Anxious Hearts

by Tucker Shaw

  I stand up on the rock-platform to scope out the meadow for a place to set up a small camp. At the other end of the stone wall, I see two more large boulders. I could use those for shelter, I think. I gather my pack and walk over.

  As I approach the boulders I see a small, crumbled building that reminds me of the old mill up near the lakes where Da’ used to take me canoeing. He said the old mill was the oldest building in Washington County, which was saying a lot since Washington County had a lot of old buildings.

  I walk over to the structure and run my hands along its stones and wonder what this building used to be. I wonder how old it is. I am amazed at the way the stones fit together, all irregular shapes but all perfectly fitted, like a jigsaw puzzle with moss growing from the seams.

  I search in the wall for a place to wedge a stick to hang my poncho from and my fingers catch on something, something that doesn’t feel as old as these walls, stuffed between the rocks. It is a notebook.

  Gabriel’s notebook.

  Gabriel

  AFTER FOUR DAYS OF HUNGER AND SLEEPLESSNESS and despair, the doors of the Great House burst open, and the once able Cadian men poured out onto the frosty meadow, tripping and stumbling and falling to the ground in the blinding sunlight. The days without sun had dilated their eyes, and Gabriel, with the others, squinted and covered his face to shield them.

  Gasping not so much for oxygen as for this fleeting moment of freedom, false freedom, the men, weakened by darkness and hunger and captivity and fear, sprawled around the entrance of the Great House like seals tossed onto the rocks after a violent ocean storm.

  Gabriel, lying beside a blueberry bush, looked through his fingers, letting the light in slowly. The Great House, rising from the banks of the Manan River, stood beside him, looking over the harbor. Gabriel turned his head to see that the dock was surrounded by New Colony skiffs, sent from the ships anchored deeper out in the harbor.

  They’d learned to navigate the tide.

  “To your feet, Cadians,” said a soldier. “You will now be escorted to your transports.”

  “Where is my wife?” Gabriel said to no one in particular. “Evangeline. My wife.” He mumbled more than spoke, and struggled to stand.

  “This way, please,” said the soldier, prodding Gabriel to his feet with the butt of his musket. “This way.” He pushed Gabriel toward a shuffling crowd of men.

  Gabriel hobbled forward on weak, uncertain legs. “Father?” he said. “Where is my father?”

  “My son,” said a voice to his left. Basil.

  “Father,” Gabriel said. “You are here.”

  “Let me take your arm, my son,” Basil said. “Let me follow you.”

  Gabriel mustered his last reserves of clarity and led his weakened father to the dock, following the others around him, eyes cast downward, spirits shamed and hopeless. It had taken only four days to break every able Cadian man, and here they were, broken, imprisoned, enslaved. Even Basil.

  Gabriel carried his slumping father, struggling under Basil’s weight but moving forward steadily with the crowd. So intent was he on not falling underfoot, on not dropping his father, that he barely noticed the women, children, and old men gathered silently at the dock. His eyes, reddened by darkness and desperation, nearly missed his beloved, disheveled and dirty but eternally lovely, bent under the weight of her own father, who leaned heavily on her sloping shoulders.

  “Gabriel,” she said boldly as he walked past.

  Gabriel, ripped from his misery by her voice, spun to see the cornflower cloak of Evangeline. He reached out to her, almost unbelievingly. “My beloved!” he cried, breaking stride with the shuffling men and falling out of the line toward her. “My wife!”

  “This way,” insisted a soldier as he prodded Gabriel in the leg with the butt of his gun. “Return here, if you please.” He took Basil from Gabriel’s arm and pushed him roughly onto the dock.

  Gabriel jumped over the soldier’s gun and hissed. “She is my wife,” he said gravely and determinedly. His eyes burned. “I will go to my wife.”

  The soldier whistled sharply, and suddenly four soldiers tackled Gabriel, pinning him to the ground. They flipped him onto his face and bound his hands behind his back with a spiky length of rope. “It is the troublemaker’s son,” one said. “Move him. We must hurry, or we will lose this infernal tide.”

  Two soldiers took Gabriel by the arms, lifted him roughly, pulled him across the dock, his unshod feet dragging behind him, and shoved him onto a skiff. The boat was flush with the dock, easing Gabriel’s landing onto its floor, but not by much. An oarsman grabbed Gabriel and jerked him to his feet. Gabriel growled.

  The oarsman quickly pushed off and began rowing for the ships.

  “My son!” Basil shouted from the dock.

  “Father,” whispered Gabriel. “Evangeline.”

  The skiff rowed away slowly, carrying Gabriel, stroke by unhurried stroke, away from the dock, his father, his wife, his life.

  A great cry came up from the collected Cadians still on shore, just as a fast fog licked across the land and drew an opaque curtain over the dock, the Manan River, and Gabriel’s beloved Pré-du-sel.

  This is the last I shall ever see of this place, he thought as the cloud closed around him, and the sadness was so powerful and final that his knees buckled. As he fell, he saw flames striking through the fog, and realized that the fog was not fog, but smoke from a fire. They are burning the village, thought Gabriel in his delirium. It is over.

  “Evangeline.”

  Gabriel slumped to one side, and toppled over the edge of the skiff and into the crystal-black ocean, as cold as an icy heart.

  “Overboard!” yelled the oarsman. “Man over!”

  “Worry not,” answered the commander. “He is bound. He will not surface again. Row on. And proceed with the destruction of the dikes.”

  eva

  I don’t have time to decide whether to read Gabe’s notebook. It just happens before I can think about it. I am transfixed by the first words in the notebook, sloppily lettered in Gabe’s handwriting.

  Evangeline set down her rake and untied her felt cloak of cornflower blue, draping it over the fence that enclosed the small garden in front of the small, square stone-and-log house. She pushed her linen sleeves up over her forearms, swiped her hair away from her face, and looked up at the low, wispy clouds above. Gabriel seized on the gesture, sweeping his charcoal across the sheet of birchbark.

  I ignore the slowly building ocean breeze, the descending clouds, the fading afternoon light. I read intently, not caring about the time or the temperature, at turns enchanted and alarmed by the words in the notebook. I am swept away in the story, because it is Gabe’s story.

  I sit on the stone platform and read, straight through sunset and into the dense blue-dark of the Maine twilight. I read about Evangeline in her leggings of deerskin and kirtle of blue, and Gabriel clutching his sketch in pursuit of her beauty, and the rolling, golden land of Pré-du-sel, and of hotheaded Basil and fatherly Benedict and the threatening ships. I read about the wedding and the violence and the imprisonment and the separation at the docks. I read about Gabriel, who fell overboard but will not surface, because he is bound.

  After the words “Row on. And proceed with the destruction of the dikes,” there are only blank pages. The rest of the notebook is empty.

  Except for, tucked in the back, up against the spiral, a slip of paper that has been crumpled, then carefully folded, like a piece of rubbish retrieved from the trash can and reclaimed.

  I unfold it. It is typed and ruled, like a third copy of a triplicate form, stamped: “Bangor Regional Hospital, Oncology.”

  Then it says: “Northern Maine’s Best Cancer Care Facility.”

  Then it says: “Patient Name: Paul Lejeune, Franktown, Maine.”

  Then it says: “Indication: Lymphocytic leukemia.”

  Then it says: “Procedure: Bone marrow.”

  Then it says: “Donor: Gabriel Lejeune
, brother.”

  I blink and read it again. Gabriel Lejeune, brother.

  I stare at the paper for a long time, hypnotized, before a cold raindrop on my forearm startles me. I look up at the sky. I knew the clouds were getting thicker, but I am surprised at how gusty and dark it’s gotten since I’ve been here. More raindrops. Are these really the first? My shirt is already soaked through. I’m still staring at the piece of paper, but I can’t see it. I’m not sure how long I’ve been here.

  So Gabriel knows about Paul. He was the donor. Was that why he limped? Was he recovering from the surgery? My heart hardens to think of the pain Gabriel must be carrying this day.

  And then there is a voice behind me. “What are you doing here?” it says. The voice is deep, powerful, insistent. But not unfamiliar. I have never heard this tone before, but I know this voice.

  I look up, but all I see is sudden darkness and flashes of light, distant lightning snaking through the thunderclouds, unrelenting flashes, one atop the other like a strobe light. Am I hearing things?

  A massive crash of thunder overhead makes me jump. I turn, and suddenly the fuming sky above me roars, the storm now directly overhead, lightning illuminating the bluff, the sea, and the wild face in the wind staring at me.

  “Gabe!”

  Another strike of lightning, even closer now, illuminates the face again. It is him, only his face is different. Mangled, tight, angry like the sky, with streams of rainwater flowing from its planes.

  “What are you doing?” he yells, and grabs the notebook out of my hands. “Did you read this?”

  A gust of wind whips up behind him, catching his hair and blowing it into his face. Water swirls around him like an airborne whirlpool. I can’t see his eyes, only his mouth, screaming, his neck red and bulging with tendons. “How did you find this place? Why are you here?” He seems so much bigger than I know him to be.

  “Gabe! I—”

  “How did you get here?” he wails, yelping, then begins mumbling, pacing. “No, no,” he says. “No!” He looks back and forth, panicked. “No, no one is supposed to be here!”

  “Gabe,” I say, I whisper, hoping my voice will soothe him.

  He stops for a moment and stares at me, body and voice shaking, and for a moment he is not an angry young man, just a child frightened by the storm. “It’s not my fault,” he says, voice shivering.

  “Please,” I say, holding out my hands, my hair plastered wet against my face. “Please.” I want to shout but, like in a dream where your legs won’t move just as you need to run, my voice fails me, and all I can do is whisper. “Please. Gabe.”

  “Do you hear me?” he shouts at me violently. “No one is to see this! No one is to know!” He suddenly turns and starts running, racing toward the edge of the cliff. He tears the pages from the notebook and tosses them into the air. They catch the violent wind, sweeping and spinning upward into the stormy night sky, shrinking as they’re sucked, one after another, into the tempest.

  “Gabe!” I whisper. “Gabe!” I race after him, not sure what he’s going to do, only knowing that the cliff is there, just steps away, massive and unforgiving and slick, and after that there is nothing, only driving rain, black with rage.

  “It’s not my fault!” he yells.

  I race, but I trip, and I crumple to the ground just as Gabe reaches the edge. “Gabe,” I say. I get back up and stumble forward. “I love you.”

  Gabriel Lejeune doesn’t answer me, and I catch a rock with my toe, and fall again into the wet, cold grass, slowly, and before my head hits another rock and the blood starts to seep into my eyes, I see him disappear over the side of the cliff.

  My last thought is to wonder if they will ever find us.

  PART TWO

  eva

  I have accepted that Gabriel is gone. It’s been a year and a half. I’m graduating today. Growing up. I’d better be used to it by now.

  I know he’s not dead. I would have heard about it if he’d washed up on a beach somewhere like the Felician girl. It would have been a big deal, like on the news and everything. “Local Boy Drowns in Tide, Residents Reminded to Wear Life Jackets.” That kind of thing.

  But I have no idea where he actually is. I spent months in those woods, looking for him, I guess. I knew how stupid it was, but I tried. I never found him, of course, and eventually I had to try to stop wondering where he was, to stop looking for clues, to quit listening to rumors. There’s always another story: He’s moved to Los Angeles, he’s a drug addict in New York City, his father sent him to military school in South Carolina, he moved to Paris with a girl.

  Wherever he is, he’s not here.

  When I do let myself picture him, or when I dream about him, which is harder to stop, he’s always alone. He’s never in the sun, always in the shadows, in the fog, in the forest. I can barely see him. But he’s always carrying that notebook.

  Gabe’s father, Mr. Lejeune, is gone, too. Shortly after Paul died and Gabe disappeared, he moved to Boston. But then I heard he moved again, to Washington, D.C. Or somewhere. Who knows. Da’ says that happens to families. Tragedy either brings them closer together or rips them apart. The Lejeunes were ripped apart. After Paul’s funeral, they were like ghosts here. People spoke of Gabe and Mr. Lejeune, but no one ever saw them in Franktown again.

  At the beginning of this school year, I even got rid of the quarter Gabe gave me, that day under the docks. His life’s savings. Tossed it right off the edge of that same stupid cliff he disappeared over.

  I can’t believe we’re graduating today. Louise has been all over me to wear striped tights and Converse sneakers under our graduation robes, which I protested against but finally gave in to because it was easier than explaining to Louise how refusing to wear stupid tights doesn’t make me a party pooper. To be honest, I wanted to skip the whole graduation altogether, just blow it off, but when there are only thirty-three in your graduating class, people notice if you don’t show up. I tried to use the excuse that Da’ wasn’t feeling well enough to come, which he wasn’t, but Louise didn’t let me get away with it. So here I am, walking across the stage to accept a rolled-up diploma from Principal Hawthorne, in a canary-yellow graduation robe over striped tights and Converse sneakers. Louise chose the tights—light blue and dark blue—I guess because we are both going to the University of Southern Maine down in Portland and those are their school colors.

  I’m looking forward to college. I’m going to study premed. I don’t know if I want to be a doctor or a researcher or what. I can’t explain it, but I just want to learn how to fix things. Things like old age. Leukemia. Pain.

  I wish Ada were here today. She’d be proud. But she hasn’t been home since the New Year’s Day blizzard, when she was picked up by the cops walking down Route 18A in a nightgown, bare feet frozen blue in the driving snow and ice. She was a month in the hospital in Bangor, where they removed all except one of her frostbitten toes, and now she’s living at Penobscot Pines in Brewster, where I guess she’s going to die. I mean, it’s not like you leave places like Penobscot Pines when you get better. People there don’t get better. Ada knows it, and Da’ and I know it, too. But we never talk about it, and everyone tries to pretend that it’s no big deal. All Ada ever said about anything was once when I was telling her about how the crocuses were starting to come up back in Franktown, and she said, “I never got to say good-bye to my home.” And then she smiled and shook her head, as casually as if she’d just missed a ringtoss at the Franktown Fair.

  We go up to see her every two weeks or so. Sometimes she’s embroidering or looking at Yankee magazine. Sometimes she’s asleep. Sometimes she just sits there in bed, staring at the wall, with no expression at all. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t creepy when she’s like that.

  I think it made Da’ pretty happy that I applied to do my pre-pre-med summer work-study at Penobscot Pines. I’ll be answering phones, filling out forms, distributing activity schedules. Boring. But I’ll get paid minimum wage, plus I
’ll get credits at USM. And I’ll get to hang out with Ada, which I feel is something I’m supposed to do. I mean, we’re practically related, and in a weird way she’s one of my best friends. I haven’t told her about my job yet. I want it to be a surprise. Da’ said I can take his car for the summer, since he hates driving it anyway.

  It’s going to be weird to be around all those old people all summer. Odds are someone will die while I’m there, which will freak me out. But I better get used to people dying if I want to study medicine. It’s part of the deal. And I guess it’s easier to be around old people who are dying than to be around kids who are dying. Like Paul.

  Paul. He’s the real reason Gabe left. If Paul had lived, if the transplant had worked, Gabriel would have gotten better. His father would have called him a hero. It would have been the best thing that could have happened to him. And to me, because he would still be here.

  But that’s not what happened. Paul died, because his body rejected Gabriel’s gift. “Close but no cigar,” as Da’ would say.

  Principal Hawthorne hands me my diploma and I shake his hand, then take my seat on the side of the stage. My canary-yellow polyester graduation gown catches a nail and tugs me backward. I tear at it, ripping the bottom seam of the gown. Principal Hawthorne glares at me. You’ll be charged for that, he seems to say.

  “Louise Letiche,” Principal Hawthorne announces. “Valedictorian.” Louise walks across the stage, shakes Principal Hawthorne’s hand, accepts her roll, and smiles broadly. She yanks up her gown to reveal her tights, and the small audience applauds—except for Robert Manning, who barks “Go Wildcats!” which I guess means he’s going to the University of New Hampshire.

  It’s no surprise that Louise is valedictorian. She is definitely the smartest girl in Franktown. Straight A’s every semester. And I don’t think she even studies that hard. She’s just one of those people who knows the right answers all the time.