by P. S. Duffy
Ida moved back to the rinse tub. “I’d say that you should keep clear of George. He’s not right in the head. Set them fires down at Mather’s beach, didn’t he? All lined up in a row. He was a sharpshooter in the war and a good one. Lord knows what he’ll do next. And I wouldn’t tell your mother what I told you. People have their own truth and sometimes that works out best. Whether Ebbin’s alive or not, what I see is she’s keeping the books again. And a right good thing. Didn’t she and Duncan go to it last week—her claiming he’d lost an account from pure neglect. His Highness warning her to keep out of his affairs and just mind the books, and her saying right back there’d soon be no affairs to stay out of nor books to keep.” Ida shook the forking stick at him. “Don’t stand there with your mouth agape. Are you a help or a hindrance? Fork over that next sheet or move out of my way.”
“Wait. Are we in trouble?”
“Not now, we aren’t. You seen all them letters she’s writing. Folks about might just say your grandfather has a new partner, and they might just be right one day. Signs each one ‘H. E. MacGrath.’ ”
“Yeah?”
“Those initials is the opposite of her brother’s, if you’ll notice.”
“What’s that mean?”
Ida paused, hand on hip, and looked up at the sky. “I don’t rightly know. Just came to me is all. Now, I want you to take some of my cinnamon muffins over to Mr. Heist. He’s doing right poorly. A spring cold’s my guess.”
WAITING FOR IDA to get the muffins out of the oven, Simon sifted through the letters on his mother’s desk. Ida was right, H. E. MacGrath was writing to customers about delinquent accounts, several to a Mr. Pethrick Cameron about lumber for a sawmill in Gold River. Numerous letters to and from Mr. Balfour. The Silver Fox, Ida called him. At the bottom of the pile was one to her from Maggie McInnis. Simon scanned it and came up short at the last paragraph.
Once I’d broken through the veil, I felt a peace such as I didn’t think possible, knowing Harold and Tom are alright, as they told me through Mrs. Nicodemus. I learned how they died, and they assured me they were right here with me as I move on in this weighed-down mortal life. Yes, it’s true, women have been cast into asylums, and even prison, but it’s hardly a pagan practice, nor witchcraft, as has been claimed. It is but a means of confirming our Christian belief in life everlasting. I urge you to try it.
She’d been talking to ghosts and inviting his mother to do the same. But asylums? Prison? Was communing with the dead witchcraft? Was it against the law? Mr. Heist would know. He shoved the letter back into the pile.
In the kitchen Ida knotted a towel over the muffins and put them in a sack with a little critch of butter onto which she’d pressed a thistle stamp. He joked that she must be sweet on Mr. Heist. “No,” she said. “I’ve had but one sweetheart my whole life, and I’ll never tell who, so don’t even ask. Just be sure you’re back by supper. And see that he warms these muffins up before he eats them. Tell him we’re hoping he feels better.”
JUST BEFORE THE turnoff for Mr. Heist’s, Simon and Peg passed the Mather property. George hobbled over from the field and stood there, shirt open to a bare chest, his hair swept around his ears. He balanced on one crutch. Peg slowed to a stop. Simon gave her a kick, but she just nudged George and whinnied softly. Simon felt a nervous flutter in his stomach and said, “She’s come a-ways now—needs water. I gotta get going.” George limped away. He mentioned neither coins nor boxes nor Ebbin Hant, and his retreating form made Simon sorry he hadn’t shared one of Ida’s muffins.
At Mr. Heist’s blue cottage, all was quiet. Simon set the muffins down on the steps, and eventually found him down at his long and narrow wharf stringing some lanterns between two poles for a purpose that Simon was by then too distracted to ask about. As they climbed the steep steps set into the bank, Mr. Heist paused to cough and mop his face. Simon told him he’d seen George by the road, but that George hadn’t said a word. Mr. Heist said he’d stopped in at the Mathers’, and George had been quiet then, too.
Simon said, “When he does talk, it’s crazy talk. Riddles is all. Right?”
“It may seem that way,” Mr. Heist said as he pushed on his knee to climb the last steps. “To us, perhaps, but not to George.” Simon asked what that meant. “He’s doing his best to make a connection, but something holds him back.”
“What? What holds him back? You mean the war? The war doesn’t just make people . . . crazy like that.”
“What I mean is that to communicate with others, one must first be able to communicate with oneself. There, I think, lies George’s problem. He isn’t connected to his own experience, maybe never will be. And maybe never should be.”
“What about those fires?” Simon said.
“Ah yes, a row of campfires, maybe to bring something back to himself. The fires were well contained, well tended.”
Nothing about George bothered Mr. Heist.
“That day in Chester, before you came out, he said he saw Uncle Ebbin at Thiepval. At least I think that’s what he was saying.”
“Ah. We can’t know what George means there, can we? Did he see your uncle or his ghost, or wish he had? Perhaps he did. Perhaps he wants to make you feel better.”
“Well, he doesn’t make me feel better. And he’s wrong. Uncle Ebbin was dead by then.”
They’d reached the garden, patched with snow. They took the path, neatly lined with beach stones, to the back porch, where Simon was surprised to see a beehive-shaped lens bound by highly polished brass. A lens for a lighthouse. A tarp lay on the floor next to it. The concentric prisms above and below the center glass glittered in the late afternoon sun.
Mr. Heist rocked on his short feet, clearly pleased. “Yes,” he said, “A fourth-order Fresnel lens. Recently acquired. Delicate-looking, is it not? But thick and sturdy all the same. The prisms of the Fresnel capture and magnify almost all of the light emitted from the lamp. A work of art and a practical boon to sailors. This one’s just two and a half feet tall and two feet in diameter, but I believe it could signal at least fifteen or more miles out to sea, maybe as far as twenty.”
Simon bent down to examine it. “But why? Are you building a lighthouse?” he joked.
“Heavens no. I was just lucky to acquire it. Perhaps I’ll put it in the vegetable garden to keep the crows away.” Mr. Heist chuckled. Simon helped him secure the tarp over it and tie it to the porch railing. Then Mr. Heist looked out toward the edge of the point and the patch of view through some felled trees. “I was glad when those trees blew down. I’m thinking of building a lookout tower,” he said.
“A tower? Why?”
“To get a better view, of course. Over there so it would be above those evergreens going down the bluff. Not too close. I’m thinking of a little roof over it where I could take my tea and watch the boats come and go with my binoculars. You should see the sights from up here when the fleet comes in. All those schooners, schooning . . .”
“Schooning? Is that a word?”
“Hmm? It is and it isn’t. Some say ‘schoon’ without the h came from ‘scone,’ a Scottish word for ‘skip along the water.’ But surely the Dutch added that h, and with those double o’s, I like to think of it as ‘schooning’—which I like to think means ‘glide,’ even if it is not so. A little etymologic whimsy of mine. But come along now. Let’s go in so you can tell me what’s on your mind.”
In the cottage he retrieved a kettle sitting atop a stack of books. He set it to boil and stoked the fire. Four thin black socks hung in a lonely row on a rack near the stove. Mr. Heist, without his starched collar and tie, without his vest, shambled about in loose blue trousers and an old blue sweater. He’d cast a fussy look at Simon’s boots as he changed into his own leather slippers when they entered the cottage. Simon pulled his boots off.
He looked around as Mr. Heist unwrapped the muffins and told him to extend his thanks to Ida, wonderful woman. The house was unlike any house Simon had ever seen. Aside from the bedroom, it
was basically just one great room, with exposed beams and a bank of windows facing the porch with a view of the bay. Mr. Heist said he’d had the wall between the parlor and the kitchen taken down, leaving two posts for the support beam so he could see out on three sides no matter where he stood. Shelves from floor to ceiling were jam-packed with books with titles in Latin and Greek, German and English. Here and there a potted plant dangled tendrils. A music stand was in the center of the room, and Mr. Heist’s violin case. Ink drawings of buildings—from Europe, Simon supposed—hung between the bookshelves. One of a boys’ choir coming out of a cathedral door caught Simon’s eye. Newspapers, manuscripts, articles and stacks of letters, many in German, littered every flat surface.
Mr. Heist indicated a chair at the kitchen table. At one end of its glossy red surface, a typewriter sat squarely on a mat, a stack of clean paper on one side and typed pages, facedown, on the other. In the center lay an oversized, bound volume entitled Lepidoptera of North and South America, open to a colored plate depicting an exotic blue butterfly. “Plate 42: Morpho didius,” the caption read.
“Is this real? This butterfly?” Simon asked as Mr. Heist set out two mugs.
“Real? Why, of course. The Morpho didius is as real as any other butterfly. We’ll never see it, which is the pity. Not unless we travel to South American and claw our way up to the very canopy of the rainforest.”
“I might get there someday,” Simon mused. He was thoroughly immersed in the struggles of the young hero of First Voyage, who had been chased deeper and deeper into the screeching reaches of the Venezuelan jungles.
“Ach, I’d like to accompany you, but I’m afraid I am too old and frail. Thankful, actually, that I am. Even at a younger age, I didn’t have the constitution for such adventure, nor the spirit. I’d have never made a good naturalist,” he sighed, “and I will never see this butterfly. But we must be content with what we have and who we are. Here, I will show you one I’ve seen many times. Drab compared to the Morpho, but I suspect you’ll like the name of it.” He flipped through the pages with ink-stained fingers. “It’s among the Skippers. Ah. Here it is. Not much to look at, but you see the name, Erynnis icelus—Dreamy Duskywing.”
Simon agreed. Perfection of a name. “Do you collect butterflies?”
“Pin them to a wall? Never! I simply note my sightings here in my butterfly notebook, and my bird sightings here—no, now where on earth is that notebook?” He shuffled through some books on the counter. “Well, in any case, you would not pin a bird to a corkboard, would you? Of course not! It is the same with butterflies. It is enough to see them and know that I have. You must come out in the summer. I’ve set my garden out to attract certain species of moths and butterflies and catalogue them. I’ve obtained gayfeather and columbine seeds, and sweet-pea seed pods from Dora MacDonald’s garden. She’s too good to me.”
“How come you do that, write them down like that?”
“Why, so I can remember what I observe and how often. It is a way of being in this world. Understand?”
“Not . . . exactly.”
“Of being part of it, Simon. Engaged.” Mr. Heist gave up searching through his books and faced Simon. “Your father once said something that I have kept in here.” He patted his chest. “He said that when he was on long voyages, he was no longer a stranger on the water; he was part of it. He and the boat were not on the water, but of the water. Together they became the roll of the swells, the lap of the waves, the rod through which the wind met the deep. Not in quite those words, but you see? No? Not sure?”
Simon shook his head. He wanted more.
Mr. Heist complied. “It was his way of being alive. He said it was that dimension that he wanted to get down on his canvas. So he could stay alive. In his landscapes and shore birds, he never felt he had. He wanted to paint something more. Oh yes,” he said to counter Simon’s surprise. “We talked of his painting. Several times. He told me he was working on something before he left. Came to him all at once. I had a feeling it was of the sea. Of course, I wouldn’t know about being part of the sea, myself. I’m not a sailor.” He chuckled. “But you know that, don’t you! Don’t have the stomach for it for one thing. Nor the courage.”
Simon did know. He could still see Mr. Heist in suit and vest, clutching the rail awkwardly when they took him for a picnic on the Lauralee, eyes bugging out behind salt-sprayed spectacles every time the boat heeled over. He never got the hang of how to switch sides when they came about, never got his footing. Up to that point, Simon hadn’t known that getting your footing on a boat was something some people had to learn. He and Zenus had laughed their heads off afterwards when Simon did an imitation. He felt pretty bad about that now.
“But you do have a little rowboat down there,” Simon said.
“I do. I take it out when it’s calm. Even then, I keep it tied by a long line to the wharf. And,” he patted his chest with both hands, “I wear my life vest.”
Simon laughed gently with Mr. Heist.
“I like to see the bottom at some depth, and especially at night with my lanterns. The starfish and sea urchins lurking in their own universe. And what is better than the green gleam of phosphorus disturbed on a night sea?”
“Nothing. But you can’t see phosphorous with a light,” Simon said.
“No, of course. I turn my lamps off on those nights and throw stones in the water and watch the green tail follow them all the way down.”
“Me, too!”
“We have that in common, then, Simon.” He poured out the tea. “Sailing is not for me, but when I hear the call of gulls or the curlew, or see the tiny beating wings of the Acadian Hairstreak on an oak leaf, or watch a starfish stretch out a single arm on the wharf pilings, I feel more alive than I did the minute before.”
Simon hadn’t considered birds or butterflies, and especially not starfish, as something to make you feel more alive. He turned the page back to the iridescent blue Morpho.
Mr. Heist took the muffins from the oven. “You like that one,” he said as he arranged them on a platter. “He’s a very clever fellow. His wings are blue on top but mottled brown underneath, so he cannot be seen from below. Note the name, the Morpho. Do you make the connection? Metamorphosis. Changing. Like all moths and butterflies, he’s not beautiful to start, and in his case, only beautiful from above. He is ugly and attractive both. But think of it—from caterpillar to chrysalis to the bursting out of the butterfly, so light on its wing—that is pure beauty. Would it be so if it had never been a caterpillar? Think of it! Crawling on the ground, then locked in darkness, and suddenly airborne! But does the butterfly remember he once was not?”
“I, I don’t know,” Simon said.
“I was fortunate enough once to watch a black swallowtail do just that, break out of its cocoon. It was a good five minutes before it took off. And all the while, it opened and closed its wings, so slowly, as if considering the magnitude of transformation. Can I really use these wings to lift above the world, he seemed to ask. How I envied the moment when he trusted that he could.”
Simon put his chin on his hand. He could listen to Mr. Heist all day.
Mr. Heist cleared his throat and took a sip of tea. “But now, you didn’t come here to discuss butterflies. Ever the professor, I’m afraid. You mentioned a question, a concern.”
Simon sat up and without mentioning the letter, asked if Mr. Heist knew what “breaking through the veil” meant and if it was connected to witchcraft.
Mr. Heist stirred his tea a moment, and insisted on context. Simon looked down and shook his head.
“You want to contact your uncle? Is that it?”
“No! Not me. Ma—” Simon stopped himself and sat back. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Ach. Of course. I myself have had three cousins killed in the war. Two at the Somme . . . Death diminishes the living, if they let it. But your poor mother. I’ve been teaching here for seventeen years, and I can still remember the first time I saw Ebbin Hant and An
gus MacGrath. A pair of scoundrels, those two. Hard to believe Ebbin is gone. So tragic. Of course she wants to contact him. Perfectly natural.”
“It is? But do they throw people in prison for that? Or asylums?”
“What?” It was Mr. Heist’s turn to be alarmed. “For trying to contact the dead?”
Simon revealed the contents of the letter, and from there Mr. Heist launched into a treatise on what he called the Spiritualism movement, sweeping the British Isles with so many lost to the war and even so great a mind as William James investigating it to find the “demarcation between science and magic.” It might once have been considered witchcraft, perhaps, or the mark of the insane. President Lincoln’s wife for example, poor woman, and yes, there were tricksters and hucksters, perhaps even this Mrs. Nicodemus, whom Simon Peter now conjured in the garb of a gypsy with a crystal ball. But, Mr. Heist added, holding up his finger, one had to weigh the comfort of those left behind against indeterminate scientific proof.
This talk, peppered with words like “occult,” “séances” and “mediums,” was a little hard to follow. “Do you believe it? That people can get messages from the dead?” Simon asked when Mr. Heist paused for breath.
Mr. Heist considered this. “ ‘Belief’ is the word, isn’t it, Simon? We believe in many things that are unseen and for which we have no evidence. I have no experience on which to base belief. Or disbelief, for that matter. What is our evidence for life after death or for the Resurrection itself except the belief of others in whom we place our faith? Or perhaps the faith of others in whom we place our belief. Very different things.”
Mr. Heist caught Simon’s eye and said, “I think of it this way. Suppose you had a collection of metal filings on a piece of paper. Under it, a magnet. What would happen to the filings?”
“They’d all collect to where the magnet was, I guess.”
“Just so. I believe while we are here, our spirits collect, like the filings, into the shape of our beings. When death comes, the magnet is removed and the spirit scatters back out. Just like the filings—the shape is gone, our individual beings, but the filings remain—part of the greater whole.”
