Others joined us along the rutted road, either in pairs or singly. Light spilled out of the doctor's house in bronze puddles. I took one more breath of the chill salt air before stepping into the confines of the Hutchinson home and handing my cloak over to their hired woman.
The house was bright and had a festive feel to it. Many of the good citizens of Schooner Harbor occupied the formal parlor where a blaze crackled in the fireplace. A giddiness pervaded the conversation, my friends and neighbors filled with expectancy.
"Mrs. Grindle, I am glad you're here!"
Lydia Pendleton had recovered recently from an accident in a Lowell textile mill. A surge in the flow of water that powered the turbines sped the carding machine she tended out of control and ruined her hand forever. She swathed it in linen and a mitten so none could see it.
Though her parents were simple fisher folk, she had earned enough in the mills to purchase fine city clothes, and she'd become worldly and educated there, though, since the war, the mills now attracted immigrants rather than Yankee country girls to operate the machines.
"You look well, Lydia."
"I'm excited." Her large brown eyes were bright and comely. She'd earned a dowry, but none would have her for her crippled hand. "We're finally going to meet Isaiah Fernald's strange sailor."
Isaiah Fernald stood by the fireplace in his Sunday best: a coarse wool coat and trousers. His long gray side-whiskers swayed as he regaled the men with a story he'd told hundreds of times before, his shadow large against the wall.
"That night I couldn't see my hand before my face in that fog . . ."
"When do you suppose we'll meet Mr. Island?" Lydia asked me, too eager to listen to Isaiah's story again.
"Soon, dear."
"I hear he'll travel the lyceum circuit and speak of his journeys."
I had heard this too and feared that Mr. Island's sensational story would distract the populace from those who spoke on behalf of women's rights and the freedmen.
"I seen his ship all aglow, close on Heddybemps . . ." Isaiah paused his narrative to light his pipe. Smoke drifted in a cloud over the assembled.
Lydia touched my sleeve. "Why, look, there's Tilda and the girls. Who's tending the light?"
The girls, ten and eight, peeked into the parlor, then darted away, giggling. Mrs. Fernald hovered near the doorway, smoothing her faded skirts. She watched the festivities with a shy smile but declined to join in.
Mr. Grindle noticed as well and fairly echoed Lydia. "Isaiah, who watches the light?"
Isaiah sucked on his pipe, eyes twinkling above his ruddy cheeks. "Why, the light watches itself," he said mysteriously. "Thanks be to Mr. Island."
Murmuring broke out in the parlor among the men, but before discussion could grow too loud, Dr. Hutchinson burst upon the gathering, his expression jovial. "Gentlemen, gentlemen. And ladies. Do not question our poor keeper. Isaiah is true to his word. The light keeps itself thanks to a clever mechanism devised by Mr. Island. But come, ladies and gentlemen, please be seated."
Skirts swished as ladies found plush parlor chairs to sit on. Isaiah took up his confident pose by the fireplace again and cleared his throat.
"When I seen the vessel near the Rock, I told Tilda, you mind the light now. And I sent the girls to fetch the doctor. I pushed the dory down the ways. The sea was like to grab and pull it under. It filled with rain and ocean, but I rowed. I thought, this is the night I pass the Gates of Heaven, this is the night of Judgment. But I guess He wouldn't have me." Isaiah laughed.
"Then I seen the light shine off the hull of the vessel. I rowed alongside it and tapped it with my oar. It rang hollow. Wasn't wood, nor steel, but I'd no time to think it peculiar. I just thought of the poor bastards trapped inside."
Gasps passed through the room at his coarse language, and Miss Agatha Richardson, a spinster of seventy years, fanned herself with a handkerchief.
"Isaiah," the doctor said. "Remember, you are in fair company tonight."
The mantel clock ticked loudly while Isaiah regarded the doctor with annoyance. He puffed on his pipe and turned back to his audience. "Just when I was wondering how to help, a hatch opened and Mr. Island stuck his head out. As luck would have it, he was the only soul aboard. I hauled him into the dory, and just in time, for the ship sank straight away. I took him to my house. The doctor awaited us there. When we got Mr. Island inside, we knew he was from away."
"Thank you, Isaiah," the doctor said before the lighthouse keeper could go on. "I shall resume the story now."
Isaiah allowed the doctor a baleful glance before surrendering his coveted position at the polished oak mantel. The doctor assumed his place and hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets.
"Mr. Island is an interesting specimen as you will see. He grasps little English, but is learning as fast as I can instruct him. He is a mariner from far away, an island of some sort, we gather, which we have never heard of before. We endowed him with his unusual name." Here the doctor smiled. "Upon sighting Sheep Island from the light tower and learning the word 'island,' he grew excitable and could not stop saying the word. Thus, his surname. 'Joseph' is after my own grandfather, for he, too, was a mariner.
"Mr. Island and I will travel the lyceum circuit starting next month. I am sure the country will want to meet him. May I present, without further ado, Joseph Island."
A hunched figure shuffled into the parlor. He wore a black suit, a gold watch and fob glistening in the firelight. At first his features were shadowed but became visible in the lamplight. Several ladies cried out and hid their eyes, and even the gentlemen were taken aback. All averted their gaze, all except Lydia, who paid rapt attention to his every movement.
Joseph Island looked manlike enough, but his skin was flaccid and wrinkled like a dead porpoise that has washed ashore. His blunt nose fell beneath wide eyes, black liquid pools that reflected the lamplight. There were small openings along his jawline that may have been ears, but they resembled nothing with which I was acquainted. His hands, when I examined them more closely, had only three stubby fingers each.
Though most had shrunk back upon viewing his deformities, we remained politely restrained. The doctor sensed our duress and did the only sensible thing he could do: he served tea. Some might have desired stronger spirits, but the doctor was, after all, a temperance man.
Mr. Island gazed at the floor, blinking slowly, as though deliberately. His stubby fingers played with the watch fob. Once I saw him take the watch out and listen to its steady ticking rhythm as a babe might listen to his mother's heart. It seemed to comfort him. I detected a reticence on his part, or perhaps more accurately, a sadness. That is until the hired woman, Margarite, carried the tea service in on a silver tray.
"Tea!" Mr. Island grinned. "Two sugarz, pleeze."
My neighbors and I looked on in amazement at his outburst. Margarite smiled tolerantly as she dropped two teaspoons of sugar into a teacup, evidently familiar with this peculiar guest.
Isaiah guffawed and patted him on the shoulder. "Never saw such a bugger for tea."
After that, the tension in the parlor eased and gay chatter filled the room. Mr. Island watched and listened from his chair.
Through it all, Lydia scrutinized him. When he gazed in her direction, balancing the saucer on the tips of his three fingers, he smiled again. I saw a dimple form on the edge of Lydia's mouth. But then Mr. Island's grip on his teacup slipped and hot tea soaked his front. He gazed mournfully at his knees. The parlor stilled as he moaned. It was the loneliest sound I have ever heard, and my heart ached for him.
Lydia wasted no time in coming to his aid. She took a handkerchief from one of the gentlemen and blotted his coat. She held her mittened hand before him. "See," she said, "I have trouble holding my teacup, too. I have to do it all with one hand. I can understand your difficulty."
Lydia kept speaking in reassuring tones as she blotted. Mr. Island looked from her hand to his, and back again. "Difficultee," he said. "Yez. Difficultee,
teacup."
"Yes," Lydia replied. "Difficulty. Teacup." Then a wondrous thing happened and the two laughed together as if bonded by an understanding that made the rest of us outsiders.
The occasion came for Mr. Island to tell us his story. He shuffled to the mantel and the room hushed.
"From across ocean I come. Great ocean." The gilt-framed mirror over the mantel reflected the back of his head. Thin sandy hair wisped around his crown. "My land. Iz called Evanonway."
From the corner of my eye, I saw Miss Richardson mouth the name of his land as if to etch it into her mind.
"Long I travel. I explore, see new placez. I see Izaiah's light but I come too close." Now he looked out the window. "My land, I need to go back. Harvest. Time for harvest. To help famlee."
"What is your land like?" asked Reverend Foster. "Your Evanonway. I've not heard of it before."
"Treez. Much smaller, not so big as here." Mr. Island's eyes drifted upward as if the room were surrounded by the tall spruces and pines indigenous to much of Maine. "I live by the sea too."
"'Course you do," Isaiah said. "You live on an island."
Mr. Island smiled at his friend. "Yez. Island. It is not so different."
"What continent is your island near?" Reverend Foster asked.
Mr. Island glanced first at Isaiah, then at Dr. Hutchinson, in puzzlement. "Cont-continent?"
"Yes. Like Africa, for instance, or Europe."
The folds above his forehead deepened. "This I do not know."
Dr. Hutchinson placed a hand on Mr. Island's shoulder. "He has much of our language yet to grasp, Reverend."
When it appeared little else was forthcoming, whether due to the insurmountable language barriers or bashfulness on Mr. Island's behalf, the ladies removed to the sitting room across the hall. Many of the women pulled out needlework and conversed about childcare and matters of domestic economy.
Lydia suffered the evening silently, for her crippled hand prevented her from even the simplest of needlework. I caught her often peering across the hall, where the French doors enclosed the men in the formal parlor but did not hinder their thunderous laughter. No doubt she wondered about our mysterious Mr. Island and the faraway port he had sailed from. Evanonway. Though he was ugly beyond words, she had formed a bond with him, and I wondered if it would blossom into something more. Tilda Fernald noticed Lydia's glances too and smiled.
For my part, I closed out the inane chatter of the women. Mr. Grindle and I had not been given children, and my mind cried out to discuss something other than croup and pox. I, too, looked at the closed French doors. But to actually cross the hall and open the doors and join the men would have been considered promiscuous at the very least.
* * * * *
October can be beneficent with the sun warming the day and frost coating the ground by night. Or, the weather can be surly with heavy leaden clouds hanging low over the ocean. No matter what the climate, I observed Mr. Island strolling, or rather his shuffling equivalent, along the shoreline on a daily basis. Ensconced on Schooner Head at the base of the lighthouse, he would look out to sea. For hours.
On one such excursion, Lydia joined him. The wind swirled leaves around them as they walked, and from their intense expressions, I knew they attempted to communicate with one another. They did not watch the ocean for long that day, for Lydia grew chill. Mr. Island put his topcoat around her shoulders and escorted her to her parents' home.
Later in the week, I chanced to meet Lydia along the Shore Road as I walked to the village on errands. "Lydia, dear," I said, "what is it that Mr. Island watches for when he stands beneath the lighthouse?"
Lines creased Lydia's brow. "I believe he wants to go home and he thinks about that. He is trying to think of a way to retrieve his ship."
"Why, it must be shattered to pieces by now!"
"I don't know," Lydia said. "He believes his ship to be whole."
"Well, it's too treacherous to go anywhere near Heddybemps. He must resign himself to that and perhaps find passage on some other ship."
"For some reason, he doesn't find other ships to be good enough."
Over the days that followed, I espied Lydia accompanying Mr. Island to Schooner Head. It appeared they were beginning to understand one another much better now, their conversation and gestures animated. Lydia's laughter, a sound unheard since she returned from the mill, carried on the wind to my dooryard.
Isaiah Fernald often sat carving on a stick outside the lighthouse and barely grumbled when Mr. Island and Lydia passed by. His sunny nature had grown irritable at best now that the light kept itself. The egg-sized lamp Mr. Island had installed in the light tower didn't smoke the Fresnel lens or brass housings as kerosene once had, and so there wasn't even polishing to occupy the lighthouse keeper.
We fear that Isaiah's idleness may lead to his consumption of demon rum as it is the way with men of the sea. I pity Tilda, whose shy smiles have turned to anxious frowns.
Mr. Island surprised my husband and me by stopping at the house one afternoon. I led him to the piazza where Mr. Grindle sat reading in the warmth of Indian summer. As I turned to step back into the house to leave them, Mr. Island stopped me.
"Pleeze. Stay, Meezus Grindle. Stay."
I hesitated on the step and my husband raised a brow. "Wouldn't you like some tea?" I asked, uncertain as to why I was being detained. After all, it sounded like he wanted man-talk. To talk business with my husband.
"No, pleeze. I just talk. Talk ships."
"Well, surely you don't need me."
"Stay. Where I come from, mates are . . ." He paused, searching for the appropriate word. "Partnerz."
My husband was incredulous but did not protest for fear of offending our guest. I settled onto the rocker, frankly relieved to be off my feet. All the mad preserving of fruits and vegetables, the beating of carpets and cleaning in preparation for winter, had sapped the energy from me, even with the help of our housekeeper.
"What is it I can do for you?" Mr. Grindle asked. "Are you interested in investing in the new ship I'm building in Searsport?"
"Ah, no. I need my ship." Mr. Island jabbed a finger at his chest. "I need your help, George Grindle. I need my ship."
Mr. Grindle smoothed his mustache. "Joseph, I'd help if I could, but your ship is broken on the bottom of the bay. It's foolish to even think about salvaging it."
Mr. Island's wrinkled brow furrowed deeper. "Not foolish. Not broken. I know this. I know how to . . . salvage, but, uh, I have no monee."
"Money? You want me to finance the salvaging of your ship? I wish to help, Joseph, you know that, but not only is it a dangerous endeavor, it's an expensive one. Can't we find you passage on some other ship?"
"No, no, no. No good. Only my ship take me home."
I could tell my husband wanted to help, but he is, after all, a businessman, and Mr. Island's request was not a good investment.
"Obviously Mr. Island is in desperate need," I said, before I knew I was saying it. "It seems we must help him in some way. Remember Paul: And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."
My husband glared at me, but Mr. Island beamed. "Yez, I provide George with macheenze that make his ships better. Faster than wind. Faster than steam. He gives me monee."
That gave my husband pause. Speed in shipping was everything, and he harbored a not-so-secret desire to relive the days of the swift clippers of the '50s; he often cited the record of the Flying Dragon, which sailed from Maine to San Francisco in only ninety-seven days. Our hardy down-easters proved competitive but lacked the glamour of the days of the Gold Rush, when speed and grace, not necessarily cargo, were the mariner's dream.
"You have machines that will improve my ships?" he asked.
Mr. Island nodded. "You give me monee. I make macheenze."
Once Mr. Grindle realized he would receive some compensation for his assistance, his benevolence toward Mr. Island could not be mistaken.
; When the interview concluded, I showed Mr. Island to the front door. He paused on the threshold, only to turn around and look up at me with those queer black eyes of his.
"I am most grateful," he said. "You convinzed George."
"I did no such thing. You offered him a form of recompense that he found impossible to ignore. These engines you proposed will make his ships difficult to surpass. Sailing around Cape Horn as speedily as possible is more important than you may know."
"Perhapz." He rubbed a wrinkled cheek with his three fingers. "But you helped all the same. It is important that I return home. Your ships, they will not cross the ocean I must cross. The ocean I must cross to my island."
He bore his sadness well but now and then it resurfaced. I have never been far from home, certainly not across the wide ocean, and now I was sure, after witnessing Mr. Island's melancholy, that I never wanted to travel afar. I will remain content with the curios and stories brought back from foreign lands by my brother and the various shipmasters in my husband's employ.
"I do have one request," I told Mr. Island after a moment of thought. "A favor you may return if you like."
His sadness vanished at once in his eagerness to please.
"When you travel the lyceum circuit at the end of the month, I ask that you remember to mention women's rights and universal suffrage!"
Mr. Island laughed. "I will, I will!"
"One more thing," I said. "You must promise not to hurt Lydia. She's quite taken with you and if you were to leave . . ."
His laughter died abruptly, and the sadness returned to his eyes. "I am . . . taken by her too."
* * * * *
The rest of the month brought frenzied activity to Schooner Harbor. Mr. Island spent much of his time at the shipyard drafting plans for my husband's ships and working with machinists as they built engines to his specifications. The rest of his time he spent at the sail loft, where he manufactured special filaments that were woven into sailcloth. My understanding was that the sails would collect the energy of the sun, in turn rendering power to the engines.
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