Stern Men

3

MR. LANFORD ELLIS lived in Ellis House, which dated back to 1883. The house was the finest structure on Fort Niles Island, and it was finer than anything on Courne Haven, too. It was built of black, tomb-grade granite in the manner of a grand bank or train station, in only slightly smaller proportions. There were columns, arches, deep-set windows, and a glinting tile lobby the size of a vast, echoing Roman bath house. Ellis House, on the highest point of Fort Niles, was as far away from the harbor as possible. It stood at the end of Ellis Road. Rather, Ellis House stopped Ellis Road abruptly in its tracks, as if the house were a big cop with a whistle and an outstretched, authoritative arm.

As for Ellis Road, it dated back to 1880. It was an old work road that had connected the three quarries of the Ellis Granite Company on Fort Niles Island. At one time, Ellis Road had been a busy thorough-fare, but by the time Webster Pommeroy, Senator Simon Addams, and Ruth Thomas made their way along the road toward Ellis House, on that June morning in 1976, it had long since fallen into disuse.

Alongside Ellis Road ran the dead length of the Ellis Rail, a two-mile track, dating from 1882, that had been laid down to carry the tons of granite blocks from the quarries to the sloops waiting in the harbor. Those heavy sloops steamed away to New York and Philadelphia and Washington for years and years. They moved in slow formation down to cities that always needed paving blocks from Courne Haven Island and more monument-grade granite from Fort Niles Island. For decades, the sloops carried off the granite interior of the two islands, returning, weeks later, packed with the coal needed to power the excavation of still more granite, to scour out more deeply the guts of the islands.

Beside the ancient Ellis Rail lay an orange-rusted scattering of Ellis Granite Company quarry tools and machine parts-peen hammers and wedges and shims and other tools-that nobody, not even Senator Simon, could identify anymore. The great Ellis Granite Company lathe was rotting in the woods nearby, bigger than a locomotive engine car, never to be moved again. The lathe sat miserably in the murk and vines as if it had been consigned there as punishment. Its 140 tons of clockwork gears were weathered together in an angry lockjaw grip. Rusted pythonic lengths of cable lurked in the grass all around.

They walked. Webster Pommeroy and Senator Simon Addams and Ruth Thomas walked up Ellis Road, next to the Ellis Rail, toward Ellis House, bearing the elephant tusk. They were not smiling, not laughing. Ellis House was not a place any of them frequented.

“I don’t know why we’re bothering,” Ruth said. “He’s not even going to be here. He’s still in New Hampshire. He won’t be here until next Saturday.”

“He came to the island early this year,” the Senator said.

“What are you talking about?”

“This year, Mr. Ellis arrived on April eighteenth.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not kidding you.”

“He’s been here? He’s been here the whole time? Since I got back from school?”

“That’s right.”

“Nobody told me.”

“Did you ask anybody? You shouldn’t be so surprised. Everything is different now at Ellis House from the way it used to be.”

“Well. I guess I should know that.”

“Yes, Ruthie. I suppose you should.”

The Senator fanned mosquitoes off his head and neck as he walked, using a fan he’d made from fern fronds.

“Is your mother coming to the island this summer, Ruth?”

“No.”

“Did you see your mother this year?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, is that right? You didn’t visit Concord this year?”

“Not really.”

“Does your mother like living in Concord?”

“Apparently. She’s been living there long enough.”

“I’ll bet her house is nice. Is it nice?”

“I’ve told you about a million times that it’s nice.”

“Do you know that I haven’t seen your mother in a decade?”

“And you’ve told me that about a million times.”

“So you say she’s not coming to visit the island this summer?”

“She never comes,” Webster Pommeroy said abruptly. “I don’t know why everybody keeps talking about her.”

That stopped the conversation. The threesome did not talk for a long while, and then Ruth said, “Mr. Ellis really came out here on April eighteenth?”

“He really did,” the Senator said.

This was unusual news, even astonishing. The Ellis family came to Fort Niles Island on the third Saturday of June, and they had been doing so since the third Saturday of June 1883. They lived the rest of the year in Concord, New Hampshire. The original Ellis patriarch, Dr. Jules Ellis, had started the practice in 1883, moving his growing family to the island in the summers to get away from the diseases of the city, and also to keep an eye on his granite company. It was not known to any of the locals what kind of doctor Dr. Jules Ellis was, exactly. He certainly didn’t act like a physician. He acted rather like a captain of industry. But that was during a different era, as Senator Simon liked to point out, when a man could be many things. This was back when a man could wear many hats.

None of the natives on Fort Niles liked the Ellis family, but it was an odd point of pride that Dr. Ellis had elected to build Ellis House on Fort Niles and not on Courne Haven, where the Ellis Granite Company was also at work. This point of pride had little actual value; the islanders should not have been flattered. Dr. Jules Ellis had chosen Fort Niles for his home not because he liked that island better. He had selected it because, by building Ellis House on the island’s high, east-facing cliffs, he could keep an eye on both Fort Niles and Courne Haven, right across Worthy Channel. He could live atop one island and watch the other carefully and also enjoy the advantage of keeping an eye on the rising sun.

During the reign of Dr. Jules Ellis, summertime would bring quite a crowd to Fort Niles Island. In time, there were five Ellis children arriving every summer, together with numerous members of the extended Ellis family, a continuing rotation of well-dressed Ellis summer guests and business associates, and a summer household staff of sixteen Ellis servants. The servants would bring the Ellis summer household necessities up from Concord on trains and then over on boats. On the third Saturday of June, the servants would appear at the docks, unloading trunks and trunks of summer china and linens and crystal and curtains. In photographs, these piles of trunks resemble structures in themselves, looking like awkward buildings. This enormous event, the arrival of the Ellis family, lent great importance to the third Saturday of June.

The Ellises’ servants also brought across on boats several riding horses for the summer. Ellis House had a fine stable, in addition to a well-cultivated rose garden, a ballroom, an icehouse, guest cottages, a lawn tennis court, and a goldfish pond. The family and their friends, on Fort Niles Island for the summer, indulged themselves in sundry forms of recreation. And at the end of the summer, on the second Saturday of September, Dr. Ellis, his wife, his five children, his riding horses, his sixteen servants, his guests, the silver, the china, the linens, the crystal, and the curtains would leave. The family and servants would crowd onto their ferry, and the goods would be packed into the towering stacks of trunks, and everything and everyone would be shipped back to Concord, New Hampshire, for the winter.

But all this was long ago. This mighty production had not taken place for years.

By Ruth Thomas’s nineteenth summer, in 1976, the only Ellis who still came to Fort Niles Island was Dr. Jules Ellis’s eldest son, Lanford Ellis. He was ancient. He was ninety-four years old.

All of Dr. Jules Ellis’s other children, save one daughter, were dead. There were grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of Dr. Ellis who might have enjoyed the great house on Fort Niles, but Lanford Ellis disliked and disapproved of them, and he kept them away. It was his right. The house was entirely his; he alone had inherited it. Mr. Lanford Ellis’s one surviving sibling, Vera Ellis, was the only family member for whom he cared, but Vera Ellis had stopped coming to the island ten summers earlier. She considered herself too frail to make the trip. She considered herself in poor health. She had spent many happy summers on Fort Niles, but preferred now to rest in Concord, the year round, with her live-in companion to care for her.

So, for ten years, Lanford Ellis had been spending his summers in Fort Niles alone. He kept no horses and invited no guests. He did not play croquet or take boating excursions. He had no staff with him at Ellis House except one man, Cal Cooley, who was both groundskeeper and assistant. Cal Cooley even cooked the old man’s meals. Cal Cooley lived in Ellis House throughout the year, keeping his eye on things.

Senator Simon Addams, Webster Pommeroy, and Ruth Thomas walked on toward Ellis House. They walked side by side, Webster holding the tusk against one of his shoulders as if it were a Revolutionary War musket. On their left ran the stagnant Ellis Rail. Deep in the woods on their right stood the morbid remains of the “peanut houses,” the tiny shacks built by the Ellis Granite Company a century earlier to house its Italian immigrant workers. There were once over three hundred Italian immigrants packed into these shacks. They were not welcome in the community at large, although they were allowed to have the occasional parade down Ellis Road on their holidays. There used to be a small Catholic church on the island to accommodate the Italians. No more. By 1976, the Catholic church had long since burned to the ground.

During the reign of the Ellis Granite Company, Fort Niles was like a real town, busy and useful. It was like a Fabergé egg-an object encrusted in the greatest detail. So much crowded on to such a small surface! There had been two dry-goods stores on the island. There had been a dime museum, a skating rink, a taxidermist, a newspaper, a pony racetrack, a hotel with a piano bar, and, across the street from each other, the Ellis Eureka Theater and the Ellis Olympia Dance Hall. Everything had been burned or wrecked by 1976. Where had it all gone? Ruth wondered. And how had everything fit there, in the first place? Most of the land had returned to woods. Of the Ellis empire, only two buildings remained: the Ellis Granite Company Store and Ellis House. And the company store, a three-story wooden structure down by the harbor, was vacant and falling in on itself. Of course, the quarries were there, holes in the earth over a thousand feet deep-smooth and oblique-now filled with spring water.

Ruth Thomas’s father called the peanut houses in the back of the woods “guinea huts,” a term he must have learned from his father or grandfather, because the peanut houses were empty even when Ruth’s father was a boy. Even when Senator Simon Addams was a boy, the peanut houses were emptying out. The granite business was dying by 1910 and dead by 1930. The need for granite ran out before the granite itself did. The Ellis Granite Company would have dug in the quarries forever, if there had been a market. The company would have dug the granite until both Fort Niles and Courne Haven were gutted. Until the islands were thin shells of granite in the ocean. That’s what the islanders said, anyway. They said the Ellis family would have taken everything, but for the fact that no one any longer wanted the stuff from which the islands were made.

The threesome walked up Ellis Road and slowed down only once, when Webster saw a dead snake in their path and stopped to poke it with the tip of the elephant tusk.

“Snake,” he said.

“Harmless,” said Senator Simon.

At another point, Webster stopped walking and tried to hand the tusk to the Senator.

“You take it,” he said. “I don’t want to go up there and see any Mr. Ellis.”

But Senator Simon refused. He said Webster had found the tusk and should get the credit for his find. He said there was nothing to fear in Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ellis was a good man. Although there had been people in the Ellis family to fear in the past, Mr. Lanford Ellis was a decent man, who, by the way, thought of Ruthie as practically his own granddaughter.

“Isn’t that right, Ruthie? Doesn’t he always give you a big grin? And hasn’t he always been good to your family?”

Ruth did not answer. The three continued walking.

They did not speak again until they reached Ellis House. There were no open windows, not even any open curtains. The hedges outside were still wrapped in protective material against the vicious winter winds. The place looked abandoned. The Senator climbed the broad, black granite steps to the dark front doors and rang the bell. And knocked. And called. There was no answer. In the noose-shaped driveway was parked a green pickup truck, which the three recognized as Cal Cooley’s.

“Well, it looks like old Cal Cooley is here,” the Senator said.

He walked around to the back of the house, and Ruth and Webster followed. They walked past the gardens, which were not gardens anymore so much as unkempt brush piles. They walked past the tennis court, which was overgrown and wet. They walked past the fountain, which was overgrown and dry. They walked toward the stable, and found its wide, sliding door gaping open. The entrance was big enough for two carriages, side by side. It was a beautiful stable, but it had been so long out of use that it no longer even had a trace of the smell of horses.

“Cal Cooley!” Senator Simon called. “Mr. Cooley?”

Inside the stable, with its stone floors and cool, empty, odorless stalls, was Cal Cooley, sitting in the middle of the floor. He was sitting on a simple stool before something enormous and was polishing the object with a rag.

“My God!” the Senator said. “Look what you’ve got!”

What Cal Cooley had was a huge piece of a lighthouse, the top piece of a lighthouse. It was, in fact, the magnificent glass-and-brass circular lens of a lighthouse. It was probably seven feet tall. Cal Cooley stood up from his stool, and he was close to seven feet tall, too. Cal Cooley had thick, combed-back blue-black hair and oversized blue-black eyes. He had a big square frame and a thick nose and a huge chin and a deep, straight line right across his forehead that made him look as if he’d run into a clothesline. He looked as if he might be part Indian. Cal Cooley had been with the Ellis family for about twenty years, but he hadn’t seemed to age a day, and it would have been difficult for a stranger to guess whether he was forty years old or sixty.

“Why, it’s my good friend the Senator,” Cal Cooley drawled.

Cal Cooley was originally from Missouri, a place he insisted on pronouncing Missourah. He had a prominent Southern accent, which-although Ruth Thomas had never been to the South-she believed he had a tendency to exaggerate. She believed, for the most part, that Cal Cooley’s whole demeanor was phony. There were many things about Cal Cooley that she hated, but she was particularly offended by his phony accent and his habit of referring to himself as Old Cal Cooley. As in “Old Cal Cooley can’t wait for spring,” or “Old Cal Cooley looks like he needs another drink.”

Ruth could not tolerate this affectation.

“And look! It’s Miss Ruth Thomas!” Cal Cooley drawled on. “She is always such an oasis to behold. And look who’s with her: a savage.”

Webster Pommeroy, muddied and silent under Cal Cooley’s gaze, stood with the elephant’s tusk in his hand. His feet shifted about quickly, nervously, as if he were preparing to race.

“I know what this is,” Senator Simon Addams said, approaching the huge and magnificent glass that Cal Cooley had been polishing. “I know exactly what this is!”

“Can you guess, my friend?” Cal Cooley asked, winking at Ruth Thomas as if they had a wonderful shared secret. She looked away. She felt her face get hot. She wondered if there was some way she could arrange her life so that she could live on Fort Niles forever without ever seeing Cal Cooley again.

“It’s the Fresnel lens from the Goat’s Rock lighthouse, isn’t it?” the Senator asked.

“Yes, it is. Exactly right. Have you ever visited it? You must have been to Goat’s Rock, eh?”

“Well, no,” the Senator admitted, flushing. “I can never go out to a place like Goat’s Rock. I don’t go on boats, you know.”

Which Cal Cooley knew perfectly well, Ruth thought.

“Is that so?” Cal asked innocently.

“I have a fear of water, you see.”

“What a terrible affliction,” Cal Cooley murmured.

Ruth wondered whether Cal Cooley had ever been severely beaten up in his life. She would have enjoyed seeing it.

“My goodness,” the Senator marveled. “My goodness. How did you ever acquire the lighthouse from Goat’s Rock? It’s a remarkable lighthouse. It’s one of the oldest lighthouses in the country.”

“Well, my friend. We bought it. Mr. Ellis has always fancied it. So we bought it.”

“But how did you get it here?”

“On a boat and then a truck.”

“But how did you get it here without anyone knowing about it?”

“Does nobody know about it?”

“It’s gorgeous.”

“I am restoring it for Mr. Ellis. I am polishing every individual inch and every single screw. I’ve already been polishing for ninety hours, I estimate. I expect that it will take me months to finish. But won’t it gleam then?”

“I didn’t know the Goat’s Rock lighthouse was for sale. I didn’t know you could buy such a thing.”

“The Coast Guard has replaced this beautiful artifact with a modern device. The new lighthouse doesn’t even need an attendant. Isn’t that remarkable? Everything is all automated. Very inexpensive to operate. The new lighthouse is completely electric and perfectly ugly.”

“This is an artifact,” the Senator said. “You’re right. Why, it’s suitable for a museum!”

“That’s right, my friend.”

Senator Simon Addams studied the Fresnel lens. It was a beautiful thing to see, all brass and glass, with beveled panes as thick as planks, layered over one another in tiers. The small section that Cal Cooley had already disassembled, polished, and reassembled was a gleam of gold and crystal. When Senator Simon Addams passed behind the lens to look at the whole thing, his image became distorted and wavy, as though seen through ice.

“I have never seen a lighthouse before,” he said. His voice was choked with emotion. “Not in person. I have never had the opportunity.”

“It’s not a lighthouse,” Cal Cooley corrected fastidiously. “It is merely the lens of a lighthouse, sir.”

Ruth rolled her eyes.

“I have never seen one. Oh, my goodness, this is such a treat for me, such a treat. Of course, I’ve seen pictures. I’ve seen pictures of this very lighthouse.”

“This is a pet project for me and Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ellis asked the state whether he could buy it, they named a price, and he accepted. And, as I say, I have been working on this for approximately ninety hours.”

“Ninety hours,” the Senator repeated, staring at the Fresnel lens as if he had been tranquilized.

“Built in 1929, by the French,” Cal said. “She weighs five thousand pounds, my friend.”

The Fresnel lens was perched on its original brass turntable, which Cal Cooley now gave a slight push. The entire lens, at that touch, began to spin with a freakish lightness-huge, silent, and exquisitely balanced.

“Two fingers,” Cal Cooley said, holding up two of his own fingers. “Two fingers is all it takes to spin that five-thousand-pound weight. Can you believe it? Have you ever seen such remarkable engineering?”

“No,” Senator Simon Addams answered. “No, I have not.”

Cal Cooley spun the Fresnel lens again. What little light was in that stable seemed to throw itself at the great spinning lens and then leap away, bursting into sparks across the walls.

“Look how it eats up the light,” Cal said. He somehow pronounced light so that it rhymed with hot.

“There was a woman on a Maine island once,” the Senator said, “who was burned to death when the sunlight went through the lens and hit her.”

“They used to cover the lenses with dark gunnysacks on sunny days,” Cal Cooley said. “Otherwise, the lenses would have set everything on fire; they’re that strong.”

“I have always loved lighthouses.”

“So have I, sir. So has Mr. Ellis.”

“During the reign of Ptolemy the Second, there was a lighthouse built in Alexandria that was regarded as one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was destroyed by an earthquake in the fourteenth century.”

“Or so history has recorded,” said Cal Cooley. “There is some debate on that.”

“The earliest lighthouses,” the Senator mused, “were built by the Libyans in Egypt.”

“I am familiar with the lighthouses of the Libyans,” said Cal Cooley, evenly.

The Goat’s Rock lighthouse antique Fresnel lens spun and spun in the vast empty stable, and the Senator stared at it, captivated. It spun more and more slowly, and quietly whispered to a stop. The Senator was silent, hypnotized.

“And what do you have?” Cal Cooley asked, finally.

Cal was regarding Webster Pommeroy, holding the elephant’s tusk. Webster, caked with mud and looking most pathetic, clung desperately to his small find. He did not answer Cal, but his feet were tapping nervously. The Senator did not answer, either. He was still entranced by the Fresnel lens.

And so Ruth Thomas said, “Webster found an elephant’s tusk today, Cal. It’s from the wreck of the Clarice Monroe, 138 years ago. Webster and Simon have been looking for it for almost a year. Isn’t it wonderful?”

And it was wonderful. Under any other circumstances, the tusk would have been recognized as an undeniably wonderful object. But not in the shadow of Ellis House, and not in the presence of the intact and beautiful brass-and-glass Fresnel lens crafted by the French in 1929. The tusk seemed suddenly foolish. Besides, Cal Cooley, with his height and demeanor, could diminish anything. Cal Cooley made his ninety hours of polishing seem heroic and productive, while-without saying a word, of course-making a year of a lost boy’s life searching through the mud seem a depressing prank.

The elephant’s tusk suddenly looked like a sad little bone.

“How very interesting,” Cal Cooley said, at length. “What a perfectly interesting project.”

“I thought Mr. Ellis might like to see it,” the Senator said. He had snapped out of his gaze at the Fresnel lens and was now giving Cal Cooley a most unattractive look of supplication. “I thought he might grin when he sees the tusk.”

“He may.”

Cal Cooley did not commit.

“If Mr. Ellis is available today…” the Senator began, and then trailed off. The Senator did not wear a hat, but if he were a hat-wearing man, he would have been working the hat brim in his anxious hands. As it was, he was just wringing his hands.

“Yes, my friend?”

“If Mr. Ellis is available, I would like to talk to him about it. About the tusk. You see, I think this is the kind of object that may finally convince him of our need for the Natural History Museum on the island. I’d like to ask Mr. Ellis to consider granting me the use of the Ellis Granite Company Store building for the Natural History Museum. For the island. For education, you know.”

“A museum?”

“A Natural History Museum. Webster and I have been collecting artifacts now for several years. We have quite a large collection.”

Which Cal Cooley knew. Which Mr. Ellis knew. Which everybody knew. Ruth was now officially furious. Her stomach hurt. She could feel herself frowning, and she willed herself to keep her forehead smooth. She refused to show any emotion in front of Cal Cooley. She willed herself to look impassive. She wondered what a person would have to do to get Cal Cooley fired. Or killed.

“We have many artifacts,” the Senator said. “I recently acquired a pure white lobster, preserved in alcohol.”

“A Natural History Museum,” Cal Cooley repeated, as though he were considering the notion for the very first time. “How intriguing.”

“We need a space for the museum. We already have the artifacts. The building is large enough that we could continue to collect artifacts as time went on. For instance, it might be the place to display this Fresnel lens.”

“You aren’t saying you want Mr. Ellis’s lighthouse?” Cal Cooley looked absolutely aghast.

“Oh, no. No! No, no, no! We don’t want anything from Mr. Ellis except permission to use the company store building. We would rent it, of course. We could offer him some money every month for it. He might appreciate that, you know, since the building hasn’t been used for anything in years. We don’t need any money from Mr. Ellis. We don’t want to take his possessions.”

“I certainly hope you aren’t asking for money.”

“You know what?” Ruth Thomas said. “I’m going to wait outside. I don’t feel like standing here anymore.”

“Ruth,” Cal Cooley said with concern. “You look agitated, sweetheart.”

She paid him no heed. “Webster, you want to come with me?”

But Webster Pommeroy preferred to race his feet in place beside the Senator, holding his hopeful tusk. So Ruth Thomas walked out of the stable alone, back through the abandoned pastures, toward the rock cliffs facing east and Courne Haven Island. She hated to watch Simon Addams grovel before Mr. Lanford Ellis’s caretaker. She had seen it before and couldn’t stand it. So she walked to the edge of the cliff and picked lichen off some rocks. Across the channel, she could clearly see Courne Haven Island. A heat mirage floated above it, like a mushroom cloud.

This would be the fifth time Senator Simon Addams had formally visited Mr. Lanford Ellis. The fifth time that Ruth Thomas knew of, that is. Mr. Ellis never granted the Senator a meeting. There may have been other visits that Ruth hadn’t been told about. There may have been more hours spent waiting in the front yard of Ellis House for nothing, more incidents of Cal Cooley explaining, with insincere apologies, that he was sorry, but Mr. Ellis was not feeling well and would not be receiving guests. Each time, Webster had come along, each time carrying some discovery or find with which the Senator hoped to convince Mr. Ellis of the necessity of a Natural History Museum. The Natural History Museum would be a public place, the Senator was always ready to explain with sincerity and heart, where the people of the island-for only a dime’s admission!-could explore the artifacts of their singular history. Senator Simon had a most eloquent speech prepared for Mr. Ellis, but he had never had a chance to deliver it. He had recited the speech to Ruth several times. She listened politely, although each time it broke her heart a little.

“Plead less,” she always suggested. “Be more assertive.”

It was true that some of Senator Simon’s artifacts were uninteresting. He collected everything and was not much of a curator, not one for picking among objects and discarding the worthless ones. The Senator thought all old objects had worth. On an island, people rarely throw anything away, so, essentially, every basement on Fort Niles Island was already a museum-a museum of obsolete fishing gear or a museum of the possessions of dead ancestors or a museum of the toys of long-grown children. But nowhere was this sorted or catalogued or explained, and the Senator’s desire to create a museum was a noble one.

“It’s the common objects,” he constantly told Ruth, “that become rare. During the Civil War, the most common object in the world was a blue wool Union soldier’s coat. A simple blue coat with brass buttons. Every soldier in the Union had one. Did the soldiers save those after the war, as souvenirs? No. Oh, they saved the general’s dress uniforms and the handsome cavalry britches, but nobody thought to save the simple blue jackets. The men came home from war and wore the jackets to work in the fields, and when the jackets fell apart, their wives made rags and quilt squares from them, and today a common Civil War jacket is one of the most rare things in the world.”

He would explain this to Ruth as he put an empty cereal box or an unopened can of tuna in a crate marked FOR POSTERITY.

“We cannot know today what will be of value tomorrow, Ruth,” he would say.

“Wheaties?” she would reply, incredulous. “Wheaties, Senator? Wheaties?”

So it was not surprising that the Senator had run out of room in his house for his growing collections. And it was not surprising that the Senator would get the idea to seek access to the Ellis Granite Company Store, which had been standing vacant for forty years. It was a rotting, useless space. Still, Mr. Ellis had never once given the Senator an answer or a nod or any acknowledgment, other than to defer the entire subject. It was as though he were waiting the Senator out. It was as though Lanford Ellis expected to outlive the Senator, at which point the matter would be settled without the inconvenience of decision.

The lobster boats were still in the channel, working and circling. From her perch on the cliffs, Ruth saw the boat of Mr. Angus Addams and the boat of Mr. Duke Cobb and the boat of her father. Beyond them, she could see a fourth boat, which may have belonged to someone on Courne Haven Island; she couldn’t identify it. The channel was so littered with lobster trap buoys, it looked like a scatter of confetti on a floor or dense litter on a highway. Men set their traps nearly on top of one another in that channel. It was risky, fishing there. The border between Courne Haven Island and Fort Niles Island had never been established, but nowhere was it more in contention than in Worthy Channel. Men from both islands defined and defended their ground hard, always pushing toward each other. They cut away each other’s traps and waged collective assaults toward the opposite island.

“They’ll drop their traps on our front goddamn doorsteps, if we let them in,” said Angus Addams.

On Courne Haven Island they said the same of Fort Niles fishermen, of course, and both statements were true.

On this day, Ruth Thomas thought the Courne Haven boat was hovering a little close to Fort Niles, but it wasn’t easy to be sure, even from above. She tried counting strings of buoys. She picked a blade of grass and made a whistle with it, pressed between her thumbs. She played a game with herself, pretending that she was seeing this view for the first time in her life. She shut her eyes for a long moment, then opened them slowly. The sea! The sky! It was beautiful. She did live in a beautiful place. She tried to look down on the lobster boats as if she did not know how much they cost and who owned them and how they smelled. How would this scene look to a visitor? How would Worthy Channel look to a person from, say, Nebraska? The boats would look like toys, adorable and sturdy as bathtub boats, manned by hardworking Down East characters who dressed in picturesque overalls and gave each other friendly waves across their bows.

Ya can’t get thah from heah…

Ruth wondered whether she would enjoy lobster fishing more if she had her own boat, if she were the captain. Maybe it was just working with her father that was so unpleasant. She couldn’t imagine, though, whom she would enlist as a sternman. She ran over the names of all the young men from Fort Niles and quickly confirmed that, yes, they were all idiots. Every last drunken one of them. Incompetent, lazy, surly, inarticulate, funny-looking. She had no patience for any of them, with the possible exception of Webster Pommeroy, whom she pitied and worried over like a mother. But Webster was a damaged young man, and he was certainly no sternman. Not that Ruth was any lobsterman. She couldn’t kid herself about that. She didn’t know much about navigation, nothing about maintaining a boat. She’d shrieked “Fire!” to her father once when she saw smoke coming out of the hold; smoke that was actually steam from a ruptured hose.

“Ruth,” he’d said, “you’re cute, but you’re not very smart.”

But she was smart. Ruth had always had a sense of being smarter than anyone around her. Where had she got that idea? Who had ever told her such a thing? God knew, Ruth would never publicly admit this sense of hers. It would sound appalling, horrible, to admit what she believed about her own smartness.

“You think you’re smarter than everyone else.” Ruth had often heard this accusation from her neighbors on Fort Niles. A few of the Pommeroy boys had said it to her, as had Angus Addams and Mrs. Pommeroy’s sisters and that old bitch on Langly Road whose lawn Ruth had mowed one summer for two dollars a pop.

“Oh, please,” was Ruth’s standard reply.

She couldn’t deny it with more conviction than this, though, because she did, in fact, think she was considerably smarter than everyone else. It was a feeling, centered not in her head, but in her chest. She felt it in her very lungs.

She was certainly smart enough to figure out how to get her own boat if she wanted one. If that was what she wanted, she could get it. Sure. She was certainly no dumber than any of the men from Fort Niles or Courne Haven who made a good living by lobstering. Why not? Angus Addams knew a woman on Monhegan Island who fished alone and made a good living. The woman’s brother had died and left his boat to her. She had three kids, no husband. The woman’s name was Flaggie. Flaggie Cornwall. She made a good go of it. Her buoys, Angus reported, were painted bright pink, with yellow heart-shaped dots. But Flaggie Cornwall was tough, too. She cut away other men’s traps if she thought they were messing with her business. Angus Addams quite admired her. He talked about her often.

Ruth could do that. She could fish alone. She wouldn’t paint her buoys pink with yellow hearts, though. Jesus Christ, Flaggie, have some self-respect! Ruth would paint her buoys a nice, classic teal. Ruth wondered what kind of name Flaggie was. It must be a nickname. Florence? Agatha? Ruth had never had a nickname. She decided that if she became a lobsterman-a lobsterwoman? lobsterperson?-she’d figure out a way to make a great living at it without getting up so goddamn early in the morning. Honestly, was there any reason a smart fisherman had to wake up at four A.M.? There had to be a better way.

“Are you enjoying our view?”

Cal Cooley was standing right behind Ruth. She was startled but didn’t show it. She turned slowly and gave him a steady look.

“Maybe.”

Cal Cooley did not sit down; he stood there, directly behind Ruth Thomas. His knees almost touched her shoulders.

“I sent your friends home,” he said.

“Did Mr. Ellis see the Senator?” Ruth asked, already knowing the answer.

“Mr. Ellis isn’t himself today. He could not see the Senator.”

“That makes him not himself? He never sees the Senator.”

“That may be true.”

“You people have no idea how to act. You have no idea how rude you are.”

“I don’t know what Mr. Ellis thinks about these people, Ruth, but I sent them home. I thought it was too early in the morning to be dealing with the mentally handicapped.”

“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, you prick.” Ruth liked the way that sounded. Very calm.

Cal Cooley stood behind Ruth for some time. He stood behind her like a butler, but more intimate. Polite, but too near. His nearness created a constant feeling that she did not appreciate. And she did not like speaking to him without seeing him.

“Why don’t you sit down?” she said, at last.

“You want me to sit next to you, do you?” he asked.

“That’s entirely up to you, Cal.”

“Thank you,” he said, and he did sit down. “Very hospitable of you. Thank you for the invitation.”

“It’s your property. I can’t be hospitable on your property.”

“It’s not my property, young lady. It’s Mr. Ellis’s property.”

“Really? I always forget that, Cal. I forget it’s not your property. Do you ever forget that, too?”

Cal did not answer. He asked, “What’s the little boy’s name? The little boy with the tusk.”

“He’s Webster Pommeroy.”

Which Cal Cooley knew.

Cal stared out at the water and recited dully: “Pommeroy the cabin boy was a nasty little nipper. Shoved a glass up in his ass and circumcised the skipper.”

“Cute,” Ruth said.

“He seems like a nice child.”

“He’s twenty-three years old, Cal.”

“And I believe he is in love with you. Is this true?”

“My God, Cal. That is truly relevant.”

“Listen to you, Ruth! You are so educated these days. It is such a pleasure to hear you using such big words. It is rewarding, Ruth. It makes us all so pleased to see that your expensive education is paying off.”

“I know you try to rile me, Cal, but I’m not sure what you gain from it.”

“That’s not true, Ruth. I don’t try to rile you. I’m your biggest supporter.”

Ruth laughed sharply. “You know something, Cal? That elephant tusk really is an important find.”

“Yes. You said as much.”

“You didn’t even pay attention to the story, an interesting story, about an unusual shipwreck. You didn’t ask Webster how he found it. It’s an incredible story, and you didn’t pay any attention at all. It’d be annoying if it wasn’t so damn typical.”

“That’s not true. I pay attention to everything.”

“You pay a great deal of attention to some things.”

“Old Cal Cooley is incapable of not paying attention.”

“You should have paid more attention to that tusk, then.”

“I am interested in that tusk, Ruth. I’m actually holding it for Mr. Ellis so that he can look at it later. I think he’ll be very interested indeed.”

“What do you mean, holding it?”

“I’m holding it.”

“You took it?”

“As I’ve said, I’m holding it.”

“You took it. You sent them away without their tusk. Jesus Christ. Why would a person do something like that?”

“Would you like to share a cigarette with me, young lady?”

“I think you people are all pricks.”

“If you would like to smoke a cigarette, I won’t tell anybody.”

“I don’t fucking smoke, Cal.”

“I’m sure you do lots of bad things you don’t tell anybody about.”

“You took that tusk out of Webster’s hands and sent him away? Well, that’s a downright horrible thing to do. And typical.”

“You sure do look beautiful today, Ruth. I meant to tell you that immediately, but the opportunity did not arise.”

Ruth stood up. “OK,” she said, “I’m going home.”

She started to walk off, but Cal Cooley said, “As a matter of fact, I believe you need to stay.”

Ruth stopped walking. She didn’t turn around, but she stood still, because she knew from his tone what was coming.

“If you’re not too busy today,” Cal Cooley said, “Mr. Ellis would like to see you.”

They walked toward Ellis House together. They walked silently beyond the pastures and the ancient gardens and up the steps to the back verandah and through the wide French doors. They walked through the broad and shrouded living room, down a back hall, up the modest back stairs-the servants’ stairs-along another hall, and finally reached a door.

Cal Cooley stood as though to knock, but, instead, stepped back. He walked a few more paces down the hallway and ducked into a recessed doorway. When he gestured for Ruth to follow, she did. Cal Cooley put his big hands on Ruth’s shoulders and whispered, “I know you hate me.” And he smiled.

Ruth listened.

“I know you hate me, but I can tell you what this is all about if you want to know.”

Ruth did not reply.

“Do you want to know?”

“I don’t care what you tell me or don’t tell me,” Ruth said. “It doesn’t make any difference in my life.”

“Of course you care. First of all,” Cal said, in a hushed voice, “Mr. Ellis simply wants to see you. He’s been asking after you for a few weeks, and I’ve been lying. I’ve told him that you were still at school. Then I said you were working with your father on his boat.”

Cal Cooley waited for Ruth to respond; she didn’t.

“I should think you’d thank me for that,” he said. “I don’t like to lie to Mr. Ellis.”

“Don’t, then,” Ruth said.

“He’s going to give you an envelope,” Cal said. “It has three hundred dollars in it.”

Again, Cal waited for a response, but Ruth did not oblige, so he continued. “Mr. Ellis is going to tell you that it’s fun money, just for you. And, to a certain extent, that’s true. You can spend it on whatever you like. But you know what it’s really for, right? Mr. Ellis has a favor to ask of you.”

Ruth remained silent.

“That’s right,” Cal Cooley said. “He wants you to visit your mother in Concord. I’m supposed to take you there.”

They stood in the recessed doorway. His big hands on her wide shoulders were as heavy as dread. Cal and Ruth stood there for a long time. Finally, he said, “Get it over with, young lady.”

“Shit,” Ruth said.

He dropped his hands. “Just take the money. My suggestion to you is not to antagonize him.”

“I never antagonize him.”

“Take the money and be civil. We’ll figure out the details later.”

Cal Cooley stepped out of the doorway and walked back to the first door. He knocked. He whispered to Ruth, “That’s what you wanted, right? To know? No surprises for you. You want to know everything that’s going on, right?”

He threw open the door, and Ruth stepped inside, alone. The door closed behind her with a beautiful brushing sound, like the swish of expensive fabric.

She was in Mr. Ellis’s bedroom.

The bed itself was made, as seamlessly as though it were never used. The bed was made up as though the bedding had been produced at the same time as the piece of furniture itself and had been tacked or glued to the woodwork. It looked like a display bed in an expensive store. Bookcases were everywhere, holding rows of dark books, each precisely the same shade and size as its neighbors, as though Mr. Ellis owned one volume and had had it repeated throughout the room. The fireplace was lit, and there were heavy duck decoys on the mantel. The musty wallpaper was interrupted by framed prints of clippers and tall ships.

Mr. Ellis was near the fire, sitting in a large, wing-back chair. He was very, very old and very thin. A plaid lap rug was pulled high over his waist and tucked around his feet. His baldness was absolute, and his skull looked thin and cold. He held out his arms to Ruth Thomas, his palsied palms upward and open. His eyes were swimming in blue, swimming with tears.

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

He grinned and grinned.