by A. S. Green
I laugh out loud and surprise myself with the sound. I can’t remember the last time I laughed.
“Hey, kid!” Doyle yells up from the deck then turns his head to see who or what has been holding my attention. He shakes his head. It may only be my second summer on Little Bear, but I know what that headshake means. When it comes to summer girls, Doyle’s advice is best not to get too familiar.
No worries there, Cappy.
Samson whines on his mat in the corner of the bridge. His muscles ripple as he dreams, then he snaps awake as if something has bitten him.
“Come here, you dumb dog.” He trots up alongside me. I stroke his black, milk-crate head and down his neck. A low rumbling sound of contentedness vibrates through Sam’s chest, and I lean out the window to see how Doyle’s doing.
He has flipped the thick lines off the iron cleats, gracefully casting us from the pier. He loops the lines into a coil at the stern, then waves his arms in a crisscross fashion over his head, signaling to me to engage the throttle.
The engines groan as I back the ferry from the landing. There are no words spoken between us. The whole thing is perfectly choreographed, like a ballet with a hundred-ton prima donna. It’s time to go. Punctuality is important, so I don’t delay. Little Bear residents set their clocks by the ferry, and I’ve disappointed enough people to last a lifetime.
Chapter Eight
Katherine
It’s a twenty-minute ferry ride from New Porte on the mainland to Little Bear Island, and my stomach is twisted with paranoia. I’m certain everyone on board is staring at me, the new girl. There’s a particular skin-prickling intensity coming from above, from up where they drive this thing. I turn my back on it and spot the grumpy old man from the ticket booth. He’s standing at the stern, still glowering at me as if I kicked his puppy. You’d think the guy already hated me or something.
Get a grip, I tell myself. You’re imagining things. And by the time the ferry bumps the dock on Little Bear, filling my nose with a gust of diesel fumes, I’ve halfway convinced myself that it’s all going to be okay.
As we dock, I stand cautiously along the rail and wait for someone to signal that it’s my turn to get off. That’s when a weather-worn man runs toward me from shore, pushing a small furniture dolly and moving at an alarming clip.
“I’m Calloway,” he says as he reaches me. “You the summer girl?”
Joseph Calloway—the lighthouse caretaker and the man I spoke to on the phone about the job—is one of those people of indeterminable age. His hair is thick, silver, and windblown around his bronzed and weathered face. He walks with a slight limp, but he has no problem loading up my suitcases and running them to his car.
“Katherine D’Arcy,” I reply to the back of his head. He throws my bags into the backseat of his rusted-out car, then jumps behind the wheel.
I barely get myself belted before he stomps on the gas and we fly backward into a neck-snapping Y-turn, then up the slope to the main street.
“Brace yourself,” he warns as the blacktop ends, and with a hard bounce, we continue on a deeply rutted dirt road that weaves through the woods and up a steep hill.
I support myself with one hand gripping the car door and the other pressed against the roof. We careen around corners, then skitter across the loose gravel before straightening out, jarring and jolting until my teeth rattle and I imagine my head has turned into a giant maraca.
At the top of the hill, there’s a sign that reads march’s berry farm, then we take a sharp right at a break in the pines, revealing the lighthouse in all its…okay, so it isn’t exactly glorious.
In a word, the old lighthouse can only be described as squat. The short tower is built of dark brown stones with an iron railing around the widow’s walk. It is attached to a stub of a house with two square-paned windows that are evenly spaced, glowing with a dim light and framed by peeling, dark green shutters. Together, the house and the tower remind me of a toad smoking a cigar.
The car tires make a crunching sound as they roll over the pea-gravel driveway, finally coming to a rest in one of two parking spaces.
When I step out, I can hear the lake lapping against the shoreline, out of view and somewhere far, far below the grass-fringed edge of the yard. Seagulls squawk and sail over the water.
Calloway pulls my suitcases from the backseat, carrying them in one hand while his right arm wraps around my backpack full of books. I grab my smaller bag and purse and follow him into the house.
An old radio is playing on the kitchen windowsill. It’s picking up two stations at once, creating a confusion of white noise. There’s a crusted pan of scrambled eggs on the floor, and I try really, really hard not to notice that the plaid curtains over the kitchen sink don’t match the floral curtains on the window behind the table.
The refrigerator is squealing. Calloway leans his weight against it, and the shrill whine dips to a hum.
When I step farther into the house, the floorboards creak, and a hairy red dog comes barreling out of a back room.
“Oh gosh!” I yelp and take a few stutter steps backward. The dog makes a beeline for me. “Crap!”
I bend over at the waist, stiff-arming the beast before it knocks me over. Only once I think I’ve convinced it to stay away, do I straighten. The dog takes that as an invitation to jump up and put its rough paws on my shoulders.
“Down,” I say. “Get down.”
It drops to the floor and sniffs me in that totally awkward way. My purse slips from my shoulder and hits the floor while I twist and block the dog, all the while trying to remain calm. I remember reading somewhere that dogs can smell fear. Why doesn’t Calloway control his freakin’ dog?
Calloway returns from another room—now relieved of my suitcases and backpack. A yellow-toothed smile breaks across his face. “I see you’re getting acquainted with Lucy.” He chuckles. “Golden retrievers are supposed to be water dogs, but she doesn’t like it at all, and by the time I figured that out she’d kinda grown on me. So…she won’t be going on the fishing trip, but she’ll be good company for you. She thinks she runs this place, anyway.”
Calloway strips off his plaid wool shirt, which he wears like a jacket over a faded black T-shirt, and throws it recklessly over a kitchen chair. He gestures for me to follow him toward the back of the house, and I take a tentative step away from the door before hurrying to catch up. The dog trails right behind me, a low rumble in her throat. Calloway reproaches her, and she sniffs the back of my knee.
“These are the sleeping quarters,” he says, gesturing through an open doorway to the left of the kitchen. There’s no doorknob, only a wrought-iron latch. He takes my purse from me and tosses it through the doorway where it lands with a thud on the floor alongside my suitcases and backpack. “Lucy sleeps at the foot of the bed. Good luck convincing her otherwise.”
“You didn’t mention anything about a dog in the ad.” I’m going to kill Macie.
He looks at me guiltily. “A kid in town suggested I advertise in his old college newspaper, but it charged more per letter than the normal papers. I was being economical.”
I continue to stare back, unblinking. Oh, no. No no no no. This is not happening to me.
“Plus,” he says gruffly, “I was in a bind. I couldn’t afford to scare off any more applicants by mentioning Lu. Sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t sound sorry at all.
“Here are the keys.” He tosses them in the air, and I fumble the catch before getting my pinky finger caught in the ring. “Now, I hope you don’t mind, but it can get pretty lonely up here.”
“I don’t mind being alone.” I watch the dog warily and wonder if there’s a kennel on the island. “In fact, are you sure you don’t want to take your dog with you?”
“Have a seat.” He kicks one of the red lacquered kitchen chairs back from the round oak table, and it makes a scraping noise across the floor.
I pause again and survey the chair. If I sit, I’ll be closer to the dog’s mouth, wh
ich is already panting its hot breath all over the palm of my hand. Betta fish are one thing, but my anxiety with animals grows proportionally with their size. There’s no way I’m spending the summer with a dog.
Calloway tries to tune the radio to a combination polka channel/farm report, then he comes back to the kitchen table, flips another chair around, and straddles it backward. “I want to make myself clear. I usually don’t hire summer girls as young as you, but when your friend called, she said you were a very detail-oriented person. That’s good, see, because this place is my baby. Nothing’s too good for my baby. That’s why I don’t hire one of the local girls.”
Something he sees on my face tells him I don’t understand.
“My granddad was the lighthouse keeper, but the Coast Guard decommissioned it in thirty-two. About twenty years ago, the town council planned to tear it down.” He huffs and coughs, turning his head into his shoulder.
“I started a petition to have it added to the Register of Historic Places. Won that fight and bought the place. I never trusted most of the people in this town after that.”
He pulls a piece of paper out from God knows where—it’s like a freaking magic trick or something—then slaps it on the table. “How are you with lists?” he asks.
I raise my eyebrows. Is he kidding?
Apparently not, so I deadpan, “I’m the Queen of Lists.”
“Good.” He then proceeds to give me the rundown on the weekly routine, which mainly consists of housekeeping duties, until he says, “And on Fridays we clean Lucy’s teeth. She keeps her toothbrush under the kitchen sink.”
At first I think he’s kidding, and I laugh. He doesn’t. He doesn’t even crack a smile.
“Saturday we check Lucy for ticks. Sundays are for rest. Now listen, if you come up with any questions later, call me.” He taps the piece of paper where I notice he’s scribbled several phone numbers. “But I don’t always have good reception where I’m headed, so try any of these local numbers if you’re in a bind.
“There’s a doggie door cut outta the back of this place. Lucy will let herself in and out. There’s a bag of dog food under the sink and more in the shed out back. Give her one cup in the morning and one in the late afternoon. No more or she won’t fit through the door anymore. Keep her water dish full, or she’ll drink out of the toilet, and keep her away from dead fish as best you can or she’ll get diarrhea.”
I’m pretty sure my skin is turning a pale shade of green. “Aren’t you going to teach me about running the lighthouse?”
He looks at me like I’m extremely slow. “I told you it was decommissioned.”
“Yes.”
“So there’s nothing you need to do—at least when it comes to keeping boats from crashing on the rocks. You’re here for Lucy.”
The dog whines.
“It’s all right, Lu. This girl’ll take good care of you. I’ll be back in twelve weeks. The Vega’s yours to use,” he offers, pointing in the direction of where his car is parked in the driveway. “It’s gassed up. Ah! I hear Murphy’s truck coming. He’s my fishing partner. We gotta get out of here if we’re going to make Winnipeg by morning. We’ve got an eight a.m. flight out of there to Vancouver.”
“Wait. You mean, just like that?” I ask, perhaps a little too desperate sounding than is reasonable. “You’re leaving?”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” He bends over and kisses the dog on the head, and with that, picks up his wool shirt, grabs two duffles, zips up his bag of fishing poles, and walks out.
The dog and I listen to the muffled voices of Calloway and his friend in the driveway, then the thump, thump of Calloway’s duffle bags landing in the back of the truck.
There’s the crunch of tires over gravel and a small backfire, then the dog wheels around on me—a low growl rumbling through its chest.
I curse low under my breath. It’s going to kill me before I even unpack. “Nice doggie.”
It barks twice—loud and sharp. I shriek and fly through the kitchen, flinging myself into the bedroom, slamming the door and dropping the latch. I grab my backpack and dig around until I find my phone. Out of habit, I dial Macie’s number, but I’m met with the sound of a dropped call. Still no service.
I hold my phone high in the air and wander around the room then over to the window, while the dog continues to bark on the other side of the door. With the phone still held above my head, I try Macie again.
“Hello?” comes the broken voice above me.
“Macie!” I yell toward the ceiling. “Macie, can you hear me?”
“Katherine? Are you okay?”
Before I answer, the line goes dead. I throw my cell toward the foot of the bed and lunge for the heavy black phone on the nightstand. The handset feels like a lead brick. I’ve never actually used a dial phone before. I’m not even sure it’ll work.
“Katherine? Is that you?”
“Hey! Wow! It works,” I say.
“Are you okay?” Macie asks.
I flop down on my stomach on the bed. “I am so mad at you.”
“You made it up there in one piece then,” she quips.
“There’s a dog, Macie. A big dog! I’m a freaking dog sitter!”
“Ooo,” she says. “Awkward.”
“Awkward? Awkward? It wants to kill me.”
I can hear Macie’s eye roll over the line. “Don’t overdramatize,” she says.
Easy for her to say. There’s not some hairy four-legged creature scratching on the other side of her bedroom door.
She says, “Give it something better to eat than you.”
“Would you be serious?”
“I thought I was,” she responds.
I groan, rolling over onto my back.
“So what’s it like up there?” she asks.
“Old and small.” So small I can hear the clock tick-tock in the kitchen.
I look around the tiny bedroom for the first time. Much like the mismatched kitchen, Calloway’s room is a jumble of antiques and truck-stop knickknacks. It features a tarnished brass bed with a saggy mattress and an olive green velour blanket, an upholstered pink-and-orange chair with stuffing coming out in tufts, and a small bedside table and lamp, which casts a dim light around the otherwise dark room. Who can live like this?
I roll off the bed and stretch the phone cord toward the window. I push up the sash, letting in a breeze. The lake laps the shore as the house groans on its foundation.
“Did you find Andrew’s present yet?” Macie asks.
“What present?” Knowing Andrew’s proclivity for grand gestures, he probably sent a bouquet of flowers ahead of time, but I think I would have smelled that already. Right now all I smell is dog and mothballs. I search the room again, but there’s no obvious welcome gift, only a Girls of the Ivy League calendar that’s hanging on a nail by the door. The wrong month is showing. Miss Dartmouth must be Calloway’s type.
“It’s in your big suitcase,” she says, “but brace yourself.”
“How did he get it in there?” I ask.
“He told me your mom planted it for him.” Macie’s tone sounds like a warning, and the line picks up static.
This does not give me a good feeling. I keep digging and find, tucked underneath the just-in-case sweaters Mom made me pack, Andrew’s gift box. Judging by its rectangular shape, it’s probably clothes, but Andrew’s not much of a shopper. His mom does all that for him, which makes me even more leery about the present. Why didn’t he want me to open it in front of him?
There’s a note taped under the ribbon. It says, Just for laughs.
I pull the lid off the box and find a whole bunch of lacy, silky undergarments—but not the Victoria Secret kind. The first is a bright yellow negligee featuring Sponge Bob. I flip below it and see matching Iron Man, Green Lantern, Gollum, and Squidward bra and panty sets—two of each kind.
Andrew’s always been a sucker for a great gag gift, but why? Just…why? I mean, what kind of underwear company would
even make something like this?
“What the hell?” I say, frantically digging through the suitcase. None of my normal underwear are in here anymore.
“Weird, don’t you think?” Macie asks. The line starts breaking up, but I’m too distracted to worry about that. I keep digging through my suitcase, hoping to find something normal. Anything. I’d take enormous white cotton granny panties at this point.
“What was he thinking?”
“Girl, listen,” she says. “I hate to feed your eternal optimism, but you don’t think he was buying himself a little insurance policy, do you?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, my hands stilling.
“I mean, wha— are the chances you’re going t— have a summer fling wi— some guy up th— if you’re wearing a Squidward thong?”
With the line picking up more static, my brain struggles to catch all the words, as well as catch up to her theory. Andrew wants to make sure I keep my clothes on? Interesting. “You think that’s it?”
My cell phone screen lights up—miraculously—with an incoming call. “Macie, I got to go. I got another call.”
“It’s Andy, isn’t it.”
“Andrew. Yeah.”
“What are you going to say? Maybe grow a pair and ask him flat out, ‘Are you as hot for me as I am for you?’”
“Helpful. Have a great time in Tibet. Really, really great, okay? Okay, bye.” I pick up Andrew’s call, but it goes dead as quickly as Macie’s did.
I call him back on the black phone, and he picks up right away, saying, “Hello?”
At the sound of his steady voice, my shoulders relax, and I realize how much tension I’ve been carrying around all day. “It’s me,” I say. “I’m calling from the landline.”
“How are you doing?” Andrew asks, and the way he says it tells me that he really wants to know.
“Not sure, exactly. I may have picked up someone else’s suitcase. I don’t recognize a lot of the things inside.”
“So you found my present?” I can tell he’s grinning.
