On Hurricane Island

by Ellen Meeropol

  “Precious little. There’s another island nearby, but I think we’re pretty far from the mainland. Until you told me, I didn’t even know this island was named Hurricane. Hey, you study hurricanes. That’s got to be a good omen, don’t you think?”

  “Terrific,” Gandalf says. “What else?”

  “I get the impression the facility is pretty new. One big building with at least three floors. Of course I’ve never been outside, except in the courtyard.”

  “What about other prisoners?”

  “No idea. We’re kept locked in our rooms except for the exercise yard. Or interrogation. I’ve never even seen any other prisoners. Except you.”

  “And you’ve never actually seen me.” Gandalf pauses. “Tell me why they brought you here, if not your lawsuit?”

  Norah makes that choked-laugh again. “There are so many reasons. It could be my blog. I do tend to rant. Or my father—I’m a red diaper baby. Do you know what that means?”

  “That you have Communist parents?”

  “Uh-huh, and grandparents. My dad was a Black Panther organizer in Harlem. He went underground to avoid COINTELPRO. My sister and I were constantly harassed by the feds, in school, on the playground, everywhere. One agent played Scrabble with us, that’s how much time he spent at our kitchen table. One day he warned my mom that she was about to be arrested, and she went underground too.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “My sister and I were farmed out to relatives. Eventually my dad gave up on the possibility of democracy in this country and moved to Liberia. Mom said she couldn’t stomach one more group of well-meaning people gathered in a living room thinking they could change the world. She and my sister grow orchids in Florida.”

  “Your family does not sound like much of a threat.”

  “Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

  “What’s your lawsuit about?” Gandalf isn’t actually interested in the legal details, but Norah needs to talk, and maybe the case will shed light on what these people want.

  “You’ve heard of Posse comitatus?” Norah asks. “The statute that forbids the military from butting into domestic peacekeeping?”

  She should have paid more attention in civics class. “Not really.”

  “When the Army was called in to crush the lingering rebellions after the Civil War, Congress passed the act to keep the military out of civilian matters. Of course, everyone ignores it. Bush-the-shrub signed funding acts for quasi-military detention camps, poised to receive civilians in the name of stopping terrorism.”

  “Like this one.”

  “Uh-huh,” Norah says. “Obama claimed he closed them down.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know about this?” Gandalf voted for him twice despite Jess’s warnings that he was corporate through and through.

  “That’s hard to believe. Anyway, Homeland Security and the military keep the program alive, and the Republicans pump money into them. We filed a lawsuit, but it’s a catch-22. They won’t let you challenge the statute unless it has affected you personally. Now I finally have a strong case, if I ever get out of here. Ironic, huh?”

  Gandalf feels a small rush of hope. Maybe Norah brought her incarceration on herself; maybe her activism got her in trouble. In that case, she herself has nothing to worry about. Bringing her here is a mistake, and the authorities are certain to figure that out pretty quickly. If only they will give her a chance to explain before they start interrogating her.

  “Norah …”

  “What?”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  Norah doesn’t answer.

  “The interrogations. Did they, you know, use torture?”

  As the silence lengthens, Gandalf tries to control the R-rated images rolling across her retina. And Jess says she lacks imagination.

  “They didn’t rape me,” Norah says, “or tear out my fingernails, if that’s what you’re asking. No waterboarding.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Before every session they kept me in an icy cold room for forty-eight hours. Bright lights, music blaring—vile, awful music. Violent lyrics, misogynist, you know? No food, just water. No clothes, either.” Norah’s voice is flat. “They questioned me naked. There were a lot of them. All men. They made crude comments. Racist and hateful. About my body.” There is another pause. “About what they planned to do to me.”

  Gandalf tries to think of a comment, some words to offer into the silence, but none come.

  “You know what is even worse than the cold and the music? Being alone. Twenty-three hours most days, with one hour in the exercise yard with a guard. Maybe that doesn’t sound that bad to you, but it’s driving me insane. Even makes me miss my ex-husband and I can’t stand the guy. I almost look forward to interrogations, for the company. Pathetic, huh?”

  “I am so sorry.” Gandalf feels herself blushing; what a stupid thing to say. “Did you, um, tell them what they wanted to know?”

  Norah’s voice gets steely. “I didn’t tell them anything. Anyway, they asked me about people I’d never heard of. Tried to get me to say I knew these people, had been in cells with them.” She pauses. “But I worry all the time, every minute, about how far these people will go to get the answers they want. You’ve heard the stories of prisoners being tortured to death?”

  “Maybe in Egypt or Iraq,” Gandalf says. “That couldn’t happen here, to American citizens. Anyway, I have nothing to hide.”

  “And you think that will help you?” Norah’s voice breaks on the last two words.

  Gandalf squeezes her eyes tight, tries to slow her breathing. A picture creeps into her mind: Norah, naked, her body on display to a jeering audience of soldiers. She does not even know what Norah looks like, except that her hand is small and dark. On impulse, Gandalf reaches down, between the bed and the wall, searching for the hole in the molding. Norah’s hand isn’t there, but Gandalf’s fingers touch the shavings on the floor. She brings a clump to her nose and sniffs.

  “Norah,” she says. “Why do you suppose there is all this sawdust here?”

  “What sawdust?”

  “On my floor, near the molding.” She pushes some through the hole.

  “I don’t believe it!” Norah’s whisper explodes into the silence.

  “What?”

  “The sawdust. Don’t you see?” Norah says. “That means they cut this hole on purpose. After they built the rooms. So we would talk to each other. I am so stupid. I should have expected this. They’re fucking listening to every word we say.”

  FRIDAY

  SEPTEMBER 9

  12. RAY, 10:23 A.M.

  Grabbing his green wool shirt, Ray eases the screen door closed behind him, and sits on the stoop to pull on his sneakers. Other than the determined wind chasing swollen clouds across blue sky, the storm isn’t broadcasting itself yet. But Ray can feel it. The weather pundits can’t display gut feelings on a full-color moving graphic, but any fisherman, even a mostly retired one, recognizes the promise and the warning.

  This one is going to be big. He’ll remind Austin to pack a bag tonight. No chance she’ll get off Hurricane once the storm hits. He sure doesn’t feel good about her bunking down there, not one bit. Bad enough she has to spend her days in that place, even with Nettie’s cousins working there.

  Ray hesitates at the intersection with the harbor road, still thinking about Austin on Hurricane, and Bert and Cyrus too. Maybe he can pry some information from Bert about the goings-on out there. Bert usually ferries back to Storm Harbor mid-morning for biscuits and honey at Mitch & Ruthie’s. Bert claims he goes there for the lemonade, but everyone knows how lonely the guy is even though he’s kin to half the island. Or maybe because of that. Everyone knows all the miserable details about how his first wife left him to raise Evelina by himself, and then he married a girl from Rockland and the breast cancer got her, not two years after their boy Gabe was killed in Iraq. No man should have to deal with so much pain.

  Sure enough, Bert sits at his fa
vorite table in the corner, his chair leaning back on two legs against the pine wall. He sees Ray and raises his fingers half an inch off his glass in greeting.

  “Morning, Ruthie,” Ray calls to the woman behind the counter. “Coffee?”

  “Coming up. Anything doing out there?”

  “Just some wind.” Ray sits across from Bert. “Crossing bad?”

  “A bit. Tomorrow’ll be the bitch.”

  “Yup.” Ray pauses. “I wish Austin didn’t have to be over there.”

  Bert tilts his head sideways and closes one eye. “Might be pretty bad.”

  “Thanks for nothing.” Ray sips his coffee in silence for a few minutes. “Storm’s not the only thing eating at me. It’s that place you work at. What do they do over there?”

  Bert shrugs. “I just ferry folks over and back.”

  “You don’t hear anything?”

  “Bits of stuff.”

  “Don’t worry you none?”

  “They pay well, and I need the job.”

  “Well, it worries me, Austin being there.”

  “You know Henry Ames is in charge?” Bert says. “Lissa’s dad.”

  Ray swirls his cup, watching the thin film of oil eddy. Gabe was planning to marry Lissa after Iraq. Good thing the girl moved away, and Bert doesn’t have to see her in the IGA with some other guy’s kids.

  “Is Ames solid?”

  “He’ll do. Seems a bit off these days though. Him and his sidekick both.”

  “What about Cyrus? He still working over there?”

  Bert nods.

  “Can I trust him to look out for Austin?”

  Bert does that funny clownish thing with his head again, tilting it and closing one eye, like he can see everything clearly that way. “Cyrus is hard to figure.”

  “I’d sure appreciate if you keep an eye on my girl,” Ray says.

  Bert nods but doesn’t answer. Ray takes a long swallow of coffee, then tucks a dollar bill under the saucer. He turns to leave.

  “Ray,” Bert whispers. “I’ll watch out for her.”

  Buffeted by the blustery wind on the sidewalk, Ray studies the dark shadow of Hurricane Island across the sound. Even with Bert’s help, he doesn’t feel good about this. Austin never was an easygoing kid, any more than her mother was. And the girl was darn persistent with all her questions last night. But no one is more mulish than Nettie, not when she doesn’t want to talk about something. He’s been trying for decades to get her to talk about what happened to her family out on Hurricane. The only time she ever opened up was when they were teenagers and he got home after riding out Hurricane Edna in the cave. She had been beside herself with worry and fury, certain that he would die out there. When he returned safely, and she was giddy with relief, she told him her great aunt Margaret used to live on Hurricane Island and disappeared. Disappeared how? Ray wanted to know more but Nettie said she only knew fragments of the story. And when he brought it up a few weeks later, she refused to talk about Margaret or Hurricane at all.

  The year Abby was born, Nettie’s mother died and left her a packet of letters from Margaret. That night Ray found Nettie nursing Abby and weeping over the pale blue papers, her tears dampening Abby’s black curls. Nettie wouldn’t talk about the letters and the next morning she sewed them into a cloth packet which she hid in the closet in the baby’s room.

  Ray knows the local history and rumors about the conflicts just before the quarry company folded, about the strike and the bombing blamed on the anarchists or socialists, whatever they were, whatever the difference is and who cares now, anyway. He has his suspicions about what’s in the letters, but no matter how many times he tells her it’s ancient history, and no one cares any more, no matter how many times he tries to talk about the hole in her family, she refuses. Let it be, she says.

  By now he’s mostly stopped asking, but he has never stopped feeling shut out by Nettie’s refusal. And he has never stopped wondering if that hole in her family might have somehow, he isn’t sure how, had something to do with how difficult it was for Nettie to raise up her own daughter.

  He scans the sky. Not a drop of rain yet, but the atmosphere is high voltage. Like tiny electrons are zinging interlocking circles in the air around his head, giving off pops of invisible energy. This storm’s going to be a doozy.

  13. AUSTIN, 11:15 A.M.

  Clutching the lead to the prisoner’s handcuff-to-waist harness restraint, Austin presses her thumb carefully in the center of the security pad. The door to the exercise yard opens with an electronic whirr. She often imagined this kind of scenario during the security-vetting period between being hired and starting training. She pictured herself moving a prisoner from cell to cell, jingling a big bunch of keys on a brass ring. Of course, brass rings are outdated—modern security is all about retinal and fingerprint scans. But she still gets a kick being trusted with such an important job.

  Crossing the threshold into the yard, Austin and the prisoner look up. Clouds chase each other across an indigo sky.

  “Guess that storm is coming,” Austin says. “The hurricane.”

  “Yes. Gena.” The prisoner starts walking the perimeter of the yard.

  Austin falls into step beside her, still holding the leash. Once in the secured yard, she’s allowed to remove the restraint, but she’s more comfortable keeping it in place. No way the prisoner can escape anyway—the building totally encloses the courtyard and for this hour the locks are programmed for Austin’s fingerprint. Wait a minute—couldn’t a prisoner escape by overpowering a guard and forcing the guard’s finger against the pad? But Henry and Tobias must have thought of that. She’s silly to worry, especially today. This old lady is not likely to try to disable her with a judo move. She smiles at the thought.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” Austin says. “You know, last night at dinner my grandfather couldn’t stop yapping about some old-time hurricane that followed the same path as this one.”

  “Edna,” the prisoner says. “September 1954.”

  “Wasn’t that before you were born?”

  “Yes, but I study hurricanes professionally.”

  “Why would you do that?” Can’t hurt to talk a little, can it? She might even learn something important. For the investigation.

  “They fascinate me. I was visiting my grandparents in Florida when Hurricane Donna hit,” the prisoner says. “It’s one of my first memories, watching the destruction from their bay window and playing in the ruined yard afterwards.”

  “Is it really true that there are more destructive storms now, with climate change and all, and they’re going to get worse and worse?” Austin heard that on TV and it worries her.

  “The data confirm that they are statistically more frequent and severe, but that doesn’t predict the future.”

  “I’ve always wondered something else. Why do they use those weird, old-lady names, like Gena?” Austin glances at the prisoner. Was that an insulting thing to say?

  “Actually now they use both male and female names. But for many years, in their misogynist wisdom, they decided that the way storms shift directions suddenly is a female trait.”

  “Where do the names come from? I mean, who decides?”

  “An international meeting of meteorologists. Every year they vote on the list, following the alphabet.” The prisoner pauses, then adds, “If only we could choose our given names; I would never have chosen mine.”

  “What is it?”

  “You don’t know my name?”

  Austin shrugs. “We use numbers here.”

  “What’s my number?”

  That couldn’t be secret, could it? “524.”

  “Well, my name is Gandalf.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Didn’t you ever read The Hobbit? Lord of the Rings?”

  “Isn’t that a movie?”

  The prisoner frowns, like Austin is really stupid. “They’re books by J.R.R. Tolkien,” she says. “Gandalf is a wizard
.”

  “You’re named after a wizard? Does that mean you’re supposed to be magic or wise or something?”

  “Or something. When I was about twenty, I read all of Tolkien’s books searching for wisdom,” Gandalf says. “I did not find any.”

  “I have an unusual name too. Austin.”

  Gandalf looks at her sharply, as if her name triggers a memory. She mumbles something Austin doesn’t catch, something about apricots, then asks, “For Jane Austen?”

  “For the city. My dad’s from there.”

  It’s none of Gandalf’s business that Austin’s dad returned to Texas two weeks before her second birthday. Or maybe he went somewhere else, who knows. Her only image of him comes from a photo. He’s standing in his lobster gear at the town dock with a silly grin on his face. Austin found it when she was about eight and stuck it on the mantel, right between the formal picture of Gran and Pops on their wedding day and an old-timey brown photograph of some children standing stiff and formal in front of a potbelly stove. Gran snatched the snapshot down and gave it back to Austin. “That deadbeat doesn’t deserve a place in our parlor.”

  “It’s amazing that your grandfather lived through Edna way out here,” the prisoner says. “That was an astonishing storm. Does he remember details? I would love to talk to him about it.”

  Uh-uh. Leave her family out of this. The prisoner is acting like they’re friends or something. This conversation might be getting awfully close to fraternizing. Austin unlocks the prisoner’s harness and gives her a small shove towards the center of the courtyard.

  “You only get an hour out here. Better make the most of it.”

  14. TOBIAS, 11:31 A.M.

  In the basement of the administration building, Tobias studies the monitors. Number 524 jogs around the exercise yard. The new girl leans against the shingled wall, looking pleasingly young and ripe. He is picturing female guards wearing uniforms with short skirts when his phone rings.