Marrow Island (18 page)

I took a mouthful of coffee from the bottom of the cup to buy myself some time. I didn’t know how much I should tell Carey, as much as I liked him.

“You can talk to them about it,” I said. “Or, once I figure it all out, you can read the article. If I write one.”

I spent the next couple of hours wandering around Fort Union—through the buildings, along the western shore of the island—taking pictures until my phone died, while Carey finished up some work. Then we walked back to the Colony together, for the harvest supper.

We talked most of the way, about where we had gone to school, where we had traveled, where we had lived, where we wanted to live. I told him about the situation with the cottage, my job, my finances. How I didn’t think I could live in Seattle anymore. He talked about growing up in Bakersfield, where his dad worked for an oil company, and knowing he never wanted to live in California again. The sun was setting behind us, casting our shadows onto the path before us. It started to feel like a date, and we fell into an awkward quiet as we neared the last hill down to the Colony.

The chapel below was lit up, with lanterns lighting the path to its doors. A procession of people carried dishes from the fires on the bluff and the various kitchens in the cottages. We passed the fires, and Andrew handed us dishes to carry, too.

The entire chapel was rearranged, set up like a banquet hall, with the old bench pews turned alongside the tables. Beeswax and tallow candles burned in the windows, on the altar, along the lengths of tables. Katie was there, setting dishes on tables, counting to make sure they were evenly distributed. Someone was in the corner, playing an old upright piano, and voices filled the room—as they always do in churches, the chattering voices of the congregation reverberate and hum. The room radiated warmth.

Sister J. touched my arm. Her eyes flashed in the candlelight, full of tiny flames.

“I am so glad you’re here,” she said.

She took my arm and Carey’s and led us to a table in the center of the room, seating us across from each other, near the head. The she slipped into the crowd and led others to their seats. Maggie entered, looking weary but dressed in a fancy blouse and flowy skirt, and sat near us.

“Maggie,” I said, reaching a hand across the table to her.

She grasped it in her left and covered it with her right. Her hands were as soft as kid gloves, with delicate wrinkles and bones like stays, thin and strong.

“Lucie,” she said, and smiled. “I’m so sorry I haven’t seen more of you.”

“This is my friend from the boat, Carey,” I told her.

She released my hand and shook Carey’s.

The places were filling quickly around us, Katie and Tuck, Elle and Jen, Maggie and others. Each table covered in dishes. Katie told us what everything was as everyone settled: the rabbit soup, crab chowder, salads, sauerkraut with dulse, bread and cheese and butter, sweet roasted squash custard, bottles of dandelion and elderberry wine. Carey looked calm but out of place in his uniform.

Sister stood at the head of our table and soon the room fell quiet. She nodded and smiled as she scanned the room, taking time over the faces of those gathered.

“Here we are,” she began, “once again under a harvest moon, on our great green island. Among friends, new and old. All family. We gather to celebrate the work we have done, to give thanks for another year.” She picked up a glass and held it aloft. We all did the same.

“Another year!” she called.

“Another year!” came the response.

We drank. I caught Carey’s gaze over his glass.

There was a long pause while we set our glasses down.

Sister began again: “I saw my first shrike of the season this week. I was pulling garlic mustard from the potatoes at the field’s edge. We here—”

Sister looked at me, then at Carey.

“—we here have come to know the shrike, who shows up in the fall. The migration. Thousands of birds gather and fly in the night, by some inner coordinates, never questioning, never asking
why?
Just following the call: north or south. They land in our trees at night, feast on our mosquitoes, our horseflies, or they pass us by, urged on by the call. You might hear their wing beats under the stars and wonder whose spirit has flown this island. Yet some of our winged friends spend the winter among us. The hardier ones”—laughter trickled through the group. “We welcome them, we accept them as our own for as long as they choose to stay. The shrike is one of these: a winter guest. The shrike has an unmistakable song: a cheerful trill, uplifting, like a ladder of light, when your hands are in the dirt. This morning I heard her song and I knew she was among us again. I listened to her for a good while, thinking of the work we do to survive and the songs we sing. Soon the shrike was done with her morning call, and I heard the smaller birds again—they bounced from branch to earth all around me, the sparrows diving to and fro, and the nuthatches in the trees. Then there was a thrashing in the brush beyond the field and the mewling call of the rufous-sided towhee, foraging in the undergrowth, her feet in the earth—as mine were—her head to the ground, as mine was, working for her food, toiling for sustenance. What a blessing, I thought, to find myself in this time and place, among the creatures—
one of
the creatures of this island, our island, this
Earth
.”

Sister looked down at her hands.

“I worked on, prying out those garlic mustards root by root. After a while, there was another curious call from the towhee, and another thrashing in the brush, and a flock of sparrows scattered, lining up along the fence across the field, watching as a chase commenced in the bushes before me, the sounds of wings and a struggle in the leaves. Then all was quiet, and I heard the call of the shrike again. I couldn’t spot her. Her soft gray crown and her black mask. I returned to my work; I listened. The bird chatter resumed. I gathered my tools and headed for breakfast. Coming back along the fence line, I looked for the shrike. I wanted to see her, the first of the season. I never found her. But I did find
her
morning work: a rufous towhee fastened through the neck to a barb in the wire—”

The silence in the room deepened—so still I could feel my heart beating at my rib cage. Sister’s voice deepened, her words coming slower, heavier.

“The shrike, of course, though her song lifts the soul at work, will also mimic the calls of her cousin birds, luring them to her table, darting from her hidden perch when the songbirds begin to feast. She strikes with her fierce beak, carries her prey to a thorny bush, or in this case a barbed wire, and she impales the creature and eats its flesh. She saves the remains, safely snagged above the ground, for her mate. In this way, she survives the winter among us. Of the rufous towhee, the sprightly grub-eater, the industrious nest-builder, we may say that she was unsuspecting, that when she heard the shrike mimic the towhee song, she did not hear the arrival of her own death. So why did I weep for the towhee? Released of its flesh, the soul flies. Why weep for the towhee? Why did I not rejoice with the shrike?”

Sister J. bowed her head. Others bowed or stared into the middle distance, solemn. Tuck still had that trace of a smile on his lips, his eyes moist—was he crying? Carey glanced at me; he seemed unnerved. I could see the sweat on his brow. He shifted in his seat and met my eyes again, holding my gaze this time. He seemed uncomfortable, from the parable of the shrike, maybe, or the closeness of the bodies around us.

Sister continued in a brighter tone, and I looked away from Carey.

“Ignorance is God’s greatest gift to us,” she said. “Ah, you would say, but we have learned so much on this earth that is of use, that sustains us, that sustains those who come after us. And yes, I concur! It is the ignorance of what is beyond this moment that I’m thinking of. We know only what has come before and what is now, but not what is to come, and that,
that
ignorance, it is a gift. And then there is all that we think we know, but which is yet to be further illuminated. The mysteries of the stars, the cells, the cosmic dust we came from and into which we will dissolve. What we don’t know, what we are incapable of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting—indeed what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste but cannot comprehend—this is the gift that allows us to sleep at night, to dream, to love each other, to sow and reap, and to build, to bear—”

She stopped short and held back. Elle inhaled sharply next to me.

“—to bear the burdens, the losses,” she continued. “We sleep at night because we don’t allow ourselves to believe that the murderer does not sleep, she stalks us every moment, behind every shadow, under our fingernails, from the forest canopy, in the depths of the sea, out of cracks in the earth, between colliding atoms. We dream because what we have seen, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted has filled us up with life and there is no room: our bodies, these organisms we inhabit, cell by cell, spend every second of every day trying to make sense of this,
this
—”

She slapped her heart, opening her arms to the room, hands cupped around some weighty, invisible substance.

“Look at what we have built! Could ignorance build this? Could ignorance take this burnt, poisoned crust of land and make it green again, and make it live again? We have witnessed a resurrection! We are living a resurrection!”

Her voice lowered to a whisper, but it carried down the table and up to the rafters in the still space.

“And yet. And
yet
. Death waits. Death watches. Death sings from the branches while we work, lifts our unknowing souls, calls us to fly.”

She bowed her head again, and the entire room seemed to exhale. Heads down or eyes closed, some tears, some blissful smiles. Sister lifted her head and signaled to Maggie and Katie, on either side of her. Everyone rose and joined hands around the tables. Maggie hummed the key and started to sing. Voices around the table joined in:

Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace.

Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above,

Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it, mount of thy unchanging love.

The singing was energetic and robust; full-throated, simple harmonies that were nothing like the dispassionate singing of the Masses of my childhood. I sang along with the melody, not sure of my place in the song, pausing to breathe when I couldn’t remember the words, but compelled to sing by the tension rising in my chest that told me I would cry if I didn’t let something out of my throat. Katie sang next to me in her raspy alto, eyes closed, her hand delicate in my sweating grip. Carey stood with his eyes closed and head bowed, not singing, his body upright as ever, and still as a tree, with a softness to the bend in his neck, the slope of his shoulders.

Everyone seemed to have a part, every note memorized. Occasionally I could hear a particular voice, distinct from the rest, a higher harmony, a vibrato. At other times, certain phrases and notes—
prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love—
then every voice seemed combined into one. Once or twice I suppressed a shiver—all of our bodies connected, the rhythm flowing through us, rising and falling in waves. I felt something move in me. It felt like joy and also like surrender.

When the song ended, the reverberation through the room remained and no one moved until it had passed, until we could plainly hear the waves again, the wind picking up outside. We held hands a moment longer, then released and sat. That sound of the congregation sitting, the shushing of all the clothing folding into limbs, the shuffling of feet.

We passed tureens of the mushroom stew around the table, and chunks of the bread, still warm, soft goat cheese with herbs, a salad of berries and greens, the rabbit stew, and bottles of wine. There was little conversation at first, just
here you go
and
thank you,
but the faces and bodies around were warm and glad. After we had taken our first bites, our first tastes of the briny stew, the bitter greens, the quiet lifted and there was conversation, laughter. The lines around Carey’s eyes had not softened, but he held my gaze and smiled.

I listened to the wind, watched it blow clouds past the moon through a break in the trees. I tried to convince myself I didn’t have to pee, that I could wait until morning. I had to be up early again, to meet Coombs at the dock. I had drunk too much elderberry wine and my head was heavy. I threw the blankets off and grabbed my sweater and slipped on my sandals.

The moon was bright, but there were more shadows than I anticipated. Even with a flashlight, it was easy to become disoriented. I walked nervously down the path to the little vault toilet between my cabin and the next two. It was still warm in the loo, even with the breeze coming in an open window, flowered muslin curtain billowing. Frantic wind chimes. I heard voices, too, but coming from the woods behind me. As I walked back, ears tuned to the murmur of the voices, sometimes carried, sometimes obscured by the wind, I saw lights, deep in the trees. I turned off the flashlight and I crept back to the cottage door, watching them. Many lights, but not beams, more like the flames of candles. Oil lamps?

On the walk back from the supper, Katie had told me they had a ritual for the dying, that they gave them a tea of herbs and mushrooms to help them on their way.

“On their way?” I had asked.

“To the lights,” she had said.

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe you’ll see, someday,” she had said.

“Have you seen them?”

“We all have.”

“How?”

“We open our minds to them.” She had sighed, like she was tired of my questions.

I watched the lights move between the trees, listened to the occasional strand of voice. Were they performing a ritual out there? I didn’t want to let them out of my sight, but they flickered and vanished.