These Granite Islands

by Sarah Stonich

  She sighed heavily. “All right. I’ll wait.”

  “Wait?”

  He looked at her, but she turned and didn’t answer. He stepped to the door.

  “Goodnight, Momma.”

  ~ ~ ~

  At four o’clock the sheriff came. He sank into a chair, took off his hat, and wiped his brow with a grimy forearm. Isobel offered him a glass of cold water, which he drained in loud gulps.

  “Mrs. Howard, I got two crews out there searching now, and forest service got another two truckfuls coming up from Duluth.”

  He looked her in the eye and hitched his shoulders. “I know you’ve nothin’ to do with this mess yourself, Mrs. H, but folks think you might know something, since you’re so friendly with Cathryn Malley.”

  Isobel swallowed. “My being friends with her doesn’t mean I know where she is.”

  “Malley was here yesterday, wasn’t he?”

  “Well, yes, but only for a few minutes.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He was looking for Cathryn, of course.”

  “No one’s seen him since yesterday, no sign of his car.

  Nobody up at the mine’s seen him neither.”

  The sheriff looked intently at his empty water glass. “There’s some think Liam Malley knows something, or maybe even did something.”

  “Did something? Did what?”

  “Maybe something bad, like killed his wife and killed Jack Reese too. What do you think of that?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Isobel folded her arms tight against her chest. “He’s killed no one.”

  “You seem awfully sure. Just how come you’re so certain?”

  The sheriff stood, came too near to her, and rested his hand on the wall above her head. The smell of spent cigarettes and sweat made her stomach pitch.

  “I’m certain… ”

  She faltered. “I’m certain because I know Mr. Malley had only concern for his wife.”

  “Had?”

  “Has.”

  “Well, I don’t know much about Mr. Malley’s personal relations with his wife, ’cept of course that she was whoring round behind his back.”

  She glared. “Whoring?”

  He nodded. “Y’see? I do know somethin’ ’bout what’s between Reese and Mrs. Malley, or what was. That’s the one thing I know.”

  He mopped at his neck with a stained kerchief. “The other thing I’m certain of is that you’re about the only person who was onto what they were up to. Their plan, so to speak. Now I’m gonna ask you one simple question, and all I want is one word. You got any idea where Jack Reese and Cathryn Malley might be right now?”

  Isobel saw Louisa staring at them from the corner, hands behind her back. The child was pressed against the window as if trying to become part of it.

  Isobel shook her head; she was able to look him in the eye. Her answer was a low whisper. “No.”

  “No idea? Not even a theory?”

  “Sheriff Graham, you’ve been watching too many detective films.”

  He sneered. “No cause to be snotty. Well then, let me offer a few of my own theories, see if any of these sound plausible to you.”

  He tapped his nostril. “How ’bout they might have run off together?”

  “You want me to answer that? Because I can’t.”

  “His boat’s missing.”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t think that’s significant?”

  She stared at him. “Okay, try this one on. Drowned?”

  She shrugged. “They were both fine swimmers.”

  “Lost in the woods?”

  “Jack? Lost?”

  She shook her head as if he were pitifully stupid. “So, you have thought about this. Maybe they’re both dead. Maybe they could be… ah… suicides?”

  She dipped away from him, slipping out under his arm to get the counter between them. For a second she thought he might reach across and grab her, pull her back, and force her to look at him. The tears she’d been fighting all morning ran freely down her face. “They could be any of those things, I suppose.”

  He grunted. “Or none.”

  “That’s right. Or none.”

  She would not reach up to wipe her face. She would not let him see her struggle. “You understand what ‘aid and abet’ means? You understand that’s a crime?”

  She glared at him. “I could’ve hauled you down to the station, you know.

  I could’ve questioned you there. As a favor to Victor, I didn’t.”

  He turned. “Mrs. Howard, if you hear from any of them, you call me, understand? If your memory happens to shake anything loose, you call me.”

  After locking the door she went into the bathroom and vomited. When Louisa stuck her head in the door, Isobel was washing her face.

  “Momma. It’s time to go home. Please, can we?”

  Stepping out of the shop, Isobel felt eyes on her, stabbing, and shifting away just as suddenly. She kept her head down the length of Main Street, walking at a clip, Louisa skipping alongside to keep up.

  There were more people, crowds now. Volunteers had filtered into town, strange faces. A busload of teenage boys from Arrowhead Camp came to help search. Newspaper reporters had driven from the Twin Cities. Side streets were clogged with cars. Both hotels were full, and tents had been set up near the band shell to house spillover crews.

  She ducked into an alley and walked to the edge of town, her hand tight on Louisa’s. They climbed the grassy hill on the worn path the children had pounded out.

  Ahead they saw a group of Welsh miners milling on the slope beneath the Finnish shacks. The smoke from their pipes and cigarettes gathered into one column.

  One of them shouted, “There they come!”

  Isobel ducked off the path behind a sumac, shielding Louisa with her body. But the men were turning in another direction. She peeked out to see them gesture, not toward her, but to a line of a dozen Finnish miners zagging down the steep alley from their rows of blue and grey houses. They met at the plateau, and the groups merged and began talking. They were too far away for Isobel to make out specific words.

  A fat stranger in a fedora huffed up the hill, oblivious to Isobel and Louisa. He lumbered toward the men, close enough that Isobel could hear his laboured breathing. He swore as his bulky camera banged against his side, its dish of silver reflector fanned out and ready.

  Twenty yards past their hiding place he stopped, mopped his forehead, and called up to the group of men.

  “Where you fellas off to? Looking for the lovebirds?”

  The men turned as one unit. They forged into a line to begin descending the hill, snaking along the path. No one answered the photographer until they were nearly upon him. One of the Finns brushed past, jostling the camera.

  “We’re not looking for dem. We’re looking for da husband.”

  “Malley?”

  The man skipped sideways along next to the men. “Liam Malley? What the hell, he take a powder too?”

  Their strides were long, and the man couldn’t keep up. He stopped, flipped open his notebook, and pulled a pencil stub from the brim of his hat. “Say, anybody know how Malley’s spelled? That with an e or just a y?”

  One of the men passing by inclined his head toward the sumac and Isobel. “Ask her.”

  Isobel sat at the table watching Louisa make iced tea. “You sure you don’t want something to eat, Momma?”

  Isobel shook her head. Louisa sat and ate a crude sandwich made from uneven slices of bread. A glob of butter and something pale dripped out one side.

  Isobel shuddered. “What’s in that?”

  Louisa wiped her lip and held the sandwich aloft. “Boiled egg and coleslaw. Want some?”

  Isobel took her tea out to the screen porch off the kitchen. The wicker rocker cracked as she dropped into it. She rocked, staring out at the garden.

  Victor would know what to do. How would she ever explain… She thought about finding someone to
fetch Victor, bring him home now, tonight. But all available men and boys would be out looking for Jack and Cathryn. Liam too.

  Her hands curled to fists over her knees.

  Isobel froze in this posture, the rocker still beneath her. Where can they be? She tried to recall every word that had passed in her earshot that might offer some clue — places Jack or Cathryn had spoken of, offhand remarks about cities or sights they’d seen or wanted to see.

  She pressed her knuckles to her temples, as if the pressure would bring some revelation.

  When it grew completely dark she shifted into the living room and turned on a lamp. She sat on the couch and resumed where she’d left off. Her head was thudding. Louisa had dropped onto the living room rug, curled around a pillow and a book.

  Isobel slept, at least for a while, for the night she’d been staring out at had somehow slipped from the window and the mantel clock was chiming five. She felt drugged as she rose to lay an afghan over Louisa, asleep on the carpet. She limped into the kitchen to make coffee. Her foot had fallen asleep, and she kicked it against the stove leg to bring back feeling. Her dress was wrinkled. She poured water, ground beans, ran her fingers through her dirty hair, pulling it back in a hank. She was staring at the glass button on the coffeepot, willing it to perk. With hairpins in her mouth, she used one hand to hold the twist of hair and the other to pin it up. The doorbell rang.

  Cathryn? She ran, skidding on the tiles of the vestibule in her stockings. Fumbling with the lock she cried, “C’mon, c’mon!”Pulling open the door she sobbed, “Cathryn.”

  Sheriff Graham, his cap held to his middle, gave her a wearied look as she stepped outside. A young deputy stood just off to the left, yawning and plowing his fingers through his whiskers. Isobel sagged against the doorframe. Both men looked as if they’d been up all night. She looked from one to the other, gathering spit to ask, “Has she come back? Have you found her?”

  The sheriff pulled at his earlobe with sooty fingers. “Nope. But we found Liam Malley, Mrs. Howard.”

  “Where?”

  “In the woods at the bottom of the fire tower. Dead.”

  “Dead?”

  Isobel staggered. “Momma?”

  Louisa had crept up behind, rubbing her eyes. “Inside, sweetheart. Go back inside.”

  Her voice broke as she pushed the girl back and pulled the door shut behind her.

  “How? How did he die?”

  “Dunno, Mrs. Howard.”

  The sheriff’s face was devoid of emotion. “Maybe he fell. Might have been pushed. Could’ve jumped.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Please. Please, can you take this tent away?”

  She had buzzed the nurse and was feebly scratching at the plastic. The nurse leaned over to tuck the loose side of the tent back under the mattress. “Doctor Hertz said since you wouldn’t keep the mask on you have to have it.”

  “I don’t care what he said.”

  She slapped the plastic.

  “I’m trapped! If you don’t take it down, I will.”

  The woman sighed. “Fine, but it means either the mask again or tubes. Your choice.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care. Just please, get it away.”

  The old woman’s tone made the nurse pause. She examined the crumpled face and, lifting a corner of the plastic, slipped a tissue into Isobel’s hand.

  “There now. Wipe your eyes, dear.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Victor told her later how he and the boys caught a ride in from Chalmer’s Point in a forest service truck. As they climbed up into the truck bed, their lopsided bundles in tow, he saw his sons as she would. Thomas, his front milk teeth gone, had also lost much of his baby fat. Henry had grown two inches in as many months. Both were in need of haircuts, and the fine shag over their eyes had gone platinum from the sun. Their faces had browned to burnt butter, Thomas’s eyes more green than ever. Legs and arms were bruised and perforated with insect bites and scrapes. Victor had mended and washed their clothes the best he could, but the frays and stains of bacon grease and berry were immutable. As he hoisted Thomas onto the truck bed, he gave him a noisy smack on the cheek. The boy giggled, rubbing furiously where Victor’s whiskers had swiped him. “Papa! You’re all tickley!”

  The pale softness of spring had left their bodies, but as ragtag and scraped as they were, the boys were smiling, had flesh on their cheeks.

  Victor climbed into the cab next to the young ranger and laid his brown arm out the window to catch the breeze.

  “We could smell smoke all the way out to the island night before last. You boys been busy?”

  “Shit, that was just a campfire, Vic. We got lucky with the wind, only lost about eighty acres over at Granite Point.”

  Victor nodded toward the row of trucks lined up at the landing, the men, the long boats with the odd tackle. “Then why all these fellas hanging around?”

  The ranger glanced over his shoulder. “Can you roll up your window, Vic? You won’t want your kids to hear this.”

  Isobel was in the storage hall pushing the rolling ladder on its track. She had limbered the wheels with sewing machine oil and was pushing it along to distribute the oil. Louisa was on the floor at the far end of the room, watching.

  Isobel was thinking of the day Jack and Cathryn had taken her to climb the lookout tower. Cathryn had climbed far above her, nearly to the top. She had risen fearlessly, surefooted as a chimney sweep, until that last step, its halfinch difference compensating for the trapdoor above. She’d tumbled on that odd step, almost pitching over the low railing. Jack caught her.

  Once they were in the tower, Jack explained to them that the mind’s subconscious physical memory was so powerful, so adroit in its calculations, that climbing only two or three stairs set the formula. When a step of a slightly different measure was encountered, a person was sure to stumble over that fraction of space not recognized by the body’s swift memory.

  Isobel listened to Jack while she clung to the stovepipe in the middle of the tower room, the sway of the structure working on her stomach. Cathryn was leaning far out the window, as if on a dare, her arms eagle-winged, looking out at all that was laid before her, crowing, “Isn’t this glorious!”

  Liam must have fallen. That was it, then. It was an accident. Liam went looking for Jack and Cathryn at the tower, had climbed up in a rush — in the dark — and the last odd step had tripped him up.

  But pushed? Isobel shook her head. The sheriff had lost his mind. Out of the question. Liam Malley was a large man, agile. Tough. The idea of someone pushing him from the tower was idiotic. Besides. Who? Not Jack Reese. Certainly not Cathryn.

  Jumped? More nonsense. Liam was too level-headed. It would take more than Cathryn leaving for him to do such a thing. He was a devout Catholic, he knew suicide was a mortal sin.

  Besides, the search had just begun. Liam would never have lost hope so soon. There was still a good chance Jack and Cathryn would be found. Unless Liam had known differently. A sliver of doubt wedged into her mind, the sight of his pleading eyes. I love her you know. She remembered how he had corrected himself, said loved her.

  The gruff voice of the sheriff grated in her ear. Killed his wife and killed Jack Reese too. Isobel’s knuckles were pale on the ladder. No. Absolutely not. Never.

  “Momma, please stop now.”

  Isobel looked up. “But I’m almost finished.”

  “But you’ve been pushing that ladder forever. You’ve walked a mile with it, at least.”

  “Have I?”

  Isobel tested the ladder again, pushing it with her fingertip so that it glided easily to the far end of the hall.

  “What time is it, Lu?”

  “Five. Can we go now?”

  “You go ahead.”

  Isobel wiped her hands on the oily rag.

  “I’ll come home soon and make you something to eat.”

  “You said that twice before. I’m hungry.”

  “Okay, you go home and make yourself a
sandwich.”

  Louisa got up and dusted off her bottom. “Momma, can suicides go to heaven?”

  Isobel took a long breath. “I don’t know, Louisa.”

  “So, Mr. Malley? We don’t know if he’s in heaven” — the girl’s eyes grew round as she whispered — “or hell?”

  Isobel steadied herself by gliding her palm over the counter as she walked to her daughter. She pulled the small body to hers, fighting a sob. “Mr. Malley was good. He was a good man. I’m sure he’s in heaven.”

  Louisa’s small arms circled her mother’s waist. “Is Cathryn in heaven too?”

  Isobel let go and knelt down. “Cathryn isn’t in heaven and she isn’t in hell either.”

  “But the sheriff said — ”

  “Never mind him. He doesn’t know anything.”

  “But how do you know?”

  Louisa’s eyes filled. “I know because I know. If they were dead I would know.”

  Isobel gently wiped the tears away. “How?”

  Isobel pressed Louisa’s hand over her heart. “I would know it here.”

  Louisa had rolled up all the shades, and evening light filtered into the room. Isobel abandoned the hall, washed her hands, and sat. Fine work was out of the question; she shook too badly. But she felt the instinct to stay busy, hoping work would steady her, quiet the odd rattle of what had come loose. She tried to concentrate on the beret she was lining, knowing full well the whole thing might have to be torn out and redone later. The satin under her hand creased, her needle regularly missed its mark. She thought of the flurry of activity going on out at Granite Point. Scrabbling through rubble for bones. She envisioned the great rafters of the cottage fallen like a spine, a shipwreck in a burnt forest. Wisps of smoke posing thin questions in the air. Exhausted men searching the woods, futilely dragging the lake. She could stop it all with one word to the sheriff.

  I could stop it.

  She had gone through Cathryn’s satchel again. Couldn’t believe she had missed it before. Opening the satchel wide, she flipped it over and shook it. The gold wedding band bounced into her lap. The ring was in her dress pocket now, the sparse weight of it resting on her thigh.

  “I could stop it all now.”