Compass Rose

by John Casey

Since when did she worry about certainty? She used to thrive on taking chances. She used to be good at keeping her balance. Now she was sprawling again. She’d been wrong about Dick’s files, fallen out of a tree, got poked in the face with a stick. Fainted dead away in Captain Teixeira’s radio room. Losing her footing right and left. And no skipping over that she’d opened the window to Walt, lost her grip. Falling was when she stood still as he unpeeled her bicycle suit; falling was when she was nothing but breath, so weightless that he hoisted her up and swung her onto the bed, nothing to it.

  A trickle of heat in her. Immediately chilled. If anyone found out. Him and his “This is like a dream come true.” Ripe for telling. A Deirdre O’Malley story.

  She shook it away, back into the pile of her other mistakes—all in a clump all since … when? Since Rose’s play. Her headlong charge at Rose. Her tin ear. No, worse than a tin ear. Something was wrong with her inner sense, whatever part of the brain it was that gave her a moment of insulation between her first impulse and rushing ahead. But how could she have known about the Sawtooth S&L’s holding Dick’s mortgage? Stupid girl! Mr. Salviatti told her.

  Never mind if she wasn’t good enough—what if she didn’t know what was really going on? She used to be pleased by how alert she was. But now, if she was sleepwalking, how would she find her way?

  chapter eighty-two

  Jack sent Elsie a copy of the plans for his new property. The attached handwritten note read: “To save you another trip to my office.” The first page showed a bridge across Pierce Creek and a raised boardwalk leading to a gazebo in the nature sanctuary. The architect’s drawing included a woman in a wheelchair on the boardwalk. Jack included a copy of a letter from Elsie’s old boss at Natural Resources, approving the plan and praising Jack for “encouraging public access in a way that minimizes impact on the environment.”

  Elsie leafed through the plans in a rush of anger. The second time through she made a more careful and bitter assessment. The wheelchair was a shrewd touch. Natural Resources was always on the defensive about access to nature for the disabled.

  Page two was a map that showed a small parking lot in place of Dick’s front yard, another smaller footbridge across the creek, and a path and a ramp to the boardwalk. All in all, Jack would lose only a narrow strip of the three acres to the general public. The royal road was from Sawtooth, across the downstream edge of Dick’s three acres. There was plenty of room for the three new cottages, daintily sketched in. The contractor for the boardwalk, bridges, gazebo, and cottages was to be Wormsley and Fitzgerald. So Eddie and Phoebe had rolled over. And, Elsie noticed, the company was no longer Wormsley and Son. Had Phoebe finally edged Walt out? Or did Walt just get an urge to ride off on his motorcycle into the north woods? A small bubble of relief there.

  Page three was another map. Everett Hazard’s old barn was to be the Hazard Memorial Library. The house was still there, labeled “private dwelling,” and in the field two more cottages. So—six house sales and six new Sawtooth memberships—Jack would rake in almost two million dollars. Of course, he’d have to pay Eddie’s company to build the five cottages. Those would cost Jack—what?—a half million. And Jack would have to pay something to Mary and JB, but just the difference between the Hazard property and Mary’s old restaurant. For Dick and May, Jack was throwing in a small rickety house in Snug Harbor and an unplowed field that didn’t even border a paved road—getting those items off his books. She was pretty sure he had a tax dodge in there somehow. By her rough calculation Jack would come out with a net profit of a million and change. Jack’s making money wasn’t painful in itself; he’d always been annoyingly rich. It was his triumph that was hateful. Half by bullying, half by finagling, he’d rearranged people’s lives and won. What’s more, she counted it as his fault that she was angry with most of the people she cared about.

  She was about to shriek when Rose emerged from her bedroom. Half asleep, she shuffled to the bathroom. Midday. Rose’s diva schedule.

  Elsie had given in to the show at Sawtooth. Rose had sat across from Elsie at the dining table and listed the arguments for her singing and not singing, laying out the fingers of her right hand and her left hand.

  “I owe it to the rest of the cast.” (Elsie recognized a Mary Scanlon note). “Of course, Uncle Jack deserves to be hurt. But May told me that she can’t bear it if I don’t sing. She says she’d feel worse about that than having to move. And she says they’re going to have to move anyway. But you think … you think I’d be a selfish little shit.”

  Rose let her head fall on her hands and began to cry.

  “No,” Elsie said. “I never said that.” She saw Rose as a child again. She saw Rose being pulled back and forth across the splinters of the grown-up fight with Jack. She said, “It’s okay, it’s okay. We did what we could. You did as much as anybody.”

  Rose had kept on crying. “It’s okay,” Elsie said. “Mary wants you to sing. May wants you to sing.”

  Rose lifted her head. Elsie waited for Rose to look at her, to look to her for the final word.

  Rose sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She went to the kitchen sink and splashed her face. “I guess,” Rose said. She patted herself dry with a dish towel. “I guess they know I’m only really happy when I’m—”

  “Onstage.” Elsie didn’t mean it to sound as sharp as it came out.

  “No,” Rose said. She turned around. She wasn’t angry. She sighed and said, “It’s not like that. It’s more like when I’m singing, I’m more music than I’m me.” She shrugged. “It’s hard to explain.”

  Elsie was irritated by Rose’s “I’m more music than I’m me,” dismissed by Rose’s “It’s hard to explain.” She’d been trying to comfort Rose, she’d invoked Mary and May. She’d hoped, of course, that Rose would come back to her. All right, then. It wasn’t enough to be moved by Rose’s tears and to coo a few soothing words. And she hadn’t even done that all that well. “Only really happy … onstage.” That toad of a remark had hopped out of her mouth before she could stop it—a reflex of all her old quarrels with a difficult child.

  Lucky for Rose, then, that she had Mary and May to swaddle her. Elsie didn’t let that thought hop out of her mouth. With some effort, she said, “Rose. Rose, I know that sometimes I’m a difficult mother.”

  “It could be worse.”

  Elsie had laughed.

  And now here was Rose at midday in her nightgown and bathrobe. Elsie erased the word diva from her thoughts. She said, “How’d it go?”

  “Fine.”

  “You want some breakfast?”

  “Maybe later.”

  “You know, if you don’t eat at least a little breakfast the first hour you’re up, your body thinks that—”

  “I know, I know. I know what my body thinks, thank you.”

  Rose stopped her slow shuffle and shook her head. She turned toward Elsie. “Mom, I almost forgot. Tomorrow’s the day everyone’s going to help May with her new field. Well, not everyone. Mary’s got to work at Sawtooth, but JB’s going, and Deirdre and—”

  “I know. Deidre’s picking me up in her jeep.”

  “I’m going but not till later. May said I should sleep in. So I hope you can get there early.”

  “I’ll be early.”

  “This means a lot to May after everything that’s happened.”

  “I know.”

  “You were late when we all went to May’s house.”

  Elsie waited until Rose was brushing her teeth, her knuckles stopping her mouth while she worked on her back molars. Elsie said, “Let’s try to change the rhythm. I may have a tin ear, but I’ve got a sense of rhythm. So I won’t nag you, you won’t nag me. I’ve been angry at Jack and in a bad mood because I screwed up. You’re working hard, you’re doing a grown-up job, and you should get to be a little temperamental.” Rose pulled the toothbrush out and leaned over to rinse her mouth from the spigot. Elsie said, “But I think we could both—”

  “
Mom, I get it.”

  chapter eighty-three

  When Elsie got to the field she recognized the place. At first she just took in Eddie on his tractor and the little crowd of volunteers, but then she saw the row of black locusts. Her sticks were still there, the two top ones dangling askew.

  It took them a while to get organized, since Eddie kept deferring to May and May kept deferring to Eddie. Phoebe said, “You’ve got a plan, Eddie. Don’t keep it a secret. I’ve got to get back to Sawtooth.”

  Everyone got a crowbar or a spade and lined up. Eddie said, “Okay—put the rocks here in my front scoop. When I’ve got a load, I’ll dump them over there. If you’ve got a crowbar, stick it in a ways. If you hit a rock, find an end and pry her up. Get someone with a spade to dig around and loosen her up.”

  The grass was still wet with dew, but the sun was high enough to make it hot. Before long their boots and pant cuffs were soaked and their shirts were getting wet with sweat. Eddie’s tractor engine chugging along behind them was noisy enough, but it was the rocks clattering into the front scoop that made conversation impossible.

  Eddie yelled, “Whoa!” and drove off to dump a load. Deirdre said to JB, “You’ll ruin your back if you don’t bend your knees. Watch how Tran does it.”

  JB said, “Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs,” and May laughed. JB, encouraged by this, said, “This kind of work is in my blood. Listen, O’Malley, I’ll bet you don’t know who’s the second-most-important man in Irish history.”

  “I’ll bite,” Tom said. “Who?”

  “The man who invented the wheelbarrow and got the Irish up on their hind legs.”

  “Oh, God,” Deirdre said. “Not that old wheezer.”

  Eddie came back, shut off the engine, and rearranged them in pairs. May with Tom, Deirdre with JB, Elsie with Tran.

  It was satisfying, more satisfying than weeding Miss Perry’s garden. Deeply satisfying to probe with the crowbar and find the edges of a big rock. Dig under it and then have at it with the bar. If it didn’t budge, Tran would get another crowbar and the two of them would pry at it until it tore loose from the earth. All shapes and sizes. Some the size of a loaf of bread, some as big as a car tire. Elsie probed around one that turned out to be long and narrow, a piece of granite shaped like a mummy sleeping bag, the foot end angling up. Eddie dumped a load and came back. He lowered a corner of the front scoop under the lip of rock that Elsie had dug free. He drove forward a half foot, gave a delicate pull on the hydraulic control. The rock tipped up a few inches. Eddie yelled, “Oh, boy! You found the granddaddy!” Another grunt of the engine, another twitch on the hydraulic, and another and then another, until the rock reared up as tall as a man. They all stood admiring it, admiring Eddie, admiring themselves—looking back and admiring their wake of trampled grass and empty pockets of dark earth.

  Eddie shut off the engine. “I thought for sure she’d break in two. Let’s eat lunch and think what to do with her. Won’t fit in the bucket. Maybe put a chain on her and drag her. Make a hell of a tombstone.”

  They sat in the shade and ate their sandwiches and drank from their thermoses. Elsie was savagely hungry and thirsty. She should’ve brought two sandwiches.

  May said, “Is Rose going to come?”

  “She said she would,” Elsie said. “She’s sleeping in. She had a show last night. Deirdre left her a map.”

  “That’s good,” May said. “Thank you, Deirdre.”

  Eddie came back from walking around and shaking his legs out. He said to Deirdre, “I see you got a ball on the back of your jeep. I should’ve thought of that. You think you could go back to my place and hitch up a wagon? We could put the little rocks in it. Save me going back and forth with the tractor every ten minutes.”

  “Sure. I’ll pick up Rose on the way.”

  “You might see if Dick’s at a stopping point with that skiff he’s building,” May said. “He’s over there in Eddie’s shed, the big one with the tin roof.”

  Elsie lay on her back and pulled her knees to her chest. Three hours of digging, tugging, and lifting had knotted her up some, but as she let her back relax, she felt light and hollow. She heard JB say, “I’ll come along. I’d like to see what a boat looks like half done.” Out of nowhere, out of the sky, out of the ground she lay on, a ferocious desire filled her. It was as unasked for and as real as a dream. She hugged her knees closer to her, she saw Dick working, she smelled wood shavings, she felt herself coming into the shed, not a word, just the air between them growing so dense they could sense each other through it.

  She rolled onto her side, pressed her cheek into the ground to stop her trembling.

  Deirdre said to JB, “You’re just trying to get out of work. Never mind. Hop on in.”

  Elsie listened to the jeep jounce and rattle away.

  “I doubt Dick’s going to come,” May said. “If he’s got to wait on something for his skiff, he’ll go over to Wickford, look at a lobster boat might be for sale. He say anything to you about that?”

  Tran said, “Maybe Wickford. Maybe New Bedford. He’s looking all over. Lot of things on his mind, but finding a boat is number one.”

  Eddie walked around the upright slab of rock, came back, and asked Tran to help him put a chain around it. “I’ll keep her propped up, you get the chain on snug, then you back off and I’ll tip her over. Then you come back and fasten the chain to the cable from the winch. Then I’ll go over there and snake her in.”

  Elsie propped her head up on her elbow. She hoped what they were going to do would be brutal enough to distract her. She said, “How come you just don’t drag it with the tractor?”

  “That winch there could move a house. The tractor’d either rear up or spin. You’ll see. In fact, come on—I’ll let you run it.”

  Eddie had Tran twist the chain around so the hook would end up on top. He gave the rock a little shove, and over it went. Elsie had expected more of a seismic thud. Eddie moved the tractor; Tran unreeled the cable and fixed its hook through a link on the tail end of the chain. Eddie climbed down beside Elsie. He pointed to a red plastic knob on an upright lever. “Okay. Give that a pull. Just don’t run that rock up onto your toes.” Nothing much at first, just taking up the slack. Then the cable went taut and the chain scratched into the rock. Elsie left her hand on the knob, a light buzz in her palm. The reel turned steadily. There was a visible but surprisingly noiseless tension on the cable, no thicker than her little finger. The enormous rock began to move. It wagged a little at first, as if trying not to come, then gave in and swam straight toward her, thick end first, like a whale.

  This was wizardry; this was hands-on witchcraft. She’d used a walkie-talkie, seen radar and sonar screens, wondered a little at invisible waves, but now it was her hand pulling a ton of rock across the ground she stood on.

  Eddie said, “Whoa, there. Close enough. Now you want to push that lever the other way, just a touch. Give us a little slack so we can unhook her.”

  She thought she ought to feel her own physical strength dwarfed, she ought to feel put in her place. In a whole morning of poking, prying, and lifting, she hadn’t moved as much weight as this winch had in the last minute. So what a puny little thing she was … Didn’t feel that way. The morning’s work had got her blood up—she’d flushed every muscle in her body with blood and oxygen, and that rush reached every capillary and nerve in her skin. She’d moved rocks; she’d moved a boulder; she could drink a pond dry; she could run all the way through the woods, kick open the door to Eddie’s shed, and make Dick hold on to her furious body.

  The hook on the chain was wedged tight in the link. Eddie tapped the next link over with the ball of his ball-peen hammer, and everything popped open. The chain slid down either side of the rock into two puddled heaps. Eddie turned the tractor around, eased the lip of the front scoop under the rock, and lifted it a few inches. Elsie pulled the chain free. Even through her gloves, she could feel the heat in the links.

  Eddie said, �
��Let’s see if we can get another couple of hours out of this crew. This isn’t work you can do all day. If we push too long someone’ll end up dropping a rock on their foot. I’m kind of worried about that old fellow. Maybe you can get him to talking every so often; that’ll give him a rest. Least if that girlfriend of Charlie’s doesn’t get after him. When they get back, you might let her know to go easy.”

  Sweet, mild Eddie. A universal donor. Another kind of man might have sensed the state she was in.

  They heard the jeep before they saw it. The rattling was louder with the empty cart in tow. Just the three of them. May said, “I didn’t expect you’d get him. Was he there?”

  “Yes,” Rose said, “but he was just leaving. He said to tell you not to wait supper. He’ll get something to eat on his way back, and then he’s going to work some more on the skiff. Might be late.”

  Elsie wished it wasn’t Rose letting her know where he’d be.

  chapter eighty-four

  The sea breeze came up while they ate lunch, not so salty as down by the marsh. A bit of pine in the air, a bit of forest mast, but mostly crushed grass and turned earth. May breathed deep. They’d got the better part of an acre cleared of rocks, and she was grateful for how hard everyone was working. That was part of why she felt so good. Another part was that what with sticking their crowbars and spades in and prying the stones up, they were loosening the soil, letting it breathe. She liked having a commonsense reason for feeling good.

  She’d caught herself humming as she’d shoveled. If she went on like this, pretty soon she’d be like Mary Scanlon, bursting into song whenever she felt like it. But then May thought, If that’s how Mary feels, let her.

  Mary had told her how Mr. Salviatti had gone in to see Mr. Aldrich, taking Mary in tow. “I don’t know why. He talked about fresh peas and then he said, ‘Ask Mary,’ and I nodded, and he said, ‘Fresh corn, a half hour from stalk to kettle. Ask Mary.’ I couldn’t get a word in, but neither could Jack. Finally Mr. Salviatti leans in and says, ‘Look, Jack. We don’t want that land for more houses. I’m in the road business, I know what it would cost to put a road in there. And water and sewage. No ocean view from that lot. We might not make our money back. What makes money for Sawtooth? It’s our oceanfront, it’s our tennis club and yachts. And it’s our good food. So this way we have vertical integration. Mrs. Pierce knows how to grow good vegetables; Mary knows how to cook them. And I know how to make sure nobody has problems.’ ” Mary had laughed. “People have been wondering for years. He was joking. You know how I know? Going down the stairs from Jack’s office, I said, ‘So how come you had me along?’ And he says, ‘You’re the muscle.’ And we both cracked up. You know what I think? Jack got his way with legal shenanigans and throwing his weight around, but he’s cut himself off. He’s up in his office with nothing but his maps and files. You’ve got a gang of friends. It’s them—them and your way with your old garden—that got Mr. Salviatti on your side. And he figures he’ll have more fun with us raggle-taggle gypsies. I’ve got to cook at Sawtooth on Saturday, but I’m bringing Mr. Salviatti over Sunday afternoon. His car can’t make it over that jeep trail, so we’ll use my pickup. It’s late in the season but time enough for some root vegetables. Turnips, parsnips, celeriac. You could use some of those rocks you pull up to line a root cellar. Eddie could help you make one. In the fall you could have a barn raising, a little red-cedar barn. It’d be grand.”