impression: maybe the woman was the doctor herself.
“Piedmont’s my cat,” Anna said, the mutual assessment over in a heartbeat. “I had to leave him in Houghton with Christina and Ally-my housemates.”
“Ah. Yes.” The woman spread her skirt around her in a golden circle and sat gracefully on the step. Anna noticed her sandals matched her dress and hair-exactly. They had been dyed the same shade. “We left Pointer in a kennel in Duluth. Carrie writes him once a week. If any dog can learn to read, it’ll be Pointer. He’s a Lhasa Apso. ‘No Domestic Animals on the Island.’ As if the comforts here weren’t few enough.”
An employee. Anna felt she should be able to place the woman, but her brain was in no mood to be racked for once-seen faces, half-heard names. “I know I’m Anna Pigeon, North Shore Ranger, but I don’t know who you are. Should I?” The sentence construction was a little tipsy but Anna thought the sentiment sounded reasonable enough.
“At least you know who you are,” the woman said and laughed. “That’s more than most of the people here know. These Upper Peninsula types aren’t given much to introspection. I’m Patience Bittner. I manage the lodge. When I’ve been guffawed on, jostled, or growled at one too many times, I escape out here to regain my equilibrium.”
Anna nodded, took a sip of her drink, turned her mind free again to glide out over the water. She must have made a face, because Patience said: “You’re drinking the Beaujolais.”
“Yes,” Anna said neutrally.
“It’s the last of it, I promise. It was ordered without my approval and it seemed a shame to pour it out. It’s such an ordeal getting anything good shipped out here back of beyond. I’ve got quite a decent California red coming in on the
“Nosy without being precocious?” Anna teased, thinking of Molly and her neurotic gourmet.
Patience smiled. “Do I sound pretentious? Habit. I used to manage a winery outside Napa.”
“Vodka and beer are the booze ordinaire in this part of the country. Not many people will notice your hard work.”
“You will, I expect.”
“Only on the first glass,” Anna said truthfully and the woman laughed again, a brittle sound but not unpleasant.
“If I get in anything special, I’ll get you in on the first glass.” She looked at her watch, a delicate gold band. “Party time. Pleased to meet you, Anna. I hope you’ll come by and sit on my deck again sometime soon.”
The innkeeper left, trailing a faint scent of perfume. “Privileged,” Anna thought, or “Passion.” Expensive scents, but neither could compete with the mind-clearing draft that was carried over the water from the ground hemlock and fir on Raspberry Island.
With the fading of the light the guardians of the island began to reclaim her shores. A persistent whining burned in Anna’s ear. A stinging itch cut through the thin fabric of her shirt. Again she missed the desert. There if something bit, one usually died of it. She hated this nickel and diming to death, one bloody sip at a time.
She stood and knocked back the last of her wine. Denny Castle’s wedding reception: it would be rude not to make an appearance. And she needed to wheedle an invitation to sleep on someone’s floor. Failing that, she’d bed down in the
Inspired-or intimidated-by Patience Bittner’s easy elegance, Anna made a stop in the ladies’ room. Hair hanging in two gray-streaked braids gave her an aging Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm look. She wrapped the plaits around her head and secured them in place with pins from her daypack. Too sunburned to wash her face with the harsh industrial soap in the washroom, she limited her toilette to the new coiffure.
The main dining room at the Rock Harbor Lodge made an attempt at being picturesque. The walls were paneled in light-colored wood, the ceiling cross-hatched with redwood beams, and the chandeliers fashioned from brass conning wheels. Other appropriately nautical bits of decor were scattered around, but boxy fifties construction spoiled the overall effect.
Park people were clustered in one corner. Patience floated around like a golden butterfly, refilling glasses. Coffeepot in hand, an awkward-looking girl with dark hair cut in a Prince Valiant shuffled after her from table to table, eyes fixed on the tops of her shoes. Anna wondered if this was the Carrie who wrote letters to Lhasa Apsos. She appeared to be the right age for a daughter of Patience Bittner-twelve or thirteen.
Tinker was there with Damien. They sat near the others but at a table for two. Their hands were clasped together on the white cloth and, instead of the glaring electric table lamps, they shared a candle-lantern which they obviously supplied themselves. Damien tried to catch Anna’s eye with a dark and pregnant look, but she pretended not to see him.
Scotty Butkus was sitting at the head of the main table smoking a cigarette, two bottles of Mickey’s Big Mouth at his elbow. Scotty, like Anna, was a permanent law enforcement ranger, her counterpart in Rock Harbor. Butkus fancied himself an old cowboy who’d been a ranger when it was still a good job. To hear him talk, he’d helped clean up Dodge City. But he wasn’t more than fifty-nine or sixty at most, still a GS-7 making the same salary as Anna.
A few of the younger people thought he was a semiromantic has-been. Anna suspected he was a never-was, drinking and talking to rectify a personal history that was a disappointment. He’d been busted down from somewhere and was starting over: new park, new job, new young wife. The new wife wasn’t in evidence.
Next to Butkus was Jim Tattinger, the park’s Submerged Cultural Resources Specialist. Anna knew very little about him except that, according to the crew of the
Between Pizza Dave, the four-hundred-and-fifty-pound maintenance man, and Anna’s boss, Ralph Pilcher, the District Ranger for Rock Harbor, she found an empty chair. Lucas Vega wasn’t there. One of the perks of being Chief Ranger was being spared some of the employee get-togethers.
Holly and Hawk Bradshaw were conspicuous by their absence.
The pooped-party feel did not surprise Anna. Living in such isolated places, NPS managers felt a responsibility to instill a sense of “family” into their employees and, accordingly, planned endless potlucks, Chrismooses, chocolate pig-outs, and receptions. Usually these attempts at building an esprit de corps failed. People came because there was nothing else to do and left as early as good manners-or good politics-allowed.
This get-together had a couple of things going for it. People wanted to see Denny’s new wife, and it was held in the lodge within hailing distance of a fully stocked bar.
As Anna wriggled into her chair, Denny Castle and his wife entered the front door, triggering desultory applause. A handful of lodge guests joined in and the sound swelled to a respectable level.
As the popping of hands thinned, and Butkus began another story of how it used to be, Patience took the bride’s arm with a natural hostess’s charm and walked her and Denny across toward the party.
Denny’s wife was five five or six with narrow shoulders and disproportionately wide hips. Lusterless brown hair fell from a center part to below her waist. Her round face was expressionless behind oversized red-framed glasses. As she pulled out the chair next to Ralph, Anna noticed how gnarled and scarred her hands and forearms were. She had seen those blue-black marks before. Looking into the glare of the electric candles, she tried to smooth her mind so the memory would come. After a moment’s teasing, it rose to the surface. She’d seen the scars on the arms of a hitchhiker she had given a lift from Santa Barbara to Morro Bay. The man had been an abalone diver. The scars were from where the shells had cut.
“This is the new Mrs. Castle,” Patience introduced her. “Jo.”
So, the bride, Jo, nee God knew what, had opted to be known as Mrs. Denny Castle. Anna thought it an odd choice for a woman with her master’s degree in freshwater biology, and the diving scars to prove it. That bit of information Anna had picked up from a Resource Management memorandum. Funded by the park, Jo Castle would spend the summer researching pollution in ISRO’s inland waters. Originally she had applied to do her Ph.D. thesis on how much impact sport fishing was having on the island’s lake trout population.
That would have been worth knowing, Anna thought. But the NPS wouldn’t fund that particular study. Sport
