The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims (118 page)

“In most conditions, you’d be dead from exposure by then. There was a shipwreck in the Arctic Circle. The men were in lifeboats for three days, up to their knees in icy water.”

“Which shipwreck?”

“I do not recall the name.”

“Really?” Ruth had never heard of a shipwreck the Senator did not know by name.

“The name doesn’t matter. The wrecked sailors landed on an Icelandic island eventually. They all had frostbite. The Eskimos tried to revive their frozen limbs. What did the Eskimos do, Ruthie? They rubbed the men’s feet vigorously with oil. Vigorously! The men were screaming, begging the Eskimos to stop. But the Eskimos kept on vigorously rubbing the men’s feet with oil. I can’t recall the name of the shipwreck. But you should remember that when you get on a boat.”

“I’m not planning on sailing to Iceland.”

“Some of those men on the Icelandic island fainted from the pain of the vigorous rubbing, and they died right there.”

“I’m not saying that shipwrecks are good, Senator.”

“Every one of those men eventually needed amputations.”

“Senator?”

“To the knee, Ruthie.”

“Senator?” Ruth said again.

“They died from the pain of the rubbing.”

“Senator, please.”

“The survivors had to stay in the Arctic until the next summer, and the only thing they had for food was blubber, Ruth.”

“Please,” she said.

Because there was Webster, standing before them. He was coated in mud up to his skinny waist. He had tight curls sweated into his hair and dashes of mud across his face. And he was holding an elephant’s tusk flat across his filthy, outstretched hands.

“Oh, Senator,” Ruth said. “Oh, my God.”

Webster laid the tusk on the sand before the Senator’s feet, as one would lay a gift before a regent. Well, the Senator had no words for this gift. The three people on the beach—the old man, the young woman, the tiny, muddy young man—regarded the elephant tusk. No one moved until Cookie rose up stiffly and slouched toward the thing with suspicion.

“No, Cookie,” Senator Simon said, and the dog assumed the posture of a Sphinx, her nose stretched toward the tusk as if to smell it.

At last, in an apologetic and hesitant way, Webster said, “I guess he was a small elephant.”

Indeed, the tusk was small. Very small for an elephant that had grown to a mighty size during 138 years of myth. The tusk was slightly longer than one of Webster’s arms. It was a slim tusk, with a modest arc. At one end was a dull point, like a thumb. At the other end was the ragged edge of its break from the skeleton. There were deep black, cracked grooves in the ivory.

“He was just a small elephant, I guess,” Webster repeated, because the Senator had not yet responded. This time, Webster sounded almost desperate. “I guess we thought it would be bigger, right?”

The Senator stood up, as slowly and stiffly as if he’d been sitting on the beach for 138 years, waiting for the tusk. He stared at it some more, and then he put his arm around Webster.

“That’s a good job, son,” he said.

Webster sank to his knees, and the Senator eased himself down beside him and put his hand on the boy’s lank shoulder.

“Are you disappointed, Webster?” he asked. “Did you think that I would be disappointed? It’s a beautiful tusk.”

Webster shrugged, and his face looked stricken. A breeze came up, and Webster gave a thin shiver.

“I guess it was just a small elephant,” he repeated.

Ruth said, “Webster, it’s a terrific elephant tusk. You did a good job, Webster. You did a great job.”

Then Webster gave two hard sobs.

“Oh, come on, now, boy,” the Senator said, and his voice, too, was choked. Webster was crying. Ruth turned her head. She could still hear him, though, making those sad noises, so she stood up and walked away from the rocks toward the spruce trees lining the shore. She left Webster and the Senator sitting on the beach for a good long time while she wandered among the trees, picking up sticks and breaking them. The mosquitoes were after her, but she didn’t care. She hated to see people crying. Every once in a while she looked toward the beach, but she could see that Webster was still sobbing and the Senator was still comforting him, and she wanted no part of it.

Ruth sat herself down, with her back to the beach, on a mossy log.

She lifted a flat rock in front of her, and a salamander scooted out, giving her a start. Maybe she’d become a veterinarian, she thought absently. She’d recently read a book, given to her by the Senator, about the breeding of bird dogs, and she had found it rather beautiful. The book, written in 1870, had the loveliest language. She’d been moved almost to tears by a description of the best Chesapeake labrador the author had ever seen, one that had retrieved a downed seabird by leaping over crashing ice floes and swimming far out past the point of invisibility. The dog, whose name was Bugle, had returned to shore, nearly frozen to death, but carrying the bird ever so gently in its soft mouth. Not a mark on it.

Ruth stole a glance over her shoulder back to Webster and the Senator. Webster appeared to have stopped crying. She wandered down to the shoreline, where Webster was sitting, staring ahead grimly. The Senator had taken the tusk to a warm pool of tidewater to rinse it off. Ruth Thomas went over, and he straightened up and handed her the tusk. She dried it on her shirt. It was light as bone and yellow as old teeth, its hollow inside packed with mud. It was warm. She hadn’t even seen Webster find it! All those hours of sitting on the beach watching him search the mud, and she had not seen the moment when he found it!

“You didn’t see him find it, either,” she said to the Senator. He shook his head. Ruth weighed it in her hands. “Unbelievable,” she said.

“I didn’t think he would actually find it, Ruth,” the Senator said, in a desperate whisper. “Now what the hell am I supposed to do with him? Look at him, Ruth.”

Ruth looked. Webster was trembling like an old engine in idle.

“Is he upset?” she asked.

“Of course he’s upset! This project kept him going for a year. I don’t know,” the Senator whispered in panic, “what to do with the boy now.”

Webster Pommeroy got up and came to stand beside Ruth and the Senator. The Senator straightened to his full height and smiled widely.

“Did you clean it off?” Webster asked. “Does it look n-n-nicer?”

The Senator spun around and hugged tiny Webster Pommeroy close to him. He said, “Oh, it’s splendid! It’s gorgeous! I’m so proud of you, son! I am so proud of you!”

Webster sobbed again, and recommenced crying. Ruth, reflexively, shut her eyes.

“Do you know what I think, Webster?” Ruth heard the Senator ask.

“I think it is a magnificent find. I really do. And I think we should bring it to Mr. Ellis.”

Ruth’s eyes flew open in alarm.

“And do you know what Mr. Ellis is going to do when he sees us coming with this tusk?” the Senator asked, his huge arm draped over Webster’s shoulder. “Do you know, Webster?”

Webster did not know. He shrugged pathetically.

The Senator said, “Mr. Ellis is going to grin. Isn’t that right, Ruthie? Won’t that be something? Don’t you think Mr. Ellis will love this?”

Ruth did not answer.

“Don’t you think so, Ruthie? Don’t you?”

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, deepset 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 thoroughfare, 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 drygoods 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.