Western Wind

by Paula Fox

  She was actually in Maine with Gran. She realized that she’d been hoping for a reprieve at the last moment, even as her parents had said good-bye to her in Boston. It seemed to her, now, that the bicycle she had so often imagined herself pedaling through New Hampshire villages had rolled away on its own to collapse in a corner of the farmhouse cellar. Yet there was another feeling, strong and insistent, that—despite herself—she was about to be happy.

  Gran appeared soon, carrying a paper sack.

  “Your daddy says hello and love,” she reported. “There’s our transportation.” She waved at the nearest wharf, where Elizabeth saw a small boat bobbing at the end of a long rope tied to a piling.

  “We’re going in that?” exclaimed Elizabeth. “It’s like a pea pod!”

  “We’re going in that,” Gran said brusquely.

  They walked out on the wharf, which swayed and creaked beneath their feet. Gran pulled on the rope until the boat was close to a ladder that descended into the water. “It’s easier when the tide isn’t so low,” Gran said.

  Along the bottom of the boat lay a pair of oars, a rolled tarpaulin, and rags. To Elizabeth’s relief, a small outboard motor clung like a claw to the stern.

  “I’ll go first. Then you start down and hand me your suitcase and backpack and the groceries,” Gran said, descending the ladder with sure steps.

  Elizabeth handed down the things and stepped into the rocking boat herself. “Do you have to cross over from the island every time you need something from the store?” she asked.

  “Oh, no! I’d be at sea all the time. See the launch over there? The one with El Sueño written on the bow? That’s Jake Holborn’s. He brings it over to Pring Island once a week. I give him a list. Next time, he brings me what I asked for, and the mail. The launch was built seventy years ago. It used to carry servants and supplies out to the rich people who once owned many of the islands in the bay. It’s a beautiful old thing, isn’t it? Like my car. Jake keeps the brass polished.”

  A gull flew to one of the pilings and folded its wings. It seemed to stare coldly at Elizabeth.

  “But what if you need something in a hurry? Do you have a phone?”

  “Put the stuff in front of you, Elizabeth, and sit in the middle of the seat. We don’t need a phone. There is a family on the island, the Herkimers.”

  The motor roared, then settled down to a modest grumble. The boat nosed its way past the wharf. Elizabeth was preoccupied with the news that there were other people on the island. She didn’t even glance up when Gran announced they were passing El Sueño.

  “John Herkimer has a battery-run shortwave radio. And Jake has a receiver on the launch, so we can reach him when he’s on it, which is most of the time. When there are storms, John’s radio doesn’t fail like a telephone might. It’s the same for electricity and water. The hand pump in the cottage works no matter what the weather is doing. And as long as we have matches, we can keep the kerosene lamps or candles lit.”

  Gran put on a scarf and tied it with one hand, her other on the tiller. Elizabeth’s dark straight hair was blown into tangles by a low, brisk breeze. She saw islands everywhere. Some were quilled like porcupines with evergreen trees. Some were large jagged rocks stained with pale green lichen. As they passed one such tumbled, stony place, Elizabeth cried out, “There’s a seal!”

  “They like to sun themselves,” Gran shouted over the sound of the motor, which had grown loud now that they were out on the bay, away from Molytown’s sheltering harbor. “And that’s where I found Grace, my cat.”

  “How did a cat get there?”

  “She’d been abandoned. Someone must have put her off a boat. She was dehydrated and terrified but managed to scramble into my lap. I had to grab on to barnacles to keep the boat steady while she slid down. Fortunately, it was high tide.”

  “How could anyone do such an awful thing?” Elizabeth stared at the rocks, trying to imagine the people who could have left a small animal in such a desolate place. What had they thought?

  “I don’t know,” Gran answered. “I tend to believe in demons. Other explanations for such behavior seem wanting.”

  The boat had changed direction. They were heading straight for a heavily wooded island.

  “That’s Pring,” Gran said.

  As Elizabeth stared, the island appeared slowly to emerge from the bay. An uneven ridge along the center of it suggested the menacing rise and fall of a dinosaur spine. Between the ranks of pine, glimpses of sky were like silent explosions of brilliant blue.

  Gran cut the motor speed, and they moved slowly past a stone-strewn beach. Beyond it lay a sloping meadow of tall, tawny grass.

  Elizabeth dipped her hand in the water and withdrew it quickly. It was like ice.

  Gran glanced at her. “A person can’t last more than two minutes out here,” she said. “But closer to shore, in the coves, the sun warms up the water and you can swim if you can bear it.”

  At the foot of the ridge, Elizabeth saw a large, rambling house. Near it stood a small barn, its roof collapsed, tendrils of vine wound thickly around the walls. Here and there, great patches of bramble sat bristling like indignant fowl.

  “Is that your house?” Elizabeth asked.

  “It’s the Herkimer place. He’s a high-school teacher in Orono. She runs the local historical society there. The family has been coming here for twenty years. We’re going to have supper with them tomorrow. Hold on now.”

  They rounded a point of land that was no more than a splinter of coarse sand and pebbles. At once, they were in a small cove, and the Herkimer house was hidden by a slight rise, upon which stood clumps of oak and pine. Gran brought the boat to a dock, tied up next to a ladder, and said, “Pring.” She smiled at Elizabeth, who was staring at a shell path that led to the door of a ramshackle, dark little cottage.

  “That’s your house?” Elizabeth asked, unable to conceal the disappointment she felt.

  “That’s it,” Gran said shortly, her smile gone. “Begin unloading, please.”

  After Elizabeth had transferred everything to the dock, Gran unrolled the tarp and spread it over the boat. The journey was done. Pring was a piece of earth covered with stones and rocks and scraggly trees. The cottage had a dull, blank look.

  Mom and Daddy were playing with Stephen Lindsay at home. On the marble-topped kitchen table, there was probably a big bag of fresh corn and warm tomatoes from the farm stand down the road. Elizabeth looked inside Gran’s grocery sack. She saw a carton of milk and a can of navy beans.

  Gran came to stand beside her. “It will be twilight soon. I like that time of day best. And very early morning,” she said. “Tomorrow, you can explore the other shore of the island. It’s quite different from this side.”

  She was standing so close! Elizabeth stared down at the splintery surface of the dock.

  “You don’t much want to be here,” Gran stated. “I know that.”

  Elizabeth looked up, but away from her grandmother. A small bird flew toward the squat oak trees on the rise.

  “We’ll make the best of it,” Gran said. “That means we have to find something more interesting to think about than your disappointment at being here.”

  “I’m not disappointed,” Elizabeth protested weakly. “It’s just that I’m not used to islands—the water. Anyhow, you don’t have to think about it.”

  “Never mind all that,” Gran retorted sharply. “Life is all getting used to what you’re not used to.”

  Then she smiled. “Look! There’s Grace!”

  From a side of the cottage, a small smoke gray cat walked toward them, her tail straight up like an exclamation point.

  3

  Inside the cottage, there were not three or four tight, dark rooms as Elizabeth had imagined, but one big room. Two rows of four wooden posts, about a dozen feet apart, rose to the ceiling. They were like the columns of a small temple. At the base of one, she deposited the luggage and groceries and looked around.

  Next to
a sink beneath a window stood a stumpy hand pump on a counter. Beside it were two glasses, one with a toothbrush, the other filled with Queen Anne’s lace. Shelves above and below the counter held dishes, glasses, pots, pans, and canned food. Along the same wall hulked a big wood stove; a few feet away stood a small two-door chest. On the floor were bottles and baskets filled with flowers, some fresh, some dried. A stack of wood lay next to the dark hearth of a tiny fireplace.

  There were several chairs, a round table, and next to other windows across the room from the sink, an easel splotched with paint. A wide plank on two sawhorses held cans of brushes, sticks of charcoal, tubes of paint, a palette, and a Polaroid camera. A small staircase, with a handrail made of rope, disappeared into shadows.

  The room was inviting without looking very comfortable. It appeared to have no secrets—like a person who tells you right away what she’s interested in. Yet some mystery remained. Perhaps it was because of the posts that were like temple columns, or because of the implements and materials of painting that covered the wide plank.

  Grace sped past Elizabeth, leaped on a ragged red sweater on the floor near the easel, and began to scratch one ear.

  “Sand fleas,” observed Gran, who had come to the door.

  “Where shall I put the groceries?”

  “On the counter. Put the milk in the icebox.”

  “The icebox?” Elizabeth asked politely, knowing it was the little chest.

  Gran was silent.

  Chagrined, Elizabeth opened the bottom door of the icebox and thrust the milk inside. A watery smell, edged with sourness, emanated from its dark interior. There was food on a shelf, but Elizabeth didn’t try to make out what it was.

  “What do you think?” Gran asked.

  “About what?”

  “Well—I hoped you would have a thought about this place,” Gran said.

  “It doesn’t look like your apartment in Camden.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “It’s really pretty there,” Elizabeth said, knowing how disagreeable she was being, unable to stop herself.

  “I suppose it is,” Gran said pleasantly.

  Elizabeth clamped her jaw shut and stared down at her old running shoes. How ugly they were! Carelessly tied, dirty, big as boats. She would have gotten new ones for the bicycle trip.

  “I’m so sorry you feel the way you seem to,” Gran said softly.

  Elizabeth’s throat tightened. Her eyes swam with sudden tears. She swallowed hard and looked over at Gran.

  “Walk around a bit,” Gran urged. “It’ll lighten your heart.” She went to the counter and began to put away the food she’d bought at Sadie’s.

  Elizabeth wandered toward the easel. She noticed that there were paintings hung on all the walls of the room. Some were washes of color. Others were recognizable—woods, the ridge that ran along the center of the island, rocks. Sketches of Grace covered a sheet of paper. One big canvas showed a group of people who looked like a family posing for a photographer on some special occasion. Everywhere, in oil or ink or charcoal, were drawings and paintings of a man’s head. Some were a few lines. Others were detailed. In one, a hat brim hid the man’s forehead and eyes so that only his falconlike nose and long narrow mouth showed.

  “The good thing is I don’t have to clean very often,” Gran said. Elizabeth turned around and saw she was standing at the foot of the stairs.

  “Come and see your room,” Gran said.

  “Were there once lots of little rooms here?”

  “Yes. I got a carpenter from Molytown to take down the walls after the owner said I could do whatever I wanted to. It was too dark before, too squeezed. The posts hold up the ceiling so he had to leave them. I like them, though.”

  Elizabeth, carrying her bag and pack, followed Gran up the stairs to a small landing. Gran opened one of the two doors that led off it. “I’d thought you’d like to be able to see the bay,” she said.

  The room ran the width of the house. A braided rug lay on the floor beside an iron bedstead that was covered with a blue and red quilt. Next to it stood a night table holding a candle in a saucer. Another candle and a jar full of wildflowers stood on the bureau. A small mirror in a hammered-tin frame hung from a nail on the wall above a straight-backed chair with a towel folded on it.

  “I put some hangers here on the back of the door, if you have anything you need to hang,” Gran said.

  Elizabeth thought of the two summer dresses she’d packed. No use for them here.

  “Can I wash my face and hands?” she asked.

  “At the sink,” Gran answered. “There’s very good water on Pring. Some of the islands have none; that’s why they’re uninhabitable. I’ll show you the facilities after you’ve unpacked. You’ll have to take sponge baths. That’s what you had when you were a baby. In fact, I gave you a few of those myself. You can heat water on the stove when you need it.”

  Elizabeth unzipped her bag. When she looked up, Gran was gone. She walked to one of two small windows so close to the floor she had to stoop to see out. The mainland seemed much farther away than her sense of the distance she and Gran had traveled in the little boat.

  Below, she saw the clamshell path leading to the dock, alongside of which the boat rocked gently. The waters of the bay were as purple now as a Concord grape. The tide had risen and covered the small point of land that made one arm of the cove.

  With some difficulty, Elizabeth pushed up the creaking window and stuck her head outside. The air was pungent with the smell of pine and salt. Across the sky to the west, she saw streaks of red as thin as paper cuts. A gull shrieked. She watched it swoop to the dock, where it cradled itself in its wings and became as still as stone. There was such silence! She couldn’t hear Gran below. Water and sky seemed one joined, immense thing in which she floated, a speck.

  There was a thud, a loud meow, and she turned to see Grace standing on the red and blue quilt, switching her tail and looking at her.

  Elizabeth sighed, stroked the cat a minute, and began to put away her clothes. On the bedside table, she put two novels from her school’s summer reading list, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Old Man and the Sea, neither of which she had yet glanced at. How could she have read in a house where everybody was waiting for a baby to wake up, or else running around like crazed mice when he did?

  She took the towel from the chair and her toothbrush and went down the stairs.

  Gran was peering into the upper part of the icebox. “It’s a good thing Jake’s coming day after tomorrow. The ice is nearly gone,” she said. “It only lasts about five days. I hope you like spaghetti. I’ve made tomato sauce. And I picked blueberries this morning before I went to Bangor. You’ll be sick of blueberries before you leave Pring. Put your toothbrush in the glass next to the pump. I’ll show you the outhouse.”

  Elizabeth followed Gran to the back of the cottage and up the rise. There, in a fragrant thicket of young spruce, stood a small outhouse, entirely open on the side that faced the bay. Leaves of thick ivy framed it.

  “It doesn’t have a door,” Elizabeth said.

  “A door wouldn’t make it more private out here, just stuffy,” Gran said. “I’ve seen deer close by in the early morning,” she added.

  “How would a deer get here?”

  “Swim. I once saw one swimming. Very beautiful, holding its head well above the water, like a creature from a fairy tale. Fire can drive them out of the forests on the mainland, or hunger.”

  When they returned to the cottage, Gran talked about the Herkimers as she led Elizabeth by her hand to the large painting of the family she had noticed earlier. “There they are. The whole gang,” Gran said.

  Two older people in bathing suits looked grimly out of the painting. A girl of around fourteen stood on one leg, holding the other bent sideways with a long-fingered hand. She wore an old-fashioned party dress, bright pink and covered with bows. Kneeling in front was a little boy with large transparent ears and huge eyes as dark as coal. The
woman’s right hand rested above his head, not touching it. Far in the background stood the long house and collapsed barn.

  “John and Helen Herkimer,” said Gran. “The girl, Deirdre, would never put on such a dress. She was wearing torn blue jeans when she posed for me. My little joke. The boy is Aaron. He’s a strange child. His ears aren’t actually like the ones I painted. It’s that he listens so intently you feel he’s all ears. His parents are awfully nervous about him. Helen watches him all the time. Usually, he spends the summer with her brother, but the brother had a stroke this spring. So Aaron’s here for the first time.”

  “What makes them so nervous?”

  “I don’t know. Aaron can’t get lost on this island, and the water temperature doesn’t encourage impulsive swimming. But it’s true he doesn’t seem to understand danger. He climbed up on their roof last week. They had a frightening time getting him down in one piece.”

  “Funny, to wear such a lot of pearls with a bathing suit,” commented Elizabeth.

  “Helen always wears them. Years ago, her first husband ran away from her. I heard from people in Camden who’ve known her for years that she never got over feeling disgraced. It’s said that when she found the note he left, she put on the pearls and has never taken them off, even in the hospital when the children were born. The family is really like a small country. Maybe all proper families are. I feel I need a passport to visit them. Occasionally, I think they’re going to revoke my visa. If I wasn’t their only neighbor, I do believe they’d have nothing to do with me. Helen is very disdainful. When I take a walk in the early evening and pass their house, I sometimes hear her laughing, and I know she’s making fun of someone, probably me.”

  “They don’t sound so great.”

  “I like them, though. Maybe like isn’t quite the word.”

  “Maybe you’re interested in them,” said Elizabeth, with a slight emphasis, recalling how Gran had asked her if she had to like everything.

  “Ah! That must be it,” Gran said with amusement. She was rolling up newspaper sheets and thrusting them into the wood stove. As Gran added kindling, Elizabeth picked up the Polaroid camera and looked through its viewfinder at the room. There was a yellow glow at the west-facing windows.