Sunny. Cold. To Fisher Bay.
On the twentieth of November, a bright and cold Saturday, Eliza walks to Tuttle’s, six blueberry muffins and a jar of blackberry mush in her basket. She will ask Tuttle directly what he knows of the boy. Maybe Samuel had come to Tuttle’s also and stolen what he needed, items a man might need, like a razor or an axe.
BLACKBERRY MUSH
Two quarts of ripe berries, a half-quart of boiling water, two teacups of white sugar.
Boil slowly five minutes, then thicken with flour until all lumps are incorporated and cook a few minutes longer.
Put into a greased mold to cool and serve with cream, or use as spread for muffins.
ELIZA IS FRUS TRATED WITH HER EFFORTS. SHE IS SURE THE boy is now toying with her. He must know that Eliza is the one who leaves all the goods for him. He had rummaged through her cabin, after all, so he knows who she is and where she lives, even though they have never formally met. The only recollection Eliza has of the boy is when he would accompany his father to town, and Eliza would see the ragamuffin child trail behind his father’s rough and coarse woolen coat that dragged in the mud behind him as he shuffled, silently, toward the docks. Mad Virgil and his boy went off island twice per year, but Eliza did not know where they traveled, or why.
Mad Virgil did not attend Sunday services. The one time that Jacob had approached the man, Mad Virgil had ranted at Jacob. He mouthed senseless words, and spittle ran from the corner of his whiskered mouth. Jacob felt he had done his Christian duty in attempting to converse with the man; after the rebuff, Jacob ignored the wild-haired character, opting to invest his skills and services elsewhere. There were ruffians who lived near the docks who needed salvation, not to mention loggers and trappers who grazed the island bare.
“I will not be demeaned,” Jacob had said to Eliza one morning as he sipped coffee in the anteroom of the parsonage as she dusted the spare furniture.
“As it is written in Deuteronomy, ‘The Lord will smite those with curses, confusion, and rebuke, until they are destroyed, because they have forsaken Me.’”
“It is the West, Jacob.” Eliza had replied. “Perhaps the Lord needs to work harder to turn their hearts from stone.”
“Hmmm, ‘Hearts from Stone,’ that’s a good working title for a sermon. Thank you, Eliza. You have good ideas from time to time. Now excuse me. I must attend to more important matters.”
ELIZA ROUNDS THE CORNER OF TUTTLE’S CABIN AND SEES TUTTLE chopping wood behind his crude shanty. His beard all but occludes his face. A pile of cedar logs lays akimbo in a semicircle around his feet. He stops mid-chop, his axe high above his head.
“Ah, Mrs. Stamper. A sight for sore eyes.”
He lowers the axe to his side.
“You are too kind, Mr. Tuttle. You must not see many women if you are able to say so truthfully.”
Tuttle comes forward to accept the parcel Eliza offers from her basket. A ruddy nose and deep-set eyes are all that Eliza can make out through the mat of hair that covers his face, neck, and upper arms. Tuttle’s mouth all but disappears beneath a tangle of black.
“Shall we have tea?” Tuttle asks, as a formality.
Eliza sits upright on a hard chair on Tuttle’s porch as he goes inside to prepare the tea. Eliza looks toward what had once been the thriving town of Fisher Bay, and chances to remember what it had been like to live in town, back when there was a town in which to live.
ELIZA HAD WALKED THE SHORT TWO BLOCKS EAST ON CHURCH Street to the general store most afternoons when Fisher Bay rumbled and bustled with activity, before the epidemic. On the waterfront, to the right of the now dilapidated dock, the Fisher Bay Store offered drygoods and, on Wednesdays, fresh produce and meats. Eliza made it a habit to stop in at the store each day before she continued on to the post office.
When the Pamela Jean chugged away from the dock on Wednesday afternoons, bellowing steam with a loud cough from a monstrous engine and emitting a long whistle from the captain’s perch, the vessel’s leaving signaled a run on the store. Eliza learned this fact quickly. Wednesday afternoons were the mid-week social event on Cypress, as women and men frequented the store to pick over the week’s meat and fresh produce. By closing time on Wednesdays, it was “slim pickin’s” as Ida used to say. If wives and single men wanted any pork or beef, or the rare treat of fresh asparagus or peaches from east of the Cascade Mountains in late summer, they had better visit the store on a Wednesday afternoon, and sooner as much as later. Eliza only missed one Wednesday, when she fell ill from influenza, soon after their arrival to Cypress. That meatless week caused friction in her household, and garnered snide comments from Jacob when Eliza served Welsh Rarebit with quince jelly for Sunday dinner.
Jacob had left the table when Eliza put the meal before him. She had no appetite and left the plate where she set it down. The plate remained on the table for a full twenty-four hours, until the dish congealed. Eliza removed it at Monday supper, and placed Indian corn pudding in front of Jacob. Jonathan heaved a mouthful of the dish into his rosebud mouth. Eliza felt greatly restored to health, and mother and son ate with great relish; Jacob picked at the edges and reluctantly ate his portion. They lived through Tuesday—egg salad with mixed greens, with tapioca for dessert. On Wednesday, after the supply run—and thanks be to God!—there were pork chops; on Thursday, oxtail soup; and Friday, roast mutton. To everyone’s great relief, meat graced the table and normalcy returned to Number Four Church Street.
TUTTLE EMERGES WITH THE TEA, SERVED IN CHIPPED TEACUPS. Eliza always drinks from the yellow cup with the rose pattern; Tuttle uses the green one rimmed with gold leaf, with a large white band encircling the cup just under the lip. They sip politely and share a blueberry muffin. Neither of them talks of the past.
“Mighty good, Ma’am,” Tuttle says. “I must say, I miss home cookin’.”
Eliza doesn’t know if Tuttle refers to the muffins, or is asking for something much more.
Does he wish for me to make him more than the occasional sweet treat? Is he fishing for an invitation to dinner?
With horror, Eliza wonders if Tuttle refers to something else entirely, something vaguely marital.
She deflects her gaze. She instead peers past Tuttle’s ruddy, bearded face to the spot where the church once stood. There is little trace of First Methodist; no trace of the hand-hewn pews, no trace of Jacob’s forced piety, no trace of a thumb-worn hymnal. All that is left is a charred pile of wood and ash. She changes the subject.
“I’ve been wondering, of late, if you’ve seen the boy, the deaf boy, Virgil Cooper’s son.”
She turns to face Tuttle straight on.
Tuttle puts his cup down on the makeshift table near his knee.
“You mean that half-breed and his boy? Why, they left here more than a few months ago, Ma’am, didn’t I tell you? Or maybe I ain’t seen you since then. And since I’ve seen you last I’ve found myself a lady friend, you might say.”
Eliza starts to answer, but her thoughts jumble.
“No, I don’t remember you telling me, no.”
Eliza’s mind races. Her brow furrows and she winces. The blanket. The gun. The bundles of foodstuffs. She feels confused and disconnected from her present state as she balances a delicate teacup on her flannelled knee.
“They hitched along with Indian John. Don’t know where they ended up. Heard tell that there’s gold up in the Klondike. Somewhere up Alaska way. Mountains of gold, and all for the taking. I have half a mind to go chase the stuff myself. I don’t expect the others will be back now. Boy’s almost a man by now, between grass and hay, I’d reckon. You should have seen how much he growed, maybe a foot or more.”
Tuttle uses his large hands to indicate how much the boy had grown.
All color drains from Eliza’s face.
Put teacup down.
Straighten skirt.
Step, one, two, three paces.
Descend first step.
Descend second step.
Descend third step.
Eliza walks deliberately toward the cabin. By the time she reaches Smuggler’s Cove, Eliza’s emotions have welled up past crying, and she emits a loud soulful wail.
No, Jonathan is not here anymore. And neither is Samuel!
Eliza grieves for Samuel and for her grand plan. She grieves for all the lost moments of this fall, and last fall, and the fall before that. She grieves for all the knowing, and the not knowing.
And what of Steiner?
Eliza prays to God long into the night.
Heavenly Father, only You know the plans You have made for me. I look to You and Your wisdom to direct my steps.
Eliza wakes mid-sleep with perspiration dripping off her forehead in sheets. Eliza does not feel right in the head. She sits up and swears, and for the first time in her life takes the Lord’s name in vain.
“God-damn it! God-damn it all!”
In a motion so swift she cannot remember with clarity, she rises from the mattress and strips down until she stands naked in the darkness of the cabin. She raises the back of her wrist to her forehead. Her temple burns, as does the whole length of her torso. She sheds her nightclothes in one movement, rips them off her damp breasts and bottom. Any shred of cloth that touches her skin deepens the wound. Her entire being feels as if on fire. Sweat pours down her pale body, droplets collecting at her feet. A wave of nausea and vertigo washes over Eliza and she reaches for the bed frame to steady herself. Spots dance before her eyes.
I am burning alive.
Eliza fights nausea as she bends over and pulls on Jacob’s boots over her raw feet. She stamps her boots, once, twice, on the wooden slats of the cabin floor. Only then does Eliza open the door to the cabin, fully naked to the dark world.
To this day, the next quarter-hour still lingers at the edge of Eliza’s consciousness, as if at any moment she might return to the near-certain madness of unbridled grief, the night she ran through the woods on the north end of Cypress Island, dodging dense stands of fir and alder, railing against God and the world, swearing and screaming, living at the edge of sanity, welcoming the lash from the brambles and branches that stung her fragile skin, regretting her life and all that inhabited it, raging against death and delusion, and forgetting the evident fact that she was alone, and naked to the world, singed deep to the core.
Without thinking of the obvious consequences, Eliza runs into the strait and throws herself into the dark foam.
Weightless, slanted, down through the green, a shimmering moon dims as Eliza falls away from the light. She must have hit her head, because the world bruises purple, and the light refracts in hues of violet and blood.
No one will speak my name after today. It will always be, “that day,” or “the accident,” or, more often than not, “the drowning.” Just like the crazy woman who lived here before me. No one will find my body.
In that moment between death and life, that split second before the flame is extinguished and all that is left is the smoke, Eliza rises to the surface and takes in one last breath, a deep full inhale before the nothing. She sinks then toward the sea floor.
The water burns her skin, even more than the air. She is suspended between one hell and another. From somewhere deep inside, Eliza claws to the surface and gasps for breath. Her limbs are heavy as lead as she makes for the shore.
She wakes in the dark, drenched, in shallow water. Near freezing seawater laps at her sallow skin. As she rises into full consciousness, a tremble wracks her frame.
I am still alive.
She drags her bruised and bloodied body out of the shallow waters of Smuggler’s Cove, peeling Jacob’s sea-filled boots off her beached-white feet. She throws the boots up the beach where they land with a dull thunk, and she runs for the cover of the cabin, her soft feet torn by shards of mussel and clam shells. The cabin’s shadow looms large as she approaches, and she feels her way up the stoop like a blind man.
She races into Jacob’s coat and sits square in front of the cookstove on the three-legged stool, feeding the dying embers of the Acme a steady supply of kindling. Her fingers feel removed from her arms, her arms removed from her body. Her body now feels colder than she has ever experienced.
In a matter of minutes, in imperceptible increments, a wave of warmth creeps up her sleeves toward her heart, and with it, a soothing stream of forgiveness, and relief.
