The Watery Part of the World (27 page)

No, honey, I don't ever get lonesome. Never have. Plenty to keep me busy. I don't need television or movie theaters to take my mind off my troubles because at the end of my day I am just not that troubled.

There were so many lies in that answer she didn't even want to untangle them all. Maybe not lies—only what Maggie called playing it up to the hilt, the primitive Banker role. Once you got going down that road it was hard to admit you liked to sit out on the church steps and read aloud grocery store prices of an evening. Didn't fit with the image. She had the island to protect too. Wasn't anybody else going to protect it, since it wasn't but three of them left and she was the only one of them could tell the story the way Dr. Levinson and them needed it told.

That morning Whaley watched Woodrow's boat until it slid over the sunlit horizon and then she walked home feeling as hollow low as she had in years. She told herself it was lack of sleep making her feel this way, for stormy nights excepting, she always slept like the dead, went to bed at dark and got up at first light, was out when her head hit the pillow and stark awake when she swung her legs off the mattress at the rooster crow. At home she went straight upstairs to her room and crawled in bed with her clothes on.

Maggie woke her around two o'clock that afternoon.

“You feeling poorly?” She shook her shoulder lightly, and Whaley stared at her and then at the room, the full blaze of afternoon sun through the windows.

“What time?”

“Well after lunch. Two almost.”

“I didn't get to sleep till late.”

“Woodrow didn't come back yet,” said Maggie.

He was usually back by noon, especially in the summer heat. Whaley said, “Maybe something's wrong with his motor.”

“I'm worried about him for some reason.”

“You're worried because you're a worrier.”

“Too old to change, I guess,” said Maggie as she left the room.

Whaley got up and got herself some toast and tea and went about the day's chores but it didn't feel right, this day—things were off kilter, her rhythm was awry, she felt, well, bad, empty, for sleeping the day away, and her sister's worry had gotten away with her too. Especially when Woodrow didn't turn up by suppertime.

Or the next day.

They didn't have any way of getting ahold of him, of course. There were other boats on the island but they had not been afloat in some time. When Maggie suggested they drag one of them down to the water and set out looking, Whaley dismissed this as craziness, said someone would come to them if anything happened to Woodrow.

Out in the yard plucking a tern that afternoon, she decided
he'd taken such offense at her saying he was too old to change that he'd decided to show her, loaded up his boat, and kept on going right over to the mainland.

She stayed right mad at him for that. The anger helped her get through the hours of that day and, more important, the endless night. She would not let herself feel guilty because clearly Woodrow was just proving a point, showing her how they all could change, how the island itself would change if only one of them—well, the right one of them—went across.

Okay. She gave up. He had proved his point. They ate out of the cupboard, cans: Chef Boyardee, peaches, green beans that tasted of rust. No mail. No prices to read aloud of an evening.

And Maggie, good Lord—you'd of thought she was married to Woodrow the way all the wind went out of her. She had not been this bad since that Boyd. Thing was, they didn't talk about it. Three days he was gone and not one word passed between them on the subject of Woodrow—on any subject much—until one of those O'Malley boys came dragging his bulk up the beach road late afternoon of the third day.

Whaley was sitting on the porch. She never sat on the porch in the afternoon but she could not bear the thought of Maggie seeing Woodrow first when he came back across. It was white-hot and breezeless and one of the O'Malley boys came up in the yard sweating and huffing.

“Miss Whaley,” he said.

“I knew your daddy,” said Whaley.

O'Malley looked a little emotional. “I
am
the daddy.”

“You're Marvin?”

“Hiram.”

“Close,” she said. She meant the sound of his name was close to Marvin. But he looked bothered, and real hot.

“Well,” he said. “It's Mr. Woodrow.”

“That's what y'all call him?”

“Always have.”

“To his face or behind his back?”

O'Malley took a red kerchief out of his pocket and unfolded it.

“Where's he at?” she said. Because she was still hoping this was some sick point he was hellbound out to prove. Okay, Woodrow. I give up.

“They found his boat almost clear down to Lenoxville.”

“Just his boat?”

“He could have had a stroke. Fell out.”

She looked past him, up the island. The steeple of the church showed passing boats here is God's love, bountiful and all-forgiving. But she hid there in the belfry and let the wind take Sarah and she said something to Woodrow so hurtful he up and jumped off his boat. Where was God's love?

She said, “Woodrow has not fell out and he did not either have any stroke.”

Hiram or Marvin O'Malley said, “Well.”

A long time passed. Her great-great-great-grandmother Theo floated in the breakers. Somehow the portrait Theo was taking to
present to her disgraced father turned up on her doorstep. People left in droves. The progging fell off. Most of what washed up on the beach was Japanese and plastic. The roof of the old hospital caved in. Mail stopped coming.

“They'll find him directly,” said O'Malley.

Storms battered the island. One took the power, the light. It cut an inlet down southside. That was okay. They had each other. Sisters. She never did marry. Ducks and egrets would light on the water so many it looked like an island. Babe Ruth came. Decorations for women's hats out of the plumage.

Maggie came up on the porch. O'Malley the younger shifted his bulk and said, “Miss Maggie.”

“We killed her,” said Whaley to her sister. Only it wasn't Maggie she was talking to but little Liz kneeling beside her chair in the little sitting area she'd set up for the interview.

“We let that woman die.”

Little Liz shook her head, her lips tight and trembling.

“No, not we,” Whaley corrected. “It was me. I'm the one. I done it.”

Whaley took Liz's hand in both hers and squeezed. She said, “Woodrow asked me to look after her, I went down there that night I looked through the window I seen she was okay I came on back up the hill to the house I made Maggie come with me up to the church I wouldn't let Maggie go after her because what it was, it wasn't the water took her it was the wind.”

“I never told Woodrow what I done but that morning he left
the island I went down there to apologize to him about saying he was too old to change. He was already gone. Next time I saw him he was laid out on the altar.”

The O'Malleys took them across for the service. They were the only white people up in that church. It was so hot the air-conditioning was sweating. They held hands and cried and hugged and Whaley said to her sister, “Maggie, I'm sorry all these years I never acted like I love you but I do,” and her sister didn't say anything just made that hush sound with the
s
's streaming out of her mouth like water lapping the beach at night. She made a noise like the surf at night and it did not comfort Whaley for she knew all the wrong she'd done but it calmed her a little. That noise Maggie made with her mouth took her back across to the island.

“I told myself it was for the best, I reckon.” Liz nodded her earnest red head. She said, “Hold on, now Miss Whaley, I'll be right back, okay?”

But while she was gone Whaley kept talking.

“No hell that's a lie it won't for the best I didn't I did not tell myself a goddamn thing,” she was saying when Liz returned with her sister in tow, and she heard Maggie laugh and say to little Liz, “That's the only time I ever heard that word out of her mouth.”

Whaley said, “I just blamed it on the wind.”

Maggie came over and sat in the chair she'd set out for Liz.

“What are you saying, sister?”

“About what happened,” said Whaley. “I'm just telling her what she needs to know.”

“Why don't you share some of your recipes?” said Maggie.

Whaley laughed. “She's the one asked,” she said, pointing to little Liz. “Come sit,” she said. “I'm not through.”

But Maggie would not get out of the chair. She said she'd stick her head in. Maggie had a story to tell too. Woodrow had one. Whaley said to little Liz, “Y'all never did get Woodrow down. Whatever he told y'all, it wasn't exactly a lie …”

“Hush, now, Theo,” said Maggie, the
s
's streaming out of her mouth like water lapping the beach at night.

“I'm just saying,” said Whaley.

“I've got an idea,” said Maggie.

“They're the ones asked,” said Whaley. “They're wanting to put it in the paper.”

“How about—” her sister said.

“I just wish,” said Whaley.

“You tell us a story from when we were little.”

Whaley looked at her sister. Beyond her, white sails and the inlet asparkle. Ducks and egrets would light on the water, so many it looked like an island. Decorations for women's hats out of the plumage.

Whaley laid her head back in the chair. She opened her mouth to speak. Said to her sister, “Move so I can see across.”

Though some of the people and places mentioned in these pages are real, this is a work of fiction, dependent upon the necessary fabrications, hyperbole, and transmogrification. Distortions notwithstanding, books are made from other books, and in this case I owe much to Richard N. Côté's
Theodosia Burr Alston: Portrait of a Prodigy
and Nancy Isenberg's
Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr,
as well as a shelf or two of memoirs and natural histories about the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

I am indebted to everyone at Algonquin—Craig Popelars, Michael Taeckens, Brunson Hoole, Kelly Clark Policelli, and especially Megan Fishmann—for their help with this book. Deep thanks to Bland Simpson for sharing his knowledge of coastal North Carolina and patiently answering my queries.