Now
what?
Toby
leaned back in his chair. He reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt, took
out some rolling papers and a bag of American Spirit tobacco.
"How
come you need to get out there so bad?" he asked as he began to roll a
cigarette.
"I
have a job out there."
"A
job?" He seemed taken aback. "On the island? Who you working for?
Aphrodite?"
I
hesitated. Phil had geared me up with all this cloak-and-dagger stuff about
Kamestos and her paranoia, but it all seemed stupid now that I was actually in
Burnt Harbor. There was no one here, and certainly no one who seemed to care
that I'd arrived.
"I'm
supposed to interview her," I said at last.
"Really?
She expecting you?"
"Yeah."
I wondered if maybe this guy was the friend Phil had mentioned, and asked him.
"Phil
Cohen. Nope. Never heard of him." Toby tipped his head, regarding me with
calm hazel eyes. "But you do know Aphrodite."
I
finished my coffee.
"No,"
I admitted. "I've never even spoken to her. Phil was the guy set it up for
me. Through an editor in London."
I
poured myself more coffee. "But you know what? I don't even know what the
fuck I'm doing here. I think I better just get back into my god-dam car and
drive back to New York."
"That
would be a long way to come to have a cup of coffee and sleep—where did you
sleep last night, anyway?"
"The
Lighthouse."
"That
would definitely be a long way to come to sleep at the Lighthouse."
Toby
tapped his cigarette and tucked it behind his ear, folded up his tobacco packet
and rolling papers and put them away.
"Well,
if you still want to get over there to Paswegas, I'll take you," he said.
I
stared at him in disbelief. "You can take me?"
"Sure."
He pointed toward the harbor. "See that boat out there?"
"A
sailboat?" I squinted at the sunlit water. "You can sail in the
winter?"
"Sure.
Water's same temperature as it is in the summer. You'd just die faster if you
fell in now. We'll motor over, unless the wind's with us. It'll take a little
longer than Everett's boat, but I'll get you there. I was going over later
today anyway."
"Jeez.
Well, thanks." I ran a hand through my dirty hair. "I didn't even
take a shower."
"That
won't bother me. If you're staying with Aphrodite, I'm sure she'll let you take
a shower. But we should get going."
He
stuck a ten dollar bill under his plate. "How should I pay you?" I
asked.
"We'll
figure something out." As we headed to the door, he glanced at me.
"Those all the clothes you got?"
"Pretty
much. You mean, am I dressed up enough to meet her?"
"I
mean you're going to freeze your butt off if you don't put on something
warmer." He looked at my boots and shook his head. "You better be
careful with those—cowboy boots are terrible on deck. I think maybe I got some
stuff on the boat you could wear. Come on."
I followed
him outside. I retrieved my things, locked the car, then headed after Toby.
Two
steps and my gut clenched. Maybe getting onto a boat wasn't such a great idea,
after all. But Toby was already halfway down the beach, so I hurried after him.
As
he'd warned, my boots were terrible in the damp. The pointed toes caught
between rocks and slid on lumps of greasy black seaweed. I walked gingerly to
where he bent over a wooden dinghy. A few yards off, waves swept the shingle
and left a trail of shining foam.
Toby
glanced up. "That all you got?"
I
nodded. "Will my car be okay if I leave it for a few days?"
"Should
be fine till Memorial Day. Okay, come on down this way—"
He
dragged the dinghy into the shallows, waved for me to clamber in. I did. A film
of brackish water covered my boots and immediately soaked through to my feet,
ice cold.
"Better
get down," said Toby.
I
sat as he got behind the dinghy and shoved it farther out. A moment later he
hopped in, settled in the bow, and took the oars.
"This
won't take long," he said. A few strong strokes and we were free of the
shingle. A few more and I leaned over the side and vomited.
"Seasick
already?"
"Hangover."
I
cupped icy seawater with one hand, rinsed my mouth then splashed more water on
my face.
I
felt a little better. My headache receded. The frigid air and water seemed to
purge exhaustion from my blood. My eyes stung, but the pain felt clean and
sharp, almost welcome. I sank back onto my seat, making sure my satchel stayed
dry.
"See
there?" Toby gestured at a small, blunt-nosed sailboat bobbing a short
distance from the end of the pier. "That's her.
Northern Sky.
Know
anything about boats?"
I
blinked into the splintered blue-and-gold light. "No."
"She's
what they call a gaff cutter. Twenty-six feet on the waterline. I bought her
twenty years ago for a dollar, from the ex-wife of a guy in jail down in the
Keys. You know the two happiest days of a man's life? The day he buys his boat
and the day he sells her."
Out
here the dank reek of the harbor was gone. The air smelled of salt and wet
rock, with a faint undertone of diesel fumes. I shaded my eyes and looked for
other boats.
"Are
you the only boat out here?"
"The
only sailboat, this time of year. There's a few lobster boats. Bugs migrate to
deeper water in the winter, so it slows down about now. In the summer there's a
bunch of people here—yachts, windjammers. But you want to get off the islands
in a hurry, you need a power boat. That way you can catch your flight back to
Florida."
"Sounds
good to me."
Toby
laughed. "Oh, it's not that bad. Not nowadays. Fifty or a hundred years
ago, then that would be bad, I guess."
"What
the hell do people do out there?" I squinted at the islands. "Besides
fish. I mean, what do you do?"
"I
go back and forth. Bring supplies out to the islands. I'm a carpenter, and I do
heating systems. There's a lot of rich people around. Summer people. Used to be
everyone left after Labor Day. Now some of 'em stay on till Thanksgiving, but
they don't winter over. Summer people, I mean. Islanders live here all year
round. But they don't need me to do their work for 'em."
He
rested the oars and lit a cigarette, cupping his hands against the spray.
"Aphrodite, I've done some work for her."
"How
long you been here?"
Toby
exhaled a plume of blue smoke. "I came in 1972. Used to be a commune out
on Paswegas, it was pretty well known back then. I came and hung out there
awhile, ended up staying."
"A
commune? How long did it last?"
"Not
that long. Few years."
I
zipped my leather jacket, shivering. "I wouldn't last a week."
"People
been living on these islands a long time," Toby said mildly. "The
Micmacs were here for thousands of years. But no, that commune didn't last
long. None of them ever do. I guess that's why they decided to rename it an
artist's colony. That was more successful. For a little while, anyway. That's
why they call it Burnout Harbor."
I
made a face, and Toby said, "Hey, I'm surprised you didn't know about
that. If you're coming to see Aphrodite, I mean. She kind of started the whole
commune thing, her and her friends."
He
fell silent, smoking and staring with narrowed eyes across the reach of blue
water. Finally he said, "That's what brought a lot of folks here. People
from away. Back-to-the-landers. That's why I came, actually. I studied at the
Apprenticeshop, boatbuilding, but a lot of the folks I met then, they were real
hippies. There was a lot of communal-type living going on. A lot of runaways.
College dropouts. Kids from Boston and New York. Even kids from California.
Some from around here. They wanted to, I don't know what—build their own yurts?
Raise goats? Whereas Aphrodite was more into art and, well, kind of a spiritual
thing, I guess you'd say. Oakwind, that's what she named the commune. That's
when I first met her."
"Wasn't
she kind of old for the whole hippie scene?"
Toby
frowned. "Well, no, I don't think so. And she was really good-looking back
then."
I
did the math in my head: Kamestos was born in 1936, so ...
"Well,
okay," I conceded.
"There
were a lot of artists." Toby took a final drag on his cigarette then began
to row again in earnest. "A few photographers. Couple of writer types who
were friends of her husband; one of them stayed on. Everyone smoked a lot of
weed. There was a lot of acid. Aphrodite owned a big chunk of land on Paswegas,
her and her husband. They'd let people squat on their property, build these
little shacks and stuff. A few still live there; locals call 'em the cliff
dwellers. Aphrodite's husband, he was dead by then."
"Did
you know him?"
"No.
He killed himself. I never heard the whole story. I guess he was gay, and maybe
that was an issue, or maybe it was drugs? Some weird stuff went on at Oakwind,
the whole place kind of imploded. Everyone just went their separate ways after
that."
I
rubbed my arms. "What kind of weird stuff?"
Toby's
gaze grew remote. He turned to stare at the green and black mass of Paswegas
looming in the distance. "Out on the islands, every couple of years you
get a witch hunt. People go crazy, cabin fever. Winter especially. Lot of times
it's directed at a schoolteacher, someone from away. Back then there was only
about forty people living on Paswegas. Today there's less than that. So the
hippies came, and all of a sudden you've got, like, double the population on a
place that's not real used to having company, except in the summer. It's a
fragile human ecology, just like an animal ecology; you introduce a new
species, even just one person, and everything goes to hell. Some bad stuff
happened. Afterward most everyone split."
"But
not Aphrodite."
"Not
Aphrodite," said Toby. "Maybe you could get her to talk about it. But
I doubt it. Okay, here we go—"
We'd
come up alongside the sailboat. A carved sign adorned the stern;
Northern
Sky
picked out in gold leaf. Even beside the dinghy it looked small. I had
a flash of panic: how could something so tiny hold two people, let along bring
them anywhere safely? Toby grasped
Northern Sky's
rail and pulled the
dinghy against it. I stood and stumbled on board. Toby followed, then began
tying off the dinghy at the stern.
"You
go put your stuff below," he called. "Just slide that hatch there,
I'll be right down. Watch your head."
The
boat was a pretty little thing. White paint, gray trim, mahogany accents.
Bronze portholes verdigrised from age and salt air. I still couldn't see how
two people could move around without bumping into each other or tripping over a
million lines, wires, sails, buckets, God knows what.
Not
to mention ice—the deck was slick with it. Fortunately it was only three steps
across the bridge deck to where the companionway led down. I skidded over and
pushed open the hatch then climbed down a ladder into a space so densely packed
it was like walking into a broom closet.
I
had to stoop to enter, and even then my head grazed the ceiling. Forward, my
way was blocked by the mast and, directly behind it, a sheet-metal woodstove
roughly the size and shape of a large coffee can. Beyond this was the bow, a
V-shaped berth crammed with boxes, milk cartons, power cells, books, ropes,
tools, a small chemical toilet.
But
where I was—smack in the middle of the main cabin—everything was meticulously,
if eccentrically, organized. To either side was a bench covered with frayed
corduroy cushions. Above these were amazingly carved shelves, pigeonholes,
cupboards, and nooks, some no bigger than the pencils they held, others large
enough to support rows of books and manuals. There were hooks carved like
fingers, canned goods stacked behind carven filigree. Two copper gimbals shaped
like mouths held kerosene lanterns. Crocheted nets dangled from the ceiling,
filled with onions and garlic and sprouting potatoes. Tucked into an alcove by
the ladder were a tiny alcohol-fueled cookstove and a NOAA weatherband radio
beside a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Rum and several bottles of Moxie.
"You
okay? Find a place to stow your stuff?"
Toby's
bearded face appeared in the hatch. I ran my fingers across a shelf carved with
rows of eyes. "Did you do this? All this carving? And this?"
At
the end of the shelf hung a mask. Papier-mache, vaguely Native
American—looking: a frog, mottled brown and green and creamy yellow. It had
protruding golden eyes, a wide, lipless grin. The papier-mache was so smooth it
looked like plastic, except at the edges where you could see un-painted bits of
newsprint. It was beautiful, but also unsettling.