Stern Men

10

JULY ARRIVED for Fort Niles. It was now the middle of the summer of 1976. It wasn’t as exciting a month as it might have been.

The Bicentennial passed on Fort Niles without any outstanding revelry. Ruth thought she lived in the only place in America that wasn’t getting its act together for a decent celebration. Her dad even went out to haul that day, although, out of some patriotic stirring, he gave Robin Pommeroy the day off. Ruth spent the holiday with Mrs. Pommeroy and her two sisters. Mrs. Pommeroy had tried to sew costumes for them all. She wanted the four of them to dress up as Colonial dames and march in the town parade, but she’d managed to finish only Ruth’s costume by the morning of the Fourth, and Ruth refused to dress up alone. So Mrs. Pommeroy put the costume on Opal, and baby Eddie immediately vomited all over it.

“The dress looks more authentic now,” Ruth said.

“He was eating pudding this morning,” Opal said, shrugging. “Pudding always makes Eddie barf.”

There was a short parade up Main Street, but there were more people in the parade than there were people to watch it. Senator Simon Addams recited the Gettysburg Address from memory, but he always recited the Gettysburg Address from memory, given any opportunity. Robin Pommeroy set off some cheap fireworks sent to him by his brother Chester. He burned his hand so severely that he would be unable to go fishing for two weeks. This made Ruth’s father angry enough to fire Robin and hire a new sternman, Duke Cobb’s ten-year-old grandson, who was skinny and weak as a third-grade girl and, unhelpfully, scared of lobsters. But the kid came cheap.

“You could’ve hired me,” Ruth told her father. She sulked about it for a while, but she didn’t really mean it, and he knew that.

So the month of July was almost passed, and then one afternoon Mrs. Pommeroy received a most unusual telephone call. The call came from Courne Haven Island. It was Pastor Toby Wishnell on the line.

Pastor Wishnell wanted to know whether Mrs. Pommeroy would be available to spend a day or two on Courne Haven. It seemed there was to be a big wedding on the island, and the bride had confided to the pastor that she was concerned about her hair. There were no professional hairdressers on Courne Haven. The bride wasn’t young anymore, and she wanted to look her best.

“I’m not a professional hairdresser, Pastor,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

Pastor Wishnell said that was quite all right. The bride had hired a photographer from Rockland, at considerable cost, to document the wedding, and she wanted to look pretty for the pictures. She was relying on the pastor to help her out. It was a strange request to be made to a pastor, Toby Wishnell readily admitted, but he had received stranger ones. People expected their pastors to be fonts of information on all manner of subjects, Pastor Wishnell told Mrs. Pommeroy, and this lady was no exception. The pastor explained, further, that this bride felt somewhat more entitled than others to ask the pastor so unusual and personal a favor, because she was a Wishnell. She was actually Pastor Wishnell’s second cousin, Dorothy Wishnell, known as Dotty. Dotty was to marry Fred Burden’s oldest son, Charlie, on July 30.

In any case, the pastor went on, he had mentioned to Dotty that there was a gifted hair stylist right over on Fort Niles. That, at least, was what he had heard from Ruth Thomas. Ruth Thomas had told him that Mrs. Pommeroy was quite good with hair. Mrs. Pommeroy told the pastor that she was really nothing special, that she’d never been to school or anything.

The pastor said, “You’ll do fine. And another thing…” Apparently, Dotty, having heard that Mrs. Pommeroy was so good at styling hair, wondered whether Mrs. Pommeroy would also cut the groom’s hair. And the best man’s, if she didn’t mind. And the hair of the maid of honor, the mother of the bride, the father of the bride, the flower girls, and some members of the groom’s family. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble. And, said Pastor Wishnell, while he was thinking of it, he could use a little trim himself.

“Since the professional photographer who is coming is known to be expensive,” the pastor continued, “and since almost everyone on the island will be at the wedding, they want to look their best. It’s not often that a professional photographer comes here. Of course, the bride will pay you well. Her father is Babe Wishnell.”

“Ooh,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, impressed.

“Will you do it, then?”

“That’s a whole lot of haircuts, Pastor Wishnell.”

“I can send Owney to pick you up in the New Hope,” the pastor said. “You can stay here as long as you are needed. It might be a nice way for you to make some extra money.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever cut so much hair at once. I don’t know that I could do it all in one day.”

“You could bring a helper.”

“May I bring one of my sisters?”

“Certainly.”

“May I bring Ruth Thomas?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked.

This gave the pastor a moment’s pause. “I suppose so,” he said, after a cool beat. “If she’s not too busy.”

“Ruth? Busy?” Mrs. Pommeroy found this idea hilarious. She laughed out loud, right into the pastor’s ear.

At that very moment, Ruth was down at Potter Beach with Senator Simon Addams again. She was beginning to be depressed when she spent time down there, but she didn’t know what else to do with herself. So she continued to stop at the beach a few hours every day to keep the Senator company. She also liked to keep an eye on Webster, for the sake of Mrs. Pommeroy, who constantly worried about her oldest, strangest boy. And she also went there because it was difficult to talk with anyone else on the island. She couldn’t very well hang out with Mrs. Pommeroy all the time.

Not that watching Webster dig in the mud was still fun. It was painful and sad to watch. He’d lost all his grace. He floundered. He was searching for that second tusk as if he was both dying to find it and terrified of finding it. Ruth thought Webster might sink down in the mud one day and never show up again. She wondered whether that was, in fact, his plan. She wondered whether Webster Pommeroy was plotting the world’s most awkward suicide.

“Webster needs a purpose in life,” the Senator said.

The thought of Webster Pommeroy seeking a purpose in life depressed Ruth Thomas even more. “Isn’t there anything else you can have him do with his time?”

“What else, Ruth?”

“Isn’t there something he can do for the museum?”

The Senator sighed. “We have everything we need for the museum, except a building. Until we get that, there’s nothing we can do. Digging in the mud, Ruth, is what he’s good at.”

“He’s not so good at it anymore.”

“He’s having some trouble with it now, yes.”

“What are you going to do if Webster finds the other tusk? Throw another elephant in there for him?”

“We’ll take that as it comes, Ruth.”

Webster hadn’t found anything good in the mudflats lately. He hadn’t turned up anything other than a lot of junk. He did find an oar, but it wasn’t an old oar. It was aluminum. (“This is magnificent!” the Senator had raved to Webster, who looked frantic when he handed it over. “What a rare oar this is!”) Also, Webster had uncovered a vast number of single boots under the mud, and single gloves, kicked and and tossed off by years of lobstermen. And bottles, too. Webster had found a lot of bottles in recent days, and not old ones. Plastic laundry detergent bottles. He hadn’t, though, found anything worth all the time spent in that cold, loose mud. He looked thinner and more anxious every day.

“Do you think he’ll die?” Ruth asked the Senator.

“I hope not.”

“Could he snap completely and kill somebody?”

“I don’t think so,” the Senator said.

On the day Pastor Wishnell called Mrs. Pommeroy, Ruth had already been at Potter Beach with the Senator and Webster for several hours. She and the Senator were looking at a book, a book Ruth had purchased for the Senator at a Salvation Army store in Concord a month earlier. She’d given it to him as soon as she returned from visiting her mother, but he hadn’t yet read it. He said he was finding it difficult to concentrate because he was so concerned about Webster.

“I’m sure it’s a super book, Ruth,” he said. “Thanks for bringing it down here today.”

“Sure,” she said. “I saw it sitting on your porch, and I thought you might want to look at it. You know, if you got bored or something.”

The book was called Hidden Treasure: How and Where to Find It. A Finder’s Guide to the World’s Missing Treasures. It was something that, under normal circumstances, would have brought the Senator all sorts of excitement.

“You do like it?” Ruth asked.

“Oh, yes, Ruth. It’s a swell book.”

“Are you learning anything?”

“Not too much, Ruth, to be honest. I haven’t finished it. I was expecting a little more information from the author, to tell you the truth. You’d think from the title,” Senator Simon said, turning the book over in his hands, “that the author would tell you how to find specific treasures, but she doesn’t give much information about that. So far, she says that if you do find anything, it’s an accident. And she gives some examples of people who got lucky and found treasures when they weren’t looking for anything. That doesn’t seem to me like much of a system.”

“How far have you read?”

“Just the first chapter.”

“Oh. I thought you might like it because of the nice color illustrations. Lots of photographs of lost treasures. Did you see those? Did you see those pictures of the Fabergé eggs? I thought you’d like those.”

“If there are photographs of the objects, Ruth, then they aren’t really lost. Now, are they?”

“Well, Senator, I see what you mean. But the photographs are pictures of lost treasures that regular people already found, on their own. Like that guy who found the Paul Revere goblet. Did you get to that part yet?”

“Ah, not yet,” the Senator said. He was shading his eyes and looking out over the mudflats. “I think it’s going to rain. I hope it doesn’t, because Webster won’t come in when it rains. He’s already got a terrible cold. You should hear his chest rattle.”

Ruth took the book from the Senator. She said, “I saw a part in here-where is it? It says a kid found a marker in California that Sir Francis Drake left. It was made of iron, and it claimed the land as belonging to Queen Elizabeth. It had been there for, like, three centuries.”

“Isn’t that something?”

Ruth offered the Senator a stick of chewing gum. He refused it, so she chewed it herself. “The author says the greatest site of buried treasure anywhere in the world is on Cocos Island.”

“That’s what your book says?”

“It’s your book, Senator. I was thumbing through it when I was coming back from Concord and I saw that thing about Cocos Island. The author says Cocos Island is a real bonanza for people looking for buried treasure. She says Captain James Cook stopped at Cocos Island all the time with loot. The great circumnavigator!

“The great circumnavigator.”

“So did the pirate Benito Bonito. So did Captain Richard Davis and the pirate Jean Lafitte. I thought you’d be interested…”

“Oh, I am interested, Ruth.”

“You know what I thought you’d be interested in? About Cocos Island, I mean? The island is only about as big as Fort Niles. How about that? Wouldn’t that be ironic? Wouldn’t you be right at home there? And with all that buried treasure to find. You and Webster could go there and dig it up together. How about that, Senator?”

It started to rain, big heavy drops.

“I bet the weather’s better on Cocos Island, anyhow,” she said, and laughed.

The Senator said, “Oh, Ruth, we’re not going anywhere, Webster and I. You know that. You shouldn’t say such things, even as a joke.”

Ruth was stung. She recovered and said, “I’m sure you two would come home rich as kings if you ever got to Cocos Island.”

He did not reply.

She wondered why she was pursuing this. Christ, how desperate she sounded. How starved for conversation. It was pathetic, but she missed sitting on the beach with the Senator for hours and hours of uninterrupted drivel, and she wasn’t used to being ignored by him. She was suddenly jealous of Webster Pommeroy for getting all the attention. That’s when she really started to feel pathetic. She stood and pulled up the hood of her jacket and asked, “Are you coming in?”

“It’s up to Webster. I don’t think he’s noticed that it’s raining.”

“You don’t have a waterproof jacket on, do you? Do you want me to get you one?”

“I’m fine.”

“You and Webster should both come in before you get soaked.”

“Sometimes Webster comes in when it rains, but sometimes he stays out there and gets wetter and wetter. It depends on his mood. I guess I’ll stay until he wants to come in. I’ve got sheets on the line at home, Ruth. Would you take them in for me before they get wet?”

The rain was coming down now at a fast, slicing pace.

“I think the sheets are already wet, Senator.”

“You’re probably right. Forget it.”

Ruth ran back to Mrs. Pommeroy’s house through the rain, which was now pounding down. She found Mrs. Pommeroy with her sister Kitty, upstairs in the big bedroom, pulling clothes out of the closet. Kitty, watching her sister, was sitting on the bed. She was drinking coffee, which Ruth knew to be spiked with gin. Ruth rolled her eyes. She was getting fed up with Kitty’s drinking.

“I should just sew something new,” Mrs. Pommeroy was saying. “But I don’t have the time!” Then, “There’s my Ruth. Oh, you’re soaking wet.”

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for a pretty dress.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“I’ve been invited somewhere.”

“Where?” Ruth asked.

Kitty Pommeroy started laughing, followed by Mrs. Pommeroy.

“Ruth,” she said, “you’ll never believe it. We’re going to a wedding on Courne Haven. Tomorrow!”

“Tell her who said so!” Kitty Pommeroy shouted.

“Pastor Wishnell!” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “He’s invited us over.”

“Get out of here.”

“I am getting out of here!”

“You and Kitty are going to Courne Haven?”

“Sure. And you, too.”

“Me?”

“He wants you there. Babe Wishnell’s daughter is getting married, and I’m doing her hair! And you two are my helpers. We’re going to open a little temporary salon.”

“Well, la-di-dah,” Ruth said.

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Pommeroy.

That night, Ruth asked her father whether she could go to Courne Haven for a big Wishnell wedding. He did not answer right away. They were talking less and less lately, the father and daughter.

“Pastor Wishnell invited me,” she said.

“Do whatever you want,” Stan Thomas said. “I don’t care who you spend your time with.”

Pastor Wishnell sent Owney to pick up everyone the next day, which was Saturday. At seven in the morning of Dotty Wishnell and Charlie Burden’s wedding, Mrs. Pommeroy and Kitty Pommeroy and Ruth Thomas walked to the end of the dock and found Owney waiting for them. He rowed Kitty and Mrs. Pommeroy out to the New Hope. Ruth enjoyed watching him. He came back for her, and she climbed down the ladder and hopped into his rowboat. He was looking at the bottom of the boat, not at her, and Ruth could not think of a single thing to say to him. But she did like looking at him. He rowed toward his uncle’s gleaming mission boat, where Mrs. Pommeroy and Kitty, leaning over the rail, were waving like tourists on a cruise. Kitty shouted, “Looking good, kid!”

“How’s everything going?” Ruth asked Owney.

He was so startled by her question that he stopped rowing; he just let the oars sit on the water.

“I’m fine,” he said. He was staring at her. He wasn’t blushing, and he didn’t seem embarrassed.

“Good,” said Ruth.

They bobbed on the water for a moment.

“I’m fine, too,” said Ruth.

“OK,” said Owney.

“You can keep rowing if you want.”

“OK,” said Owney, and he started to row again.

“Are you related to the bride?” Ruth asked, and Owney stopped rowing.

“She’s my cousin,” Owney said. They bobbed on the water.

“You can row and talk to me at the same time,” Ruth said, and now Owney did blush. He took her out to the boat without saying another word.

“He’s cute,” Mrs. Pommeroy whispered to Ruth when she climbed onto the deck of the New Hope.

“Look who’s here!” Kitty Pommeroy shrieked, and Ruth turned around to see Cal Cooley stepping out of the captain’s bridge.

Ruth let out a scream of horror that was only partly a joke. “For God’s sake,” she said. “He’s everywhere.”

Kitty threw her arms around her old lover, and Cal extricated himself. “That’s quite enough.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Ruth asked.

“Supervising,” Cal said. “And nice to see you, too.”

“How did you get here?”

“Owney rowed me out earlier. Old Cal Cooley certainly did not swim.”

It was a quick trip to Courne Haven Island, and when they got off the boat, Owney led them to a lemon-yellow Cadillac parked by the dock.

“Whose car is this?” Ruth asked.

“My uncle’s.”

It matched the house, as it turned out. Pastor Wishnell lived a short drive from the Courne Haven dock, in a beautiful house, yellow with lavender trim. It was a three-story Victorian with a tower and a circular porch; bright blooming plants hung from hooks, placed three feet apart, around the entire porch. The slate walkway to the house was lined with lilies. The pastor’s garden, in the back of the house, was a little museum of roses, surrounded by a low brick wall. On the drive over, Ruth had noticed a few other homes on Courne Haven Island, equally nice. Ruth hadn’t been to Courne Haven since she was a little girl, too young to notice the differences between it and Fort Niles.

“Who lives in the big houses?” she asked Owney.

“Summer people,” Cal Cooley answered. “You’re lucky not to have them on Fort Niles. Mr. Ellis keeps them away. One of the many nice things Mr. Ellis does for you. Summer people are vermin.”

It was summer people, too, who owned the sailboats and the speedboats that surrounded the island. On the trip over, Ruth had seen two silvery speedboats darting across the water. They were so close to each other, the head of one boat seemed to be kissing the ass of the other. They looked like two dragonflies, chasing each other around, trying to have sex in the salty air.

Pastor Wishnell set up Mrs. Pommeroy to cut hair in his back garden, right in front of a white trellis of pink roses. He had brought out a stool and a small side table, where she placed her scissors and combs and a tall glass of water in which to dip the combs. Kitty Pommeroy sat on the low brick wall and had herself a few cigarettes. She buried the butts in the soil under the roses when she thought nobody was looking. Owney Wishnell was sitting on the steps of the back porch in his strangely clean fisherman’s clothes, and Ruth went to sit beside him. He kept his hands on his knees, and she could see the curling gold filaments of hair on his knuckles. They were such clean hands. She wasn’t used to seeing men with clean hands.

“How long has you uncle lived here?” she asked.

“Forever.”

“This doesn’t look like a house he’d live in. Does somebody else live here?”

“Me.”

“Anyone else?”

“Mrs. Post.”

“Who’s Mrs. Post?”

“She takes care of the house.”

“Shouldn’t you be helping your friends over there?” Cal Cooley asked. He’d come up behind them on the porch without making a sound. Now he lowered his tall body and sat next to Ruth so that she was between the two men.

“I don’t think they need any help, Cal.”

“Your uncle wants you to head back over to Fort Niles, Owney,” Cal Cooley said. “He needs you to pick up Mr. Ellis for the wedding.”

“Mr. Ellis is coming to this wedding?” Ruth asked.

“He is.”

“He never comes over here.”

“Regardless. Owney, it’s time to push off. I’m going with you.”

“May I go with you?” Ruth asked Owney.

“You certainly may not,” said Cal.

“I didn’t ask you, Cal. May I go with you, Owney?”

But Pastor Wishnell was approaching, and when Owney saw him, he quickly jumped off the steps and said to his uncle, “I’m going. I’m going right now.”

“Hurry,” said the pastor as he walked up the steps and onto the porch. He looked over his shoulder and said, “Ruth, Mrs. Pommeroy is going to need your help.”

“I’m not much help cutting hair,” Ruth said, but the pastor and Owney were gone. One in each direction.

Cal looked at Ruth and lifted a satisfied eyebrow. “I wonder why you’re so eager to hang around that boy.”

“Because he doesn’t annoy the fuck out of me, Cal.”

“I annoy the fuck out of you, Ruth?”

“Oh, not you. I didn’t mean you.”

“I enjoyed our little trip to Concord. Mr. Ellis had a lot of questions for me when I got back. He wanted to know how you and your mother got along, and if you seemed at home there. I told him that you’d both got along swimmingly and that you seemed very much at home there, but I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you about it. Come to think of it, perhaps you should write him a note when you get the chance, thanking him for having sponsored the trip. It’s important to him that the two of you have a good relationship, considering how close your mother and grandmother have been to the Ellis family. And it’s important to him that you get as much time off Fort Niles as possible, Ruth. I told him I’d be happy to take you to Concord at any time, and that we had a good time traveling together. I do enjoy it, Ruth.” He was giving her his heavy-lidded stare now. “Although I can’t get out of my head this idea that someday the two of us will end up in a motel along Route One having filthy sex together.”

Ruth laughed. “Get it out of your head.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because Old Cal Cooley is such a funny man,” Ruth said. Which was not at all the truth. The truth was that Ruth was laughing because she had decided-as she often did, with varying degrees of success-that Old Cal Cooley was not going to get to her. She wouldn’t allow it. He could heap upon her loads of his most insidious abuse, but she would not rise to it. Certainly not today.

“I know it’s only a matter of time before you start having filthy sex with somebody, Ruth. All signs point to it.”

“Now we’re going to play a different kind of game,” Ruth said. “Now you leave me alone for a while.”

“And you should keep yourself away from Owney Wishnell, by the way,” Cal said as he walked down the porch steps and wandered into the garden. “It’s obvious that you’re up to something with that boy, and nobody likes it.”

“Nobody?” Ruth called after him. “Really, Cal? Nobody?”

“Get over here, you big old man,” Kitty Pommeroy said to Cal when she saw him. Cal Cooley turned on his heel and walked stiffly in the other direction. He was going back to Fort Niles to get Mr. Ellis.

The bride, Dotty Wishnell, was a likable blonde in her mid-thirties. She’d been married before, but her husband died of testicular cancer. She and her daughter, Candy, who was six years old, were the first to have their hair done. Dotty Wishnell walked over to Pastor Wishnell’s house in her bathrobe, her hair wet and uncombed. Ruth thought this was a pretty relaxed way for a bride to walk around on her wedding day, and it made Ruth like the woman right away. Dotty had an attractive enough face, but she looked exhausted. She had no makeup on yet, and she was chewing gum. She had deep lines across her forehead and around her mouth.

Dotty Wishnell’s daughter was extremely quiet. Candy was going to be her mother’s maid of honor, which Ruth thought an awfully serious job for a six-year-old, but Candy seemed up to it. She had a grown-up face for a child, a face that didn’t belong anywhere near a child.

“Are you nervous about being the maid of honor?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked Candy.

“Obviously not.” Candy had the firm mouth of the aging Queen Victoria. She wore a most judgmental expression, and those lips of hers were firmly set. “I was already a flower girl at Miss Dorphman’s wedding, and we aren’t even related.”

“Who’s Miss Dorphman?”

“Obviously she’s my teacher.”

“Obviously,” Ruth repeated, and Kitty Pommeroy and Mrs. Pommeroy both laughed. Dotty laughed, too. Candy looked at the four women as if she were disappointed in the lot of them.

“Oh, great,” Candy said, as if she had already had this kind of irritating day and wasn’t looking forward to another. “So far, so bad.”

Dotty Wishnell asked Mrs. Pommeroy to take care of Candy first and see whether she could give her thin brown hair some curls. Dotty Wishnell wanted her daughter to look “adorable.” Mrs. Pommeroy said it would be easy to make such an adorable child look adorable, and she would do all she could to make everyone happy.

“I could give her the cutest little bangs,” she said.

“No bangs,” Candy insisted. “No way.”

“She doesn’t even know what bangs are,” Dotty said.

“I do so, Mom,” said Candy.

Mrs. Pommeroy set to work on Candy’s hair while Dotty stood and watched. The two women talked comfortably with each other, although they’d never before met.

“The good thing is,” Dotty told Mrs. Pommeroy, “that Candy doesn’t have to change her name. Candy’s daddy was a Burden, and her new daddy is a Burden, too. My first husband and Charlie were first cousins, believe it or not. Charlie was one of the ushers at my first wedding, and today he’s the groom. Yesterday I said to him, ‘You never know how things are going to turn out,’ and he said, ‘You never know.’ He’s going to adopt Candy, he said.”

“I lost my first husband, too,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Actually, he was my only husband. I was a young thing like you. It’s true; you never know.”

“How did your husband die?”

“He drowned.”

“What was his last name?”

“It was Pommeroy, sweetheart.”

“I think I remember that.”

“It was in 1967. But we don’t need to talk about that today, because today’s a happy day.”

“You poor thing.”

“You poor thing. Oh, don’t you worry about me, Dotty. What happened to me was a long, long time ago. But you lost your husband only last year, right? That’s what Pastor Wishnell said.”

“Last year,” Dotty replied, staring ahead. The women were silent for a while. “March twentieth, 1975.”

“My dad died,” Candy said.

“We don’t need to talk about that today,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, forming another perfect ring in Candy’s hair with her damp finger. “Today is a happy day. Today is your mommy’s wedding.”

“Well, I’m getting another husband today, that’s for sure,” said Dotty. “I’m getting a new one. This island is no place to live without a husband. And you’re getting a new daddy, Candy. Isn’t that right?”

Candy did not express an opinion on this.

“Does Candy have other little girls to play with on Courne Haven?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked.

“No,” Dotty said. “There are some teenage girls around, but they aren’t too interested in playing with Candy, and next year they’ll be going inland to school. Mostly, it’s little boys around here.”

“It was the same thing with Ruth when she was little! All she had were my boys to play with.”

“Is that your daughter?” Dotty asked, looking at Ruth.

“She’s practically my daughter,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. My daughtah… “And she grew up with nothing but boys around.”

“Was that hard on you?” Dotty asked Ruth.

“It was the worst,” Ruth said. “It ruined me completely.”

Dotty’s face collapsed into worry. Mrs. Pommeroy said, “She’s teasing. It was fine. Ruth loved my boys. They were like her brothers. Candy will be fine.”

“I think Candy wishes she could be a girly-girl sometimes, and play girly games for a change,” said Dotty. “I’m the only girl she can play with, and I’m no fun. I haven’t been much fun all year.”

“That’s because my dad died,” Candy said.

“We don’t need to talk about that today, honey,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Today your mommy’s getting married. Today’s a happy day, sweetheart.”

“I wish there were some little boys my age around here,” said Kitty Pommeroy. Nobody seemed to hear this but Ruth, who snorted in disgust.

“I always wanted a little girl,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “But I had a whole bunch of boys. Is it fun? Is it fun dressing Candy up all pretty? My boys wouldn’t let me touch them. And Ruth always had short hair, so it wasn’t fun to play with.”

“You’re the one who kept it short,” Ruth said. “I wanted my hair to be just like yours, but you were always cutting it.”

“You couldn’t keep it combed, sweetheart.”

“I can dress myself,” Candy said.

“I’m sure you can, sweetheart.”

“No bangs.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “We’re not giving you any bangs, even though they’d be beautiful.” She expertly circled the puff of curls she had created on top of Candy’s head with a wide white ribbon. “Adorable?” she asked Dotty.

“Adorable,” said Dotty. “Precious. You did a great job. I can never get her to sit still, and I don’t know anything about styling hair. Obviously. I mean, look at me. This is about as good as I get.”

“There you go. Thank you, Candy.” Mrs Pommeroy bent over and kissed the little girl on the cheek. “You were very brave.”

“Obviously,” said Candy.

“Obviously,” said Ruth.

“You’re next, Dotty. We’ll do the bride, and you can go get dressed, and then we’ll do your friends. Somebody should tell them to start coming over. What do you want me to do with your hair?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just want to look happy,” Dotty instructed. “Can you do that for me?”

“You can’t hide a happy bride, even under a bad hairstyle,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “I could wrap your head in a towel, and if you’re happy, you’d still look beautiful, marrying your man.”

“Only God can make a happy bride,” Kitty Pommeroy said very seriously, for some reason.

Dotty considered this and sighed. “Well,” she said, and spat her gum into a used tissue she’d fished out of her bathrobe pocket, “see what you can do for me. Just do your best.”

Mrs. Pommeroy set to work on Dotty Wishnell’s wedding day hair, and Ruth left the women and went to look more closely at Pastor Wishnell’s house. She could not make any sense of its delicate, feminine style. She walked the length of the long, curving porch, with its wicker furniture and bright cushions. That must be the work of the mysterious Mrs. Post. She saw a bird feeder, shaped like a little house and cheerfully painted red. Knowing that she was trespassing, but overcome by curiosity, she let herself into the house through the French doors that opened from the porch. Now she was in a small parlor, a sitting room. Brightly covered books lay on end tables, and doilies covered the backs of the sofa and chairs.

She walked next through a living room papered in a print of pale green lilies. A ceramic Persian cat crouched next to the fireplace, and a real tabby cat reclined on the back of a rose-colored couch. The cat looked at Ruth and, unconcerned, went back to sleep. Ruth touched a handmade afghan on a rocking chair. Pastor Wishnell lived here? Owney Wishnell lived here? She walked on. The kitchen smelled of vanilla, and a coffee cake sat on the counter. She noticed stairs at the back of the kitchen. What was upstairs? She was out of her mind, to be snooping around like this. She’d be hard put to explain to anyone what she was doing upstairs in Pastor Toby Wishnell’s house, but she was dying to find Owney’s bedroom. She wanted to see where he slept.

She walked up the steep wooden stairs and, on the next floor, peered into an immaculate bathroom, with a potted fern hanging in the window and a small cake of lavender soap in a dish above the sink. There was a framed photograph of a small girl and a small boy, kissing. BEST FRIENDS, it read below in pink script.

Ruth moved to the doorway of a bedroom containing stuffed animals propped against the pillows. The next bedroom had a beautiful sleigh bed and its own bathroom. The last bedroom had a single bed with a rose-covered quilt. Where did Owney sleep? Not with the teddy bears, surely. Not on the sleigh bed. She couldn’t picture that. She had no sense of Owney at all in this house.

But Ruth kept exploring. She climbed up to the third floor. It was hot, with sloping ceilings. Seeing a partly closed door, she naturally pushed it open. And walked in on Pastor Wishnell.

“Oh,” Ruth said.

He looked at her from behind an ironing board. He was in his black trousers. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. That’s what he was ironing. His torso was long and seemed to have no muscle or fat or hair. He lifted his shirt off the ironing board, slid his arms into the starched sleeves, and fastened the buttons, bottom to top, slowly.

“I was looking for Owney,” Ruth said.

“He’s gone to Fort Niles to pick up Mr. Ellis.”

“Oh, really? Sorry.”

“You knew that very well.”

“Oh, that’s right. Yes, I did know that. Sorry.”

“This is not your house, Miss Thomas. What made you think you were free to wander about it?”

“That’s right. Sorry to have bothered you.” Ruth backed into the hallway.

Pastor Wishnell said, “No, Miss Thomas. Come in.”

Ruth paused, then stepped back into the room. She thought to herself, Fuck, and looked around. Well, this was certainly Pastor Wishnell’s room. This was the first room in the house that made any sense. It was stark and blank. The walls and ceiling were white; even the bare wooden floor was whitewashed. The room smelled faintly of shoe polish. The pastor’s bed was a narrow brass frame, with a blue woollen blanket and a thin pillow. Under the bed was a pair of leather slippers. The bedside table held no lamp or book, and the room’s single window had only a window shade, no curtain. There was a dresser, and on it a small pewter plate holding a few coins. The dominant object in the room was a large, dark wooden desk, beside which was a bookcase filled with heavy volumes. The desk held an electric typewriter, a stack of paper, a soup can of pencils.

Hanging above the desk was a map of the coast of Maine, covered with pencil marks. Ruth looked for Fort Niles, instinctively. It was unmarked. She wondered what that meant. Unsaved? Ungrateful?

The pastor unplugged the iron, wrapped the cord around it, and set it on his desk.

“You have a pretty house,” Ruth said. She put her hands in her pockets, trying to look casual, as if she’d been invited here. Pastor Wishnell folded the ironing board and placed it inside the closet.

“Were you named after the Ruth of the Bible?” he asked. “Have a seat.”

“I don’t know who I was named after.”

“Don’t you know your Bible?”

“Not too much.”

“Ruth was a great woman of the Old Testament. She was the model of female loyalty.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You might enjoy reading the Bible, Ruth. It contains many wonderful stories.”

Ruth thought, Exactly. Stories. Action-adventure. Ruth was an atheist. She had decided that the year before, when she learned the word. She was still having fun with the idea. She hadn’t told anyone, but the knowledge gave her a thrill.

“Why aren’t you helping Mrs. Pommeroy?” he asked.

“I’m going to do that right now,” Ruth said, and thought about making a run for it.

“Ruth,” Pastor Wishnell said, “sit down. You can sit on the bed.”

There was no bed in the world that Ruth wanted less to sit on than Pastor Wishnell’s. She sat down.

“Don’t you ever get tired of Fort Niles?” he asked. He tucked his shirt into his pants, in four smooth strokes, with flat palms. His hair was damp, and she could see the tooth marks from a comb. His skin was pale as fine linen. He leaned against the side of the desk, folded his arms, and looked at her.

“I haven’t been able to spend enough time there to get tired of it,” Ruth said.

“Because of school?”

“Because Lanford Ellis is always sending me away,” she said. She thought that statement made her sound a little pathetic, so she shrugged blithely, trying to indicate that it was no big deal.

“I think Mr. Ellis is interested in your well-being. I understand that he paid for your schooling and has offered to pay for your college education. He has vast resources, and he obviously cares what becomes of you. Not such a bad thing, is it? You are meant for better things than Fort Niles. Don’t you think?”

Ruth did not reply.

“You know, I don’t spend very much time on my island, either, Ruth. I’m hardly ever here on Courne Haven. In the last two months, I’ve preached twenty-one sermons, visited twenty-nine families, and attended eleven prayer meetings. I often lose count of weddings, funerals, and christenings. For many of these people, I am their only connection to the Lord. But I am also called upon to give worldly advice. They need me to read business papers for them or to help them find a new car. Many things. You’d be surprised. I settle disputes between people who would otherwise end up attacking each other physically. I am a peacemaker. It’s not an easy life; sometimes I’d like to stay home and enjoy my nice house.”

He made a gesture, indicating his nice house. It was a small gesture, though, and seemed to take in only his bedroom, which wasn’t, as far as Ruth could see, much to enjoy.

“I do leave my home, though,” Pastor Wishnell continued, “because I have duties, you see. I’ve been to every island in Maine in the course of my life. There are times when they all look the same to me, I must admit. Of all the islands I visit, though, I think Fort Niles is the most isolated. It is certainly the least religious.”

That’s because we don’t like you, Ruth thought.

“Is that right?” she said.

“Which is a pity, because it is the isolated people of the world who most need fellowship. Fort Niles is a strange place, Ruth. They’ve had chances, over the years, to become more involved in the world beyond their island. But they are slow and suspicious. I don’t know whether you’re old enough to remember when there was talk of building a ferry terminal.”

“Sure.”

“So you know about that failure. Now, the only tourists who can visit these islands are those with their own boats. And every time someone needs to go into Rockland from Fort Niles, he has to take his lobster boat. Every penny nail, every can of beans, every shoelace on Fort Niles has to come on some man’s lobster boat.”

“We have a store.”

“Oh, please, Ruth. Scarcely. And every time a lady from Fort Niles needs to do her grocery shopping or visit a doctor, she has to get a ride on some man’s lobster boat.”

“It’s the same thing over on Courne Haven,” Ruth said. She thought she’d already heard the pastor’s view on this subject, and she wasn’t interested in hearing it again. What did it have to do with her? He clearly enjoyed giving a little sermon. Lucky me, Ruth thought grimly.

“Well, Courne Haven’s fortunes are closely tied to those of Fort Niles. And Fort Niles is slow to act; your island is the last to embrace any change. Most of the men on Fort Niles still make their own traps, because, without reason, they’re suspicious of the wire ones.”

“Not everyone.”

“You know, Ruth, all over the rest of Maine, the lobstermen are starting to consider fiberglass boats. Just as an example. How long will it be before fiberglass comes to Fort Niles? Your guess is as good as mine. I can easily imagine Angus Addams’s reaction to such an idea. Fort Niles always resists. Fort Niles resisted size limitations on lobsters harder than anyone in the state of Maine. And now there’s talk all over the rest of Maine of setting voluntary trap limits.”

“We’ll never set trap limits,” Ruth said.

“They may be set for you, young lady. If your fishermen will not do it voluntarily, it may become a law, and there will be wardens crawling all over your boats, just as there were when the size limits were set. That’s how innovation comes to Fort Niles. It has to be rammed down your stubborn throats until you choke on it.”

Did he just say that? She stared at him. He was smiling slightly, and he had spoken in an even, mild tone. Ruth was appalled by his snide little speech, uttered with such ease. Everything he said was true, of course, but that haughty manner! She herself may have said some nasty things about Fort Niles in her time, but she had the right to speak critically of her own island and her own people. Hearing such condescension from someone so smug and unattractive was intolerable. She felt indignantly defensive, suddenly, of Fort Niles. How dare he!

“The world changes, Ruth,” he went on. “There was a time when many of the men on Fort Niles were hakers. Now there’s not enough hake left in the Atlantic to feed a kitty cat. We’re losing redfish, too, and pretty soon the only lobster bait left will be herring. And some of the herring the men are using these days is so bad, even the seagulls won’t eat it. There used to be a granite industry out here that made everyone rich, and now that’s gone, too. How do the men on your island expect to make a living in ten, twenty years? Do they think every day for the rest of time will be the same? That they can count on big lobster catches forever? They’re going to fish and fish until there’s only one lobster left, and then they’ll fight to the death over the last one. You know it, Ruth. You know how these people are. They’ll never agree to do what’s in their best interest. You think those fools will come to their senses and form a fishing cooperative, Ruth?”

“It’ll never happen,” Ruth said. Fools?

“Is that what your father says?”

“That’s what everyone says.”

“Well, everyone may be right. They’ve certainly fought it hard enough in the past. Your friend Angus Addams came to a cooperative meeting once on Courne Haven, back when our Denny Burden nearly bankrupted his family and got himself killed trying to form a collective between the two islands. I was there. I saw how Angus behaved. He came with a bag of popcorn. He sat in the front row while some more highly evolved individuals discussed ways that the two islands could work together for the benefit of everyone. Angus Addams sat there, grinning and eating popcorn. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘I’m enjoying the show. This is funnier than the talking pictures.’ Men like Angus Addams think they’re better off working alone forever. Am I correct? Is that what every man thinks over on your island?”

“I don’t know what every man on my island thinks,” Ruth said.

“You’re a bright young woman. I’m sure you know exactly what they think.”

Ruth chewed on the inside of her lip. “I think I should go help Mrs. Pommeroy now,” she said.

“Why do you waste your time with people like that?” Pastor Wishnell asked.

“Mrs. Pommeroy is my friend.”

“I’m not talking about Mrs. Pommeroy. I’m talking about Fort Niles lobstermen. I’m talking about Angus Addams, Simon Addams-”

“Senator Simon is not a lobsterman. He’s never even been in a boat.”

“I’m talking about men like Len Thomas, Don Pommeroy, Stan Thomas-”

“Stan Thomas is my father, sir.”

“I know perfectly well that Stan Thomas is your father.”

Ruth stood up.

“Sit down,” said Pastor Toby Wishnell.

She sat down. Her face was hot. She immediately regretted sitting down. She should have walked out of the room.

“You don’t belong on Fort Niles, Ruth. I’ve been asking around about you, and I understand that you have other options. You should take advantage of them. Not everyone is so fortunate. Owney, for instance, does not have your choices. I know you have some interest in my nephew’s life.”

Ruth’s face got hotter.

“Well, let’s consider Owney. What will become of him? That’s my worry, not yours, but let’s think about it together. You’re in a much better position than Owney is. The fact is, there is no future for you on your island. Every pigheaded fool who lives there ensures that. Fort Niles is doomed. There is no leadership over there. There is no moral core. My heavens, look at that rotted, run-down church! How was that allowed to happen?”

Because we fucking hate you, Ruth thought.

“The whole island will be abandoned in two decades. Don’t look surprised, Ruth. That’s what may well happen. I sail up and down this coast year after year, and I see communities trying to survive. Who on Fort Niles even tries? Do you have any form of government, an elected official? Who is your leader? Angus Addams? That snake? Who’s coming down the pike in the next generation? Len Thomas? Your father? When has your father ever considered anyone else’s interests?”

Ruth was getting ambushed. “You don’t know anything about my father,” she said, trying to sound as measured as Pastor Wishnell, but sounding, in fact, somewhat shrill.

Pastor Wishnell smiled. “Ruth,” he said, “mark my words. I know a great deal about your father. And I’ll repeat my prediction. Twenty years from now, your island will be a ghost town. Your people will have brought it on themselves through stubbornness and isolation. Does twenty years seem far away? It isn’t.”

He leveled a cool gaze on Ruth. She tried to level one back.

“Don’t think that because there have always been people on Fort Niles, there always will be. These islands are fragile, Ruth. Did you ever hear of the Isles of Shoals, from the early nineteenth century? The population got smaller and more inbred, and the society fell to pieces. The citizens burned down the meeting house, copulated with their siblings, hanged their only pastor, practiced witchcraft. When the Reverend Jedidiah Morse visited in 1820, he found only a handful of people. He married everyone immediately, to prevent further sin. It was the best he could do. A generation later, the islands were deserted. That could happen to Fort Niles. You don’t think so?”

Ruth had no comment.

“One more thing,” Pastor Wishnell said, “that came to my attention the other day. A lobsterman on Frenchman’s Island told me that back when the state first introduced size limitations on lobsters, a certain lobsterman named Jim used to keep short lobsters and sell them to the summer people on his island. He had a nice little illegal business going, but word got around, because word always gets around, and someone notified the fishing warden. The fishing warden started following old Jim, trying to catch him with the shorts. He even inspected Jim’s boat a few times. But Jim kept his shorts in a sack, weighted with a rock, that hung down from the stern of his boat. So he never got caught.

“One day, though, the fishing warden was spying on Jim with bin-oculars and saw him filling the sack and dumping it over the stern. So the warden chased Jim in his police boat, and Jim, knowing he was about to be caught, throttled his boat as fast as it could go, and took off for home. He drove it right up on the beach, grabbed the sack, and made a run for it. The warden chased him, so Jim dropped the sack and climbed up a tree. When the warden opened the sack, guess what he found, Ruth?”

“A skunk.”

“A skunk. That’s right. You’ve heard this story before, I gather.”

“It happened to Angus Addams.”

“It didn’t happen to Angus Addams. It didn’t happen to anyone. It’s apocryphal.”

Ruth and the pastor stared each other down.

“Do you know what apocryphal means, Ruth?”

“Yes, I know what apocryphal means,” snapped Ruth, who, at just that moment, was wondering what apocryphal meant.

“They tell that story on all the islands in Maine. They tell it because it makes them feel good that an old lobsterman could outsmart the law. But that’s not why I told it to you, Ruth. I told it to you because it’s a good fable about what happens to anyone who snoops around too much. You haven’t been enjoying our conversation, have you?”

She was not about to answer that.

“But you could have saved yourself this unpleasant conversation by staying out of my house. You brought it on yourself, didn’t you, by poking around where you had no right to. And if you feel as though you’ve been sprayed by a skunk, you know where to lay the blame. Isn’t that correct, Ruth?”

“I’m going to help Mrs. Pommeroy now,” Ruth said. She stood up again.

“I think that’s an excellent idea. And enjoy the wedding, Ruth.”

Ruth wanted to run out of that room, but she didn’t want to show Pastor Wishnell how agitated she was by his “fable,” so she walked out with some dignity. Once outside the room, though, she took off down the hall and down the two flights of stairs, through the kitchen, through the living room, and out the parlor door. She sat down in one of the wicker chairs on the porch. Fucking asshole, she was thinking. Unbelievable.

She should have beat it out of that room the moment he started his little oration. What the hell was that all about? He didn’t even know her. I’ve been asking around about you, Ruth. He had no business telling her who she should or shouldn’t hang around with, telling her to stay away from her own father. Ruth sat on the porch in a private, angry chill. It was embarrassing, more than anything, to be lectured to by this minister. And strange, too, to watch him put on his shirt, to sit on his bed. Strange to see his empty little monkish room and his pathetic little ironing board. Freak. She should have told him she was an atheist.

Across the garden, Mrs. Pommeroy and Kitty were still at work on the women’s hair. Dotty Wishnell and Candy were gone, probably getting dressed for the wedding. There was a small clutch of Courne Haven women still waiting for Mrs. Pommeroy’s attention. They all had damp hair. Mrs. Pommeroy had instructed the women to wash their hair at home so that she could devote her time to cutting and setting it. There were a few men in the rose garden, too, waiting for their wives or, perhaps, waiting to have their hair cut.

Kitty Pommeroy was combing out the long blond hair of a pretty young teenager, a girl who looked about thirteen. There were so many blonds on this island! All those Swedes from the granite industry. Pastor Wishnell had mentioned the granite industry, as if anyone still gave a shit about it. So what if the granite industry was finished? Who cared anymore? Nobody on Fort Niles was starving because the granite industry was gone. It was all gloom and doom from that guy. Fucking asshole. Poor Owney. Ruth tried to imagine a childhood spent with that uncle. Grim, mean, hard.

“Where you been?” Mrs. Pommeroy called over to Ruth.

“Bathroom.”

“You OK?”

“Fine,” Ruth said.

“Come over here, then.”

Ruth went over and sat on the low brick wall. She felt battered and slugged, and probably looked it. But nobody, not even Mrs. Pommeroy, took any notice. The group was too busy chatting. Ruth could see that she’d walked into the middle of a completely inane conversation.

“It’s gross,” said the teenage girl being tended to by Kitty. “He steps on all the urchins, and his whole boat gets covered with, like, guts.”

“There’s no need for that,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “My husband always threw urchins back in the water. Urchins don’t harm anyone.”

“Urchins eat bait!” said one of the Courne Haven men in the rose garden. “They get up on your bait bag, they eat the bait and the bag, too.”

“I got spikes in my fingers my whole life from goddamn urchins,” said another man.

“But why does Tuck have to step on them?” asked the pretty teenager. “It’s gross. And it takes time away from fishing. He gets all worked up about it; he has a really bad temper. He calls them whore’s eggs.” She giggled.

“Everyone calls them whore’s eggs,” said the fisherman with the spikes in his fingers.

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Pommeroy. “Having a bad temper takes time away from work. People should settle down.”

“I hate those bottom feeders you pull up sometimes, and they’re all bloated from coming up so fast,” the girl said. “Those fish? With the big eyes? Every time I go out to haul with my brother, we get a ton of those.”

“I haven’t been out on a lobster boat in years,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“They look like toads,” said the girl. “Tuck steps on them, too.”

“There’s no reason to be cruel to animals,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “No reason at all.”

“Tuck caught a shark once. He beat it up.”

“Who’s Tuck?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked.

“He’s my brother,” the teenage girl said. She looked at Ruth. “Who are you?”

“Ruth Thomas. Who are you?”

“Mandy Addams.”

“Are you related to Simon and Angus Addams? The brothers?”

“Probably. I don’t know. Do they live on Fort Niles?”

“Yeah.”

“Are they cute?”

Kitty Pommeroy laughed so hard, she fell to her knees.

“Yeah,” said Ruth. “They’re adorable.”

“They’re in their seventies, dear,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “And, actually, they are adorable.”

“What’s the matter with her?” Mandy asked, looking at Kitty, who was wiping her eyes and being helped to her feet by Mrs. Pommeroy.

“She’s drunk,” Ruth said. “She falls down all the time.”

“I am drunk!” Kitty shouted. “I am drunk, Ruth! But you don’t have to tell everyone.” Kitty got control of herself and went back to combing the teenager’s hair.

“Jeez, I think my hair is combed enough,” Mandy said, but Kitty kept combing, hard.

“Christ, Ruth,” Kitty said. “You’re such a blabbermouth. And I do not fall down all the time.”

“How old are you?” Mandy Addams asked Ruth. Her eyes were on Ruth, but her head was pulling against the tug of Kitty Pommeroy’s comb.

“Eighteen.”

“Are you from Fort Niles?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never seen you around.”

Ruth sighed. She didn’t feel like explaining her life to this dimwit. “I know. I went away to high school.”

“I’m going away to high school next year. Where’d you go? Rockland?”

“Delaware.”

“Is that in Rockland?”

“Not really,” Ruth said, and as Kitty started to shake with laughter again, she added, “Take it easy, Kitty. It’s going to be a long day. It’s too early to start falling down every two minutes.”

“Is that in Rockland?” Kitty wailed, and wiped her eyes. The Courne Haven fishermen and their wives, gathered in the Wishnell gardens around the Pommeroy sisters, all laughed, too. Well, that’s good, Ruth thought. At least they know the little blond girl is an idiot. Or maybe they were laughing at Kitty Pommeroy.

Ruth remembered what Pastor Wishnell had said about Fort Niles disappearing in twenty years. He was out of his mind. There’d be lobsters enough forever. Lobsters were prehistoric animals, survivors. The rest of the ocean might be exterminated, but the lobsters wouldn’t care. Lobsters can dig down into the mud and live there for months. They can eat rocks. They don’t give a shit, Ruth thought, admiringly. Lobsters would thrive if there was nothing left in the sea to eat except other lobsters. The last lobster in the world would probably eat himself, if he was the only food available. There was no need to get all concerned about lobsters.

Pastor Wishnell was out of his mind.

“Your brother really beat up a shark?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked Mandy.

“Sure. Jeez, I don’t think I ever had my hair combed so much in one day!”

“Everybody’s caught a shark sometime,” one of the fishermen said. “We all beat up a shark one time or another.”

“You just kill them?” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“Sure.”

“There’s no call for that.”

“No call to kill a shark?” The fisherman sounded amused. Mrs. Pommeroy was a lady and a stranger (an attractive lady stranger), and all the men in the garden were in a good mood around her.

“There’s no reason to be cruel to animals,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. She spoke around a few bobby pins in the corner of her mouth. She was working on the head of a steel-haired old lady, who seemed utterly oblivious of the conversation. Ruth guessed she was the mother of the bride or the mother of the groom.

“That’s right,” said Kitty Pommeroy. “Me and Rhonda, we learned that from our father. He wasn’t a cruel man. He never laid a hand on any of us girls. He stepped out on us plenty, but he never hit nobody.”

“It’s plain cruelty to pick on animals,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “All animals are God’s creatures as much as any of us. I think it shows that there’s something really wrong with you, if you have to be cruel to an animal for no reason.”

“I don’t know,” said the fisherman. “I sure like eating them fine.”

“Eating animals is different from picking on them. Cruelty to animals is unforgivable.”

“That’s right,” repeated Kitty. “I think it’s disgusting.”

Ruth could not believe this conversation. It was the kind of conversation people on Fort Niles had all the time-dumb, circular, uninformed. Apparently it was the kind that people on Courne Haven liked, too.

Mrs. Pommeroy took a bobby pin from her mouth and set a small gray curl on the old lady in the chair. “Although,” she said, “I have to admit I used to shove firecrackers in frogs’ mouths and blow them up.”

“Me, too,” said Kitty.

“But I didn’t know what it would do.”

“Sure,” said one of the amused Courne Haven fishermen. “How could you know?”

“Sometimes I throw snakes in front of the lawn mower and run over them,” said Mandy Addams, the pretty teenager.

“Now that’s downright cruel,” said Mrs. Pommeroy. “There’s no reason to do that. Snakes are good for keeping pests away.”

“Oh, I used to do that, too,” said Kitty Pommeroy. “Hell, Rhonda, we used to do that together, me and you. We were always chopping up snakes.”

“But we were only children, Kitty. We didn’t know any better.”

“Yeah,” said Kitty, “we were only children.”

“We didn’t know better.”

“That’s right,” Kitty said. “Remember that time you found a nest of baby mice under the sink, and you drowned them?”

“Children don’t know how to treat animals, Kitty,” Mrs. Pommeroy said.

“You drowned each one in a different teacup. You called it a mouse tea party. You kept saying, ‘Oh! They’re so cute! They’re so cute!’ ”

“I don’t have such a big problem with mice,” said one of the Courne Haven fishermen. “I’ll tell you what I do have a big problem with. Rats.”

“Who’s next?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked brightly. “Whose turn is it to look pretty?”

Ruth Thomas got drunk at the wedding.

Kitty Pommeroy helped. Kitty made friends with the bartender, a fifty-year-old Courne Haven fisherman named Chucky Strachan. Chucky Strachan had earned the great honor of serving as bartender largely because he was a big drunk. Chucky and Kitty found each other right away, the way two garrulous drunks in a bustling crowd always find each other, and they set out to have a great time at the Wishnell wedding. Kitty appointed herself Chucky’s assistant and made sure to match his customers, drink for drink. She asked Chucky to whip up something nice for Ruth Thomas, something to loosen up the little honey.

“Give her something fruity,” Kitty instructed. “Give her something just as sweet as her.” So Chucky whipped up for Ruth a tall glass of whiskey and a little tiny bit of ice.

“Now that’s a drink for a lady,” Chucky said.

“I meant a cocktail!” Kitty said. “That’s going to taste gross to her! She’s not used to it! She went to private school!”

“Let’s see,” said Ruth Thomas, and she drank down the whiskey Chucky gave her, not in one swallow, but pretty quickly.

“Very fruity,” she said. “Very sweet.”

The drink radiated a pleasant warmth in her bowels. Her lips felt bigger. She had another drink, and she started to feel incredibly affectionate. She gave Kitty Pommeroy a long, strong hug, and said, “You were always my favorite Pommeroy sister,” which couldn’t have been further from the truth but felt good to say.

“I hope things work out for you, Ruthie,” Kitty slurred.

“Aw, Kitty, you’re sweet. You’ve always been so sweet to me.”

“We all want things to work out for you, hon. We’re all just holding our fingers, hoping it all works out.”

“Holding your fingers?” Ruth frowned.

“Crossing our breath, I mean,” Kitty said, and they both nearly fell down laughing.

Chucky Strachan made Ruth another drink.

“Am I a great bartender?” he asked.

“You really know how to mix whiskey and ice in a glass,” Ruth conceded. “That’s for sure.”

“That’s my cousin getting married,” he said. “We need to celebrate. Dotty Wishnell is my cousin! Hey! Charlie Burden is my cousin, too!”

Chucky Strachan leaped out from behind the bar and grabbed Kitty Pommeroy. He buried his face in Kitty’s neck. He kissed Kitty all over her face, all over the good side of her face, the side that wasn’t burn-scarred. Chucky was a skinny guy, and his pants dropped lower and lower over his skinny ass. Each time he bent over the slightest bit, he displayed a nice New England cleavage. Ruth tried to avert her eyes. A matronly woman in a floral skirt was waiting for a drink, but Chucky didn’t notice her. The woman smiled hopefully in his direction, but he slapped Kitty Pommeroy’s bottom and opened himself a beer.

“Are you married?” Ruth asked Chucky, as he licked Kitty’s neck.

He pulled away, threw a fist in the air, and announced, “My name is Clarence Henry Strachan and I am married!”

“May I have a drink, please?” the matronly lady asked politely.

“Talk to the bartender!” shouted Chucky Strachan, and he took Kitty out on the plywood dance floor in the middle of the tent.

The wedding service itself had been insignificant to Ruth. She had barely watched it, barely paid attention. She was amazed by the size of Dotty’s father’s yard, amazed by his nice garden. Those Wishnells certainly had money. Ruth was used to Fort Niles weddings, where the guests brought casseroles and pots of beans and pies. After the wedding, there’d be a great sorting of the serving dishes. Whose tray is this? Whose coffee machine is this?

The wedding of Dotty Wishnell and Charlie Burden, on the other hand, had been catered by a mainland expert. And there was, as Pastor Wishnell had promised, a professional photographer. The bride wore white, and some of the guests who had been to Dotty’s first wedding said this gown was even nicer than the last one. Charlie Burden, a stocky character with an alcoholic’s nose and suspicious eyes, made an unhappy groom. He looked depressed to be standing there in front of everyone, saying the formal words. Dotty’s little daughter, Candy, as maid of honor, had cried, and when her mother tried to comfort her, said nastily, “I’m not crying!” Pastor Wishnell went on and on about Responsibilities and Rewards.

And after it was over, Ruth got drunk. And after she got drunk, she set to dancing. She danced with Kitty Pommeroy and Mrs. Pommeroy and with the groom. She danced with Chucky Strachan, the bartender, and with two handsome young men in tan pants, who, she found out later, were summer people. Summer people at an island wedding! Imagine that! She danced with both of those men a few times, and she got the feeling that she was somehow making fun of them, though she couldn’t later remember what she’d said. She dropped a lot of sarcastic comments that they didn’t seem to get. She even danced with Cal Cooley when he asked her. The band played country music.

“Is the band from here?” she asked Cal, and he said that the musicians had come over on Babe Wishnell’s boat.

“They’re good,” Ruth said. For some reason she was allowing herself to be held very close by Cal Cooley. “I wish I could play an instrument. I’d like to play the fiddle. I can’t even sing. I can’t play anything. I can’t even play a radio. Are you having fun, Cal?”

“I’d have a lot more fun if you’d slide up and down my leg as if it were a greased fire pole.”

Ruth laughed.

“You look good,” he told Ruth. “You should wear pink more often.”

“I should wear pink more often? I’m wearing yellow.”

“I said you should drink more often. I like the way it makes you feel. All soft and yielding.”

“What am I wielding?” Ruth said, but she was only pretending not to understand.

He sniffed her hair. She let him. She could tell he was sniffing her hair, because she could feel his puffs of breath on her scalp. He pressed himself against her leg, and she could feel his erection. She let him do that, too. What the hell, she figured. He ground himself against her. He rocked her slowly. He kept his hands low on her back and pulled her tight against him. She let him do all that. What the hell, she kept thinking. It was Old Cal Cooley, but it felt pretty good. He kissed her on the top of the head, and suddenly it was as if she woke up.

It was Cal Cooley!

“Oh, my God, I have to pee,” Ruth said, and pulled herself away from Cal, which wasn’t easy, because he made a fight to hold her. What was she doing dancing with Cal Cooley? Jesus Christ. She weaved her way out of the tent, out of the yard, and walked down the street until the street ended and the woods began. She stepped behind a tree, lifted her dress, and peed on a flat rock, proudly managing to not splatter her legs. She couldn’t believe she had felt Cal Cooley’s penis, even faintly, pressing through his pants. That was disgusting. She made a pact with herself to do anything she had to do for the rest of her life to forget that she had ever felt Cal Cooley’s penis.

When she walked out of the woods, she took a wrong turn and ended up on a street marked FURNACE STREET. They have street signs here? she wondered. Like the other streets on Courne Haven, this one was unpaved. It was dusk. She passed a small white house with a porch; on the porch was an old woman in a flannel shirt. She was holding a fluffy yellow bird. Ruth peered at the bird and at the woman. She was feeling wobbly on her feet.

“I’m looking for Babe Wishnell’s house,” she said. “Can you tell me where it is? I think I’m lost.”

“I’ve been taking care of my sick husband for years,” the woman said, “and my memory’s not what it ought to be.”

“How’s your husband doing, ma’am?”

“He doesn’t have many good days anymore.”

“Really sick, is he?”

“Dead.”

“Oh.” Ruth scratched a mosquito bite on her ankle. “Do you know where Babe Wishnell’s house is? I’m supposed to be at a wedding there.”

“I think it’s right up the next street. After the greenhouse. Take a left,” the woman said. “It’s been some time since I was there.”

“The greenhouse? You guys have a greenhouse on this island?”

“Oh, I don’t think so, love.”

Ruth was confused for a moment; then she figured it out. “Do you mean that I should take a left after the house that’s painted green?”

“I think you should, yes. But my memory’s not what it ought to be.”

“I think your memory’s just fine.”

“Aren’t you a love? Who’s getting married?”

“Babe Wishnell’s daughter.”

“That little girl?”

“I guess so. Excuse me, ma’am, but is that a duckling you’re holding?”

“This is a chick, love. Oh, it’s awful soft.” The woman grinned at Ruth, and Ruth grinned back.

“Well, then, thank you for your help,” Ruth said. She headed up the street to the house that was green and found her way back to the wedding.

As she stepped into the tent, a hot, dry hand caught her by the arm. She said, “Hey!” It was Cal Cooley.

“Mr. Ellis wants to see you,” he said, and before she could protest, Cal led her over to Mr. Ellis. Ruth had forgotten that he was coming to the wedding, but there he was, sitting in his wheelchair. He grinned up at her, and Ruth, who had been doing a lot of grinning lately, grinned back. Good God, he was thin. He couldn’t have weighed a hundred and ten pounds, and he’d once been a tall, strong man. His head was a bald, yellow globe, burnished as the head of a well-used cane. He had no eyebrows. He wore an ancient black suit with silver buttons. Ruth was astonished, as always, at how poorly he had aged compared with his sister, Miss Vera. Miss Vera liked to affect frailty, but she was perfectly hale. Miss Vera was little, but she was sturdy as firewood. Her brother was a wisp. Ruth couldn’t believe, when she’d seen him earlier in the spring, that he’d made the trip to Fort Niles this year from Concord. And now she could not believe that he had made the trip from Fort Niles to Courne Haven for the wedding. He was ninety-four years old.

“It’s nice to see you, Mr. Ellis,” she said.

“Miss Thomas,” he replied, “you look well. Your hair is very pretty away from your face.” He squinted up at her with his rheumy blue eyes. He was holding her hand. “You will have a seat?”

She took a deep breath and sat down on a wooden folding chair beside him. He let go of her. She wondered whether she smelled of whiskey. One had to sit awfully close to Mr. Ellis so that he could hear and be heard, and she didn’t want her breath to give her away.

“My granddaughter!” he said, and smiled a wide smile that threatened to crack his skin.

“Mr. Ellis.”

“I can’t hear you, Miss Thomas.”

“I said, Hello, Mr. Ellis. Hello, Mr. Ellis”

“You haven’t been to see me in some time.”

“Not since I came over with Senator Simon and Webster Pommeroy.” Ruth had some difficulty enunciating the words Senator and Simon. Mr. Ellis did not seem to notice. “But I’ve been meaning to come by. I’ve been busy. I’ll come up to Ellis House very soon and see you.”

“We shall have a meal.”

“Thank you. That’s very nice, Mr. Ellis.”

“Yes. You’ll come on Thursday. Next Thursday.”

“Thank you. I look forward to it.” Thursday!

“You haven’t told me how you found your visit to Concord.”

“It was lovely, thank you. Thank you for encouraging me to go.”

“Wonderful. I received a letter from my sister saying as much. It might not be amiss for you to write her a note thanking her for her hospitality.”

“I will,” Ruth said, not even wondering how he knew that she hadn’t done so. Mr. Ellis always knew things like that. Of course she would write a note, now that it had been suggested. And when she did write, Mr. Ellis would undoubtedly know of it even before his sister received the note. That was his way: omniscience. Mr. Ellis dug around in a pocket of his suit and came up with a handkerchief. He unfolded it and passed it, with a palsied hand, across his nose. “What do you suppose will come of your mother when my sister passes away?” he asked. “I ask only because Mr. Cooley raised the question the other day.”

Ruth’s stomach tightened as if it had been cinched. What the hell was that supposed to mean? She thought for a moment and then said what she certainly would not have said had she not been drinking.

“I only hope she will be taken care of, sir.”

“Come again?”

Ruth did not reply. She was quite sure that Mr. Ellis had heard her. Indeed he had, because he finally said, “It is very expensive to take care of people.”

Ruth was as uncomfortable as ever with Lanford Ellis. She never had a sense, when meeting with him, what the outcome would be: what he would tell her to do, what he would withhold from her, what he would give her. It had been this way since she was a child of eight and Mr. Ellis had called her into his study, handed her a stack of books, and said, “Read these in the order I have placed them, from top to bottom. You are to stop swimming in the quarries with the Pommeroy boys unless you wear a bathing suit.” There had never been an implication of threat in these instructions. They were simply issued.

Ruth followed Mr. Ellis’s commands because she knew the power this man had over her mother. He had more power over her mother than Miss Vera did, because he controlled the family money. Miss Vera exercised her control over Mary Smith-Ellis Thomas in petty daily cruelties. Mr. Ellis, on the other hand, had never once treated Ruth’s mother in a cruel way. Ruth was aware of this. For some reason, this knowledge had always filled her with panic, not peace. And so, at the age of eight, Ruth read the books Mr. Ellis had given her. She did as she was told. He had not quizzed her on the books or asked her to return them. She did not acquire a bathing suit for her swims in the quarries with the Pommeroy boys; she merely stopped swimming with them. That seemed to have been an acceptable solution, because she heard no more about it.

Meetings with Mr. Ellis were also significant because they were rare. He called Ruth into his presence only twice a year or so, and began each conversation with an expression of fondness. He would then chastise her lightly for not coming to visit him on her own. He called her granddaughter, love, dear. She was aware, and had been from early childhood, that she was considered his pet and was therefore lucky. There were others on Fort Niles-grown men, even-who would have liked an audience with Mr. Ellis even once, but could not obtain one. Senator Simon Addams, for instance, had been trying for years to meet with him. Ruth was thought by many on Fort Niles to have some special influence with the man, though she scarcely ever saw him. For the most part, she heard of his requests and demands and displeasure or pleasure from Cal Cooley. When she did see Mr. Ellis, his instructions to her were usually simple and direct.

When Ruth was thirteen, he had summoned her to tell her that she would be attending private school in Delaware. He said nothing of how or why this was to be or whose decision it had been. Nor did he ask her opinion. He did say that her schooling was expensive but would be taken care of. He told her that Cal Cooley would drive her to school in early September and that she would be expected to spend her Christmas holiday with her mother in Concord. She would not return to Fort Niles until the following June. These were facts, not matters for discussion.

On a less momentous matter, Mr. Ellis summoned Ruth when she was sixteen to say that she was to wear her hair away from her face from now on. That was his only instruction to her for the year. And she followed it and had been doing so ever since, wearing it in a ponytail. He apparently approved.

Mr. Ellis was one of the only adults in Ruth’s life who had never called her stubborn. This was surely because, in his presence, she was not.

She wondered whether he was going to tell her not to drink anymore tonight. Was that the point of this? Would he tell her to stop dancing like a trollop? Or was this something bigger, an announcement that it was time for her to go to college? Or move to Concord with her mother? Ruth wanted to hear none of these things.

In general, she avoided Mr. Ellis strenuously because she was terrified of what he would ask of her and of the certainty that she would obey. She had not yet heard directly from Mr. Ellis what her plans for the fall were to be, but she had a strong sense that she would be asked to leave Fort Niles. Cal Cooley had indicated that Mr. Ellis wanted her to go to college, and Vera Ellis had mentioned the college for women where the dean was a friend. Ruth was sure the subject would come up soon. She had even got a message about leaving from Pastor Wishnell, of all people, and the signs pointed to a decision soon from Mr. Ellis himself. There was nothing Ruth hated more in her character than her unquestioning obedience of Mr. Ellis. And while she had made up her mind that she would disregard his wishes from now on, she didn’t feel up to asserting her independence tonight.

“How have you been spending your days lately, Ruth?” Mr. Ellis asked.

Wanting no instructions from him at all tonight, Ruth decided to divert him. This was a new tactic, a bold tactic. But she had been drinking and, as a consequence, felt bolder than usual.

“Mr. Ellis,” she said, “do you remember the elephant tusk we brought you?”

He nodded.

“Have you had a chance to look at it?”

He nodded again. “Very well,” he said. “I understand you have been spending a great deal of your time with Mrs. Pommeroy and her sisters.”

“Mr. Ellis,” Ruth said, “I wonder whether we can talk about that elephant tusk. For just a moment.”

That’s right. She would be the one to direct this conversation. How hard could that be? She certainly did it with everyone else. Mr. Ellis raised an eyebrow. That is to say, he raised the skin below where an eyebrow would be if he happened to have an eyebrow.

“It took my friend several years to find that tusk, Mr. Ellis. That young man, Webster Pommeroy, he’s the one who found it. He worked hard. And my other friend, Senator Simon?” Ruth pronounced the name this time without a hitch. She felt dead sober now. “Senator Simon Addams? You know him?”

Mr. Ellis did not respond. He found his handkerchief again and made another pass at his nose.

Ruth went on. “He has many interesting artifacts, Mr. Ellis. Simon Addams has been collecting unusual specimens for years. He would like to open a museum on Fort Niles. To display what he has collected. He’d call it the Fort Niles Museum of Natural History and believes that the Ellis Granite Company Store building would be suitable for his museum. Since it is vacant. Perhaps you’ve heard about this idea? I think he has asked your permission for years… I think he… It may not seem like an interesting project to you, but it would mean everything to him, and he is a good man. Also, he would like the elephant tusk back. For his museum. If he can have a museum, that is.”

Mr. Ellis sat in his wheelchair with his hands on his thighs. His thighs were not much wider than his wrists. Under his suit jacket, he wore a thick, black sweater. He reached into an inside pocket of his suit and pulled out a small brass key, which he held between his thumb and forefinger. It trembled like a divining rod. Handing it to Ruth, he said, “Here is the key to the Ellis Granite Company Store building.”

Ruth gingerly took the key. It was cool and sharp and could not have been a greater surprise. She said, “Oh!” She was astonished.

“Mr. Cooley will bring the elephant tusk to your house next week.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ellis. I appreciate this. You don’t have to-”

“You will join me for dinner on Thursday.”

“I will. Yes. Terrific. Should I tell Simon Addams… Um, what shall I tell Simon Addams about the building?”

But Mr. Ellis was finished talking to Ruth Thomas. He shut his eyes and ignored her, and she went away.

Ruth Thomas went to the other side of the tent, as far as she could get from Mr. Ellis. She felt sober and a little sick, so she made a quick stop at the card table that served as a bar and had Chucky Strachan mix her another glass of whiskey and ice. Between Pastor Wishnell and Mr. Ellis, this had been a day of strange conversations, and now she was wishing that she had stayed home with the Senator and Webster Pommeroy. She found a chair in the corner, behind the band, and claimed it. When she put her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands, she could hear her pulse in her head. At the sound of applause, she looked up. A man in his mid-sixties, with a blond-gray brush haircut and the face of an old soldier, was standing in the middle of the tent, a champagne glass raised in his hand. It was Babe Wishnell.

“My daughter!” he said. “Today is my daughter’s wedding, and I’d like to say some words!”

There was more applause. Somebody shouted, “Go to it, Babe!” and everyone laughed.

“My daughter isn’t marrying the best-looking man on Courne Haven, but, then, it isn’t legal to marry her father! Charlie Burden? Where’s Charlie Burden?”

The groom stood up, looking agonized.

“You got yourself a good Wishnell girl today, Charlie!” Babe Wishnell bellowed; more applause. Somebody shouted, “Go get her, Charlie!” and Babe Wishnell glared in the direction of the voice. The laughter stopped.

But then he shrugged and said, “My daughter’s a modest girl. When she was a teenager, she was so modest, she wouldn’t even walk over a potato patch. You know why? Because potatoes have eyes! They might have looked up her skirt!”

Here, he pantomimed a girl, daintily lifting her skirts. He fluttered his hand about in a feminine way. The crowd laughed. The bride, holding her daughter on her lap, blushed.

“My new son-in-law reminds me of Cape Cod. I mean, his nose reminds me of Cape Cod. Does anyone know why his nose reminds me of Cape Cod? Because it’s a prominent projection!” Babe Wishnell roared at his own joke. “Charlie, I’m just playing with you. You can sit down now, Charlie. Let’s have a hand for Charlie. He’s a pretty goddamn good sport. Now, these two are going on a honeymoon. They’re going to Boston for the week. I hope they have a good time.”

More applause, and the same voice shouted, “Go get her, Charlie!” This time Babe Wishnell ignored the voice.

“I hope they have a hell of a good time. They deserve it. Especially Dotty, because she’s had a tough year, losing her husband. So I hope you have a hell of a good time, Charlie and Dotty.” He raised his glass. The guests murmured and raised their glasses, too. “Good for them to get away for a while,” Babe Wishnell said. “Leaving the kid with Dotty’s mother and me, but what the hell. We like the kid. Hiya, kid!”

He waved at the kid. The kid, Candy, on her mother’s lap, was as regal and inscrutable as a lioness.

“But that reminds me of when I took Dotty’s mother on our honeymoon.”

Someone in the crowd whooped, and everyone laughed. Babe Wishnell shook his finger, like tut-tut-tut, and continued. “When I took Dotty’s mother on our honeymoon, we went to Niagara Falls. This was back in the Revolutionary War! No, it was 1945. I was just out of the war. World War Two, that is! Now, I’d gotten stove up pretty bad in a wreck in the South Pacific. I’d seen some pretty serious action over there in New Guinea, but I was ready for action on my honeymoon! You bet! I was ready for a different kind of action!”

Everyone looked to Gladys Wishnell, who was shaking her head.

“So we went to Niagara Falls. We had to take that boat, The Maid of the Mist. Now, I didn’t know if Gladys was the type to get seasick. I thought she might get all woozy on me under that waterfall, because you go-you know, you go right under the goddamn thing. So I went to the pharmacy, and I bought a bottle of-what’s it called? A bottle of Drambuie? What’s it called that you take for seasickness?”

“Dramamine!” Ruth Thomas called out.

Babe Wishnell peered through the darkening tent at Ruth. He gave her a stern, perceptive look. He didn’t know who she was, but he accepted her answer.

“Dramamine. That’s right. I bought a bottle of Dramamine from the pharmacist. And since I was there anyhow, I bought a package of rubbers, too.”

This brought shrieks of joy and applause from the wedding guests. Everyone looked at Dotty Wishnell and her mother, Gladys, both of whom were wearing the same priceless expression of disbelief and horror.

“Yeah, I bought Dramamine and a package of rubbers. So the pharmacist gives me the Dramamine. He gives me the rubbers. He looks at me and he says, ‘If it makes her so goddamn sick to her stomach, why do you keep doing it to her?’ ”

The wedding guests roared. They applauded and whistled. Dotty Wishnell and her mother both doubled over, laughing. Ruth felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up. It was Mrs. Pommeroy.

“Hey,” Ruth said.

“May I sit here?”

“Sure, sure.” Ruth patted the seat next to her, and Mrs. Pommeroy sat down.

“Hiding?” she asked Ruth.

“Yeah. Tired?”

“Yeah.”

“I know Charlie Burden thinks he’s going to get rich, marrying a Wishnell girl,” Babe Wishnell continued, as the laughter died down. “I know he thinks it’s his lucky day. He probably has his eye on some of my boats and gear. Well, he may get it. He may get all my boats in the end. But there’s one ship I’d never want Charlie and Dotty to have. Do you know what ship that is? Hardship.”

The crowd said, “Awww…” Gladys Wishnell wiped her eyes.

“My new son-in-law ain’t the smartest guy on the island. I heard they were going to make him the master of the lighthouse over on Crypt Rock for a spell. Well, that didn’t work out so great. Charlie turned the light off at nine o’clock. They asked him why, and he said, ‘All good people should be in bed by nine o’clock.’ That’s right! Lights out, Charlie!”

The guests laughed heartily. Charlie Burden looked as if he might throw up.

“Yeah, let’s have a hand for Charlie and Dotty. I hope they have a real good time. And I hope they stay on here on Courne Haven forever. They might like it over there in Boston, but I’m not one for cities. I don’t like cities at all. Never have. There’s only one city I like. It’s the best city in the world. Do you know what city that is? Generosity.”

The crowd said “Awww…” again.

“He’s a real joker,” Ruth said to Mrs. Pommeroy.

“He likes those puns,” she agreed.

Mrs. Pommeroy took Ruth’s hand as they watched Babe Wishnell finish his toast with some more puns, some more jabs at his new son-in-law.

“That man could buy and sell every last one of us,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, wistfully.

There were cheers for Babe Wishnell at the end of his toast, and he took a dramatic bow and said, “And now, I’m real honored because Lanford Ellis is here with us. He wants to say a couple words, and I think we all want to hear whatever he has to say. That’s right. It’s not too often we see Mr. Ellis. It’s a real honor for me that he’s come to my daughter’s wedding. So there he is, over there. Let’s keep it real quiet now, everyone. Mr. Lanford Ellis. A very important man. Going to say some words.”

Cal Cooley rolled Mr. Ellis in his wheelchair to the center of the room. The tent became silent. Cal tucked Mr. Ellis’s blanket tighter.

“I am a lucky man,” Mr. Ellis began, “to have such neighbors.” Very slowly, he looked around at all those in the tent. It was as if he were tallying each neighbor. A baby started to cry, and there was a rustle as the mother took the child out of the tent. “There is a tradition on this island-and on Fort Niles, too-of hard work. I remember when the Swedes on Courne Haven were making cobblestones for the Ellis Granite Company. Three hundred good quarrymen could each make two hundred cobblestones a day for five cents each. My family always appreciated the hard work.”

“This is an interesting wedding toast,” Ruth whispered to Mrs. Pommeroy.

Mr. Ellis went on. “Now you are all lobstermen. That’s fine work, too. Some of you are Swedes, the descendants of Vikings. The Vikings used to call the ocean the Path of the Lobster. I am an old man. What will happen to Fort Niles and Courne Haven when I am gone? I am an old man. I love these islands.”

Mr. Ellis stopped speaking. He was looking at the ground. He had no expression on his face, and an observer might have thought that the man had no idea where he was, that he had forgotten he was speaking to an audience. The silence lasted a long time. The wedding guests began to look at one another. They shrugged and looked at Cal Cooley, standing a few feet behind Mr. Ellis. But Cal did not appear concerned; he wore his usual expression of bored disgust. Somewhere, a man coughed. It was so quiet, Ruth could hear the wind in the trees. After a few minutes, Babe Wishnell stood up.

“We want to thank Mr. Ellis for coming all the way over to Courne Haven,” he said. “How about that, everyone? That means a lot to us. How about a big hand for Mr. Lanford Ellis? Thanks a lot, Lanford.”

The crowd broke into relieved applause. Cal Cooley wheeled his boss to the side of the tent. Mr. Ellis was still looking at the ground. The band started to play, and a woman laughed too loudly.

“Well, that was an unusual toast, too,” said Ruth.

“Do you know who’s over at Pastor Wishnell’s house, sitting on the back steps of the house all by himself?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked Ruth.

“Who?”

“Owney Wishnell.” Mrs. Pommeroy handed Ruth a flashlight. “Why don’t you go find him? Take your time.”