A Star for Mrs. Blake (5 page)

Big Ole Uncle Percy was in his usual spot, perched on a spool of wire, slapping the strings of a beat-up guitar. He had meaty shoulders
and legs like wooden pilings. He could palm a twenty-inch round buoy in one hand. Even if he shaved, there’d always be a residue of dark scruff so he scarcely bothered. He got up in the dark and came back in the dark, never taking off the black wool cap pulled down over curly black hair, making him look like a curly black bear. He ate like a bear. When she cooked for him, Cora cooked enough for three. He’d pretty much abandoned family life after his wife, Avis, died, except to provide money, disappearing into small-fry illegal enterprises and surfacing when the law got too close. Like his nephew, Sammy, Big Ole Uncle Percy skated on thin ice.

Tonight he was the star of the show, having just pulled up a haul from one of his traps that was worth a lot more than lobsters—a dozen bottles of Canadian booze. A week ago he’d placed an order in an empty bottle in the trap, and here was the prize. He was in cahoots with an uncle up in Nova Scotia who had a second sense when it came to the coast guard. His boat could outrun them anyway. The stuff he sold was first-rate—the proof being that nobody had died from alcohol poisoning so far.

Linwood Moody was feeling nothing but warm sloppy love for the horny old horn blowers. He’d been singing and clomping along with the rest, his clean L. L. Bean hunting shoes in cadence with their filthy rubber waders the size of kayaks. He was as strong as they were, every inch an outdoorsman, but his sandy hair was clipped and he favored slacks and Fair Isle vests, because he was a professional soil scientist, and in this company there was no need to pretend otherwise. He was not like these men, but he was of them—comfortably so—because his father had been a mariner and he’d grown up on the island, graduating from high school a year ahead of Cora Blake.

Still, he had not become a regular until after his wife, Grace, had died and they’d made an effort to bring him in, because a man who found himself suddenly alone like that needed friends and encouragement if he ever hoped to get back on the horse. It took two years before Linwood could step foot inside and even then he felt like an impostor—not at Lester’s, but in life. Grace had been a passenger in a cousin’s car going from Ellsworth to Augusta to visit her aunt when
they hit a patch of black ice and went off the road and head-on into a tree. She had a good job with the phone company, which was just then expanding service throughout the state; he mapped soils for the government and taught geology at the University of Maine at Orono. Hundreds and hundreds of miles on the road between them, and one patch of ice trips everything up.

He drank. He slept. He hurt. He worked. He felt nothing. He went hunting with his brothers. It didn’t make sense, but a voice kept saying,
Go home
, so one Saturday the previous fall he took a drive to the island, crossing the reach on the ferry scow. He’d stopped for a hot dog at the top of Caterpillar Hill. Sitting alone at a picnic table with a good view of the cranberry bogs, auburn and russet, he could feel the colors starting to change inside himself, too.

He wasn’t overthinking everything like he always did, running the accident like punishment in his brain; he was just an ordinary Joe, following the road where it wanted to go, through a couple of townships with neatly clustered communities until it ended at the harbor, and that felt right, the sea ahead of him dotted with far-off islands, everything opening up. He sat for a long time on a stray block of granite at the entrance to the wharf, not yet ready to walk the streets of his childhood, go up to the Lily Pond and the quarry, and a couple of fishermen happened along and they talked for a while—“Come out to Lester’s sometime, don’t be shy”—and when they were gone he turned away from the waterfront and happened to look across the street, and there was the library.

Not in any hurry, he wandered over and went inside, three steps up and across the porch. He wanted just to warm himself, but a pretty woman smiled at him from a high-up old-fashioned desk and said, “Hello”—and it was Cora Blake from high school, hadn’t seen her since Grace’s funeral, didn’t know that she was working there, a miracle the place is open, hard times, glad to see you back.

A patch of ice
.

Three steps up
.

That had been eighteen months ago. Now he was sauntering along the wharf on a wet April night, the music growing faint behind
him until, by the time he reached Main Street, the only sound was rain resonating in all directions, on shingled roofs and slick granite embankments, trash cans and wooden sidewalks, tapping on leaves and running in drains. The newspaper around his chart was getting wet and starting to wilt. He could see the light ahead, and Cora Blake framed in amber glow as she peered out the window—was she watching for him? She wore a thick rust-colored sweater with an orange scarf at the neck. Her golden-brown hair was parted in the middle and pinned back loosely in a knot, the clean oval of her face mottled by raindrops sliding down the pane. She looked like brandy in a glass. Not able to make him out in the shadows, she folded her arms impatiently and turned her back on the rain.

Three steps up
.

The doorbell tinkled and Cora nearly jumped from the desk. “Good Lord, you scared me!”

“I guess I’m the scary type.”

“Terrifying.”

She turned on the stool, reluctantly drawn away from her letter to Minnie Seibert, and watched as he slowly took off the slicker. He did things in a deliberate way that could be exasperating when you had something else on your mind.

“You’ve been at Lester King’s,” she said.

“Can’t deny it.”

“What are they up to over there?”

“Singing. I learned a new song from Big Ole Uncle Percy.”

“Does he know you were off to see me?”

“Are you joking? I value my private parts. Want to hear it?”

“No.”

But he started anyway: “ ‘Walkin’ down Canal Street / Knockin’ at the door—’ ”

“I can imagine where that leads.”

“Dirty girl.”

“You actually have a decent voice if you would use it properly,” Cora teased him.

“I have another talent.”

“Is that so?”

He stood the chart on the easel and drew the wet newspaper away. “What do you think?”

She nodded with approval. “Looks good.”

“I made it myself.”

“You did not.”

“True. I stole it from the college.”

Cora was pleased to see that the chart was colorful enough to hold the attention of the eleven-in-the-morning ladies, and that the letters were large enough for them to read. Specimens of precious stones were glued to the cardboard under drawings that showed their origins: volcanoes, soil, or sand.

“It’s nice that you can touch the rocks.”

“Minerals.”

Linwood’s glasses were all fogged up. He wiped them off.

“We’ve got a spell of weather,” he observed, offering a flask. “There’s a big tree down in the village. Had to take the Pressy Road.”

“Whereabouts?” she asked, taking a pull.

“Just before you get to the old schoolhouse.”

“Next to the Pickerings?”

“Other side. Sellers.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“No.”

“That’ll be a mess.”

“Nothing for it now.”

“They’ve got flares, I hope.”

Linwood nodded.

They listened to the rain. He saw the letters on the desk.

“What are you doing?”

“Tending to my flock in Party A.”

“If you want a job with the army, why don’t you enlist?”

“Oh, they wouldn’t want me. I’m too mean.”

“Yes, you are.”

“It’s not a big job, anyway. Only five of us in the party.”

“Hardly seems worth the trouble.”

“They have to keep the parties small because there aren’t any big hotels where we’re going, to the little French towns.”

“With little French men on the prowl?” Linwood asked.

“Ha! They treat us like a bunch of schoolchildren. We’re supposed to be chaperoned by an army officer and a nurse.”

“A nurse? Is she pretty?” Cora gave him a hard stare and Linwood added quickly, “Not as pretty as you.”

“Right answer.” She smiled.

He jammed his hip against hers and squeezed beside her on the stool.

“Go away,” she told him, laughing. “You smell like a brewery.”

Instead he leaned in closer, pretending to study the letters on her desk.

“What’s the game?”

“Well, I’m called the member coordinator for Party A. My commanding officer is Mrs. Olsen, the one I told you about—”

“The rich Cambridge lady.”

“She sends piles of instructions and I pass them on. Still haven’t heard from two of them.”

“Forget it.”

“They might need my help. Like this one.” She tapped Minnie Seibert’s letter. “I feel bad for her. The poor thing wants to go, but she’s too afraid.”

“Maybe she should just stay home.”

Cora made a wry smile. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if Linwood was joking or just being his practical self. Sometimes they were the same.

“It’s her husband.”

Linwood looked confused. “Why? Does
he
want to go?”

“No! And he doesn’t want her to, either.”

“Why can’t he go?” Linwood wondered, tipping the flask.

“Because he’s not a mother or a widow.”

“So what? It’s his kid.”

Cora took the flask again. “Women only. You don’t like it, write to Congress.”

He laughed. “I know how far that would get me. It’s too bad.”

“What’s too bad?”

“Never mind.”

“What were you going to say?”

He shrugged. “Do you sometimes wish Curtis was still around?”

“My husband, Curtis?” she asked, surprised.

“I was thinking, at a time like this.”

She shook her head. “Nothing to do with him,” she replied sharply.

“Sorry. Too much to drink. Just tell me to shut up.”

Cora was feeling a sick reaction in her stomach. She didn’t like to talk about Curtis, she didn’t like to type his name on the forms or hear it spoken out loud. He was like poison on her tongue; the poison of a lifetime of lies, layered and molding in a trunk that was closed once and should never be opened. It brought to mind the trunk with Sammy’s baby clothes she’d stashed in the cupola on the barn after he’d outgrown them; after she’d left college and come home with an infant son and without a husband.

“It was a long time ago, Lin,” she said, softening toward him. “Sammy wasn’t even one when Curtis died. He didn’t know his son and he had no share in raising him. Don’t say sorry. It was God’s will,” she added.

More poison on the tongue. She could almost feel a blister rise every time she told that lie.

“At least Sammy didn’t get cholera,” she went on, horribly. “That’s the way I have to look at it. I had sixteen good years with him.”

How low could she get, to use Sammy in order to duck the truth?
It’s better for everyone this way
, is what she always told herself.

Linwood said, “I understand.”

“I know you do,” she said, thinking about Grace.

He realized that he was stone-cold sober. The booze had abandoned him. He’d come to a dead stop.

“No use to talk about sad times,” he said.

Linwood put his slicker back on and went to the door. He wasn’t being pensive or rude. It was customary in that region that when conversation comes to its natural end you simply leave, just the way he’d
left without saying a word at Lester King’s. No goodbyes or apologies are necessary; no future plans need to be made. It was understood the parties would naturally run into each other soon enough. It was an island, after all.

If Cora hadn’t gotten up and kissed him, Linwood would have walked into the rain. If he hadn’t put his hand on her breast, she might have found it easier to let him go. Instead she reached behind them and turned off the lamp. The room went black. With the twist of a switch the cottage, porch, the library and all its books, the unfinished letter to Minnie Seibert, and the man and woman in a strengthening embrace disappeared in the dark.

Cora barely recognized Linwood Moody’s Chevrolet pickup as it rolled down Main Street. The blue truck, a squat workhorse usually covered with mud, had been transformed into the bluest truck she’d ever seen—robin’s egg blue—and so shined up, you could watch the clouds float by on the polished fenders. It pulled up and parked beside the wooden sidewalk at the bottom of the hill, looking swank against the weathered bait shacks that fronted the harbor.
Aren’t
you
pleased with yourself?
Cora thought of the stubby old thing.

Linwood hopped out. He’d put on a pressed shirt and bow tie along with his summer fedora. Cora watched from the porch, suitcases at her feet, as Linwood went through his hello ritual: took off the hat to smooth his hair, checked his keys, patted his wallet, and lit a cigarette, before even turning to wave. He was taking so long! Her fingers drummed the railing. She wanted to fly right off the porch.

The train for New York City with a stop in Boston would leave Bangor that afternoon at 2:46 p.m., and three days later the ocean liner S.S.
Harding
would debark for Le Havre, France. Before she knew it, she would be standing on a street in Paris! And from there—she couldn’t think. The past month had been a whirlwind. Once her name had appeared in the paper on the list of pilgrims leaving from Maine, she’d heard as far away as Somerset from others who were unable to make the trip, and the white-ribboned pile began to grow, as they asked her to bring back a bag of French soil, lay rocks and read poems, sing Johnny’s favorite song, say a prayer, write a travelogue, go on the radio.