Islands Reappear

Journal Entry #444:

Lately I have been thinking about what doc said: so stupid but maybe I’ll try it. Reminder that he said maybe I should try writing my journal entries from an outside observer perspective, maybe so I can be more kind to myself? I don’t think it will work, especially since who can actually be objective about themselves?! That seems like an exercise in futility. Honestly though, I have had the most crazy week so maybe it would be beneficial to slow things down and be as objective as possible about everything that has happened (from an outside perspective). Exclusive, this just in: news with what perhaps reveals some other things that you all don’t know about me? Stay tuned and buckle in:

“Pa, I think he’s dead.”

Mae gingerly poked the supine man with a piece of driftwood.

The tide was coming in. It was the start of oyster season. Each year they had to keep going further afield to bring in a haul that was worth anything. Each year they had to go further than the year before what with the water levels coming up, overfishing and people trampling on sands where they shouldn’t. Today Mae was helping her Pa with the catch when their boat got caught in between the tide and some rocks. Ole Pearl had seen better days but now it would take over a week to fix the myriad small holes in her keel. Time they couldn’t afford to lose, what with it being oyster season.

As they were pulling the boat ashore onto one of the small, uninhabited inlet islands, they saw a flash of carmine red set against the grey of the rocks, backed up against the lighter grey of the sky. Unnatural red. Once they had secured Ole Pearl, they walked over and found the red was coming from a small cave, hidden by the landscape if you weren’t looking at it just right. Unless the light was just right, it looked just like any other pile of rocks.

The man Mae was now poking was wearing a full Native American headdress, fake and cheap with red and orange plastic feathers sewn into the fabric.

The rest of him was garbed in what looked like an antiquated military uniform of some kind—dirty, sea-stained and ripped in multiple places.

Mae whispered to Pa, “I didn’t know there was a war on?”

Pa tried to wipe the shock and fatigue from his face but still ended up looking bedraggled and quizzical.

“Well there isn’t. At least not round these parts there isn’t,” he managed.

…

Cornbread and fish stew for dinner again tonight.

Later that night Mae laid out her clothes for the next day, like she always did. She laid out her red and white polka dot dress, the only dress she owned that had only one stain on it, and it was a place easy to conceal. The dress she used to wear to church, when she used to go. She figured, they wouldn’t go out on the boat the next day what with the repairs needed, the storm and what with having an ailing guest to tend to.

…

Her shoulders ached from hauling him into the boat. He was heavier than he looked, or maybe the water had soaked the wool of his uniform to render him like a human paperweight! The water was coming with the tide into the small cave and an unconscious person would drown or be bashed against the rocks in a matter of minutes.

The young man had a pulse and was breathing, though not deeply. When Mae and Pa had hauled him onto the tethered Ole Pearl they managed to expel the rogue water from his lungs. They didn’t have time to ask questions before arriving back to their home dock.

The grey skies of the early day had brewed into an early tropical storm by nightfall. It took all of Mae and Pa’s strength to navigate the coast. The Ole Pearl’s ability to stay due course was impeded by the tiny floods she took at every wave. But alas, finally, the tiny light of their dock bled through and they tethered her, shouting to one another as they sea-sawed the limp man from boat to dock and dock to breathless house, with the wind stealing all the breath for the shutters.

The power had gone out, of course. They laid the man on the floor of the hall. Pa went back out to secure the outbuildings and try the generator. Mae stayed in the hall and felt along the baseboards for the bottom of the roll-top desk. She found it and felt along the bottom drawer for matches and candles. She lit the first match and lit the first taper. The man gasped and sat upright. Mae gasped back.

Carrying in her right hand the one lit taper up the spiral staircase, she held his frame (just under the shoulder blades) across her left arm, winding ever dark and guiding the light unto the top landing.

“We are good folk. We won’t let anything happen to you, I promise,” she soothed as they climbed.

Mae moved the corduroy-jacketed teddy bears from the bedspread to the rocking chair by the bed. The guest room hadn’t been used in many a fortnight and acted more as storage and memory repository of late. She built a small fire downstairs to heat the kettle and creaked up and down the stairs to bring tea and bandages, dry clothes and extra quilts.

Holding the steaming cup of chamomile in her hand, she saw the man had placed the ragged plastic headdress on own of the rocking teddies. She cracked a smile.

“My name is Mae,” she outstretched her tea hand to place it in his. “It’s just me and Pa here now. We bring in oysters during the season and I work in town during summer, tourist season, one of those hokey gift shops the tourist folk love. You got a name?”

The young man cleared his throat and felt the raw burn and scorch that comes from swallowing too much seawater.

“It’s Keme. I also work for the tourists.” He winced as he tried to smile and move at the same time.

“Best stay as still as possible-we don’t know what all you may have fractured or torn.” Mae moved the head-dressed teddy to her lap and sat in the rocking chair.

“Well Keme, you are one lucky soul that we found you when we did. How did you get in that cave? And what’s with the get up?” She motioned to the wet uniform folded on the floor.

“Oh yeah, I dress like this for fun.” He gave a chuckle that turned into a rasping cough, holding his ribs.

“Oh I bet. Here.” She placed a warm damp rag over the back of his neck.

He sighed and closed his eyes. “I got in the cave cause I guess the storm blew me there? I don’t remember everything, that’s for sure. See I work up at the historic reenactment theme park. Up on the other side of the sound, the theme park takes up the whole island. I’m supposed to be one of the Natives that “peacefully integrated” with the white man and helped fight wars with him. Can’t you tell by my swarthy skin and grey eyes?” His eyes glinted mischievously. They were truly the color of a storm.

Mae laughed. “I’ll bet they eat up everything you say.”

“Oh, I’m not allowed to speak, of course. I’m meant to pose and gesture majestically and cry if people litter in front of me.”

“So the timeline is meant to be before you learned English but after you start fighting with the settlers, peacefully, against other settlers and tribes?”

“I guess that’s the size of it.”

“And I’m sure you must be a chief with that elaborate headdress, made from orange native duck feathers?”

“Yep.”

“So is that supposed to be the Algonquin? The Tuscarora?”

“Oh I mean, I have literally said Inuit and no one bats an eye.”

“Well it all sounds very historically accurate.” Mae gave him a wry laugh that ended with a sad smile. It lingered as she stared into space for a beat. “I’ll let you get some rest. You just holler if you need anything.”

The next few days passed in a blur. Mending. Mending Keme. Mending the Ole Pearl. By nightfall Mae would nearly nod off at the supper table but always looked forward to bringing Keme his supper in bed so that they could swap stories. He did all the character voices. He had the most expressive face. Mae worried hers was frozen shut by contrast but he always made her laugh.

The power company still hadn’t fixed all the lines and as far out as they were it would be a few more days yet. They only turned on the generator a few hours a day to save fuel.

When Keme was able to walk, he spent mornings helping Pa repair the boat. After a few days of soldiering, they all decided to take Ole Pearl out for a test run. Keme wanted to sail out to the island where he worked, to get some things he had left in his locker. The tide was low and placid. Reflective fish met their ends by the long swooping dives of pelican and gull.

It was late afternoon. Keme gestured to Pa to still the wheel and cut the engine.

“Well it’s supposed to be here.”

“What?” Mae asked, wiping sweat from her brow.

“The island. I’m sure of it.” Panic crossed Keme’s face.

Pa and Mae looked at one another.

“Listen, son, it’s probably just that you miscalculated. It’s probably not too far from here.”

“No, I know it’s supposed to be here. Do you think the storm could have wiped away a whole island? Like, off the map?”

“Nah, son. I don’t think so. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like that happen.” Pa cleared his throat.

“Well damn, I had a whole pack of mint baseball cards in that locker.”

After lunch the next day, Mae took Keme to the local library to request coastal maps and shore records. The librarian had bottle blue eyes that stared at them over glass rims. Years? Or specific dates? She had asked. As far back as you have but also the present, they had said. That sounded like the right thing to say.

….

In the subsequent afternoons and evenings they traveled the shoreline with just their bare feet, flashlights and a few maps Pa had lying around. They documented the shoreline with their steps, photos and notes.

After dusk, they noted the movement of the stars, the phase of the moon.

While they waited for the library records, they filled the rest of their days by collecting driftwood, seashells and mermaids’ purses. They built elaborate sand sculptures. They shot glass bottles with old bee-bee guns. They chewed handfuls of bubblegum. They drank gallons of cream soda.

They carried around old capes and costumes so that when night fell and drunk tourists would people the dunes, they would don them while hiding, flicker their flashlights and eerily shout-whisper,

“We are avenging spirits! Roanoke will have its blood!” The drunkards in their polos would fall over themselves trying to run away. Once safe, Keme and Mae would fall into heaps of laughter. The giddiness carried them home, knowing they had protected their precious dunes if but for another day.

One evening after some epic bottle shooting, they laid on the sand, looking up at the gathering dusk.

“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?” Keme asked.

Mae emphatically shook her head no.

“It’s just lately I’m starting to worry that I made this whole place up. Like did I just imagine an entire time and place of my life?”

Mae propped herself on one elbow to look at him. “I don’t think so.”

“See, the thing is, my grandma used to tell me—don’t visit your Shadow Self too often, or you just may just stay there. I never knew what she meant, but I know it has always kind of terrified me.”

“You think that island was an extension of your Shadow Self? Or is now your Shadow Self?”

“Hmm, neither I guess? Well maybe some things about that island.”

“Have you ever heard about the legend of the vanishing island of Mona?”

Keme shook his head.

“I read about it in a book once. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

…

Later that night, alone in her room, Mae opened her hope chest. Or her mother’s hope chest, rather. The hope chest her mother left her. She pulled out the quotation written in a quill script on parchment stationary at the bottom:

“In America

When you have been alone

and venture out onto the road again

Every road sign

Is sign in triplicate

For why you should be there,

why you should have left

and the risks of leaving.”

She didn’t know the author’s name. On top of that rested the small, velvet-lined box with two perfect pearls inside, one pearl twice as large as the other. She had found them last year while sorting and shucking. Two in the same batch. Pa had been so proud. He said she should keep them, even though their sale could help with some much needed repairs around the house. Mae palmed them, reverently placed them back in their box, closed the chest and blew out the candle.

…

From the journal of a seasonal fisher, Alaskan salmon station, almost-summer months, present day:

The Origin of Ghosts and Poles

Dusk falls on the little pond at the end of the abandoned lane. Plantain lilies, dandelions and clover sprout and overlay the cracks of broken concrete slabs leading to Scraggle Flap Lake. Their leaves wilt as blue-black falls in the late Spring heat. As they fall, the sound of cicadas, crickets and Spring Peepers rise to meet the sonic middle.

Campers, voyeurs and dark tourists begin making their arrival, along the perimeter of the pond. They flatten down the grass with their woven blankets and Patagonia tarps, their PFAA-laden cutlery and tinder their Duraflame (TM) Starter Logs.

Butane, silt and swamp grass say goodbye to the sun.

Strangers next to strangers, having read the same articles, seen the same footage, alone together in the crepuscular dark as Aries rises, Scorpius and Lupus to rise later.

“So this the setting, but what exact spooky thing happened here, again?” Seth pushed, with his left arm, a willow reed (whittled to a point with a red Swiss Army knife, Circa the 1986 Boy Scouts of America (TM) catalog) brandishing a half-way burnt marshmallow into the depths of the fire.

“I dunno but it’s like Blair witch meets like Baba Gaga meets Sasquanch…”

“Or like…”

With his right arm Seth holds the Swiss Army knife limp at the tips of long lithe fingers.

“All I know is that wasn’t about someone who died, but about someone who truly lived.”

Sandy says, “this just in: I just received a Zip file containing numbered LiveJournal entries (containing transcribed old journal entries) with an adjoining Autocad file!”

“No way!” Say Little Feather and Dante from the campfire 35 degrees to the right (because they heard Sandra exclaim).

“We just received the Zip file but also with Geological Surveys dating back to…”

Another unknown camper 54 degrees to the West jumps in, looking over their shoulders and says, “guys, from a geologic and historic point of view, this pond never should have been here and doesn’t exist on any maps.”

“Also, the latitude and longitude don’t make sense on a compass.”

“Also, these concrete slabs making up the path were never registered with the County, the City, the State or the Country. So whoever made this sidewalk, made it themselves.”

“Also, guys, the electromagnetic reading of this place is off the charts.”

Good things come in threes.

…

Journal Entry #445:

So this can get dark, right ? I don’t know, it’s just so hard lately. Just sometimes feels as if the muse can be a creative force that demands sacrifice. You know, right? It takes a lot to be able to create. There are creation myths throughout almost every civilization known to humankind and in every one, creation is a boon that demands sacrifices. It just feels like all the things that have happened this week have happened on a deeper level but I can’t pinpoint the thread that connects them all, and the stress eats holes in my memory. It is like dredging the bottom of a shallow net across too wide a bed. Part of me knows that if anyone besides us read this, they would never believe it. But when you are out there, in these remote spaces, spaces that are constantly changing, there is a terror and mystery to it all, knowing that you may be the only pair of human eyes to ever witness it. Oh, gotta go. Pa is calling from downstairs. He’s saying the library left a voicemail. Hopefully they have those maps.