The Diviner's Tale

by Bradford Morrow

  — Everything okay? I asked.

  — Definitely.

  — Are you all right about what happened with us? I asked, regretting my words the instant they left my mouth.

  — Of course I am.

  — Good, because—

  — Let's go inside? as if to prove his point.

  We did go upstairs and take off our clothes and make love again, and it couldn't have been more manifest to me that the heat of our recent night had, like the heat wave itself, begun to abate. By the time we dressed and he—a mere hour after having shown up—said he had to run back to town without offering any of the expected platitudes as he left, I knew, while I collected my dowsing instruments and disheartening picnic basket by myself, that what had seemed so propitious was instead a one-off bust. Indeed, speaking with Robert Boyd on the phone later that evening, to tell him I had been successful in discovering his water for him, he said, in passing, how delighted James and his wife and little girl were going to be when they heard the news.

  —James and his family adore the place, he explained, his weak voice raspy yet full of hope. —This will give them a chance to get it back to where my wife and I had it once upon a time.

  I hadn't the heart to inform him his son harbored no other intention than of dumping the Boyd farmhouse to the first person with a line of credit and a cheap lawyer the moment he died. But toward Boyd the elder I had nothing more in me than to wish him the best with everything. I even said, —God bless and good luck to you, because I sensed that would be meaningful to him. Seven weeks later my pregnancy would be confirmed.

  12

  MORGAN AND JONAH WERE waiting for me, sitting impatiently in the violet shade of the cottage porch roof when I returned from the little graveyard. Both sprang to their feet when they saw me put the rake away in the stone shed, and came running through the tall speargrass, calling out more or less at the same time, "Hey Cass, you just missed him."

  "Missed who?" I asked, half-hoping Niles had gotten it in his head to come to Covey for some reason, Niles who wouldn't flinch at noises made by my prankster sons or a harmless woodland creature that I, who infringed on its domain, had startled into retreat.

  "I don't know," said Morgan.

  So it had been the boys after all. "You mean the same 'him' I missed in the cemetery a while ago?" I frowned. "Who do you guys think you're kidding."

  "You mean you saw him, too?"

  "Actually there were two of him and they looked amazingly just like you."

  Finally, I thought, turned tables on them for once. But instead of bursting into laughter and conceding that they'd been busted, they stared at me in plain confusion.

  "I don't get it," said Jonah.

  "Come on, give it up. You were trying to spook me at the cemetery."

  "Totally no way," Morgan insisted.

  "So who was this man looking for me?"

  "We never saw him before."

  "Jonah?" I asked, licking my thumb and rubbing some dirt off his cheek, at which he lightly winced.

  "That's right, we don't know him. But he knows who you are. He said—"

  Morgan interrupted. "He knew our names, too."

  "Well, what did he want?"

  They looked at each other and back at me, their faces unwontedly blank. My hands were trembling, so I placed them on my hips in the hope the twins wouldn't notice. "Did he at least tell you his name?"

  Names are doors to ideas, it occurred to me once more. What idea was eluding me here?

  "He didn't say."

  "Why didn't you ask?" I demanded, exasperated.

  "We just didn't," Morgan answered, now defensive, palming his long hair out of his face where the wind had ruffled it into his eyes.

  Must have been someone from Cranberry or Mount Desert, I thought, turning toward the house, or a newspaper journalist from back home who had nothing better to do than follow us up here in search of some continuation of the Henderson story. But no, a journalist would have waited, and besides, my story was already yesterday's news. Anybody who would have taken the trouble to boat over from one of the other islands wouldn't have departed without leaving a name and telling the boys what brought him all the way here.

  "Where'd he go?"

  Both eagerly pointed down the dock path.

  "You two head inside. I'm going to have a look, see if I can't catch up—"

  "Look, he did say one thing," Jonah broke in.

  "What was that?"

  "He said he'd hate to have to come back but would if you forced him to. What did he mean by that, Mother?"

  Hearing him call me Mother took me aback. Made him sound so vulnerable. I had no idea what to tell him. All I knew was that I was both angry and terrified, and that it was best not to let my boys see it. "I don't know what he's talking about. Did he mean it in a friendly way or threatening?"

  "He wasn't friendly or unfriendly," said Jonah.

  "He seemed pretty serious, though."

  "I need you boys to stay inside while I go find out what this is all about."

  "But—"

  "Please," I said, more firmly. "Get inside right now. And lock the door."

  "Come on—"

  "Lock it."

  As I ran down the path, stumbling, sliding on loose stones, I couldn't help but think the obvious. James Boyd, after all these reticent years, had read or heard about his sometime lover's recent travails and gotten it in mind to pay her, so to speak, a visit. Judge for himself whether she should be allowed to continue raising these reported sons he never met nor once bothered to contact. Made me furious to imagine him reentering my life. Furious and frightened. Would Jonah and Morgan ever trust a word I said again, if he let them in on what I always assumed was a tacit covenant between myself and their extinct father? I could only hope they would understand and forgive. By the time I reached the dock, out of breath, I had reconsidered this assumption. James Boyd had no interest in me or them, I realized. Even if he had, there was no way he would put himself to the trouble of traveling all the way to Covey Island to make his cryptic point, whatever that point could possibly mean after so much time. If not him, though, who?

  I peered along the curved rocky shorelines in both directions, looking back from the far end of the dock, and saw no one. Without pausing to think twice, I sprinted up the hill along a narrow path that led directly over the island to the houses on the far side. This trail, since it offered no lovely views—and because we never visited those on the other end, nor they us—was rarely, indeed almost never, used. Nor did it show any signs of having been taken by anyone recently. When I emerged from the green thicket to make my way down through a glass-slick slope of talus, I saw no smoke coming from Mrs. Milgate's coal-stove chimney, and the adjacent house looked dormant as well. A postcard picture of tranquil island life.

  It had been a couple of seasons since I last encountered Angela Milgate. Small though the island was, she really did keep her own counsel. Because of this, I felt every bit the intruder myself here as I sheepishly climbed her wooden steps and quietly knocked on her door. She didn't answer, though I could swear I smelled baked beans, or burned syrup maybe, wafting from the open windows. Her pair of duck boots were neatly placed side by side next to the doormat, and their leather uppers, I saw, were still wet from a recent walk down to the water.

  "Mrs. Milgate?" I called out as loudly as I dared. "You home? It's Cassandra Brooks here."

  Either she wasn't in the mood or else was napping, and so I decided to try my luck at the other house. Since the tide was out, I walked a beeline across the kelp-strewn muddy flats past where a cormorant perched like some elegant angel of death atop a beached skiff whose hull was the worse for wear. Not a boat one would want to take to sea. When I knocked on the front door, it swung open slightly. Sensing the place was long abandoned, I stuck my head inside and shouted, "Anybody home?"

  Uninhabited houses, derelict houses, always have some kind of unwritten symphony going on in them, and this one was no di
fferent. Tiny crumbs of sound, dim little cracks and creaks made by nothing other than the walls talking to one another. I once heard a recording of what was purported to be the sound of solar winds and was reminded of it then as I took a few steps inside. The furniture was old, springs corkscrewed up through the upholstery. The musty air itself seemed tired. Whoever owned the place showed as much indifference toward it as James Boyd did toward his poor father's farmhouse. Careful where I stepped, I toured a few of the downstairs rooms. It was when I discovered more fresh cigarette butts in the kitchen sink that I realized I had no business trespassing here. And besides, I had begun to worry about leaving the boys alone for so long.

  Stepping out of the woods once more onto the ramparts above our dock, I cast my eye across the open waters and saw an unfamiliar outboard boat with its white crest of wake water receding into the horizon line where the ocean met the mainland. Small as a sesame seed shrinking into a poppy seed. There was no guarantee that the man who had spoken to Morgan and Jonah was aboard—I realized I hadn't even asked them for a description of him—but I hoped he was. Still, I made a cursory search along the coast to both the east and west of the landing, my thoughts racing in useless circles, and came up with nothing.

  As I climbed the hillside back to the cottage, I had to admit that while the noises at the cemetery probably were either those of an animal or my imagination, the man who spoke with my sons needed to be treated with a different order of respect and wariness. My parents' arrival was still a couple of days off, and that evening I decided to raise the flag that let the mailboat captain, Mr. McEachern, know I wanted him to stop at Covey while making his island rounds. I needed to get to a telephone.

  We ate a quiet dinner and went to bed as rain started falling, having secured the downstairs windows and doors—a rare measure. The next day low clouds moved hastily between the ocean and overcast sky like random thoughts under a proven theory. Jonah, Morgan, and I stood on the dock after lunch, waiting for the mailboat to arrive. Choppy seas used to unnerve me a little but island people, as I'd become in my way, don't take the waves as much more than, well, waves. Hurricane waves, tropical storm waves—those mattered. You didn't have to be a hydromancer to know today was only a nice chop. Our clothes were snapping in the brisk breeze. The air and water shared the yellowish-green hue of a healing bruise.

  "Do we have to go?" Jonah asked. The boys were scanning southwest, where Mr. McEachern would be arriving from Mount Desert.

  "Yeah," said Morgan. "Relax. It's not like he did anything."

  Much as I knew they loved riding in the Bunker & Ellis and poking around the old general store on Islesford, I also was aware that they, still on their way to becoming island people, were nervous about sailing in rough seas—never failed to make them sick as dogs—but were far too proud to admit it. I was torn. Didn't want to leave them here by themselves, yet didn't want to force them to make a seasick passage. My strong intuition was that the man had left, having gotten his message across. Rosalie was going to be able to clear this up for me, once I got her on the line, I was certain. And if not her, then Niles might know what it was about.

  "Besides, we have our own stuff to do right here."

  "Such as?"

  "Just stuff," he answered, rolling his eyes. I decided I needn't drag them along, that they would be fine. Needed to remind myself they were making a sacrifice to be up here with me in the first place, and it behooved me to give them as much time to themselves as they liked.

  Their descriptions of the man were vaguer than I might have hoped, not to mention contradictory. Morgan insisted he had brown eyes; Jonah was sure they'd been blue. They did agree he had black hair, was wearing a Windbreaker, and had a tall forehead. He was on the pale side, Jonah noticed, and wasn't too tall. Certainly didn't sound like anyone I knew.

  My approaching ferry lay on the horizon, a mere indistinction almost as small as the mystery boat had been the day prior. Before long we could see its prow knifing the water between some bobbing eiders and guillemots, carving it into greenish-white wakes. Drawing close, the mailboat soon enough docked, the surge of wash heaving it up and down as the captain tossed his bowline, then stern, which Morgan caught, then handed off to him as he jumped onto the plank dock to tie up.

  Mr. McEachern—a ruddy-faced, bull-shouldered, soft-spoken man with a tidy gray beard—asked how everything was. I told him I needed to ride with him to Little Cranberry and then be dropped off back here when he was done with his rounds.

  "Might not be before sundown, if that works for you. I got some extra drops today."

  "That works," said Morgan brightly.

  "Take your time," Jonah added.

  "You two make sure there's a place to come back to, you hear me?" I said, hoping my trip to Islesford would prove a big waste of time. My nerves had been tight and tense as piano strings these past weeks and I wondered if I hadn't overreacted. When one is spooked, every little thing seems charged with meaning.

  The mailboat reversed its engine, crabbed away from the dock even as I was speaking those words. I watched the boys wave to me, and I waved back as the boat set out over the wide wild water. I did ask Mr. McEachern if he happened to have ferried anybody over to Covey the day before, and he said no. He also answered no to my question as to whether, to his knowledge, anyone had been inquiring after me or my family in Northeast Harbor. Mr. McEachern constituted a kind of central sounding post in these islands, saw and knew everybody, heard or overheard everyone's news, their doings, their scuttlebutt. No gossip himself—indeed, a through-and-through gentleman—he wasn't given to disclosing all he knew. But he was a noticer, too, a conscientious soul, and would have told me if he had heard anything that might be cause for concern.

  The post office and general store on Islesford, as Little Cranberry Island was also called, reminded me of my youth, when we used to come here for basic supplies. Nep made a practice of treating me to red licorice sticks or jawbreakers from big Ball jars on the counter. Its smell, a warm combination of pipe tobacco, gingerbread, and drowsing dusty dogs, remained the same over the decades. So did its look. A conjunction of stuff, which in any other locale would seem eccentric, here made perfect sense—deep-sea fishing tackle and homemade fudge behind the glass counter, life jackets and greeting cards, buoys and bottled milk. The telephone was behind the cash register. Not private, but since no one was here aside from the proprietor, who was half-deaf, it didn't matter.

  Rosalie and Nep's line was busy, so I called Niles. Was surprised to find him in.

  "How's your disappearance going?" he asked.

  "Not quite as invisibly as I'd hoped. We had a visitor to Covey yesterday. Showed up unannounced, left more or less the same way. I have no idea who he was, and it's not like he was willing to say."

  "Go on."

  "There's not much to go on about," I said, and told him the small balance of what I knew. "I'm trying to reach Rosalie. Sounds like it could be something to do with money being owed maybe."

  Niles didn't necessarily agree, saying he didn't know what it sounded like.

  "I'm almost afraid to ask, but what's happening with Laura Bryant?"

  "Nothing more, really. She's back home. Turns out she had a history of running away, so it fits a pattern."

  "I feel bad for her."

  "So do I, but it's out of our hands now. She's getting help, I hear."

  "Good," I said, and wondered if Niles was reminded of my having been a sometime runaway when I was younger than Laura Bryant. I felt self-conscious about the parallels and knew it was wisest to leave the matter unspoken.

  "Her mother tells me Laura would like to thank you in person, talk with you a little."

  "I'm not so sure, Niles."

  "Well, I can give you the number if you change your mind," he said. "By the way, I heard that Henderson is going ahead with his development plans."

  "It's a shame to think of those beautiful woods being all carved up."

  "Weren't you one of his
first hired henchmen?"

  "Henchwoman," I said, but couldn't argue the point.

  "If your man comes around again, get his name why don't you."

  "Will do, Niles. Thanks," and we hung up.

  Finding the line at my parents' still busy, I decided to take a ramble along the lanes of the village. I had time to kill and always liked this seaside place, with its piles of old wooden lobster traps baking in the open air, its children playing on porches or riding their bikes up and down the dirt roads, its high-steepled white church that seemed so legitimate and necessary here, where men went out on the water every day to make their living. From the near distance, gratingly loud yet not visible, came the distinctive noise of kids racing around on four-wheelers. Like swarming locusts they buzzed, reminding me of the days when my brother and his raucous gang were obsessed with riding them through the Corinth countryside. Not a pleasant memory to interrupt the serenity of my otherwise calming stroll. When I returned to the general store and phoned again, I finally got through.

  "You ought to know that's impossible," she stated in response to my question whether she might be enough in arrears on some bill causing the township to send out a collector. "I've never missed a deadline paying my taxes or a bill in my life. Your father used to tease me about it, don't you remember? Called me the Pollyanna of Payables. He had to be there for some other reason, but listen, Cassie—"

  "Yes?"

  "Seems to me the obvious answer is that the twins are being a little inventive. Maybe somebody dropped by from the other side of the island and chatted with them in passing, and they just got it wrong what the fellow said."

  "Well, that wouldn't be any more like them than you forgetting to square away some debt. Besides, I checked over there and no one was around," mentioning the smells of Mrs. Milgate's baking and her refusal to answer the door, though leaving out the cigarette stubs because I knew Rosalie would shrug them off as the meaningless ciphers they likely were.

  "Cassandra. You're there to take things easy and that's what you should get back to doing. Your father and I are looking forward to spending time with you."