WHEN JAMES LET himself into the Sachem’s cottage, the house held the usual scents: coffee, wood smoke, laundry detergent. Morphine drips must not have an odor.
Mavis nodded to him, slipped her hand out of Joe’s, and headed for her work room. The hospital bed was still pressed up against the window, even though Joe was well past caring about a water view. White sheets and shiny bars belonged to a different world—a different century—than the familiar red wool blanket draped over his shrunken form.
James sat down. Joe opened his eyes. “Hello, brother,” he rasped.
“Any pain?” James asked, even though he could see the drip, drip from a hanging bag.
“Mavis. . . won’t allow it.”
“Good woman.”
“Yes. . .”
He seemed to fall asleep then, so James gazed out the window. Dark clouds were rolling in thick from the south, several shades blacker than the slate gray harbor. Rain soon.
James must’ve nodded off too—when Mavis placed her hand on his shoulder, he started. Dark circles rimmed her eyes.
“Stay?” she asked. Gumbo snuffled at James’s knee.
James patted the dog absentmindedly. “I’m due on the sit-in at noon.”
“Mémé. . .”
“I’ll stay until she gets here,” he promised. Joe was what mattered now.
Gumbo’s nails clicked across to the screen door, which shut behind them.
Who knew where those two were headed—to the Inn, to deliver laundry, to deliver a baby? On top of everything else, Mavis hadn’t missed one of her four evenings a week on the sit-in. James was sure that if she hadn’t suggested guarding the west end during the day, Parker’s tractor would’ve dug up the Indian cemetery while the whites carefully guarded the dividing path.
It was all too easy to underestimate her. Especially after spending so much of his childhood evading dorky little Mavis.
You never underestimated her, though, he told Joe, silently. There were so many questions he needed to ask, if only Joe would open his eyes again. How to keep the damned sit-in going, and whether it was making any difference. How to figure out what to do with his life. He’d made such a hash of things: Barb, Anna. . . Courtney. He was even dodging Dean’s calls again, unable to make a commitment beyond Labor Day. Though with barely a month of savings in his bank account, he didn’t have much choice.
Once Joe had gone to a better place, he’d make a decision. After the sit-in ended. And Courtney went back to Maryland. . .
After he worked up the courage to apologize to Barb.
“Do you pine for her?” Joe had asked a few weeks ago.
James had wanted to say yes. Instead he told the truth.
All Joe had said was, “Thought so.”
Living with Barb had been a way to avoid being alone after his mother died, he realized now. He’d never once thought about her during a ferry run, never surprised her with a bouquet of flowers or a funny card from ashore. Never, ever, pined for her.
He was already pining for Courtney, he realized—and she hadn’t even left yet. The woman who he’d cursed for replacing him had become un-replaceable.
If he could only ask Joe one more question, what would it be? Not about the sit-in; all he could do was keep it going as long as possible. Either Lloyd would run out of money, or the islanders would run out of steam.
And not about the Homer; Joe didn’t care about boats.
The only thing worth wasting Joe’s energy on was—people. As usual, they were the real mystery. One attractive woman flirted with him, while another less attractive one simply went about her day. And yet the second one was who he found in his—
“Less attractive to whom?” It was almost as if Joe had actually spoken.
Less attractive by cultural standards: small chest, big attitude.
Yet so completely comfortable in her own skin.
And a very nice—
The screen door snapped shut. Blushing, James turned to find Mémé already halfway across the room. She dropped her hand on his shoulder, an even lighter touch than her daughter.
“Hello my sons.”
“Rain started yet?” James asked.
“Not yet.” She reached out to touch Joe’s chest, where his shallow breaths barely bumped up the blanket. “No rain in heaven.”
Joe’s eyes opened, the brown irises clear. “Hey Mémé,” he said, running all three syllables together like he always did.
“Joseph Flannery,” she replied, cheeks wrinkling into a smile. “I wish I could feed you something to make it all better.”
“Chicken. . . soup?”
She laughed, though she also removed the hand from James’s shoulder to wipe away a tear. “Coming right up.” She headed for the kitchen.
“She’ll need your help,” Joe told James. “Mavis too.”
“I’m here,” James replied. But I still need your help.
Joe’s eyes had closed again, so James would have to find the answers on his own.
That afternoon, Doc Emerald came out to the west end of the sit-in to keep James company. As soon as the guy sat down, he groused about the rain (even though it had faded off to a cooling mist). Then he proceeded to explain why, statistically at least, Joe should’ve passed last November—as if that even mattered. When the doctor finally left, the rain ended too. James gladly sat in silence, staring at Narragansett headstones, for the last hour of his shift.
Promptly at six p.m., he folded up the camp chair and biked up to the dividing path. Lila McKay was there, but the chair next to her was still empty.
“Mavis thinks it’s Joe’s last night,” the schoolteacher explained. “I already called for backup—Nathaniel’s on his way. I’ll be all right solo until then.”
James lowered himself into the second chair. There was no one waiting for him at home, and it was so peaceful here. The air had dried out, and damp leaves beneath him smelled of fall.
In front of him, the Inn’s shadows lengthened until they reached across the lawn to that new tractor barn. The nerve of Parker! Fire truck was supposed to be the only gas-powered vehicle on the island.
“And where is that written down?” Sheila would ask. She’d posed the same question several times while filing that injunction.
Too often, the answer was “nowhere.” Until Parker started making all of his improvements, nobody had questioned or challenged the way things had always been done. Only Joe had seen the changes creeping—
“I hear you’re leaving us,” Lila said.
“Got a good job. Sailing.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“I need. . .” What did he need—a view of the horizon? There was one right in front of him. An escape from everyone knowing when he sneezed, almost before he did? All the places he’d ever been happy— on sailboats, standing in the Homer’s wheelhouse—were even smaller than this island.
“I understand how you’d want to get away, once all your friends are gone,” Lila said. “But I don’t know who’s going to keep the islanders working together, if you do go.”
She didn’t seem to expect an answer, so he sat beside her, watching a triangle of sky above the Inn change from blue to pink, wondering who she lumped into “all his friends” besides Joe, until Nathaniel arrived.
“Oh, hi, Uncle James! I brought a deck of cards,” the kid told Lila. “Ever played hearts?”
Biking home, Mavis’s prediction resurfaced: Joe’s last night. So, after showering off sweat and grime and downing a cold bowl of leftover mac and cheese, James biked back to West Harbor again. There was just enough light left in the sky to picture his childhood buddy coasting down the bluff ahead of him, but Joe’s phantom refused to play tonight.
He scraped open the front door of the cottage to find the oil lamps already lit, and Mavis wheeling open the window just beyond Joe’s bed. Freeing his spirit from the body it no longer needed.
Ah Joe, my brother. You’re already gone from us.
Mavis turned, her face shiny. James pushed past the bed, pulling her into an awkward hug, feeling her tears soak through his T-shirt. Mémé, slumped in the chair, was still holding Joe’s left hand. Rivulets of water traced the deep wrinkles down either side of her mouth.
Joe’s eyelids were closed, but his cheeks still held a hint of color— he hadn’t been gone long.
“He looks peaceful,” James said.
“Always did.” Mémé nodded. “Right from the time he came out of me, forty years ago. Did so much good in the world.”
“Much too soon,” James agreed.
Keeping one arm around Mavis, he reached out to grasp Mémé’s free hand across Joe’s body. And together, the three of them absorbed the last strength from their friend and brother and son.