Osprey Island (10 page)

Roddy’s head just wagged back and forth.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Suzy asked.

“I’m sure you will,” he answered.

Suzy quietly shut the door to Roddy’s cabin and started up the path toward her truck. She was just passing Eden’s house when something moved on the porch. Suzy yelped. She backed away, peering into the shaded darkness. In seconds, the shed door slammed and Roddy was rushing toward her, the bedsheet clutched around his waist.

“What happened? Are you OK?”

She nodded, gestured to the porch. “There’s something on the porch. It’s probably just a raccoon.”

A light went on inside the house. Roddy grabbed a log from Eden’s woodpile. There was shuffling from the house, a series of lights flicking on inside as Eden made her way to the back door. She pushed open the screen and flipped on the porch light to reveal Squee crouched beside the rocker like a criminal caught in the searchlight, head darting, trying to decide which way to flee.

The porch light also brought to Eden’s attention her son, a log raised over his head, his other hand gripping a sheet around his otherwise naked body. And Suzy Chizek, standing on the path between the house and the driveway, looking as if she didn’t know which way to run.

“Jesus Christ, Squee!” Roddy dropped his log to the ground. “What the hell?” He clutched the sheet tightly.

“I’m not staying at Grandma and Grandpa Vaughn’s. I don’t care what you do to me, I’m not staying there.” Squee remained squatting in the shadows by the outdoor sofa’s armrest.

“For goodness sakes,” said Eden. She opened the screen door again and held it ajar. “Come on inside. We’ll give Penny a call, let her know where you are.” Squee scuttled up, his eyes on Roddy the whole time, lest he pick up the log again and lunge.

Roddy and Suzy turned to each other and began to speak at the same time.

“You OK?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” she was saying.

“Go on. Go back to Mia.”

“OK.”

“Get some sleep,” he said.

“Yeah, OK.” She backed away a few steps, then turned and walked briskly toward the truck.

Roddy watched her drive away, then went down to his shack to put on some clothes.

“Toga party’s over?” Eden said, smirking, as Roddy came to the back door. Squee was at the kitchen table eating graham crackers with milk, and Roddy shot Eden a look through the screen.

“You get ahold of Penny?” Roddy asked. Eden nodded. Then, with a mustering of will that perhaps only Eden could have perceived, Roddy pulled open the door and stepped into Eden’s home. He went and stood behind Squee, put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and gave him a playful and affectionate shake. Squee’s body went slack under Roddy’s hands. Roddy dropped to his knees at the boy’s side. “What happened?” He searched Squee’s face for signs of distress. “You OK? Are you OK?”

Squee had straightened up quickly.

“Something happen at your grandma and grandpa’s?” Roddy asked. “How come you ran off like that? What’d you do, go out a damn window? Jeez. Squee . . . you’d’ve scared your grandma half to death. What’d you go and do that for?”

Squee could be as evasive as Eden. “I like it
here,
” he said.

“And we’re very glad to have you,” Eden jumped in. “But that doesn’t make it OK to go running out on your grandparents like some sort of . . . runaway.”

Squee stood up suddenly and stepped away from the table as if he might make a dash for it. Eden pretended to notice nothing. “You finished with these?” she asked him, her hands near his glass and plate.

Squee nodded, disarmed. “Are you going to make me go back?”

“Of course not,” Eden said. “You’ve disrupted everyone’s rest enough tonight already. You’ll stay here and we’ll handle all this in the morning.”

Squee looked to Roddy. “Can I stay with you?”

Practically before the question was out of Squee’s mouth, the “No” was out of Roddy’s.

Eden laughed. “You’ll stay up here in Roddy’s
old
room. In Roddy’s bed from when he was your age.”

Squee was clearly disappointed.

“Yeah,” Roddy agreed. “There’s more room for you up here.” And with that he seemed to take full stock of the fact that he was inside Eden’s house, which really wasn’t someplace he liked to be. He turned to his mother: “You got everything under control up here?”

Eden tried not to crack a smile. “I think we’re fine,” she managed to say.

“Where are you going?” Squee blurted, then looked embarrassed.

“Just back down to my place.”

“Can I come?” Squee asked.

Roddy winced inwardly, struck dumb for a moment until Eden jumped in: “Oh, so you don’t want to stay with me either?” She sniffed dramatically.

“I’ll see you in the morning, OK partner?” Roddy said.

Squee nodded but did not meet Roddy’s eyes. Roddy reached out and tousled the kid’s hair. He made a quick exit through the back door.

“Let’s get you to sleep, OK?” Eden said to Squee. He followed her obediently down the hall.

MOREY OPENED HIS BAR to the mourners that night, gave them a place to gather and grieve, locked off the pool table, unplugged the juke, though the muted TV was on as always. Morey tended bar himself since Merle Squire was at home with Lance. There wasn’t a big crowd, just a few tables of people talking more quietly than usual, drinking harder alcohol, drinking it more slowly. They all went home early. Last to depart, at half past twelve, were Brigid and Gavin, who purchased a fifth of whiskey from Morey, under the table, before they left.

They crossed the footbridge over Fisherman’s Cove, then stepped off into the sand and made their way slowly along the beach, feet dragging, circling back and around each other. They were just passing the Lodge dock when Gavin looked up the hill then turned back to Brigid and said, “Would you want to camp, maybe, on the beach tonight?”

“Would I want to . . . if what?” Brigid asked.

“Um . . . if I asked you if you wanted to?”

Brigid mulled this over. “Fucking in the sand . . . it’s terribly gritty, don’t you think?”

Gavin stopped. “Could you preserve just an ounce of mystery here? Just like one little element of the romance of it or something? Would that be
so
hard?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Brigid laughed. She was in a position with him now that she liked—at least, one she felt she understood. He was not half as menacing when she could see where he stood, anticipate where he was heading. He was a romantic after all, not so rakish as she’d imagined.

Gavin raised his hands as if addressing gods in heaven. “I can’t win,” he said. “What have I done to deserve this woman? What have I done
wrong
?”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Brigid cooed.

“I ask the lady to camp out on the beach with me—such a nice gesture!—something I think she’s wanting me to do, and what does she do? She makes fun of me! Incredible!” Gavin’s drunkenness was becoming apparent. “What’s a man to
do,
I ask?”

“Such melodrama!” Brigid goaded.

“I can’t
win!
” he cried again, and with that he sank to his knees in the sand, then rolled so he was lying down, looking up into the sky.

Brigid came over and towered above him. “Think you’ll recover, then?” she asked, peering down.

Suddenly, Gavin grabbed her by the knees and toppled her into the sand. She yelped, laughing, squealing like a girl, wrestling him in a kicked-up flurry of sand. He pinned her easily, sat straddled atop her, poised. Then he leaned down, still pinning her shoulders to the sand, and kissed her, much as he had the previous evening, only this time he let her kiss back. The sand beneath them was cool, and cooler still as they wriggled down into it, damp and prickly and forgiving, and they rolled around for quite a while until they were forced to pull their clothes back onto their bodies and trudge up the hill to find a damn condom. Except that when they got up to the barracks they found Jeremy and Peg each asleep in their separate rooms, and while they tried to figure out someplace else to go, Gavin managed to sober up enough in the eerie hallway bug light to say, “You know, maybe we should chill out a little, slow down, get some sleep.” And before Brigid could catch her balance enough to protest, he was hugging her limply good night and heading back to his own room, which left Brigid feeling more frustrated then ever.

Nine

AN OSPREY BUILDS ITS NEST OF STICKS AND ALL THE RUBBISH IT CAN COLLECT

An osprey nest is a stupendous affair of branches, sticks, driftwood,
cornstalks, seaweed and what have you. The same pair will return to
it year after year, adding more and more junk in their repairing operations until the whole thing ultimately weighs several hundred pounds
and can be seen against the skyline for a mile or more. There are
instances of small birds of several kinds nesting in the crevices of
osprey castles, quite unmolested, which speaks well for the big fellows’ tolerance.

—ROBERT S. LEMMON, Our Amazing Birds:
The Little-Known Facts About Their Private Lives

WHEN RODDY AWOKE IN HIS SHED the next morning he sat up, swung his feet from the bed, and nearly fell over Squee who—until Roddy kicked him in the leg—was asleep on the floor. To avoid crashing down on top of the kid, Roddy managed to catch himself against the stovepipe, which only provided a moment of resistance until it gave and sent him bashing into the woodstove. Squee recoiled by instinct, without a word or a cry of surprise, and was curled upright but fetal against the far wall when Roddy regained his balance. He straightened his boxer shorts, made sure he was decent, inspected himself for damage. “Did I
say
there wasn’t enough room for two in here?” he said, shaking his head, half laughing and incredulous. “You been there all night?”

Squee shrugged. He was wearing the same dirty clothes he’d been in since Gavin had pulled him from his bed at the Lodge two days before; he looked like even more of an urchin than usual. Roddy jerked his head up toward Eden’s house. “I’ll put on some clothes, you go up see Eden about taking a shower or something—you’re looking like hell—and I’ll run the truck down to the Vaughns’ and pick up your stuff there. Give you something clean to put on. ’K?”

Squee nodded, lingering by the doorway.

“Go, get on,” Roddy waved at him.

Squee looked as if he was preparing some sort of challenge. Finally he said, “You let
Suzy
come down here . . .”

“A
visit’s
one thing,” Roddy managed to say. “You don’t see Suzy sleeping on the floor with her sneakers on, now do you?” He paused. “Unless . . .” he leaned over and peered beneath the bed. Squee laughed. Which—Roddy was starting to think—was maybe the only thing that actually really mattered anymore at all. “Get on,” Roddy told him. “Eden won’t let you near her kitchen table as filthy as you are. You want breakfast, you better get up there and get clean.”

Squee moved closer to the door. “I’m sorry.” He stuck his pointy chin toward the spot of floor where he’d lain.

“You’re the one who slept on the floor,” Roddy said.

“Yeah!” Squee’s spirits were lifting his whole body, as if someone had pumped some more air into him. He edged out the door, then turned back at the last second, as if to surprise Roddy. His face washed in a smile. “What kind of a hotel is this, anyway!” he cried, and dashed outside and up the incline toward Eden’s house.

Squee was in the shower, and Eden out collecting the morning eggs from the chicken coop when the phone rang. Eden hurried back to the house as quickly as she could without jostling the basket. She gathered eggs a couple times a day—had a sign out on Island Drive, FRESH ORGANIC EGGS FOR SALE since she had more than she could use herself. If you didn’t gather the eggs often enough the hens’d start laying them on top of the old ones, and it was crowding like that that led to eggs’ breaking, and broken eggs led to egg-eating, and Eden had learned the hard way what happened when one hen started eating eggs. You didn’t cull an egg-eater from the flock immediately and the rest of them just followed, and pretty soon your hens weren’t good for much more than soup.

She got to the phone mid-ring and snatched it up, setting her eggs on the counter. It was Suzy, calling to say she was bringing Mia over to Reesa Delamico’s place out at Scallopshell Cove for the day and did Eden think it sounded like a good idea to get Squee over there too? Reesa Delamico cut and styled hair at her home, but in the summers she relocated her operations to a small salon and gift shop in the lobby of the Osprey Lodge, where she could more conveniently cater to the summer-vacation crowd. Reesa and Suzy and Lorna had all grown up together, same grade in school. Reesa had four kids—one grown, one a baby, but the other two were near Squee’s and Mia’s ages, and they’d been summer playmates in the past.

On the phone with Eden, Suzy was talking quickly, her tone overly businesslike. She was trying not to let Eden get a word in one way or another, lest it be a word about what Suzy might have been doing out behind the house in the middle of the night, with Roddy wearing only a bedsheet. Suzy prattled on: Reesa wasn’t going in to the Lodge Salon, she’d be with the kids all day . . . Might be good to distract Squee from everything, play with Mia, and Stacey and Mark. Reesa was thinking of setting up the Slip ’n Slide . . .”

Eden said, “Well, I’ve got him here now in the shower—”

“Oh, good!” Suzy said. “I was thinking we’d have to have Reesa toss a bar of soap on there with them!”

“He
was
getting a little ripe.”

Suzy faltered: “I told Reesa about last night . . . about Squee, I mean, that he ran away from Penny and Art’s . . . anyway, she said she’ll keep a close watch.” Her pace picked up again. “I was thinking if he ran from Reesa’s, that if he runs, it’d just be back to your place probably . . .”

“Maybe,” said Eden. “That may be.”

A terribly awkward pause followed.

“Suzanne,” Eden said, “we’ve got history, you and me, but I’ve got no problem in the world with you, dear—you should know that—and no troubles with whatever’s going on between you and my son. So please, sweetheart, calm down.”

Suzy laughed. “This island is too small!”

“Well, that may be true,” Eden agreed reluctantly. She was ready to let the whole conversation go. “Why don’t you come by here and pick up Mister Squee on your way to Reesa’s, OK? How’d that be?”

“Think I can manage that,” Suzy said, relieved. “That’d be fine.”

If it weren’t for Squee climbing into the passenger seat of Roddy’s truck and insisting on coming with him to help at the Lodge, Roddy would almost certainly have been gone before Suzy made it over to Eden’s that morning. As it was, Suzy pulled up to find Roddy’s truck blocking the driveway, Roddy standing outside the passenger window, talking to Squee in the seat.

“You just can’t,” Roddy was saying. “I don’t want you around there. It’s dangerous, besides. You can come back in a few days— when your dad comes back. You want to help with the construction then, we’ll see about that. But not when it’s . . .”

“Morning!” Suzy called. Roddy had lifted his head when her truck pulled in, then turned back to Squee, no acknowledgment. Now he lifted a hand in greeting before he faced the boy again.

Suzy came and stood beside Roddy at the open window. “What’s happening here?” She was rested and showered, her hair still wet, pulled back into a ponytail that was leaving a damp splotch on her back. Roddy hadn’t yet bathed, and his beard was getting beyond shadowed to scraggly. He’d at least put on a clean T-shirt.

“Come on, partner,” Roddy tried again. “Look, Suzy and Mia are here, all set to take you over to Reesa’s. Come on, Squee, OK?”

Suzy leaned in closer, put her hand on the small of Roddy’s back as she spoke: “You got your swimsuit, kid?” she said. Roddy tensed beneath her touch. “Reesa’s setting up the Slip ’n Slide as we speak . . . Mark and Stacey are psyched you guys are coming over to play . . .”

And then, suddenly, there in Roddy’s truck in the middle of the driveway, more than a full day after the news of Lorna’s death had been made known to him, Squee began to cry. What broke him right then was anyone’s guess. Most likely he was too tired to hold it in anymore. His face did not contort and twist. He did not look like a child crying. He looked as though his tear ducts had been pierced and left to run themselves dry.

“Oh, baby,” Suzy said, and she reached past Roddy to open the door, step close, and take Squee in her arms. She cupped a hand around the back of his head and held him to her, stroking, soothing. Instinct drove her movements, and Roddy backed away.

Squee did not sob, or choke, or cough as crying children do. Suzy held him to her like a slump of towels. Every so often he gave a gasp on the intake of breath, but otherwise he wept silently, too exhausted to do anything but let the tears drain from his body. Then, somewhere in the midst of that outpouring, his body gave a sudden jerk. He seemed surprised. He pulled himself away from Suzy for a second and waited, then spasmed again. Hiccups. It took about three rounds for his brain to catch up and figure out what was going on, and then he began to cry harder, more ardently, as though his own desperation had been fully revealed. And maybe it was that he lost his resolve in the momentary chaos of emotion, but he didn’t put up any struggle at all when Suzy lifted him—a limby, dragging bundle—out of the truck and carried him toward her own idling vehicle. She kept a hand on Squee’s head and craned around to Roddy, mouthing words he couldn’t make out.

“SHERIFF, GOOD MORNING.” Eden opened the door as though Sheriff Harty paid her a visit every day.

The sheriff tugged off his hat and clutched it to him as he shifted in Eden’s doorway. “Eden, how are you?” He replaced his hat.

“Oh,” Eden said, “under the circumstances . . .”

“You busy this morning? I wonder if I could talk with you. Is it a bad time, Eden?”

“Coffee, Sheriff?” she said by way of invitation, and held the door as he entered.

“Oh,” he said, “sure, thanks, if it’s not too much trouble. Haven’t got much sleep . . .”

Eden went to the kitchen. The sheriff stood awkwardly, then strolled around the living room, inspected Roderick’s gun collection, and finally took a seat in the least comfortable-looking chair in the room.

“Eden,” he began when they were settled, “I’m not meaning to be like some detective about this, but I’m no good at the sensitive stuff and I’ve got sensitive stuff I got to talk about and I know you’re not one to stand on ceremony or beat around the bush so I’m just going to tell you what I’ve got to tell you and say what I’ve got to say and ask you what I got to ask you, and then we’ll just take it from there, OK?”

“You go right ahead, Duane.”

The large envelope he was carrying opened with a crack of Velcro. “There’s something we found at the scene of the fire . . .”—he looked up to make sure Eden was following him—“and it’s probably not exactly one hundred percent police protocol for me to be here like this . . .” He paused. “Well, no, actually it probably is—it’s just, I’m not asking anything in a real official-type way. But here: there was a small refrigerator in the laundry shack—not in operation, but used as a kind of a storage cabinet—totally against the law, and thank god we didn’t have some kid get themselves trapped in there in a game of hide-and-seek—I can only imagine . . . So, but, well, the contents of that fridge survived the fire real well—mostly just junk, but also something else we found, and it’s only been seen now by Deputy Mitchell and myself and we’re both of us tied in knots about what to do and so we decided I’d come and talk to you, on account it seems by the contents of the thing that you’re perhaps familiar with the contents—some, at least, already, and so I guess . . .” From the envelope he removed the thin lavender spiral notebook that had served as Lorna Squire’s diary. “We’ve got this thing,” said the sheriff, “and we don’t know what the hell to do with it.” He passed the book to Eden.

The sheriff, wiped out by this delivery, sank against his stiff-backed chair, then remembered his coffee and seized the cup as if it held the key to his survival.

Eden held the notebook, the warped metal curls of its binding like the spine of a small animal. On the cover, the ballpoint letters traced over so many times they were nearly engraved, it read: THE DIARY OF LORNA MARIE VAUGHN SQUIRE.

“Duane”—Eden looked the sheriff in the eye—“why’re you showing this to me?”

The sheriff set down his cup. “Like I said, Eden, or tried to . . . There’s mention of you all over in there—says right on the first page you’re the one suggested she write down her thoughts in the first place. Back when it starts at first she writes the date in—late ’seventynine is it?—then it just kind of drops off. It’s right there on the first page . . .”

Eden opened the cover.
Nov. 23, 1979.
Right when Lorna was pregnant with Squee. Eden flipped the page. The initial entries were dated, then devolved into
July . . . ?
Until they disappeared altogether. The notebook was maybe three quarters full, and most of it seemed to be letters of a sort.
Dear Diary
had given way to
Dear Squee,
and then later in the notebook the pages began with just
My Sweet Baby Boy.
“Duane,” Eden said again, “what are you here for? What are you asking me?”

The sheriff looked as though he’d have liked to climb into his coffee cup and hide. “Roderick was my friend,” he said. “I’ve known you nearly all my life, Eden. Eaten dinner at your table. You know I’ve got nothing but respect for you, Eden—you know that.”

Whether it was true, and whether Eden believed him, were questions for another time. She nodded.

“There’s stuff in there that Lorna wrote that concerns a lot of people on this island. It says some things that’re not easy to believe, and even if you do believe them it’s nothing easy to swallow. There’s lots about you in there, Eden, and I won’t pretend to understand all what it says, but I have a real good feeling that it’s not things you’re wanting too many folks knowing about . . .”

Eden screwed up her face in sudden and nearly comical surprise: “Are you
blackmailing
me, Duane?”

Duane Harty’s eyes popped. “Christ lord, no!” he cried. “I just don’t know what in god’s name to
do
with the damn thing!” His face was pleading. “Police procedure’d be to register that diary and then send it along with any other personal belongings we salvaged, hand it over to her next of kin, and if that’s Lance or that’s Art and Penny I don’t even care who, because I for one don’t want to be around when any of them lay their eyes on what it says in that book. I am at a loss here, Eden. I don’t know what in god’s name to do. I am asking for your help here, is what I’m asking.”