothes after him.

  “You want I’ll call Lovetsky’s, have her towed back over to you?”

  Bud growled, “I’ll have a man on the next boat,” and slammed down the phone.

  He tried Cybelle down at the front desk but got no answer and slammed the receiver down again, cursing the girl, until he put on his glasses and saw that the bureau clock said five-thirty-five. Chip Gruder hadn’t wasted any time calling.

  In the double bed beside him, Nancy lay on her back, a silk embroidered sleep mask over her eyes, pretending to be dead to the world, as wakefulness could have gotten her name added to the roster of people Bud might send to fetch a truck in Menhadenport. Bud wrestled himself out from under the bed sheets and went hunting for a phone directory. In a cloth-lined basket by the downstairs phone he found an Osprey telephone book—one hundred pages, if that, three by five, spiral-bound, the cover an airbrushed photo of an osprey silhouetted in its nest against an orange and purple sunset, the words Osprey Island 1988 sprawling across the darkened beach as though painted in fire. He looked up Jacobs. If there was anyone you didn’t have to worry about waking up at some ungodly hour of the morning it was Eden Jacobs, who, people were known to say, probably woke up at the first crack of light or before, since it was suspected she took her beloved chickens to bed with her. Bud dialed.

  Roddy hadn’t slept much, and his state of animation was robotic at best. He drove by the Lodge first to get the extra set of keys, then went around to the ferry and parked his truck. The morning was bright, and he scrounged behind the seat of the truck for a hat. There was only the ugly purple one from the laundry company that Suzy’d left there, but it probably looked better than his hair did, so he pulled it on and walked toward the docks. Though the sun promised a warm day, it was windy that morning, the flag whipping against its pole with tireless ferocity. The sound of the halyard smacking up against the mast was a sound that brought Roddy back to a number of different places in his life. Anywhere there was a flagpole there was that sound, rope against metal, clanging in the wind. It was, Roddy thought, both comforting and maddening, if such a thing was possible.

  The ferry line at that hour was full of Islanders who worked early morning mainland jobs and drove down every day before five-thirty when the boats started running to be the first ones across. There were two boats on that morning, and Roddy watched them pass each other in the bay. The crossing was hardly more than a mile, took seven minutes, maybe nine in bad weather, poor visibility, ice.

  The Osprey Island ferry landing was one slip, with two breaker walls of tall wooden pylons stretching out from the dock like open arms. The pylons were near-rotted, of a wood washed gray with decades of seagull droppings. No two posts were the same height or thickness, but each one had a seagull perched atop like a sentry. Roddy watched as the boat approached, the gulls eyeing it as if they were playing a game of chicken, just daring that tremendous hunk of steel to come within a breath of their roosts before they took off in a cacophonous swarm of flapping screams and cries. The ferry was a behemoth of a raft, a floating platform—like an ice rink, almost— with a watchtower sticking up from the top for the ferryman to see out while he steered. The ferries (there were three, though no more than two ever ran, one or the other perpetually in need of repair) were painted white, buffered around the sides with old truck tires strapped on to protect the ship—and cushion its landings—as she lumbered into the shore, barreling against the pylon walls, which swayed and creaked under the pressure but always managed to bounce the boat to the opposite wall like a pinball, back and forth as she shimmied her way into the slip and the ferrymen secured her to the dock.

  Chip Gruder was captaining that morning, and a younger guy whom Roddy didn’t know personally, named Derrick Darlington, was working the dock, directing cars. He swung open a wide chain-link gate and stepped out of the line of traffic as he motioned the first car off the boat, up the ramp, and onto dry land. It was a full ferry, twelve cars or so, engines turning over, drivers refastening seat belts, passengers preparing to disembark. Roddy stood by the ticket shack as the cars filed off and Derrick turned to the line of cars behind him, started motioning them onto the boat. Matty Lux was at the bow, guiding drivers into place, getting them squeezed in tight; it was a puzzle, packing on as many cars as the ferry could hold. Roddy waited until all the vehicles were on before he boarded with a few other foot passengers—two guys with lunch pails and a man in a business suit—who’d come up behind him, as well as two teenage girls who emerged from the ticket shack in waitress uniforms, clearly heading over to work the breakfast shift at Baldy’s in Menhadenport. Derrick Darlington stopped each of the pedestrians, exchanged brief words, and punched tickets for them from the thick rolled pad in his gloved hands. When Roddy got to him, Derrick said, “One way, round trip?”

  “One way, on foot.”

  Derrick lifted his eyes from the ticket book. “You picking up the Lodge truck?”

  Roddy nodded.

  Derrick flexed the hole-puncher in his grip as if it was cramping his hand. “Trouble with the staff again?” He spoke like a jaded disciplinarian, though he could not have been more than nineteen himself and had the remnants of a nasty-looking black eye on his suntanned face.

  Roddy shrugged.

  “You know who did it?” the kid said. “Who left the truck?”

  Roddy just stood there looking at him. “Yeah,” he said curtly. And then he clamped his jaw shut and stepped onto the boat. His fare would go on the Lodge account.

  The water was choppy, waves reflecting sunlight like undulating glass, and the ferry rocked and sloshed in the slip, bucking up against the pylons, which creaked and groaned in response. These were, for Roddy Jacobs, the most familiar sights and sounds in the world. Just the smells of this place—the fishy seaweed rot, the salt-drenched, sun-baked wood, gasoline, engine exhaust—all whipped by the wind and sprayed from the water in a fine mist as the ferry pulled away from the dock. Roddy leaned against the railing and turned his face to the sky, eyes closed against the sun. He heard the honking call of the ferry whistle, the churn of the rudders beneath him, the push of water through the gunwales, the clanking of chains on the gate, and the constant arrhythmic clang of rope against metal as halyard smacked flagpole atop the captain’s tower.

  If there were other places like this in the world, Roddy Jacobs hadn’t found them. And he’d traveled plenty. Two decades, and travel was mostly what he’d done. He’d been up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, through Canada, and down to Mexico and below. He’d even ridden ferries—every ferry he could find—all over Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands, across Lake Michigan and Lake Champlain and through the locks of Sault Sainte Marie. He’d been to Cape Cod, a
nd Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and St. Simon’s. Block Island, Shelter Island, Staten Island, Fire Island. And all of them were nice—he was sure that the people who’d grown up in Vineyard Haven and Vinalhaven cherished their ferries the way he cherished Osprey’s and thought their island the most beautiful, most breathtaking, most comforting place in the world. He was glad for those people who had their places. Because he had his. Roddy Jacobs had longed for his home every day he’d spent elsewhere. It was only on returning that he fully realized—a gulp of ocean air pounding into his lungs as though he hadn’t really breathed for twenty years—how much will it had taken to keep himself away.

  He knew very well who’d left the truck illegally parked in Menhadenport, though he was finding it hard to get his mind to focus on what that really meant. Bud hadn’t even known which truck it was, told Roddy to take all the spare keys, but Roddy’d gone to the vehicle shed and grabbed only the set for the tan Ford, though he suspected he’d find the truck unlocked, keys on the floor just beneath the seat. He didn’t expect there’d be a note—she couldn’t know who’d be the first to see it—and, after all, she’d already come to say good-bye. And then, after good-bye, he imagined she’d gone back to the Lodge. She’d have thrown everything into their luggage. Probably even stripped the beds to make less work for the Irish girls. She’d have coaxed Mia out of the bathroom with promises she probably never planned to make good on. Or Mia would have come out on her own, teary-eyed and sleepy and just wanting her mother, all that anger replaced by the simple need to be held in her mother’s arms. And to that end, Suzy would have obliged, hauling down all the bags by herself, then going back upstairs to lift Mia to her chest and carry her, floppy-limbed and docile, to the waiting truck.

  It would have been late, Roddy imagined. But how late? Before midnight, all those waiters and housekeepers still lounging on the deck? Would they have seen her? Wondered what was going on? Or had it been very late, the Lodge silent but for Suzy’s patter up and down the central stairs? Had they missed the last ferry, twelve a.m., and slept in the truck on the Osprey side, right by where his own truck was parked now, Mia breathing softly on the seat, Suzy dozing off, then waking every few minutes to a rumble in the running engine or a car on Ferry Road? Had anyone come by—police, security, the usual nosy Islander—to see why on earth someone—My goodness! Not just someone! Suzy Chizek!—was sleeping in a beat-up truck in the Osprey Island Ferry lot? Or had they slept there peacefully until the horn awakened them? Or maybe Suzy set an alarm, making sure they were on the first ferry across, in time to catch the six o’clock train for New York? No, he realized, they had to have gone over the night before; the guys on the morning boat didn’t know who’d left the truck; they hadn’t seen her go over. That she’d left it in a No Parking zone was nothing but a final fuck you to her father. Even through his confusion, Roddy was able to see that Suzy Chizek was the kind of person who really did need to have the final fuck you. He had at least that much objectivity left.

  What was he supposed to have done? Begged her to stay? Agreed to go with her? Watched her sail off toward the other shore, then realized— I cannot let you go!—and dived into the water after the ferry, trying to grab on to something that was already half gone? That wasn’t Roddy. Truth be told, it would have been just like Roddy to waffle and hedge, agonize over the decision, entertain every option: stay, leave, stay, leave . . . And then he’d finally say, Yes! I’ll come with you! I’m coming! They’d board the boat together for their final crossing. And then, about halfway across the bay he’d realize, I can’t do this. A moment later he’d be leaping from the back of the ferry, going down in the foam and waves, choking, sputtering, and then finding his breath as the boat moved on, left him treading water, exhausted, in the middle of the bay, with a lot to explain to a whole lot of people on both shores.

  Stuck between the steering wheel and dashboard she’d left a note on a folded flier from the Harbor Department Store, Menhadenport. The outside was not addressed. Roddy unfolded the paper. As he read the note, and read it over again, and again, conflicting emotions vied inside him. He didn’t know whether he felt more heartbroken or disappointed.

  Dad—Please try to forgive me. I’m sorry. Suzy

  Suzy Chizek couldn’t let a burning bridge burn.

  It was seven before Roddy got back to the Lodge, parked the truck, and went up the hill to find Bud to ask for a lift down to the ferry to retrieve his own truck. He found the Chizeks eating breakfast at their kitchen table. If they had any inkling of what their daughter had just done to them they didn’t betray it; they looked just as discontented as usual.

  Nancy was already standing as he came in the door. “Coffee, Roddy? I’m sure you haven’t eaten. You want some pancakes?”

  Roddy looked to Bud. “I could use a ride down to pick up my truck at the ferry.”

  Bud nodded squarely at the table, mouth full, jaw working. When he finished chewing he said, “Sure, sure, have a bite first,” and pointed his chin toward an empty chair.

  “Thank you,” Roddy told Nancy. He took a seat, removed his cap, hung it on the back of the chair, and smoothed his hair down with his hands. Nancy brought him a Pyrex mug of coffee, weak but hot.

  Bud wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Lance?” he said.

  Roddy waited a moment for more, but nothing came. “Lance?” He shook his head, not understanding.

  Bud looked back, confused by Roddy’s confusion. “Was it Lance that left the truck in Menhadenport?” He said it the way they all did, fast, and dulled: m’NAYdnpore.

  “No, sir,” said Roddy. Nancy passed him a plate of pancakes and bacon, which made him feel even stranger. It didn’t seem likely he’d get to eat a bite of it. It was hard to imagine that once the news had been sprung Bud was going to stay at the table sipping coffee. Or that he’d leave Roddy there to finish breakfast.

  “Syrup’s on the table,” Nancy told him.

  “Thank you.” He reached for the bottle.

  Bud watched impatiently. “You planning on telling me anytime this morning who did?”

  Roddy set the syrup back down without using it. If it crossed his mind just then to say, You planning on telling me about how you got a seventeen-year-old girl pregnant? You plan on telling that to your wife here? he managed not to. For all he knew, Nancy might be well aware of it all. He looked to her apologetically as he reached into his back pocket for the note. He passed it to Bud. “This was in the truck.”

  Bud eyed Roddy suspiciously, took the note without lifting his gaze from the man across the kitchen table. Then he looked down at the paper. There wasn’t much to read. He stared at it longer than necessary, then lifted it in his hand and slammed it down as he stood. “Jesus!” he cried, and stormed away from the table.

  The contents of the breakfast table jumped, and so did Roddy and Nancy. Then the front door slammed, and the bang set them in motion again like a starter’s gun. Nancy moved to the table, a dishrag in one hand, her eyes questioning Roddy, and picked up the note. What Roddy really wanted to do was pour some syrup on his pancakes, eat breakfast, and get to work. What he most wanted to do at that moment was to act as if nothing had happened. But before he could think even a step beyond that, Nancy had finished the note and was shaking it in her hand, saying, “Did you know about this?” She looked at the pancakes she’d given Roddy as if she meant to take them back. “Do you have something to do with this?” she asked, then, at a loss, repeated herself. “Does this have something to do with you? Did you two have a fight or something?”

  “What?” Roddy couldn’t help but feel like he kept missing something.

  Nancy jumped on him: “You can’t tell me you think we don’t know what’s . . . going on between the two of you.” She gestured back and forth with her dish towel, as though pointing between Roddy and an invisible Suzy she’d decided to seat beside him. “Christ Almighty, you’re smarter than that!” Nancy spat out her words, and the effort turned her ugly, made her mouth large an
d gummy. She looked, Roddy realized, like her son. She looked—he could see the resemblance so clearly now—like Chas. Her mouth open in shock, she just kept looking at him, expecting something.

  Finally he said, “She came by my mother’s last night to say good-bye.” And maybe during that moment’s admission Nancy could see for herself—maybe it was written right there on his face?—the magnitude of the loss that he was suffering in the wake of Suzy’s departure. Something in her shifted, as if she’d lost her train of thought and instead of searching just decided to shake it off and move along. There was a moment more of silence while they got their bearings and reclaimed their places in the world, and then Nancy took off her apron and went toward the staircase. Halfway to the bedroom, where she would take to her bed for the day like an invalid, she paused on the step and turned back to Roddy. She said, “Don’t let your breakfast get cold.” He took it as a blessing, for which he was thankful, and he poured the syrup and began to eat, realizing something as he chewed. Suzy’d left a note for her father, and she’d come by Eden’s place to say good-bye to Roddy before she left. Her mother hadn’t gotten anything at all.

  Twenty

  GRIEF-SPURRED, SWIFT-SWOOPING

  “Bird” in Greek and Latin also means “omen.”

  —DR. EDGAR HAMILTON, PH.D., “How Our Island Was (Mis)Named”

  BRIGID WOKE EARLY THAT MORNING on the Squire cottage sofa to the smell of frying bacon wafting up the hill from the Lodge kitchen. The doors to both Lance’s and Squee’s bedrooms were closed, and Brigid could remember drifting to sleep on the couch with Squee curled beside her. She remembered vaguely the television station signing off and Lance coming by to lift Squee from her arms and carry him to bed, and how she’d been touched, even through the wash of sleep, by a tenderness in Lance, and wished she could have invited them all in—Peg and Jeremy and the lot of them—to bear witness. Lance put Squee into bed, closed the boy’s door, and came back toward Brigid on the couch. She’d been quite awake by then. She felt a rush of fear and caught her breath, the act of which took that fear and transformed it, took her quickened heartbeat and moved the pulse of blood down between her legs in an arousal that in turn both scared and excited her. She lay on the couch beneath her own dorm blanket, eyes closed as if in sleep, and waited for what Lance would do. A waft of sweat and cigarettes traveled with him, emanating from his clothes when he got near, and he stopped by her head and bent down toward her, and then she could only smell the sweet yeast of beer clouding hot and dense out of his mouth as he put his lips, hot and cracked, to the bare skin of her forehead and said, “G’night, angel,” before he stood again, walked to the bathroom, and pissed for what seemed a very long time. And then he’d flushed the toilet, flipped off the light, gone into his own room, and shut the door. And the next thing Brigid knew it was morning and there was bacon on the griddle down at the Lodge.