The Weight of Water

by Anita Shreve

  The prisoner was arraigned at the South Berwick jail and then kept in the Portland jail. He was transported to Alfred, Maine, when the trial of The State of Maine v. Louis H. E Wagner opened on June 16, 1873. Louis Wagner stood accused of delivering ten mortal wounds with an ax to the head of “Anethe M. Christen-son” and thereby causing her instant death.

  After Rich and I clean up the broken glass, he lifts the lobsters from the pot, and we all sit down at the dining table to eat. Thomas, who has drunk even more than he usually does, struggles clumsily with his lobster, spraying bits of white chitin around the table. Billie, as anticipated, loses her appetite for lobster when she watches me crack the shells and extract with a pick the spotted, pink meat. Adaline does not dip her meat with her fingers into melted butter as do the rest of us, but rather soaks it in a bowl of hot broth and eats it from a fork. She works her way methodically through the bright red carapace, missing not a piece of edible flesh.

  Thomas goes above to the deck when he cuts his thumb on a claw. After a time, Rich, who may feel that Thomas needs company, also goes above. Billie, too, leaves us, happy to turn her back on the pile of claws and red detritus that is forming in a stainless steel bowl and is becoming vaguely repulsive. Across the table, I watch with fascination as Adaline pulls tiny bits of meat I’d have overlooked from the body of the lobster. I watch her suck and chew, one by one, each of the lobster’s spindly legs, kneading the thin shells with her teeth.

  “Did you grow up on a farm?” she asks. “Were your parents farmers?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, they were,” I say. “Where in Ireland did you grow up?”

  “Cork,” she says. “It’s in the south.”

  “And then you went to university.”

  “Yes,” she says. “Billie is wonderful. You Ye very lucky to have her.”

  “Thank you. I do feel lucky to have her. How did you end up in Boston?”

  “I was with someone,” she says. “When I was in London. He worked in Boston, and I came over to be with him. I’ve always liked Boston.”

  “How did you come to know so much about Thomas’s poetry?” I ask.

  She seems surprised at the question.

  “I think I’ve always read Thomas,” she says. “Even at Dublin, I thought he was extraordinary. I suppose, after the prize, everyone reads Thomas now, don’t they? That’s what a prize does, I should think. It makes everyone read you, surely.”

  “You’ve memorized his work.”

  “Oh, not really”

  There is an accusing tone to my voice that seems to put her on the defensive.

  “The thing about Thomas is that I think he wants to be read aloud,” she says. “One almost has to, to fully understand.”

  “You know he killed a girl,” I say.

  Adaline slowly removes a lobster leg from her mouth, holds it between her thumb and finger as she rests her hands on the edge of the table. The blue-checked oilcloth is dotted with bits of flesh and yellow drips of butter that have congealed.

  “Thomas killed a girl,” she repeats, as though the sentence doesn’t scan.

  I take a sip of wine. I tear a piece of garlic bread from the loaf. I try to control my hands, which are trembling. I believe I am more shocked at what I have just said than she is. By the way I have said it. By the words I have used.

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  She puts the spindly leg on her plate and wipes her fingers on the napkin in her lap. She holds the crumpled napkin in one hand.

  “The car accident,” I explain. “Thomas was driving.”

  She still seems not to understand.

  “There was a girl with him. In the car. Thomas went off the road, caught his rear wheel in a ditch, and flipped the car.”

  Adaline reaches up and, with her finger, absently picks at a piece of lobster between her teeth. I look down and notice I have a spill of lobster water on my jeans.

  “How old was she?”

  “The same age as he was, seventeen.”

  “He was drunk?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  I wait.

  I see it then, the moment of recognition. I can see her processing the information, reciting lines to herself, suddenly understanding them. Her eyes move to the stove and then back to me.

  “The Magdalene Toems,” she says quietly.

  I nod. “But her name wasn’t Magdalene. It was Linda.”

  Adaline flinches slightly at the word Linda, as though the commonness of the girl’s name makes it real.

  “He loved her,” she says.

  “Yes,” I answer. “Very much. I don’t think he’s really ever gotten over it. In a way, all of his poems are about the accident, even when they seem not to be.”

  “But he married you,” she says.

  “So he did,” I say.

  Adaline puts her napkin on the table and stands up. She walks a few steps to the doorway of the forward cabin. She has her back to me, her arms crossed over her chest.

  Rich bends his head into the cabin. “Jean, you should come out here,” he calls. “The light is perfect.”

  He stops. Adaline is still standing in the doorway with her back to me. She doesn’t turn around. Rich glances at me.

  “What’s up?” he asks.

  I uncross my legs under the table. “Not much,” I say.

  I fold my hands in my lap, stunned by my betrayal. In all the years that I have been with Thomas, I have never told a single person. Nor, to my knowledge, has he. Despite our fears when he won the prize, no one discovered this fact about Thomas’s youth, as the records were well sealed. Now, however, I know that Ada-line will tell others. She won’t be able to keep this information to herself.

  I can’t have done this, I am thinking.

  “Rich, leave this,” I say quickly, gesturing toward the mess on the table. “I want to go up. With Thomas. With the light still good. I’ll do the dishes later.” I push away from the table. Rich comes down the ladder and stands a moment with his hands over his head, holding on to the hatch. He seems puzzled.

  Behind me, Adaline goes into the forward cabin. She shuts the door.

  The Honorable R. P. Tapley of Saco, Maine, was the lawyer for the defense of Louis H. F. Wagner. George C. Yeaton, Esq. was the county attorney. The Honorable William G. Barrows was the presiding judge. The members of the jury were Isaac Easton of North Berwick, George A. Twambly of Shapleigh, Ivory C. Hatch of Wells, Horace Piper of Newfield, Levi G. Hanson of Biddeford, Nahum Tarbox of Biddeford, Benajah Hall of North Berwick, Charles Whitney of Biddeford, William Bean of Lim-ington, Robert Littlefield of Kennebunk, Isaac Libbey of Parson-field, and Calvin Stevens of Wells.

  Although all of the jury, the lawyers, and the judge were white men of early American — that is to say, English — stock, neither the accused nor the victim, nor the woman who survived, nor even most of the witnesses, was an American citizen.

  In the cockpit, Thomas comes to sit beside me. Billie leans against Thomas’s legs. My hands begin to shake. I feel an urge to bend forward, to put my head between my knees.

  The three of us watch the sun set over Newcastle and Portsmouth, watch the coral light move evenly across Appledore and Star, leaving in its wake a colorless tableau. From below, Rich switches on the running lights.

  I want to tell Thomas that I have done something terrible, that I don’t know why I did it except that I couldn’t, for just that moment, bear Adaline’s certainty that she knew Thomas well — perhaps, in a way, even better than myself.

  On Star, windows are illuminated, and people walk through pools of deep yellow light.

  “You’re trembling,” Thomas says.

  The Magdalene Poems are an examination of the life of a seventeen-year-old girl in the last four seconds of her life, written in the voice of a seventeen-year-old boy who was clearly her lover and who was with her when she died. The poems speak to the unfulfilled promise of love, to the absolute inevitability of that promise remaining unful
filled. The reader is allowed to imagine the girl as a middle-aged woman married to the man who was the boy, as an elderly widow, and as a promiscuous sixteen-year-old. The girl, whose name is Magdalene, is — as seen from the eyes of the boy — extraordinarily beautiful. She has the long slender body of a dancer, abundant multihued hair that winds into intricate coils at the nape of her neck, and full curved lips of even dimensions with barely any bow at all.

  According to the State of Maine, on March 5, 1873, six people lived in the one-and-one-half-story red cottage on Smuttynose, and there were no other inhabitants on the entire island that winter. John and Maren Hontvedt had come in 1868. Karen, Maren’s sister, and Matthew, John’s brother, had each come separately in 1871. Karen almost immediately entered service at the Laighton’s Hotel on Appledore Island, while Matthew joined John on the Clara Bella, the latter’s fishing schooner. Evan, Maren’s brother, and his wife, Anethe, had arrived on the island in October of 1872, five months before the murders.

  At daybreak on March 5, Matthew, Evan, and John left Smuttynose and sailed northeast in the schooner to draw their trawls.

  The Ingerbretson men from Appledore joined them in their own schooner. The plan for the day was to fish in the morning, return for lunch, and then head for Portsmouth to sell their catch and purchase bait. But just before noon, an unexpected and swift-rising wind prevented them from making an easy sail home to Smuttynose. Because they knew they had to have bait, they called over to Emil Ingerbretson and asked him to stop at the island and tell the women that they would not be home until evening. The three women — Maren, Karen, and Anethe — cooked a stew and made bread for the men in preparation for their return after dark.

  Louis Wagner, standing at Rollins Wharf in Portsmouth, watched the Clara Bella come into the dock. Wagner, who was wearing that day two sweaters, a white dress shirt, and overalls, helped John and Matthew and Evan tie up their boat. Louis told the men that the bait they wanted, which was coming by train from Boston, would be delayed and wouldn’t be in until nearly midnight. Louis then asked John for money for something to eat, and John laughed and said that none of the men had brought any money because they had thought they would go home first, and that they would have to eat on credit with Mrs. Johnson, to whose house the bait was to be delivered. Wagner then asked John if he had had any luck with his fishing, and John answered that he had been able to save up six hundred dollars. The three men of Smuttynose said goodbye to Louis, leaving him on the dock, while they went to fetch their dinner.

  Baiting the trawls was a time-consuming and slimy business. Each of a thousand hooks had to have its piece of baitfish, a stinking sliver of herring that would have come in barrels from Boston by train, and did in fact arrive much later than expected in Portsmouth that night, preventing the men from returning to Smuttynose at all. Each individual hook had to be separated from the tangle, baited, then coiled into a tub so that the lot could be thrown overboard when the schooner, the next day, had made it to the fishing grounds. To bait the trawls took three men six hours. When the work was finished, it was not uncommon for one or more of the men to have stabbed himself with fishhooks.

  Louis Wagner had emigrated from Prussia to the United States seven years earlier. He was twenty-eight years old and was described by those who knew him as being tall and extremely strong, light-haired, and having “steel blue” eyes. Other descriptions of him depict his eyes as soft and mild. Many women thought him handsome. He had worked at the Isles of Shoals off and on, loading and unloading goods, and with John Hontvedt on the Clara Bella for two months, September to November of 1872. For seven months of that year (from April to November), Wagner had boarded with the Hontvedts, but he had been crippled much of the time with rheumatism. After leaving the Hontvedts, he signed on as a hand with the Addison Gilbert, which subsequently sank, leaving Wagner once again without a job. Just prior to the murders, he had been wandering in and among the boardinghouses, wharves, docks, and taverns of Portsmouth, looking for work. He is quoted as having said, to four different men, on four different occasions, “This won’t do anymore. I am bound to have money in three months’ time if I have to murder for it.” While in Portsmouth, he resided at a boardinghouse for men that belonged to Matthew Johnson and his wife. He owed his landlord money.

  According to the prosecution, at seven-thirty on the evening of March 5, Louis Wagner stole a dory, owned by James Burke, that had been left at the end of Pickering Street. Just that day, Burke had replaced the dory’s thole pins with new, expensive ones. Wagner intended to row out to the Isles of Shoals, steal the six hundred dollars that John had spoken of, and to row immediately back. This would be a twenty-five-mile row, which, even in the best of circumstances, would be extremely taxing for any man. That day it was high tide at six P.M., low at midnight. There was a three-quarters moon, which set at one A.M. On a favorable tide, it took one hour and forty minutes to row from Pickering Street to the mouth of the Piscataqua River (which flowed through Portsmouth), and one hour and fifteen minutes to row from there to Smuttynose. This is a round-trip, in favorable conditions, of just under six hours. If a man tired, or encountered any obstacles, or if he did not have completely favorable conditions, the row to and from the Isles of Shoals could take as long as nine or ten hours.

  County Attorney Yeaton reconstructed Wagner’s plan as follows: Maren would be asleep in the southwest bedroom, and Anethe would be upstairs. Wagner would fasten the door that linked Maren’s bedroom to the kitchen by sliding a slat from a lobster trap through the latch. Since the money would be in the kitchen in a trunk, he felt there would be no difficulty. Wagner mistakenly assumed that Karen would still be on Appledore. He brought no murder weapon with him.

  Wagner, who had the current with him, moved quickly down the river and past Portsmouth. When he reached the Shoals, he circled the island silently to see if, by some chance, the Clara Bella had returned. When he was certain there were no men on the island, he rowed himself into Haley’s Cove. This was at approximately eleven P.M. He waited until all of the lights in the houses on Appledore and Star had been extinguished.

  When the islands were dark, he walked in his rubber boots up to the front door of the cottage, where an ax leaned against the stone step. He entered the kitchen and fastened the door to the bedroom.

  The dog, Ringe, began to bark.

  Louis turned abruptly. A woman rose from her bed in the darkness and called out, “John, is that you?”

  I take Billie below to get her ready for bed. She still finds the head a novelty, particularly the complicated flushing of the toilet. She brushes her teeth and then puts on her pajamas. I settle her into her berth and sit next to her. She has asked for a story, so I read her a picture-book tale of a mother and her daughter gathering blueberries in Maine. Billie lies in a state of rapt attention and holds in her arms a threadbare cocker spaniel she has had since birth.

  “Let’s say our things,” I say, when I have finished the book.

  When Billie was a toddler, she learned to talk, as most children do, by repeating what I said to her. As it has happened, this particular bit of repetition, a bedtime litany, has lasted for years.

  “Lovely girl,” I say.

  “Lovely Mom.”

  “Sleep well.”

  “Sleep well.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  “Sweet dreams.”

  “Sweet dreams.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  I put my lips against her cheek. She reaches up her arms, letting go of the dog, and hugs me tightly.

  “I love you, Mom,” she says.

  That night, on the damp mattress that serves as a bed, Thomas and I lie facing each other, just a few inches apart. There is enough light so that I can just make ou
t his face. His hair has fallen forward onto his brow, and his eyes seem expressionless — simple dark pools. I have on a nightshirt, a white nightshirt with pink cotton piping. Thomas is still wearing the blue shirt with the thin yellow stripes, and his under shorts.

  He reaches up and traces the outline of my mouth with his finger. He grazes my shoulder with the back of his hand. I move slightly toward him. He puts his arm around my waist.

  We have a way of making love now, a language of our own, this movement, then that movement, signals, long-practiced, that differ only slightly each time from the times before. His hand sliding on my thigh, my hand reaching down between his legs, a small adjustment to free himself, my palm under his shirt. That night, he slides over me, so that my face is lightly smothered between his chest and his arm.

  I freeze.

  It is in the cloth, faint but unmistakable, a foreign scent. Not sea air, or lobster, or a sweaty child.

  It takes only seconds for a message to pass between two people who have made love a thousand times, two thousand times.

  He rolls away from me and lies on his back, his eyes staring at the bulkhead.

  I cannot speak. Slowly, I take the air into my lungs and let it out.

  Eventually, I become aware of the small twitches in Thomas’s body — an arm, a knee — that tell me that he has fallen asleep.

  To get a landscape photograph at night, you need a tripod and decent moonlight. Sometime after midnight, when everyone is asleep on the boat, I take the Zodiac over to Smuttynose. I use the paddle, because I do not want to wake Thomas or Rich with the motor. In the distance, the island is outlined by the moon, which casts a long cone of light onto the water. I beach the Zodiac at the place where Louis Wagner left his dory and retrace the steps he would have taken to the house. I stand in the foundation of the house and replay the murders in my mind. I look out over the harbor and try to imagine a life on the island, at night, in the quiet, and with the constant wind. I take two rolls of Velvia 220, seventy-two shots of Smuttynose in the dark.