Osprey Island

“What’s a man to do, I ask?”

“Such melodrama!” Brigid goaded.

“I can’t win!” he cried again, and with that he sank to his knees in the sand, then rolled so he was lying down, looking up into the sky.

Brigid came over and towered above him. “Think you’ll recover, then?” she asked, peering down.

Suddenly, Gavin grabbed her by the knees and toppled her into the sand. She yelped, laughing, squealing like a girl, wrestling him in a kicked-up flurry of sand. He pinned her easily, sat straddled atop her, poised. Then he leaned down, still pinning her shoulders to the sand, and kissed her, much as he had the previous evening, only this time he let her kiss back. The sand beneath them was cool, and cooler still as they wriggled down into it, damp and prickly and forgiving, and they rolled around for quite a while until they were forced to pull their clothes back onto their bodies and trudge up the hill to find a damn condom. Except that when they got up to the barracks they found Jeremy and Peg each asleep in their separate rooms, and while they tried to figure out someplace else to go, Gavin managed to sober up enough in the eerie hallway bug light to say, “You know, maybe we should chill out a little, slow down, get some sleep.” And before Brigid could catch her balance enough to protest, he was hugging her limply good night and heading back to his own room, which left Brigid feeling more frustrated then ever.

Nine

AN OSPREY BUILDS ITS NEST OF STICKS AND ALL THE RUBBISH IT CAN COLLECT

An osprey nest is a stupendous affair of branches, sticks, driftwood, cornstalks, seaweed and what have you. The same pair will return to it year after year, adding more and more junk in their repairing operations until the whole thing ultimately weighs several hundred pounds and can be seen against the skyline for a mile or more. There are instances of small birds of several kinds nesting in the crevices of osprey castles, quite unmolested, which speaks well for the big fellows’ tolerance.

—ROBERT S. LEMMON, Our Amazing Birds: The Little-Known Facts About Their Private Lives

WHEN RODDY AWOKE IN HIS SHED the next morning he sat up, swung his feet from the bed, and nearly fell over Squee who—until Roddy kicked him in the leg—was asleep on the floor. To avoid crashing down on top of the kid, Roddy managed to catch himself against the stovepipe, which only provided a moment of resistance until it gave and sent him bashing into the woodstove. Squee recoiled by instinct, without a word or a cry of surprise, and was curled upright but fetal against the far wall when Roddy regained his balance. He straightened his boxer shorts, made sure he was decent, inspected himself for damage. “Did I say there wasn’t enough room for two in here?” he said, shaking his head, half laughing and incredulous. “You been there all night?”

Squee shrugged. He was wearing the same dirty clothes he’d been in since Gavin had pulled him from his bed at the Lodge two days before; he looked like even more of an urchin than usual. Roddy jerked his head up toward Eden’s house. “I’ll put on some clothes, you go up see Eden about taking a shower or something—you’re looking like hell—and I’ll run the truck down to the Vaughns’ and pick up your stuff there. Give you something clean to put on. ’K?”

Squee nodded, lingering by the doorway.

“Go, get on,” Roddy waved at him.

Squee looked as if he was preparing some sort of challenge. Finally he said, “You let Suzy come down here . . .”

“A visit’s one thing,” Roddy managed to say. “You don’t see Suzy sleeping on the floor with her sneakers on, now do you?” He paused. “Unless . . .” he leaned over and peered beneath the bed. Squee laughed. Which—Roddy was starting to think—was maybe the only thing that actually really mattered anymore at all. “Get on,” Roddy told him. “Eden won’t let you near her kitchen table as filthy as you are. You want breakfast, you better get up there and get clean.”

Squee moved closer to the door. “I’m sorry.” He stuck his pointy chin toward the spot of floor where he’d lain.

“You’re the one who slept on the floor,” Roddy said.

“Yeah!” Squee’s spirits were lifting his whole body, as if someone had pumped some more air into him. He edged out the door, then turned back at the last second, as if to surprise Roddy. His face washed in a smile. “What kind of a hotel is this, anyway!” he cried, and dashed outside and up the incline toward Eden’s house.

Squee was in the shower, and Eden out collecting the morning eggs from the chicken coop when the phone rang. Eden hurried back to the house as quickly as she could without jostling the basket. She gathered eggs a couple times a day—had a sign out on Island Drive, FRESH ORGANIC EGGS FOR SALE since she had more than she could use herself. If you didn’t gather the eggs often enough the hens’d start laying them on top of the old ones, and it was crowding like that that led to eggs’ breaking, and broken eggs led to egg-eating, and Eden had learned the hard way what happened when one hen started eating eggs. You didn’t cull an egg-eater from the flock immediately and the rest of them just followed, and pretty soon your hens weren’t good for much more than soup.

She got to the phone mid-ring and snatched it up, setting her eggs on the counter. It was Suzy, calling to say she was bringing Mia over to Reesa Delamico’s place out at Scallopshell Cove for the day and did Eden think it sounded like a good idea to get Squee over there too? Reesa Delamico cut and styled hair at her home, but in the summers she relocated her operations to a small salon and gift shop in the lobby of the Osprey Lodge, where she could more conveniently cater to the summer-vacation crowd. Reesa and Suzy and Lorna had all grown up together, same grade in school. Reesa had four kids—one grown, one a baby, but the other two were near Squee’s and Mia’s ages, and they’d been summer playmates in the past.

On the phone with Eden, Suzy was talking quickly, her tone overly businesslike. She was trying not to let Eden get a word in one way or another, lest it be a word about what Suzy might have been doing out behind the house in the middle of the night, with Roddy wearing only a bedsheet. Suzy prattled on: Reesa wasn’t going in to the Lodge Salon, she’d be with the kids all day . . . Might be good to distract Squee from everything, play with Mia, and Stacey and Mark. Reesa was thinking of setting up the Slip ’n Slide . . .”

Eden said, “Well, I’ve got him here now in the shower—”

“Oh, good!” Suzy said. “I was thinking we’d have to have Reesa toss a bar of soap on there with them!”

“He was getting a little ripe.”