The Sense of Reckoning

by Matty Dalrymple

  “In any case, I believe we should proceed as you suggest, if you think it’s a good idea.” Ann started to interject that she didn’t necessarily think it was a good idea, just the best she could come up with on the spur of the moment, but Garrick continued. “You would be able to arrange this yourself?”

  “Sure,” said Ann uncertainly. “Let me talk with Scott.”

  “The less he knows about the actual circumstances, the better,” cautioned Garrick.

  Chapter 30

  1947

  On Wednesday, October 22nd, the Lynam Landing Hotel’s gardener, his neighbor, and their families, who had been evacuated from their homes north of Eagle Lake, arrived at the hotel. After a brief discussion between the gardener and Chip’s father, they unloaded their luggage into several of the guest rooms and the possessions they had brought with them onto the veranda. Then the men in the group said that they were going to head back to the eastern side of the island to help fight the fires.

  When they had gone to the shed to get shovels, Chip said, “Dad, can I go?”

  His father, who was rearranging things on the veranda, didn’t look up. “No, I need you here.”

  “But it sounds like they need all the help they can get—”

  “I said no. Probably every person on that side of the island is running around like chickens with their heads cut off, making things difficult for the professional firefighters. Plus, what if the fire comes this way? You need to stay here.”

  Chip thought it unlikely that the fire would jump Somes Sound, but he knew better than to argue further.

  He spent the morning getting the evacuees settled in. Then women—much to his father’s consternation, Chip guessed—decided that food and drink should be provided for the men fighting the fire, so they commandeered the hotel truck, along with Chip as a driver, and made a run to Southwest Harbor for supplies. Back at the hotel, they assembled several dozen sandwiches, fried up a pile of doughnuts, and brewed gallons of coffee with which they filled the hotel’s coffee urns. Chip secured the urns, the bags of food, and a box of coffee mugs in the back of the truck. His father climbed into the driver’s seat, muttering about “do-gooders.”

  “Dad, I’ll go,” said Chip.

  “I already told you I need you to stay here.”

  “Okay,” said Chip agreeably. “When more people start showing up, I’ll get them settled in.”

  His father narrowed his eyes at Chip suspiciously. Finally, with a sigh, he said, “I guess I’d better stay.” He climbed stiffly out of the truck and Chip was struck by how old he looked.

  Chip climbed in, his father standing next to the car, his face pinched with discontent.

  “Best fuel up in Somesville. Go to Fernald’s, they’ll fill it on credit.”

  “Okay, Dad.” Chip started up the truck.

  “Don’t you spend a lot of time over there—and don’t you drive into anywhere where the fire’s burning. There’ll be plenty of men just standing around guarding where the fire has already come through or keeping an eye on fires that have been put out—you can give the sandwiches to them. The men busy fighting an active fire won’t be able to take time out for a meal.”

  “Okay, Dad.” Chip pulled away.

  “And keep a count of the mugs, make sure you bring them all back!” his father called after him.

  Chip waved out the window to him.

  He wound his way back to the eastern “claw,” going north to Town Hill and then east, following a convoy of Army trucks coming in from the mainland.

  When he entered the burn area, the devastation was like a punch to the gut. In some places, the fire had left the jagged stumps of tree trunks stabbing up through a blanket of gray ash—in other places, not even stumps remained. In the distance, black smoke boiled up, so thick that if Chip didn’t know better he might have thought that the earth had belched up a new mountain overnight.

  He found a group of men in a burned-over field, swatting out flare-ups. A few had Indian tanks holding a few gallons of water strapped to their backs, but most were armed with nothing more than shovels and water-soaked brooms. There were more men than equipment, so the extra men rotated out to Chip’s truck for food and coffee.

  “Is it going to Great Hill?” Chip asked a boy about his age.

  “I hear they stopped it at Duck Brook,” said the boy, “but now it’s burning north and south.” He pointed to a billow of smoke to the east. “That’s Youngs Mountain.” He pointed further to the south. “And that’s the fields west of Eagle Lake. If they can hold it there, Bar Harbor should be okay, but Hulls Cove might get it. That’s where I’m from.”

  Chip scuffed his toe in the dirt. “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Hasn’t gotten there yet,” said the boy stoutly. “Maybe the wind’ll turn. Maybe it’ll rain.”

  They both turned their eyes to the still smoke-laden but cloudless sky.

  “Or maybe not,” said the boy.

  When the sandwiches were gone, the urns empty, and the coffee mugs accounted for (one having broken when a tired firefighter fumbled it), Chip started back to Lynam’s Point, then pulled to the side of the road. His father didn’t really need him at the hotel—all those evacuees could take care of themselves. Heck, he probably wouldn’t even be missed. But he could help at Jardin d’Eden. He turned the truck around.

  He took the northerly route he had taken the previous day, through Salsbury Cove and Hulls Cove, coming into Bar Harbor via Eden Street, which was lined with the “cottages” of the Furnesses’ fellow millionaires. Most of them only summered on the island, and would now be gone to wherever they spent their winters. He wondered what they were thinking right now, opening their newspapers in Palm Beach or Charleston or Havana or, if the lines were up, maybe taking a phone call from their own Pritchards about the situation on Mount Desert. Would they be frantic as the flames closed in on their castles or would they, as his father sometimes suggested, be relieved to be rid of the responsibility?

  When he got to Jardin, he found half a dozen men, ladders propped on the sides of the house, wetting down the wooden shingles of the roof.

  “Lynam! Over here!” Pritchard had discarded his clipboard and was wrestling with a length of hose, trying to give the man on the ladder some extra reach. Chip ran over and helped haul the hose.

  Pritchard stepped back and brushed dirt from his hands. “You give these guys a hand. Mrs. Furness called, she wants a fur coat sent down to Palm Beach.”

  “She needs a fur coat in Florida?” asked one of the men, hauling on the hose.

  “What I want to know is why she thought she needed a fur coat here in the summer,” said one of the others.

  “Just because we’re baking now doesn’t mean it doesn’t sometimes get cold in the summer,” retorted Pritchard.

  “The telephone’s still working?” asked Chip.

  “So far. I’ll pack up the coat and then you can take it down to the Express Office.”

  “The Express Office is still open?”

  “Jeez, Lynam, you sound like an old lady,” muttered Pritchard as he hurried inside.

  As soon as the door closed behind Pritchard, one of the other men—a young man named Sean who had been glancing nervously at the smoke drifting over Great Hill—dropped the hose.

  “I’m going—I got a baby at home and a wife who’s expecting another and I’m not going to hang around here hosing down the Furnesses’ roof hoping my own roof isn’t going up in flames with my family under it!”

  “I’m with you there,” said one of the other men, Mel. “My uncle’s got a couple of boats in Northeast that he wants to get out on the water and I’m going down there to give him a hand.”

  “It’s not going to get to Northeast,” scoffed the third man.

  “I ain’t waiting to find out,” retorted Mel.

  “I wouldn’t want to be out on the water with the wind like this,” ventured Chip.

  Mel shrugged. “We might get banged around a little but it
’s better than just sitting by waiting for the fire to get it.” He turned to Sean. “Can you give me a lift out that direction?”

  “Sure thing.” Sean scanned the rest of the group. “Sorry about this, fellas, but we’ve done what we can here—I recommend you let Pritchard worry about Jardin and you go home to look after your own.”

  The two of them jogged off toward the greenhouses and in a minute their truck passed the group and disappeared down the drive.

  The remaining men looked at each other uncomfortably, then one of the older ones shrugged. “I ain’t got no family and I live in a boarding house—if the fire gets it, no skin off my teeth. We’re getting paid for this, right?”

  They took turns climbing the ladder and hosing down the roof, waiting like children around a broken vase for the parent to show up. Eventually, Pritchard emerged with a box. He scanned the group.

  “Where are Sean and Mel?”

  “Left to take care of their own,” said the older man mildly.

  Pritchard shook his head, his lips tight. “Well, we got most of the roof wetted, we can keep it wet with a smaller crew. Lynam, bring your truck around.”

  Pritchard handed the box over to Chip with all the usual cautions, then Chip drove into Bar Harbor, which was crowded with Army vehicles, soldiers, and firefighters, official and unofficial. Most of the stores were closed, but people wandered through the streets, anxious-looking but not panicked. Chip dropped the box off at the Express Office on Cottage Street, which was doing a brisk business as people tried to get their valuables off the island. As he was leaving, he saw another of the seasonal Jardin d’Eden workers—Millie’s older brother, Eliot—trapped in the snarl of traffic, the back of his truck loaded with furniture. Eliot noticed him and waved him over.

  “Chip, right? Hey, can you see what the holdup is?”

  Chip backed a few steps away from the truck so he could see down the street. “Something going on near the green, looks like it opens up after that.”

  Eliot nodded toward the Express Office. “Wish I could just pay to have my valuables flown away,” he said, drumming his fingers on the wheel. “I’m taking mine up to the airport but they’re not going any further, I hear they’re letting people store furniture and such on the field.”

  Chip was struck by a sudden inspiration. “Hey, do you know where Lynam’s Point is, on Lynam Narrows? My dad has a hotel there, you could store your things there.”

  “A bit further of a drive, though.”

  “Better than having your valuables all jumbled up with other folks’ stuff at the air field, right?”

  The man scratched his chin. “You’re sure your dad wouldn’t mind?”

  Chip was fairly sure his dad would mind, but it would be a way of getting a message to him without having to talk to him. “It’ll be no problem. Can you just let him know I’m helping out with things at Jardin and will be home as soon as I can?”

  “Sure. Lynam’s Point, off Indian Point Road, right?”

  Chip nodded and stepped back as the traffic began inching forward.

  “Thanks,” said Eliot, waving from the truck. Over the line of traffic, beyond the town, Chip could see flames at the tops of several mountains on the other side of Eagle Lake.

  Chip drove back to Jardin where, of the remaining crew of three, two were raking pine needles and dry ground cover away from the foundation and one was consulting with Pritchard about the removal of a large pine tree growing close to the house.

  “Let me call Mr. Furness,” said Pritchard. He disappeared into the house, only to emerge a minute later. “Line’s dead.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay, let’s take her down. Let’s move the trucks down the drive first in case the tree blocks it.”

  The rest of the daylight was occupied by the felling of the tree, which did, as Pritchard had anticipated, come down across the top of the drive. As they were cleaning up the branches as a precursor to cutting the truck into moveable chunks, another of the men—whose elderly parents lived on the eastern shore of Somes Sound—slipped away.

  When darkness fell, Pritchard sent Chip in to warm up some soup and brew some coffee. On his way to the kitchen, Chip stopped by the library and, glancing up and down the hall, tried the door. Locked.

  Chip found some cans of chowder in the pantry and dumped them into a pot. While the soup warmed, he slid open some of the drawers, wondering if Millie carried the ring of keys with her or hid them somewhere at the house. He would feel better if he could just take a quick look into the library to make sure The Lady was okay. He found only drawer after drawer of immaculately arranged silverware and carefully folded and pressed table linen.

  The night was warm and the air still. After they finished their meal, they settled down on the veranda, some with backs propped against the wall of the house, some lying on their sides, using their arms as pillows. They listened to the fire whistle sound periodically and tried not to think about what the fire might be doing out there in the darkness.

  Chapter 31

  The next day at noon, Scott stood by the Audi in the parking lot of Mainely Tents in Ellsworth, awaiting Ellen Lynam’s arrival. When he saw her Jeep pull into the parking lot, he hit Send on a pre-entered text: she’s here. He waved as Ellen pulled into the space next to the Audi and, when the car stopped, opened her door for her.

  “Thank you so much for meeting me on such short notice. Kay and I only have a short time in Maine and we want to get as much planning for the wedding done as possible.”

  Ellen grunted slightly as she exited the Jeep. “It’s no problem. But you do realize that I’m not sure what our schedule is for July ...?”

  “Oh yes, but I’m very hopeful we will be able to work something out. Kay was so complimentary about your hotel and the surroundings. She said the view is quite spectacular.”

  “Yes. It might be helpful if you see the setting first and then discuss a tent ...”

  “She gave me quite a detailed description. She just loves it, much more so than any other place we’ve looked at!”

  “Where else have you looked?” asked Ellen.

  “Oh, all places near Philadelphia where we live,” he said, reeling off some of the places he and Mike had talked about as wedding or reception locations. “But Kay likes your hotel best. I’m sure that if you’re booked in July, we would be willing to change the wedding date as needed to accommodate.” Scott ushered Ellen toward the Mainely Tents office, opening the door to the jangle of a bell.

  In the office, a short, squat man with a military crewcut and enormous walrus mustache stood behind the counter. “Ellen, this is Donald. Donald, this is Ellen Lynam of the Lynam’s Point Hotel.” Scott had spent some time chatting with Donald before Ellen’s arrival and was now familiar with, among other aspects of Donald’s life, the difficulty of subsidizing a child’s medical-school tuition on a tent-rental owner’s earnings.

  “Yes, we’ve worked together before,” said Ellen. “How are you doing, Don?”

  “Pretty good, Ellen, you?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  “Sorry to hear about Loring. That’s tough,” said Donald uncomfortably.

  “Yes. Well.” There was an awkward silence, then Ellen turned to Scott. “Will Kay be joining us?”

  “No, here’s the thing.” He leaned forward conspiratorially and Ellen and Donald leaned forward as well. “It’s a surprise for her! Kay has always wanted an outdoor wedding in a big tent. But until recently, that was out of the question based on our budget. But unbeknownst to her, a distant relative of mine passed away and left me quite a bit of money. I’m going to make sure she has the wedding she’s always dreamed of, and on our wedding day I’ll reveal our good fortune!” He leaned back and smiled expansively at them.

  “That will be quite a wedding present,” said Donald, eyebrows raised.

  “Yes, that certainly sounds very nice,” said Ellen wistfully.

  “So I’d like to take a look at the various tents that might be
available for different numbers of people and how each one might be set up on the hotel grounds. And any options for the tents—for example, do they all come with flaps that can be put down if the weather gets bad? And if the weather does get bad, will the tent be safe? What types of tests are run to ensure they’re stable? And who have you worked with on tent decorations, because I imagine the tent setup and decorating have to be closely coordinated. What other services might I need to coordinate with the tent setup? I’m sure Ellen would like to know how long after the event it will be before the tent’s taken down. And is there any possibility of damage to the lawn? Are there different colors to choose from? And what is the tent made of?” Scott thought that should hold them for quite a while. Just for good measure, he added, “And how is the tent made? You’d need something like a giant sewing machine, wouldn’t you?”

  Donald, whose possible objections to sitting around with a potential client discussing tent minutia had been circumvented by a $50 contribution to the college fund, went in back to get them some stools and put on a pot of coffee.

  Chapter 32

  When Ann got Scott’s text, she turned to Garrick and said, “Okay, she’s at the tent place.”

  Garrick, who had been reading a small, ancient-looking book in what Ann guessed was German, slipped the book into an inside pocket of his coat and started the engine. After checking carefully in both directions, he coasted out of a side road off Indian Point Road that lay in the opposite direction Ellen would have taken to get to Ellsworth and turned onto Lynam’s Landing Road. This time, he took Ann right to the front steps of the hotel. He turned off the car and got out.

  “I’ll show you where the key is, then you can return it there when you’re done.”

  Ann followed Garrick toward the west side of the building. “Why don’t you just stay? It sounds like you can understand Loring better than I can.”

  “I think he’s demonstrated that he’s unlikely to make an appearance were I to stay.” He pointed to a flowerpot. “It’s under that.”