anyone you didn’t have to worry about waking up at some ungodly hour of the morning it was Eden Jacobs, who, people were known to say, probably woke up at the first crack of light or before, since it was suspected she took her beloved chickens to bed with her. Bud dialed.
Roddy hadn’t slept much, and his state of animation was robotic at best. He drove by the Lodge first to get the extra set of keys, then went around to the ferry and parked his truck. The morning was bright, and he scrounged behind the seat of the truck for a hat. There was only the ugly purple one from the laundry company that Suzy’d left there, but it probably looked better than his hair did, so he pulled it on and walked toward the docks. Though the sun promised a warm day, it was windy that morning, the flag whipping against its pole with tireless ferocity. The sound of the halyard smacking up against the mast was a sound that brought Roddy back to a number of different places in his life. Anywhere there was a flagpole there was that sound, rope against metal, clanging in the wind. It was, Roddy thought, both comforting and maddening, if such a thing was possible.
The ferry line at that hour was full of Islanders who worked early morning mainland jobs and drove down every day before five-thirty when the boats started running to be the first ones across. There were two boats on that morning, and Roddy watched them pass each other in the bay. The crossing was hardly more than a mile, took seven minutes, maybe nine in bad weather, poor visibility, ice.
The Osprey Island ferry landing was one slip, with two breaker walls of tall wooden pylons stretching out from the dock like open arms. The pylons were near-rotted, of a wood washed gray with decades of seagull droppings. No two posts were the same height or thickness, but each one had a seagull perched atop like a sentry. Roddy watched as the boat approached, the gulls eyeing it as if they were playing a game of chicken, just daring that tremendous hunk of steel to come within a breath of their roosts before they took off in a cacophonous swarm of flapping screams and cries. The ferry was a behemoth of a raft, a floating platform—like an ice rink, almost— with a watchtower sticking up from the top for the ferryman to see out while he steered. The ferries (there were three, though no more than two ever ran, one or the other perpetually in need of repair) were painted white, buffered around the sides with old truck tires strapped on to protect the ship—and cushion its landings—as she lumbered into the shore, barreling against the pylon walls, which swayed and creaked under the pressure but always managed to bounce the boat to the opposite wall like a pinball, back and forth as she shimmied her way into the slip and the ferrymen secured her to the dock.
Chip Gruder was captaining that morning, and a younger guy whom Roddy didn’t know personally, named Derrick Darlington, was working the dock, directing cars. He swung open a wide chain-link gate and stepped out of the line of traffic as he motioned the first car off the boat, up the ramp, and onto dry land. It was a full ferry, twelve cars or so, engines turning over, drivers refastening seat belts, passengers preparing to disembark. Roddy stood by the ticket shack as the cars filed off and Derrick turned to the line of cars behind him, started motioning them onto the boat. Matty Lux was at the bow, guiding drivers into place, getting them squeezed in tight; it was a puzzle, packing on as many cars as the ferry could hold. Roddy waited until all the vehicles were on before he boarded with a few other foot passengers—two guys with lunch pails and a man in a business suit—who’d come up behind him, as well as two teenage girls who emerged from the ticket shack in waitress uniforms, clearly heading over to work the breakfast shift at Baldy’s in Menhadenport. Derrick Darlington stopped each of the pedestrians, exchanged brief words, and punched tickets for them from the thick rolled pad in his gloved hands. When Roddy got to him, Derrick said, “One way, round trip?”
“One way, on
Derrick lifted his eyes from the ticket book. “You picking up the Lodge truck?”
Roddy nodded.
Derrick flexed the hole-puncher in his grip as if it was cramping his hand. “Trouble with the staff again?” He spoke like a jaded disciplinarian, though he could not have been more than nineteen himself and had the remnants of a nasty-looking black eye on his suntanned face.
Roddy shrugged.
“You know who did it?” the kid said. “Who left the truck?”
Roddy just stood there looking at him. “Yeah,” he said curtly. And then he clamped his jaw shut and stepped onto the boat. His fare would go on the Lodge account.
The water was choppy, waves reflecting sunlight like undulating glass, and the ferry rocked and sloshed in the slip, bucking up against the pylons, which creaked and groaned in response. These were, for Roddy Jacobs, the most familiar sights and sounds in the world. Just the smells of this place—the fishy seaweed rot, the salt- drenched, sun-baked wood, gasoline, engine exhaust—all whipped by the wind and sprayed from the water in a fine mist as the ferry pulled away from the dock. Roddy leaned against the railing and turned his face to the sky, eyes closed against the sun. He heard the honking call of the ferry whistle, the churn of the rudders beneath him, the push of water through the gunwales, the clanking of chains on the gate, and the constant arrhythmic clang of rope against metal as halyard smacked flagpole atop the captain’s tower.
If there were other places like this in the world, Roddy Jacobs hadn’t found them. And he’d traveled plenty. Two decades, and travel was mostly what he’d done. He’d been up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, through Canada, and down to Mexico and below. He’d even ridden ferries—every ferry he could find—all over Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands, across Lake Michigan and Lake Champlain and through the locks of Sault Sainte Marie. He’d been to Cape Cod, and Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and St. Simon’s. Block Island, Shelter Island, Staten Island, Fire Island. And all of them were nice—he was sure that the people who’d grown up in Vineyard Haven and Vinalhaven cherished their ferries the way he cherished Osprey’s and thought their island the
He knew very well who’d left the truck illegally parked in Menhadenport, though he was finding it hard to get his mind to focus on what that really meant. Bud hadn’t even known which truck it was, told Roddy to take all the spare keys, but Roddy’d gone to the vehicle shed and grabbed only the set for the tan Ford, though he suspected he’d find the truck unlocked, keys on the floor just beneath the seat. He didn’t expect there’d be a note—she couldn’t know who’d be the first to see it—and, after all, she’d already come to say good-bye. And then, after good-bye, he imagined she’d gone back to the Lodge. She’d have thrown everything into their luggage. Probably even stripped the beds to make less work for the Irish girls. She’d have coaxed Mia out of the bathroom with promises she probably never planned to make good on. Or Mia would have come out on her own, teary-eyed and sleepy and just wanting her mother, all that anger replaced by the simple need to be held in her mother’s arms. And to that end, Suzy would have obliged, hauling down all the bags by herself, then going back upstairs to lift Mia to her chest and carry her, floppy-limbed and docile, to the waiting truck.
It would have been late, Roddy imagined. But how late? Before midnight, all those waiters and housekeepers still lounging on the deck? Would they have seen her? Wondered what was going on? Or had it been very late, the Lodge silent but for Suzy’s patter up and down the central stairs? Had they missed the last ferry, twelve a.m., and slept in the truck on the Osprey side, right by where his own truck was parked now, Mia breathing softly on the seat, Suzy dozing off, then waking every few minutes to a rumble in the running engine or a car on Ferry Road? Had
