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“I suppose you mean it's common knowledge, Pix?” Roger smiled.
Roger was even taller than Eric. He looked like a basketball player of the Kevin McHale variety, big hands, long arms, and slightly pigeon breasted. But basketball players didn't have full beards and hair past their earlobes as Roger did. It was all very tidy and he was an attractive man, yet he didn't seem to generate the energy Eric did. He had gentle, large brown eyes the same color as his hair and beard. His face was tanned, and the whole effect resembled an underpainting waiting for the definitions of color. His voice matched—calm, slow, and, Faith was pretty sure, slightly stoned. Pix's voice, in contrast, was like a circus barker's, one who had made a stop at the Winsor School and Pembroke.
“Yes I do, and you and Eric know it as well as I do. Could you afford to buy anything on this island? I know Sam and I couldn't, at least not something with frontage.”
Eric broke in, playing devil's advocate. “It hasn't been my impression that people on this island are easily talked into anything, Pix, let alone swindled out of their birthrights.”
He stopped suddenly at the thought in everyone's mind, then recovered gracefully. “Case in point. Do you think it likely that Matilda Prescott could have been talked into leaving her house to the two of us, delightful as we are, if she hadn't wanted to? Forget for a minute what the whole island is saying.”
“Well,” Pix grudgingly admitted, “Matilda might have been
an exception. Besides, she really could have sold the property for a fortune. Paul Edson would have killed to get it and years ago told her to name her price. Her answer was to tell him if he ever raised the matter again or set foot on her land, she'd shoot him. No, Matilda couldn't have been sweet-talked into anything.”
“Exactly,” Eric said. “And the Prescotts know it too. Otherwise they would be contesting the will. This is a very litigious island, remember. People love to have the excuse to go up to the county courthouse and maybe take in a movie or eat at McDonald's while they're suing.”
Everyone, including Jill, laughed.
Pix doggedly returned to her point. “But everybody is not Matilda, and I think a lot of people have been cheated out of their land, or at least have not gotten the fair market value for it. It's all these wealthy summer people with their big yachts.”
“But Pix, you're a summer person,” Faith reminded her.
“Yes, but a different kind. We respect the island and the people who live here.”
“How do you know the new people don't? Just because they live in big houses and need five bathrooms, eight bedrooms, hot tubs, big-screen TVs for one double-income-no-kids couple?” Roger asked.
“Dinks! Exactly my point, Roger—I knew you agreed with me,” Pix cried out. “And so does Eric, only he's too stubborn to admit it.”
“Oh, I do admit it, Pix, and I don't think it's just that developers are offering large sums for shore lots. It's that the economy, basically the fishing industry, is in such trouble that people have to sell to support themselves. Plus the new people build houses, which means more jobs.”
“So we're going to end up with a gentrification of the whole coast. Lots of snazzy planned communities with a view,” Roger added. It was obviously something they both felt strongly about.
“And the first thing they'll do is go back to the original spelling, ‘St. Pierre', because it looks more elegant on stationery,” Pix fumed.
Faith rose. “Let's have dessert outside. I put some citronella
candles on the porch, and if we douse ourselves in repellent we may be able to survive. Although the mosquitoes could be your first line of defense. And the black flies. Maybe we should be grateful and let them have a nibble.”
She realized as she spoke that she found any thought of change on the island as distasteful as the rest of the group. The place was certainly getting to her.
Jill started to pick up a plate, but Faith stopped her. “And please just leave everything. We have some fromage blanc—and strawberries from the Miller garden—that needs to be eaten immediately.”
“Is it true, Pix, that Sam is having the road widened so the trucks from Birdseye can make it down to your place?” Roger asked.
“Very funny, but I must say we are having a pretty terrific yield this year.”
“Then by all means say it.” Eric opened the door for her and bowed.
Everyone left early, as island custom seemed to dictate. All those energetic things to do at dawn, like weeding.
Jill had thanked Faith and hoped they would see each other again soon. Faith watched them drive away, noting that Eric had joined Jill in her car. Maybe he liked a good listener, and she was certainly a striking woman. Faith would call her beautiful—probably most other women would. Tom would say no. They never agreed on female pulchritude, so she automatically said “striking” instead of “gorgeous” in her mind. Jill had worn a gauzy white-linen shirt, full skirt of the same material, a wide dark-brown leather belt, and matching flats. She was willing to bet Jill didn't do her shopping at JC Penney, not even in the Stephanie Powers Collection.
She saw Jill again the following night at the Baked Bean and Casserole Supper with Eric and Roger. She was wearing jeans and a huge gray Champion sweatshirt, probably Eric's, and she still looked striking. They had managed to save seats for the Miller-Fairchild contingent at one of the long trestle tables set up in the IOOF Hall. It was covered with white butcher paper and
someone had placed an arrangement of wildflowers in a spray-painted coffee can exactly in the center. Faith imprisoned Benjamin in his Sassy Seat with Samantha on guard while she and Pix went to load their plates with food that even from afar seemed to fulfill Faith's prophecy. There was a good warm food smell in the air, like bread baking with a freshly brewed pot of coffee on the back burner, but it seemed to bear no relationship to what Faith could actually see in front of her.
The hall was full, and outside in the increasingly cool evening a patient crowd waited their turn for three-bean salad and watermelon pickles. When Faith returned with as little of the mystery casseroles and as much of the fresh crabmeat salad, homemade bread, beans, and what she knew was Pix's black-seeded Simpson lettuce possible, the table was full too. She recognized Elliot and Louise Frazier, long-time friends of the whole Miller family, who lived in one of the old ship's-captain houses in Sanpere Village. The others were new to her.
Pix hastened to make introductions. “Faith, these are our friends Bill Fox and John Eggleston. Bill writes books and lives not too far from us, toward South Beach. John is a wood sculptor and another man of the cloth. He lives in Little Harbor.”
A booming voice cut her off.
“Used
to be, Pix. Whatever sermonizing I do now is to the gulls and myself.”
The voice matched his size and general appearance. He was well over six feet, with startling bright-red hair shooting out in flames all over his head. A few gray strands were beginning to ameliorate the effect, and Faith judged him to be in his mid forties. He was wearing a Welsh fisherman's smock and a Greek fisherman's hat, which created an ecumenically nautical effect or vice versa. He must have been something to see in the pulpit. She wondered about the “used to be” part. Who left whom?
Bill Fox was a neat, dapper little man with a crisply pressed Brooks Brothers striped oxford-cloth button-down shirt. It was open at the neck, but Faith knew there were bow ties at home, just as she was willing to bet that when he stood up, he'd prove to be wearing chinos and Topsiders. He was the kind of person who has looked the same for most of his adult life, appearing
middle-aged in his twenties, then when everyone else caught up looking perennially youthful. Slightly balding, horn-rimmed glasses, and anywhere from thirty to fifty. Faith was struck by a sudden thought and asked, “Bill Fox. Not William H. H. Fox!”
He smiled. “I admit to such, yes.”
“Pix, ‘He writes books.' That has to be one of your greatest understatements of all time.” Faith turned to Fox. “I love your work and have reread all of it constantly throughout my life. I've never thought of them as children's books.”
“I don't either,” he confessed. “But children seem to approach them most readily.”
Faith knew that Pix's reading, when she had the time, was limited to breeding manuals for Golden Retrievers and Rodale Press best-sellers, but she couldn't believe that she had been on the island all this time in close proximity to William H. H. Fox and Pix hadn't mentioned it.
He had written a series considered modern classics in which two children discovered that they had the power to make themselves as tiny as field mice and explore the natural world in exquisite detail. One day in the forest they ventured down a hole and came upon an enchanted land, Selega, ruled by Prince Herodias and Princess Ardea. Further books related their travels in Selega and followed them through childhood in both worlds. The last book ended with their discovery that they couldn't make themselves small anymore. Faith always cried whenever she got to that final page. It was hard to pinpoint the appeal of the stories—they were a mixture of real and surreal, fantasy and adventure, with a lot of nursery-tea-type coziness thrown in whenever the children were in the big world. And Selega was perfect. There had been many a day, Faith remembered, when she longed to be transported there as Princess Ardea of the flowing dark hair and the eyes like violets. Not to mention all the handmaidens and silken gowns.
“Would you mind telling me what the two ‘H's stand for? I've always wondered.”
“Not at all. I'd put the whole thing in, but it might not fit on the cover. My full name is William Henry Harrison Fox. With a
short last name, my mother figured she could have free rein with the rest. My brother is Ulysses Grant Garfield Fox. Mom liked double initials and famous men.”
Faith had read that Fox was a shy recluse, but it was hard to attach that image to the genial man sitting across from her heartily enjoying what appeared to be canned corn mixed with sliced hot dogs and elbow macaroni.
By dessert Faith had decided Pix was right. Baked Bean and Casserole Suppers and their like were not to be missed. It wasn't the food so much, though the baked beans had been delicious, but the ambience. Everybody seemed to be having such a good time. The hall was full of happy noise, and there was a constant change of scenery as contented diners relinquished their places to newcomers. Faith sat with a thick white china mug of the coffee she had smelled earlier, a huge slab of blueberry pie, and a couple of chewy oatmeal cookies to fill in the corners and watched. John Eggleston had departed, after delivering a lengthy and learned answer to Eric's query about who were the Odd Fellows anyway? (Roots in medieval England, the first lodge in the U.S. chartered in the early 1800's and dedicated to educational assistance.) Faith wasn't surprised. Ministers always seemed to know things like this. Samantha was also gone, joining Arlene in the kitchen, where she was helping out. Everyone else was lingering over the desserts with slightly guilty glances at the line that still remained. Ben had plunged two fists into a plate of pie and was now singing softly to himself as he licked his fingers.
“I don't think I can eat another thing,” sighed Pix blissfully as she finished her second piece of pie. “Of course I said that after the main courses.”
Faith started to invite everyone back to the cottage for brandy or whatever one had after such an event, when she realized that the line had shifted again and the two people who had just edged through the door were attracting a few surreptitious glances. (She had already learned that no one in Maine actually displayed overt curiosity.)
It was Bird with her rock musician. He looked quite ordinary, or at least for the Hard Rock Café or some other place where
adolescents and post-adolescents dressed the part. He was wearing tight black leather pants and a vest with no shirt, which had to be pretty nippy Down East, and his hair was carefully arranged in careless spikes. Faith had never seen Bird up close. She was certainly dressed like a flower child, and a rather pale baby was tied in a sling on her back, but no one was noticing her dress or the baby.
Bird was beautiful. Not striking. There would be no argument. Long shining deep black hair and luminous eyes that seemed to change from blue to purple as the light caught them. Cheeks flushed from the cold and rosy lips that were slightly parted. Absolutely beautiful.
Faith looked across the table. Bill Fox was gazing at the door with a sudden look of intense longing on his face. Roger was looking too, a slightly blurred duplicate. They wouldn't want to go anywhere for a while.
Princess Ardea had just walked into the room.
“Going, going, gone.” The auctioneer brought his gavel down with a bang on the crate he had set on top of a chest of drawers. Another quilt had been bid up by the dealers and off-islanders. But Faith felt confident that she would get one eventually. There were so many. It seemed that generations of Prescott women had done nothing but cut up their old clothes and piece them into quilts. During the viewing in the barn, the choicest ones had been hung on the walls and suspended from the rafters like glowing pennants for a tournament. And in a way an auction was like a tournament as knight jousted with knight for the prize—a fair damsel, splinter of the true cross, or walnut five-shelf corner whatnot.
They were holding up another quilt now, a particularly beautiful one with a huge Mariner's Compass in the center in shades of blue, surrounded by smaller ones quilted in white on white.
Faith raised her card hopefully when the bidding started, then sighed, sat back, and watched.
It was fascinating. The auctioneer spoke so rapidly she could scarcely follow, and as he rattled off the bids—“Two hundred dollahs, do I heayre two fifty?”—his partner, an elderly man who looked like he'd be more at home in a dory on Eggemoggin Reach checking his traps, reached toward the crowd and grabbed the bids out of thin air, keeping up a constant accompaniment—“Yep, yep, you have it. You have it.”
It was all over at five hundred dollars.
“Remember, it was one of the older ones, Faith,” Pix comforted her.
They had arrived at seven o'clock, laden with chairs, a thermos of coffee, another of cold lemonade, sandwiches, tape measures, and a firm resolve not to get carried away; if one showed signs of it, the other had solemnly sworn to push her companion's chair over. Faith could afford to bid high for what she wanted, since she had a tidy little trust fund started by her perspicacious great-grandfather. The nest egg had shrunk to plover size after she had begun her catering business, but her success had let her replace what she had taken out and a good deal more. Tom looked upon it as a golden egg—insurance for old age, and also back-up college tuition for Benjamin and whoever might follow. Faith agreed, with one exception: She would pay for her clothes. She supposed that loosely defined, that could include a quilt, but she was at the auction for bargains, unless she fell head over heels in love with something. And then there was always Pix the watchdog; if she started to bid wildly, Pix would see to it that she was literally head over heels.
Pix could afford the high bids, too, but she had an ingrained Yankee frugality that continued to astound Faith—the kind that cut off the one leg in her pantyhose that had a run, matched the good leg with a similar survivor, and suffered two elastic waistbands and goodness only knew what kind of discomfort in the crotch. Faith had given her a pair of thigh highs, and Pix was initially enthusiastic until she went to Filene's to get more and found out the price.
They were both dressed in layers today. The morning had started out foggy and cool, but Pix had predicted they would be down to their tank tops before noon, and she was right.
Despite a good-sized crowd, they were able to set up camp under the tent in a prime spot—close enough to the front to follow the action there and slightly off to the side to follow any action in the crowd. They didn't have to wait long.
The first skirmish of the day broke out between Eric and Sonny Prescott before the auction started. Eric claimed that the weather vane, an old copper one in the shape of a three-masted schooner, was part of the house and not the contents thereof. Sonny said it was like the pictures, mirrors, and other detachable things. It could be taken off, so it was auctionable. Eric pointed out with increasing heat that the ship had raced against the wind on top of the barn since it was built and was as much a part of the house as the gazebo. Sonny replied that he didn't wonder but the gazebo could be auctioned too. One of the onlookers, a spoilsport or good Samaritan depending on how one viewed these matters, had gone to get the lawyer.
Mr. Foster was quite explicit, armed with foresight, experience, and a list. The gazebo stayed. The weather vane went. Eric angrily told the auction-house workers not to touch it, he was going to buy it, and the lawyer told the auctioneer he thought it could be bid upon from the ground. An uneasy peace reigned.
Roger arrived shortly after and went with Eric into the house, possibly to make sure the Prescotts weren't removing the wainscotting in the dining room or linoleum in the kitchen.
Now it was almost ten o'clock and it seemed that Stanley Gardiner, the auctioneer, had scarcely made a dent in the lots, even at the breakneck speed he and his runners steadily maintained. Faith sat transfixed, her index card with the number on it clutched in her hand. On the back were some sketchy notes to remind her what she wanted.
“Lot 56—Carnival glass—a beautiful grape-and-cable compote in perfect condition, with a small flake at the base. We don't often see them this size. What am I bid for this lovely piece? Do I heayre fifty, fifty, seventy-five? All done at seventy-five? Are
we buying or renting today? Fair word and fair warning—sold for seventy-five.”
Faith glanced down at her card. Lot 58 was a cherry cradle. After all, Benjamin was getting up there and it might be time to start thinking about another baby. Her mind instantly recoiled from the memory of all those sleepless nights and the fact that “easy childbirth” was an oxymoron.
She thought instead about little toes and a satiny-smooth bottom, those milky smiles and gurgles. Meanwhile the cradle could hold Ben's stuffed-animal menagerie.
“Now here's a pretty piece,” the auctioneer was saying. “Lot fifty-eight, a cherry cradle. Not a scratch on it. Do I heayre twenty-five to start us off?”
Faith raised her card fast, and the old man whom the auctioneer addressed as Walter and occasionally Wally snatched the bid in his gnarled grip. “You've got it.”
Faith didn't look behind her, but apparently only one other person was interested in the cradle judging from Walter's movements.
“Nobody having babies on this island anymore? I have fifty-five. Use it for a planter—look swell with petunias in it. I have seventy-five and ninety-five. Ninety-five, ninety-five. Going, going, gone at ninety-five dollars.” Faith grabbed Pix's arm ecstatically. It could have been a can full of rusty nails. The point was,
she
was the high bidder.
“Have cradle, will reproduce,” Pix said, laughing.
The tent was full and people had set up chairs on the lawn. Earlier, Pix had used the occasion to give Faith a rapid overview of the island population: four basic groups with numerous subdivisions. There were the year-round native islanders, an inordinate number of whom were named Prescott, Hamilton, or Sanford, and the year-round off-islanders, many like Eric and Roger—artists or writers—others wanting to get away to what they thought was a simpler life. There had been a big influx of this group in the late sixties and many had stayed, but to the Prescotts et al they might have arrived a week ago. The summer people were also divided into two main groups: what Pix called
the “rusticators,” families who had been coming to the island for generations and marched in the annual Fourth of July parade with banners that said “Fiftieth Summer,” and the newcomers, people like Faith who rented cottages for short periods of time. People who might never return to Sanpere, impossible as that was to imagine.
Faith looked around. Once you had the labels, it was easy to stick them on. A group of rusticators sat on sturdy canvas folding stools not far away with grandmother's fitted wicker picnic basket, “the one we always take to auctions,” filled with egg-salad and watercress sandwiches, the thermoses with fresh-minted iced tea at their feet. Some of the women were knitting Fair Isle sweaters, and the men strolled purposefully down to the water to check the tide from time to time. The new people had the equipment, but their baskets lacked the patina and validation of old age. The local people were eating the hot dogs being sold, and most of the artistic group had gone home after noting Matilda's taste—a Wallace Nutting or two, Granville Fuel Oil calendars—and searching fruitlessly in the boxes from the attic for a Hiroshige.
There was a large number of day visitors too—dealers from up and down the coast and summer people of both varieties from the mainland. Pix had spoken in a disparaging way about them—people who needed a movie theater within twenty miles.
The next couple of hours went by quickly. It got hotter under the tent, but it was worse outside in the sunshine. They ate their sandwiches and drank the lemonade. Pix had to supplement her lunch with one of the hot dogs after she smelled the one the person next to her had, heaped with sauerkraut.
“It goes with an auction,” she told Faith, who refused.
“Funny, I don't remember seeing them at Christie's,” Faith remarked, and Pix jabbed her.
“When in Rome, Faith …”
“I know, I know. If they were selling clam rolls I might be interested, but hot dogs, no, not even for you and Sanpere.”
Pix was the successful bidder on a mixed lot of Heisey glass and almost got a repulsive Roseville jardiniere and pedestal.
After that episode Faith asked her if it was permissible to overturn her chair if she bid on something hideous.
“Faith, Roseville is highly collectible, and besides it would have looked beautiful with that asparagus fern I have. I thought you liked that period.”
Before Faith could reply that there was such a thing as selectivity, their attention was drawn away by another quilt, and again it went high. Some had been sold for lower, even bargain bids, but they did not appeal to Faith. She wanted a very special one for their bed in Aleford. The parsonage was in constant danger of slipping into New England country, and she had met the threat by bringing in modern pieces of her own; so far they coexisted happily. She thought she could safely add a quilt without fear of heart-shaped baskets, wreaths, stenciled herds of cows, and pigs in all forms following.
“Faith,” Pix whispered excitedly, “the weather vane is next.”
It had been a relatively calm auction with only one minor altercation, when a lady wearing red heart-shaped sunglasses who was definitely not Lolita claimed she, and not the couple in front of her, had been the high bidder on a Limoges fish service. The auctioneer had backed up and started the bidding again. She got the fish service and left. The young couple found solace in a Nipon dessert set.
Now the crowd under the tent grew still, and people who had wandered off to the shade under the big oak trees came to stand on the sidelines.
Eric and Roger had been sitting in the front row, with the Prescotts filling in the chairs to either side and the rear. It was like a wedding where the bride or groom had only two friends. Eric's arms were folded across his chest, and Roger's eyes assumed a steely glint quite unlike their everyday softness. Faith saw Jill standing to one side of the auction worker's table. She must have closed the store. Eric saw her too and raised a hand in greeting. Jill smiled encouragingly.
Walter had taken over for a while, but now Stanley Gardiner returned, took the microphone, and placed it around his neck.
Walter moved to the side, his eyes darting around the tent, gearing up. You could hear a fly's wings flutter.
“Lot two twenty-five. Copper weather vane. As trim a vessel as ever set sail—thirty-six inches long. You've all seen it, ladies and gentlemen. Right on top of the barn. I can tell you there are no patched-up bullet holes in this one. It is in the original condition. A beauty. Fifty to open.”
Eric raised his card high, and immediately one of the Prescotts countered with a bid of seventy-five dollars. There was a lot of interest in the vane, and the bidding went high. At nine hundred dollars everyone had dropped out except the Prescotts and Eric and Roger. Eric bid nine hundred and fifty. The Prescotts looked grim and bid a thousand. The crowd was gasping. Eric bid twelve hundred and the Prescotts seemed to waver. Then Joe Prescott jumped up and rushed at Eric and Roger. Stanley Gardiner stood in his way, and Joe began shouting around him, “It's the gold! Why do you think they're bidding so high! You bastards! She told you, didn't she!? It's got to be gold underneath or something.”
“Are you out of your mind!?” Roger yelled at him. He and Eric were on their feet. Sonny Prescott stepped next to the beleaguered auctioneer. “Now Joe might have an ideah here. I'd say we better have a closer look at the hull of that boat.”
“If you touch that weather vane, I'll kill you.” Eric spoke in a flat measured voice, but his words reached all the way to the back rows. Jill moved away from the table and came up quietly behind him. Nobody else moved. Then the lawyer came and spoke to the auctioneer.
“Now everybody sit down and calm down. Gorry, I've never seen anything like an auction to get people riled up.” Mr. Gardiner took out a big white handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Faith felt a thin trickle of sweat make its way down her cleavage. It was hot. And it was tense.
“What we're going to do is withdraw Lot two twenty-five for the time being until the heirs can have it appraised to everyone's satisfaction, and whether it will be done up there on the blasted roof or down on the lawn is something you can work out with Mr.
Foster here.” He motioned to the lawyer, who looked as cool and collected as he had at seven o'clock. “Now there's plenty left for everybody. Lot two twenty-six—Well, what do you know? An Atwater Kent in a Gothic box. Have to be a few of us here who remember this baby. Now what am I bid? Who will start the music at twenty-five?”
BOOK: The Body in the Kelp
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