by Abi Maxwell
“Oh, no, missy,” Kenneth said. “That ain’t the law. Things is different on this here lake.” Kenneth went to the side of the mail boat and released a latch, pulled forth a narrow set of stairs just long enough to hit the dock, and held out his hand for Alice.
“It’s the law, missy,” he said. Alice took his hand and he led her up the stairs, onto the mail boat.
“Thought no one was allowed on,” she said.
“Women,” Kenneth mumbled, and then, “Ain’t no one allowed a ride.” Here he winked at her. “Dropping outgoing mail into the box a whole other matter altogether.” He released her hand, pointed to the blue box that was anchored to the floor of the boat, and then shaded his eyes. “Privacy,” he said, “is a very important part of a Federal Agent’s responsibilities.”
“Don’t you know he just makes up every single one of those rules,” Patty Jean would tell Alice later. “It was thanks to him I quit sending mail long ago.” But still, Alice would continue to feel quite right about every part of the official island process. The wasted effort she rather enjoyed.
Cabin’s insulated right up, good to stay the winter, though I ain’t never done that. You want yours warmer? I’d say we could do something easy. Fix the roof up first thing in order. Insulating a chicken coop ain’t the brightest thing I ever heard of, but I seen stupider things done. What I’m saying is I’ll do it if you want. Won’t cost much and besides I got some stuff we can use.
Where you been these last years? Be on the island soon.
Dear Simon,
I daresay this island is the most beautiful corner of the world I ever did know. Summer has arrived, I swim each day, and Patty Jean has taught me how to hunt for, pick, and dry some edible wild mushrooms. It frightens me a bit, to eat the little things, but Patty Jean assures me that she is an expert and that life is too short to miss out upon black chanterelles.
You asked where it is I have come here from. Most recently I was up north of the mountains. I had some difficult times there. Inheriting this cabin was a pure surprise and blessing. At the time, I had nowhere to go. My first and in truth my only thought was to go into the lake. That sounds strange and terrifying, but I do find it astonishing that after such a thought I should land in this blessed place. It is difficult to describe. The simplest version is to say that I was raised by my father; my mother left us when I was an infant. Recently I drove northward and tracked her down in the place my father said she would be. She lives in a small village on the eastern tip of the continent, in Canada. While I was there she left an envelope on the seat of my car. In it were the details of this place, my inheritance. It seems that in the year I was born, this Signe you speak of gave my mother the deed to this cabin and land, with the instructions that I should have it when I was old enough. I do wonder what would have happened had I never showed up. Would the papers have just sat there in a drawer? And as for this place? Anyway, I’m afraid that I never knew Signe, and am yet unsure of my relation to her. I also do not know the Wickholms—of course, I know who they are, but I have never had an occasion to meet them, though I am now inclined to believe that we too share a strong connection. Oh, it is all still so confusing to me! Suffice it to say that I am trying to figure it all out, and in the meantime there isn’t a place in the world where I would rather be.
Being from Kettleborough, you must know the story of the Witches. Patty Jean has just retold it to me. Ida of the Witches! Growing up, my father told me that story many times. He would joke that that woman had been my ancestor. But aren’t those only stories? Now, standing on shore and looking out to those black rocks—how like witch hats they do look—I can so clearly imagine a woman dropping within to have those rocks rise up in her place. Yesterday I found the spot marked “Witches” on the map, and I walked the perimeter of the island until I came to the place nearest to them. I stood there on shore for some time and imagined myself the woman of the story. How strange, I know. But it seemed a wonder to me that my feet were planted so closely to the last solid spot that such a legend stood. I truly felt rooted there. It was as though the rocks called out to me. I stared and stared while the time passed. And time did pass—it was nearly dusk when I came to. I walked back to my cabin then, thinking all the while of this floating strip of land, this great expanse of lake, and those great rocks. It all fills me with a pure steadiness, Simon. Is it strange to say I feel I have come home? This island holds me up in some real way.
I look forward to your arrival. Solitude is wonderful but now and again quite lonely. How does Patty Jean make it out here so long alone? Ghosts, that is what she tells me! Perhaps, but I think I prefer the living.
Be well, dear Simon.
P.S. I would love to fix this place up some more. Please do let me know the details.
Live alone and maybe I already told you but I have a dog. Yesterday maybe 5 in the morning I throw the tennis ball for him, throw it way out into the woods. He runs off, gone all day. Evening I start to call him, hear him bark back at me so I don’t worry none. Arthur. I let him do what he wants. But I wondered, because that dog likes to eat, and usually he shows up for dinner real early. Round 9 o’clock I get ready for bed and the slobbering beast runs in through the screen door wagging his tail so hard he knocks a glass of water off the table and it breaks. I look at him and that son of a bitch has the ball in his mouth, no shit. Out there looking for it all day. I couldn’t believe it.
I got insulation for you. Whole one-ton truck full of it. I’ll get out there soon. We’ll fix your place up good enough to winter the island.
Dog is good but it will be nice to have some company out there.
Dear Simon,
Like clockwork, each morning I wake just a moment before sunrise and open my eyes. Why I wake at this time each morning I do not know, yet my best guess is that it is in that moment before sunrise that the lake is entirely quieted. I sleep in the front room, in the bed closest the window, so when I open my eyes, instantly my vision is cast upon the water. And at that moment it is nothing but a plate of glass with stars that shine up from within it. From star to star, how I could skip across the lake.
Winter the island! I admit I have dreamed of it. Is it truly possible? I understand that people have not lived year round out here for ages, yet I’m inclined to believe that it could be done without too much trouble. Your cabin has a good clearing in front of it—perhaps we could plant a garden, grow enough to store through winter. Oh, my imagination runs wild! Yet I must control it, for to winter the island in my old place would certainly lead to death.
Though perhaps you will arrive soon to help me fix it up? Yet now comes a time when I have to ask something difficult. It may prove to be a mistake. However, I have recently and severely been hurt by love. I came to this island to be alone. Yet here you are (in letters, at least!) and I cannot help but respond. What I mean to say is that if you intend to make a serious attempt at love with me, then we ought to continue. Yet if you consider yourself in any way the sort of man whom a woman might do best to avoid, then I would ask that you please back away from me now. I know that sounds quite harsh, but there it is. It is my one request.
Be well, dear Simon.
I know I ain’t out there yet. I been busy with work. Also I been meaning to tell you that I am fat and I ain’t never had a girlfriend. But I been getting to thinking about you a lot these days in truth.
Anyway, once I get out there, you like what you see, I got another idea. All my life I wanted to winter the island, so I figure we could just do that in my place. If yours ain’t done is all I mean.
It was Tasha, Kenneth’s woman, who convinced Simon to write this letter—a love letter, she called it. Simon lived with Kenneth and Tasha, and in Tasha’s opinion Simon was her very best friend.
“I bet Simon knows how to love a woman the right way,” she told Kenneth, after the letter was mailed. To this Kenneth smacked her ass and made a show of unhooking his belt.
“I’ll show you the right way,” he
said.
Flowers, letters, a birthday cake—these were the things Tasha had meant. “I just might leave you,” she said. Since they were fourteen years old the two of them had been together. “We can’t even have kids.” It was true, she had tried. Yet to this Kenneth winked, told her the problem with that wasn’t in his little swimmers. “It’s probably all them things you did to me when I was too young to be doing them,” she said. Kenneth slapped her ass one more time.
Simon had wanted Tasha to read his love letter, but she had insisted that that was a private matter. So she didn’t know what he had written. Winter the island? She would have said that was fast moves. She would have suggested dinner, a movie. Instead she imagined the letter he had mailed and she said, “Simon will make a good man to some woman.” In response Kenneth walked up the stairs, lay down fully clothed upon the bed, and stayed there until morning.
At her cabin, Alice dropped her clothes onto the beach and put her hand to her belly. Slowly she walked into the lake until the water covered her knees. The water was so calm that if she squinted, she could barely perceive the line where the lake ended and the sky began. Though it was full into summer nothing passed before her, no sailboat or motorboat or canoe, no loon, either, or even a gust of wind. The sun was at her back and she turned into it, faced the island. Her cabin sat low, sunken in the center and a shade browner than the sand. Pale green moss gleamed atop the roof. The birch tree grew dangerously close. She dropped herself backward into the water and floated there, looking only at the sky. She had started a fire on shore, and now smoke came out to drift above her. Alice kicked and turned over, swam with her eyes open. She could see down to the floor of the lake, and every so often the shine of a fish caught her vision and then vanished. Getting to thinking about you a lot these days in truth. First Alice pictured those months of snow on the island. They’d find old wooden skis, and together she and Simon would carve trails around the island, down the old stone sheep run, across the lake. How they would return to tea and blankets and love. How they’d keep warm. She saw the water spring, surrounded in snow but still flowing upward. Then those months in between the ice and thaw. Alice and Simon, the only people on the island, no way on and no way off. The bread she’d bake. The walks as the fallen leaves gave over to brown or the naked trees began to sprout. And then the life, the children. A life that people live. Alice swam to shore. Her spot on the island was cast in shadow now, and she shivered naked by the fire.
Dear Simon,
Mornings, this small place fully bathed in sun, I feel there isn’t a spot farther east that a person can get. And this feeling comforts me, as though it was something I had for years unknowingly searched for.
Patty Jean is teaching me to sew a quilt. Read, swim, walk, cook, sew, what a simple life it is out here.
Oh, Simon, I am glad to hear you think of me often, as I think of you. Your invitation to winter with you came as quite a shock, yet as Patty Jean has said to me more than once, life is too short. Yes is my answer. Yes, dear Simon, what have we got to lose?
“Lots of letters to Simie,” Kenneth said. They were on the mail dock, Alice holding one end of the envelope, Kenneth the other. Lately he had taken to breaking his own rule by not lowering the steps for her to walk aboard, but rather holding out his hand for the letters.
“Lots of letters to him,” Kenneth repeated. He slipped the letter from her grip and dropped it into his breast pocket. Then he tucked his thumbs into his belt loops and tipped back on his heels. “You met him?” he asked. Alice didn’t know that Kenneth knew the answer. She didn’t know Kettleborough anymore, couldn’t know that Simon and Kenneth were friends and even that they lived together. Nor did she know that Kenneth’s own damn woman kept saying that Simon knew how to love a woman. Bullshit. Alice’s ignorance pleased Kenneth greatly. “Simie?” he continued. “Suppose you two go way back?” Now he was at the bowline, jerking the boat in closer, thrusting his hips forward with each pull. The movement was obscene.
“Yes,” Alice said sternly. “Way back.” Kenneth was her friend. She liked meeting Kenneth on the mail dock. So perhaps now she misunderstood.
“I bet you do,” Kenneth said with a wink. Quickly he ran his tongue across his upper lip. “Well.” He removed the letter from his pocket, smelled it. “Well then. You can bet this letter will get straightaway where it needs to go.”
This Alice had never doubted. But now. No. Surely her letters got where they needed to go. “Kenneth,” Alice said. She didn’t know what else to say.
Kenneth winked. “Do I know Simon?” he asked. “That what you mean? Sure as hell I knows Simon.” He tapped the letter against his arm in even intervals. “I knows he ain’t where you sending these letters.”
“Of course,” she said. “People keep PO boxes, that’s all. You ought to know that. They keep the boxes and they don’t live there, they just keep them and gather their mail when they want.” Alice spoke quickly. She had begun to sweat.
“That’s a lot of mail gathering,” Kenneth said. He came in closer to her. The sun was hot upon them and she could smell his stale coffee breath. The dock became narrow and Alice dizzy. Her hand went out to grab hold of the post for balance.
“Kenneth,” she said. He had been her friend. What had come over him? Jealous, she thought suddenly. Federal Agent Kenneth must have developed a little crush on me. “Kenneth,” she said, softly.
“Whoa there,” Kenneth said. He held his arms out to her, a horse he meant to calm. Then he went to the stern line, untied it. “You alls is falling in love is how I take it,” he said as he climbed on board, that letter now sticking out from his back pocket. He started the engine. That sentence, it had come out of his mouth by surprise. Falling in love, he thought as he lowered the throttle. If I could make Tash fall in love with me once more. The bow reared and then planed. The letter was still in his pocket, and Kenneth’s hand went to it. Pulled it out. It was a sunny, warm day. Summer would soon be over. Once out in the middle of the lake, Kenneth slowed the boat again, cut the engine. He sat down in the stern, put his feet up. The letter was now on his lap. A wind could have come through, blown it into the lake. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the letter waited on his lap while he rested both hands behind his head and then lowered one. Simon knows how to make a woman love him. Bullshit. He lowered his other hand. Carefully he opened the letter, read it quickly, trembling. Of course it couldn’t be mailed now, not after it had been opened. In a rush Kenneth tucked it into his lunch bag. It wasn’t something he meant to do, opening it, reading it, taking it home with him. This thought Kenneth repeated like a prayer in the days to come. Yet after that first letter, Kenneth couldn’t bear to not open the next. Addiction, that’s what he might have called it.
Dear Simon,
Blueberries have come and gone, but I have removed the screens from the back windows of the cabin and used them to dry most of what I picked. One screen toppled over when a wind came across the island. I thought of letting the berries go to waste, but I had the time. I picked them out from the sand one by one, and set them back to drying.
I have gone to your cabin quite a bit recently. Just looking around, imagining our life. I have no fears of it, and it is a wonderful feeling.
Kenneth has been kind enough to me these past months to bring out the groceries I need now and again, and I am using that opportunity to stock up, though I know that you, too, are certainly thinking of and preparing for our journey together. I have not told Kenneth, however, of what we plan. I do not know why, but I have not told Patty Jean, either. It just seems such a precious occurrence, and one I want to savor for a bit. Is that strange?
I imagine we have enough rice to last, and also plenty of beans and oatmeal. I hope you will enjoy what I cook!
Dear Simon,
It has been perhaps a month since I last received a letter, yet how many I have written. August is nearly ended. If you would like to cancel our arrangement, that is no problem. If you are nervous to meet me
, please cast your nerves aside. What can the trouble be? In the least, Simon, please send me a note to say you have received mine.
Spread before Alice and Patty Jean were reels of fabric—together they were at work on Alice’s first quilt. Choosing fabric had been the hardest part. Alice would pick one pattern of blues and greens, try to match five more to it, but of course the colors were different and no two patterns ever matched entirely, so she’d put it all back and begin again.
“Just choose any damn thing,” Patty Jean had said after an hour or so. Then she had swept her fingers across the wall of fabric, tapped and pulled different notes until she had a fine collection on the table. That had been weeks ago. Now, at the table, the two were pinning squares. In the time it took Alice to attach one square to another, Patty Jean had already pinned ten squares together. Alice pushed a pin through and pricked her finger. One minuscule drop of blood emerged. The wind picked up, and a mile or so out from shore a sailboat capsized. “I made a quilt for one man,” Patty Jean said as she rocked. They were on the screened-in porch. Loons called back and forth from one cove to another. “Old Mr. Wentworth. Bastard.” She laughed a high, thick laugh, and a loon called as though back to her alone. “I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Bastard, though, and he knows it.”
“Well,” Alice said.
“You’ll know young Simon,” Patty Jean said now. “You’ve met him already? I told him to go over there and introduce himself. But then I probably scared him. I keep telling him you’ll make a good woman for him! He didn’t come see you? It was just last week he was out here. He’s a handsome one, too. A bit fat, but handsome. He’ll shape right up. Lonely is all.” Patty Jean had run out of squares, and now she stood. She flipped a reel of fabric as she spoke, laid a fresh yard out across the table. “He should have gone to see you. I looked at him and I said, Simon! Is that you? He’d cleaned himself right up, looked right happy. Course he had that girl with him. Kenneth’s girl. You know, I ought to watch my mouth. I leaned right in, whispered, Simon, you leave this pretty young thing.” Rather than walking to the spring, Patty Jean drank straight from the lake, always had. Now she patted the backs of her legs, reached for her mug of silty water, and sat down. “I don’t like a girl who dyes her hair so blond and pulls out all her eyebrows. I said, Simon, you go get that Alice. Boy did that make him go red. You didn’t see him? He didn’t come down to you?”
