Folly (30 page)

Anyway, Pam, you deal with it. Frankly, I don’t care, just so I’m left in peace. A year and a half ago, I might have dug in my heels. Now I know that life is too short for the luxury of pride. Let Don tie himself up in knots—I won’t work to do it for him.

Rae

Rae had not quite finished the water line by Ed’s next visit, but she was close enough to the end that she could continue to work on it without risk of missing his arrival. He gave a brief hoot on the boat’s horn as he came into the cove, startling the juncos and the red squirrel, but she had heard the sound of the motor half a mile off and was on the promontory before he had a chance to get the groceries from his cabin.

Ed handed over the bags and then, balancing a five-gallon water jug on his shoulder, swung a leg over the side of the boat and followed her up to the tent, eyeing the building as he went.

“You haven’t done too much work this week,” he commented with a question in his voice. “I’d’ve thought you’d have some walls up by now.”

Rae laughed, and held out her hands, ingrained with soil and crusted with layers of cement the solvent hadn’t quite taken off. “Plumbing this week, Ed. This is the last jug of water I want you to bring me. If I can’t get the line finished, I’ll just have to go up to the spring with buckets.”

“Water’s a fair distance, then?”

“Clear around where that big forked fir tree is.”

Ed whistled. “Why didn’t your man build his house a little closer to the spring?”

“I guess he liked the site over the convenience.”

“It is pretty,” Ed allowed.

They drank their coffee while he caught her up on all the news, whether she was interested or not: that the two missing sisters in
Spokane had turned out to be runaways, and although they were still missing, the younger had written a letter to a friend, mailed in New Orleans ten days after she disappeared; that someone had burned down a barn on Lopez, and was in jail now with his parents screaming false arrest; that the county Board of Commissioners had discussed rationing water during the summer but decided instead to hand out flyers telling tourists not to sluice down their boats with fresh water and to wait until they got back to the mainland to take their half-hour showers.

It all ran over Rae’s hearing like water off a duck’s oily feathers, and she couldn’t have recalled a word of it (other than the change in status of the missing girls) by lunchtime. She gave him her letters, her lists, and her laundry; he went back to his boat. Alone again.

As she waved good-bye to the illustrated philosopher, it occurred to her that, for a hermit, she was well on her way to becoming a member of a community. No man is an island—nor, it would appear, woman.

The rest of her little community arrived on her doorstep, or her dock, the following day. She had spent the remainder of Tuesday pushing to complete the water line, and late at night, working by flashlight, she glued the final joint, and springwater finally trickled from the end of her circuitous snake of plastic tubes. Rae marked the occasion by a cautious victory dance on the rock slope and a ceremonial glass of the water, which tasted of mud from the pond and petroleum by-products from the pipe, both of which would, she prayed, be gone in a few days. She knelt to bathe her sweat-caked face in the trickle, set a five-gallon jug under the end, and went to bed to the sound of an owl duet.

Wednesday morning, the jug was full to overflowing, the water from the pipe dribbling free and clean. She dumped the jug’s murky contents, replaced it under the pipe, and rigged a series of three more jugs, linked together by thin tubes that would allow the water in each jug to settle before moving on to the next. The last one had a spigot at the bottom, to which she attached a common hundred-foot garden hose, which would at least reach the lower tower of the house. Ed would deliver her actual tanks the following week, and civilization would settle over the island.

She was standing at the base of the system, her ears enjoying the musical trickle and her mind turning over the symbolism of water and
life and the wellsprings of the island, when a half-familiar and close-by engine intruded itself. She turned around to see the county launch that had rested at her dock on the peculiar morning when the “family” had walked out of the mist. They were here again—minus Caleb this time, to Rae’s mixed relief and disappointment.

Sheriff Carmichael had not gotten any smaller in three and a half weeks, nor had Nikki grown any less ethereal—although being dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt and struggling beneath one end of a large flat object brought even that sprite closer to earth. Rae trotted quickly down to join them, and found herself supporting one end of a large, sternly lettered sign declaring:

The posts holding the old sign were sturdy enough to hold this one up for a few more years, and the sheriff had brought a portable electric drill, so installing the new declaration was a matter of a few minutes. Since standing back to look at it would have required that they walk on water, they settled for perching with their heels in the water and looking up at the sign outlined against the sky.

As a gateway to a home, it was neither aesthetic nor welcoming. Next year, Rae thought, she would build one of her own that was both. A series of posts, she mused, some natural, others carved, iconic in nature: a modern interpretation of the local totem poles. Like that Brassil installation with the pilings. Not consciously artificial like Nils-Udo or Goldsworthy, or as polished as Murray’s things, but— She caught herself, and began to laugh: First build your house, then think about the gateway.

“Thank you,” she said to her two companions.

The sheriff scooped up the remnants of the old sign and carried them along the promontory to the campsite, where he tossed the boards onto her pile of firewood. He straightened, brushing his hands, and lifted his chin at the building on the hillside.

“You’ve got a lot done since I was here.”

“The subfloor’s finished and the water supply’s complete.”

“Mind if I look?”

“Help yourself. I was just going to scramble some eggs. The least I can do is give you breakfast. Or lunch.”

“Why don’t I do that,” Nikki offered. “I saw the subfloor when I was here the other day.”

“Well,” Rae said, “okay. Eggs are in the cooler; there’s some bacon, too, if you want. Bread in the wooden box.” Nikki, however, already knew where everything was. She even managed to light the stove without an explosive puff, which Rae only did about half the time. Rae gave in and turned to join Sheriff Carmichael.

As they approached the heap of studs piled by the stone steps, Carmichael stopped. “Those aren’t two-by-fours.”

“Actually, they are. Full measure two-bys.”

“Why?”

“Because Desmond used them. And because they’re sturdy.”

He said nothing, but once up on the flat, clear floorboards, he bounced, and when his considerable weight caused not the slightest shift, he nodded. “Sturdy’s the word. I helped some friends put up a post-and-beam house a few years ago. It felt like this.”

“I’d have loved to do this as a timber-frame house, but I just couldn’t.”

“It does take a fair number of people to get those beams up,” he agreed.

“That, and I feel that if I’m following in my great-uncle’s footsteps, I have to follow his style of building. And not only because I’m supposed to be restoring the building, but because it needs to be the way Desmond Newborn built it.”

“You’re a woodworker, I hear. Cabinetmaker, furniture maker, whatever you call it.”

“Used to be.”

“So tell me, do all woodworkers wrestle with two-by-fours on their off time?”

“Like an artist doing housepainting during the holidays, you mean? No, not all. It’s about all I’m good for anymore.” She halted as the words sent an echo through her, and Carmichael paused by her side questioningly. She laughed, a little sour sound. “I told my husband that same thing, when our daughter was small and I couldn’t find the energy for creative work. He gave me a carpenter’s tool belt. As a joke.” And a pair of three-hundred-dollar chisels. As a serious response.

Carmichael glanced at her, but did not comment. Instead, he went
over to each of the stone towers, leaned inside to look up to the circle of open sky, then stepped down from the platform to take a closer look at the impromptu water system behind the house. After a minute, she followed.

“Things going better now?” he asked as they picked their way back down the steep rock slope. “No more strange footprints?”

“Things are fine, Sheriff. I—”

“Call me Jerry. Please.”

“Jerry. And I’m Rae, with an e. Though you already know that. Yes, things are going well.”

And they were, she realized. Her nights were invariably broken and her days filled with a thousand startling noises, but she hadn’t had a full-out panic attack in a couple of weeks. Too tired, she guessed, and found herself smiling. “Yes. Very well indeed.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I called Sam Escobar this morning before we came out, but he’s got nothing new. They can’t even find the guy who told his informant he’d heard two people talking about being hired to attack you.”

“Or somebody who may not have been me.”

“You’re right. A rumor of a rumor. I’m glad you’re not fretting about it.”

Back at the campsite, Nikki deftly divided the contents of the pan onto three plates and held one out to Rae, who perched on the cedar tree, leaving the two chairs to her guests, and dug her fork into the soft curds appreciatively. The Irish wood sprite could certainly cook an egg.

“Is it okay?” Nikki asked.

Rae looked up questioningly, then realized that manners might be a good idea.

“It’s great. I was just thinking that it’s been—oh, months since I ate something I didn’t cook myself.” Since her discharge from the hospital, in fact. The dutiful casseroles Tamara had brought were probably still in the deep freeze, and the nurse-cum-baby-sitter Rae had lodged with on her release had been a firm believer in the tough love policy, requiring Rae to forage and clean for herself. Everything else, with the exception of several cups of coffee bought on the drive up from California, had either been eaten straight from a package or peremptorily stirred together by her own hands. The unexpectedness of another person’s simple but utterly different cooking style made the sloppy omelet a feast. She felt as if she should say grace over it.

“Oh,” said Nikki. “I nearly forgot. Caleb sent you something.” She fished a piece of paper out of her shirt pocket, then handed it to Rae. Rae balanced her half-empty plate on the tree trunk and took the offering. Unfolding it, she found that Caleb had drawn a portrait of her standing in front of her tent. At least she supposed it was she: a tall stick figure in brown with a frizz of gray hair. As flattering a representation as any five-year-old could manage, she figured.

“What are those around my feet? Rocks?”

“Crabs. We counted twenty-three the day we were here, and Caleb put in every one.”

“I see. Tell him thank you,” Rae said, and folded the drawing away. She returned to her meal with a lump in her throat.

When they had finished all the eggs (Rae’s supply for the week, unfortunately) and half of her bread, Nikki moved to clean up, but Rae took the dishes out of the young woman’s hands and put them in the plastic dishpan. “It’ll make a nice change to wash up an actual pile of dishes,” she told her guests, and herded them down to the boat.

On the way past the stack of lumber (little diminished, despite the numerous trips she had already taken) she remembered something.

“I wonder if one of you could do me a favor? I forgot to tell Ed that I need a couple of heavy plastic sheets—they don’t have to be big, twelve by sixteen is fine, but they should be thick. Maybe six mil.”

“Better ask Nikki,” Jerry Carmichael suggested. “Ed and I don’t exactly see eye to eye.”

Nikki’s mouth quirked into her elfish smile. “Jerry caught Ed red-handed smuggling a load of Freon a few years back. Ed kind of holds him responsible.”

“Freon?” Rae
asked, thinking she must have misheard.

“Freon,” Jerry confirmed. “You know, the stuff they use in refrigerators and air conditioners. A canister that costs maybe thirty bucks in Mexico goes for eleven, twelve hundred here, because of the EPA regulations. So old Ed thought he might just as well pay for his winter in Baja by loading up on the stuff and bringing it to Seattle. It was really a Customs problem, but I stumbled across it, so I had to arrest him. Canisters up to the gunwales, and he thought I ought to look the other way.”

“I see.”

“Mostly what he didn’t like was when I suggested he might be able to
whittle down his sentence if he turned in the guy he was selling to. The arrest itself didn’t bother him, but ever since I asked him to ‘rat out,’ in his words, he looks at me like I’m a cockroach.”

“He went to jail?”

“Prison. It was a lot of Freon, and not exactly his first offense.”

“That explains the big tattoo on his back,” Rae said, half to herself.