“Josh!” I shouted over the wind, lifting a hand from the steering wheel to redirect the boy’s attention.
Josh faced straight ahead, the dolphin forgotten. Tyler, who until then had remained in the back, rushed forward. The island’s appearance seemed to have sparked something in him, for he shouted enthusiastically to Josh, who slid over to make room for him. Tyler then lay flat on his stomach, spreading his arms out like he was flying low across the water.
It had been twenty-five years since I had last seen Raker Island. It was smaller than I remembered, or perhaps the ocean had eroded its shore, for my memories had made a mountain out of this lonely hilltop jutting from the sea. I kept expecting it to grow larger, to rise higher from the water the closer we came, but I could already see the pier extending from the rocky beach, and make out the individual pines from the green blur of a distant forest.
The grove of pines that overlooked the beach was covered in a blanket of vines, reducing the trees into anonymous bulges. The branches themselves were lost amid a complicated network of spiraling shoots and tendrils. But there was a certain predatory beauty in this display of nature that brought the otherwise disharmonious parts of the landscape together under a single guise. Pale flowers sprung up from the undergrowth, giving the scene a dash of the exotic.
“There, Dad!” Josh shouted, pointing toward the pier.
When I downshifted, the tip of the boat dipped down, causing Tyler to retract his arms, apparently no longer convinced he could fly at such a slow speed. When the wind died and then switched directions, coming at us from behind, I noticed Josh’s hair had begun to darken, just as mine had at his age. Soon he would be a sandy blond, one step away from my own light brown.
“Not yet, Josh,” I said when he grabbed the pier line and prepared to jump. “We’ll go a little closer.”
He looked at the pier, then at the shore. “Won’t it be too shallow?”
“We’ll be okay.”
The pier, built for a ferry, was nearly a hundred feet in length, with the majority of its planks either missing or half-rotted away. I waited until we were within twenty feet of shore before nudging the Bayliner against the pier. On the other side was a maroon speedboat that hardly looked big enough to navigate the Atlantic’s waves. As Josh and I secured the lines, Tyler looked at his surroundings in disbelief that we were actually here.
“Is that it?” he asked, pointing to the distant silhouette atop the island.
“The one and only,” I confirmed, pulling the end of the clove hitch tight.
“I thought there were two towers.”
Preoccupied with docking, I had failed to notice that Raker Lighthouse alone looked over the island. The clock tower had fallen.
Didn’t I tell you? Nothing on this island lasts for long.
“There used to be. Here, have a look,” I said, handing Tyler my binoculars. “Keep an eye out for loose boards,” I warned Josh as he ran across the pier.
“It’s safe, Dad,” he called back over his shoulder.
I, too, crossed the pier, the planks groaning beneath my weight. A single vine dipped toward the water, and as if finally coming into contact with a surface it couldn’t spread across, lifted up and wrapped itself around one of the planks.
The agitated call of a gull perched along the water’s edge welcomed us ashore.
“What’s he waiting for?” Josh asked.
Tyler hadn’t budged. He stood peering through the binoculars, examining the island at every angle.
“There’s no rush,” I said. “Remember what I told you?”
“I know, I know. Give him space.”
With the binoculars dangling from his neck, Tyler finally got out of the boat and crossed the pier, his high-tops scraping the planks. When his feet touched the gravelly beach, he looked like he had just stepped onto sacred ground.
“He’s not here,” he said, giving the beach a quick examination.
I looked to where the road emerged from the pines. “We’re early. He’ll be here.”
“Are you sure someone actually lives out here?” Josh asked.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be here.”
The boys passed the time by exploring the beach. Josh initially kept his distance from Tyler, as he often did around strangers, but it wasn’t long before he either forgot his shyness or decided that my advice to give Tyler space didn’t apply here. Josh looked drawn to the water’s edge simply because it was there, while Tyler combed over it in search of something. What he found was a clam, and when he tried to pull its shell apart (perhaps not realizing that he held a living organism in his hands), the clam shot a stream of water at him. He yelled in surprise, dropping it to the ground. Josh laughed good-naturedly as Tyler picked the clam back up by his fingertips, examined it for a moment, then flung it into the water.
I caught myself thinking how different they were—just like their fathers. Tyler was eleven, two years Josh’s senior, but he acted older than his years, which I couldn’t say surprised me. But what I wasn’t prepared for was his seriousness. I kept looking for a glimpse of that rebellious adolescent spirit, but either he was too young or, more likely, it was there all along, I was just too old to notice. In a moment of acknowledged hypocrisy, I gave thanks that my son and Tyler were not friends. But seeing them walk the beach together made me realize I had been right to bring them here. Both my wife and Sarah, Tyler’s mother, had wanted to come along, but I had talked them out of it. Though I hadn’t been able to explain it to their satisfaction, some element of this place would have been lost if they were here now, warning Josh and Tyler to be careful. Mothers didn’t belong here. Raker Island was meant only for boys.
The sound of an approaching vehicle drew my attention to the road. A gray Jeep came into view and pulled beside the pier. I couldn’t help but smile as the driver climbed out.
“You’ve changed a bit,” Max said, shaking my hand.
“You haven’t,” I replied.
Though he had to be well over sixty, Max still had a full head of hair, and shaking his hand was still like putting your hand in a vice. The only noticeable change was that his red hair was streaked with gray, and he had grown a full beard. It took a moment to find his toothpick amidst all the hair.
“It’s the salt in the air,” he said. “It preserves.”
When the boys joined us, Josh looked at Max with a mixture of fear and awe, as he had heard his share of stories involving Raker Island’s reclusive owner. Tyler was more skeptical, as if questioning my judgment in allowing this rugged hermit to be our guide.
“Pleasure,” Max said as I made the introductions, and judging by the boys’ reactions, he didn’t hold back one bit on his handshake.
“Looks like your pier has seen better days,” I commented.
“Don’t have much use for it these days,” Max said with a wave of his hand. “Just supplies once a month.” Then, without saying another word, he turned and climbed back into the Jeep. When he squinted through the dirty windshield and saw that we hadn’t moved, he said, “You comin’ or not?”
The island’s only road, once a narrow passage through the encroaching undergrowth, was now nothing more than tire ruts, a groove that the Jeep’s wheels slotted into with the precision of a train straddling its tracks. Along especially sharp curves, fenceless lines of knotted posts were strung through the prairie grass like coarse knuckles, the metal cable that had once linked them into a guardrail having long since fallen away. When we passed beneath the pines, it was like the sun had slipped behind a cloud, with the interwoven vines blotting out the sky. Seated in the backseat, the boys had to duck out of the way of branches and low-hanging creepers, not to mention the assortment of fishing poles propped between them. Max sat behind the wheel, oblivious to the underbrush that swatted the windshield. When we started up the switchbacks, the foliage hugged the remnants of the road so tightly it was difficult to catch more than a glimpse of what lay ahead.
Though it was early summer, i
t still felt like spring on the island. The air was dry and buoyant, with soft breezes passing through the treetops. A cloud of blue butterflies hung momentarily over tulip blossoms before dispersing like smoke over a campfire, drifting through the air to settle over a bush of dark red berries. In the distance, a weeping willow dipped its branches into the reflective waters of a pond.
Time had made me a stranger here. An entire generation separated me from this place. There were reminders of it everywhere: the fact that I could only recognize a handful of landmarks; there in the backseat, where my son’s face hung in my vision; but especially knowing what had happened to each of us since going our separate ways.
I had returned home after the spring semester to finish my final two years at Homestead. Wellington had also left Raker Island, retreating to its old campus at Eastbridge amidst a flurry of bad publicity. The school returned to its roots in an attempt to distance itself from the 1980 Senatorial Debate debacle. Despite the odds, Wellington survived, though not without undergoing change. These days the student body was forty percent female, school uniforms were a thing of the past, and the fencing team practiced in an actual gymnasium. I doubted that I would find much of my old school in Eastbridge. All that remained of that tumultuous year of my life was here on this island, buried beneath two-and-a-half decades of neglect.
College, a career, marriage and children had kept me busy, though I never stopped wondering what had become of my old friends. The newspaper—the headlines—had been our link, and it was there that I expected to hear from them. Groomed for greatness, they would certainly make themselves known, and it would be like sitting around the cafeteria table again, seeing those same familiar names in print. FORSYTHE RUNS FOR OFFICE; GENERAL VAN BELLE ACCOMPANIES 256th INFANTRY OVERSEAS; MAYHEW CARRIES SENTINEL TO HIGHER GROUND.
But no such headlines were printed. At first this concerned me, like we had failed at some unspoken task. But as the years passed, I found comfort in knowing that our names had been kept from the public eye. As long as I didn’t read about them, I could go on assuming they were living regular lives, similar to my own.
That changed three months ago when I received a phone call from Roland. His voice, which had deepened only slightly, brought me back to the night of the debate. Despite the late hour, we talked at great length, and by the end of the conversation, I was caught up on all that had happened beneath the headlines.
After a record-setting wrestling career in the Ivy League, Derek had gone to work for his father at Sentinel, where he now headed up the marketing division. When his father passed away, Zack, the same brother who had attempted to shoot the talkative macaws, took over the family business. Apparently he focused his aggression on the competition these days, as Sentinel’s business was thriving. With a wife and two daughters, Derek was living the American dream, though he had chosen to live it in Boston instead of Greenwich.
After the inevitable fallout with his father, Roland had joined the military, though not in the way General Van Belle had envisioned. Roland graduated from Maryland Bible College and Seminary to become an ordained minister. He now served as a chaplain for the Armed Forces. Whenever a soldier was killed in combat, Roland was sent to console the soldier’s loved ones. Roland had spent his boyhood among these same families, and he chose to continue to share their sacrifice in his own humble way.
Roland spoke mostly of Chris, and even as a grown man he couldn’t keep the pride from his voice. Their friendship had never ended. If anything, it had grown stronger. After serving six months in a juvenile detention center, Chris had enlisted in the Air Force. A brief stint of flying fighter jets in the 82nd Airborne ended in a dishonorable discharge, the details of which Roland didn’t disclose. What followed were some “uncertain years” that I had always feared Chris would fall into and never find his way out. But his desire to fly eventually led him to Georgetown University Hospital in D.C., where he piloted the trauma center’s helicopter. It was also were he met Sarah Higgins, a resident nurse in the E.R. They were married three months later. Roland was his best man.
“This place is huge!” Tyler said as we pulled up to the hotel.
“It’s just like the pictures,” Josh said, jumping out of the Jeep. “Only a thousand times bigger!”
Though structurally intact, the hotel’s once striking colors had faded: the white stone walls were mottled black with moss, and the terracotta of the archways and rooftops had flaked away. But the hotel was far from abandoned. Island birds were everywhere, their white-striped wings fluttering through the air. I spotted dozens of them in small nests tucked under eaves and beneath archways. They flew out of the entryway and through broken windows, content that this once-luxurious abode was their home. Their chirps and squawks echoed from the high shadows of the lobby, which looked even larger and more vacant now that all the furniture had been removed. And though the marble tiles hadn’t aged a day, they were caked with bird droppings. The hotel looked gutted without furniture, and the birds made it into nothing more than an elegant, oversized barn.
Max stood in the entryway, hands on hips, surveying the vast chamber as if ascertaining all that had fallen into disrepair. Josh spun in a circle and stared up at the ceiling. Tyler clapped his hands, then listened to the resulting echo and flapping of wings.
“Can we look around?” Josh asked, his shyness forcing him to direct the question at me.
“Is it okay?” I asked Max.
“You can’t break anything that’s not already broken,” Max replied.
“All right!” Josh said, and started off down one of the halls.
Tyler turned to Max. “Why is this place so run down?” But when Max’s eyebrow rose, he added, “I mean, what is it that you do out here?”
“You ever fish the Narragansett Bay? They’ve got northern pike big as your arm.”
“Why don’t you catch up with Josh,” I suggested. After Tyler had left, I shrugged. “Kids. You never know what they’ll say next.”
“They’re fine,” Max said. “To be honest, it’s kind of nice having ‘em around.”
“Wait a minute. I seem to remember you hating kids.”
“Me?” Max looked surprised. “No, I hate teenagers. Kids I enjoy.”
We walked through the lobby, past the old mailroom where a white cat was nursing a litter of kittens, and into the vacant cafeteria. Nearly every pane in the south window was broken. Pebbles of glass crunched beneath our feet as we entered the courtyard. The clock tower had toppled inward, leaving a trail of bricks all the way to the fountain. Iron Lungs lay on its side, half-buried in brick and weed.
“She went four years ago,” Max said in the way a rancher might reminisce about a favorite horse that had to be put down. “Happened in the middle of the night. Sounded like an earthquake. The vibration knocked out those windows. Had to turn the lantern on to see what happened. That’s the only time I’ve ever turned ‘er on. Still works like new.”
Signs of disrepair were everywhere: missing tiles dotted the rooftop; the four yards were waist-high in knapweed; windows were broken, gutters collapsed, sidewalks cracked. Everything looked as desolate as the lighthouse, which, still adorned in dead vines, hadn’t aged a day. From the looks of it, Max, a man who could fix anything, hadn’t lifted a finger to prevent the hotel’s decay.
A spotted calico came over and rubbed against Max’s leg. When he noticed my amused expression, he said in a gruff voice, “They keep the mice away.”
I stopped at the fountain and peered into its dry interior. The stone frogs still lined the perimeter. The bottom was covered in leaves, half-concealing one of the frogs that had fallen in. It wasn’t until that moment, sifting through my memories, that I realized why Mother had never visited. It hadn’t been out of cruelty or indifference, as I had once believed. How could a widow be expected to return to the very place she had fallen in love? She had done nothing more than run from his memory. How much more would she see, I wondered, if she were to look into this same fou
ntain?
I closed my eyes and listened to the sea breeze whistle through the gap in the courtyard wall. There was the trilling of the island birds, and though it was probably just my imagination, in the distance, the sigh of waves breaking. Despite the clock tower having fallen, I heard Iron Lung’s peal, signaling the start of class. And riding the wind, the rise and fall of boys’ laughter.
Josh and Tyler ran past me on their way to the southwest quad that had, for a single school year, been known as Oak Yard. They remained on the sidewalk, not out of respect, but because the weeds convinced them to go no farther. Invisible to the boys, an emptiness resided there. Perhaps it was because all the oaks were gone, or perhaps because the gazebo leaned to one side, its once-white paint peeled away to expose the brownish-gray of rotted wood.
The boys, out of breath from running, joined me at the fountain. They talked over each other, in a rush to relay all the places they had been—the auditorium, the swimming pool, some of the old classrooms. Max stood nearby, looking at his boots with a crooked smile.
Josh moved in circles, taking in his surroundings with the expression of someone who has been told of a place a hundred times, and was only now getting to see it for himself. “This place rocks,” he said. “I wish I went to school here.”
“This is where Dad flew the helicopter, isn’t it, Mr. Hawthorne?” Tyler asked. He stood on the rim of the fountain, each foot positioned on a frog.
“Yep, this is it.”
Tyler raised his arms, perhaps for balance, but the motion reminded me of how he had laid in the prow of the boat.
“It was at night, during a thunderstorm. Everyone was watching from the windows,” he said, stepping from frog to frog. “It was raining like crazy. He flew through thunder and lightning. The wind from the helicopter was so strong it blew stuff all over the place. The gutters, the trash cans, the rooftops. Even the oak trees!”
The Keeper of Dawn Page 32
