The one night I had strayed from Pickle’s cabin, it had been to go to them. I had taken a canoe and paddled across to the near islands until I saw the glow of one of their camps. They took me captive once they spotted me, held a knife to my throat, pushed me down against the sand. Their eyes glinted in the firelight as they leaned over me. I had not tried to hide, and they asked me what I was playing at. When I told them I had killed their fellow, one of them called for rope. I shouted that I sorrowed for it now. It wasn’t a lie, the dead trader’s face haunted my dreams. And I said that I regretted having let Josiah live. Curses fell from the hollows of their mouths. Bits of elkhorn hung from the one who brought the rope. They pulled me to the water, made to push me under, but I kept shouting. I told them about the press of the late-summer traffic and the commotion of the federal ship’s arrival. There they would have their chance, I said. At that, they released me, and I slipped into Pickle’s cabin just before dawn. He stirred when I entered, but didn’t wake.
Now I watched the whiskey traders among the cordwood stacks. From Josiah’s house one of the six-pounders fired a salute. I turned in time to see him step from his front door. He was to come down to the dock to receive the gunboat’s captain in a short ceremony. Following the cannon’s salute, the Superior’s band struck up a military air. As she came into harbor, the melody carried over the chuffing of her engine and the slap of her side paddle wheel. The men on the pier hurrahed.
The path from Josiah’s house to the dock would lead him past me, and he appeared in good spirits as he approached, whistling and nodding, in his freshly brushed coat. A few yards beyond me he would be caught between the whiskey traders and the cordwood. His life would be in their hands. But now, again, it was in mine. I could step forward, could reach out to stop him and save our paradise, broken as it was. Or I could remain still and let it be taken.
A buffet of wind whipped up from the lake. There was a splash, a shout, laughter — someone on the dock had dived into the water.
It was easy. Josiah hadn’t yet noticed me. I let him pass, then turned away. I didn’t care to watch.
I HEARD THE FIRST SHOT when I was halfway to Pickle’s cabin, then three more. By the last the gunboat’s band had ceased playing. A lone scream cut through the stilled crowd, then the air itself seemed to breathe before erupting into a confused, wailing din that spread up from the docks. Someone had lifted Josiah’s body and called now for help. Several of my brothers ran past me, on their way to the water. Celia’s blanched face emerged from the cottage amid the clamor. I recalled Josiah’s telescope and wondered if she had been watching through it.
Pickle came in after dark, hours later. I had last seen him standing on the dock, cheering the Superior. Now his boots were caked with mud, his clothes damp with sweat and pricked with burrs. When he saw me in my corner, from which I hadn’t shifted since noon, he took a little step back. “I thought you were with the others.”
I shook my head.
“We chased those dogs across the island, but they got to their canoe. They’re with their fellows. Can’t you hear them?”
I’d not noticed the sound before, but now I could make out the whiskey traders’ hoots and curses echoing over the water. Pickle sat on his bed, head bowed. Then he convulsed, and I realized he was weeping. I glanced away, at his calendar covered with x’s, at my violin hanging in the window, at the lamp glasses black with soot. He had been good to me, and I had cut him from the kingdom.
THE FEDERAL GUNBOAT DEPARTED, the captain having claimed this was none of his affair. The other ships left soon after, and the elders shut themselves in the Temple. Some of the brethren had already abandoned their cabins and made camp on the dock to await the next steamer. By morning the news had reached across the island: God’s judgment.
Overnight the sky had turned gray. Thick clouds pressed low against the lake, and cold seeped through the cracks in the cabin’s walls. I ignored the breakfast Pickle made, put on my black coat, and walked to the Bainbridge farm, where I found Dorothea’s father lifting their trunks onto a borrowed wagon. He saw me, but refused to meet my eye. Dorothea’s mother was in the yard, boiling their clothes. She pointed to the clothesline. Dorothea was there, hanging sheets.
I waited for her to turn, but she ignored me. When the last sheet was hung she began adjusting the first, careful not to come near where I stood. Her manner made me anxious, but at the same time I became angry. Something promised me was being withheld.
“You’re free,” I said. “We can marry.”
“After what you saw? After everything?” she said. She showed me her face and it was twisted in anguish. “It’s too late.”
“It’s not,” I said. “I promise, I’ll forget everything.” I took her, held her in my arms. “Meet me tonight at the Judge’s House,” I said. “Will you?” Only when she nodded did I let her go.
All through the first hours of night I paced the timber skeleton of the Judge’s House. I imagined Dorothea waiting for her father to fall asleep, or writing a long letter to her mother. But as the night grew longer, I began to fear the worst. Finally I went back to the farm. It was empty, and at the sight a dizziness rippled up from my feet. I raced to Port Hebron and arrived an hour after dawn, in time to see a steamer leaving the bay. I searched among the dock camp that now spread along the shore, but Dorothea wasn’t there. After questioning a few acquaintances, I ran into Spofford, who told me he’d seen the Bainbridges board the boat. I looked out over the water and felt the bruises of my heart turn black.
I returned to Pickle’s cabin. When Pickle came in he told me that two of the elders had fled the island, taking the sacred books and the treasury with them, and that Celia had shut herself in the cottage; Josiah’s body lay spread on the dining table, and she refused to let him be buried. I stayed at the window. At night the whiskey traders returned to the bay in their canoes. Their shouting stirred me like a summons.
A day later another steamer put in. Pickle gathered his belongings into two carpetbags. He offered to pay my passage, but I told him I wasn’t leaving.
He stood in the doorway. “It’s all gone,” he said.
I told him my decision had been made, and when he asked what I meant, I got up, took my violin from the window, offered it to him, and bid him go.
FOR A WEEK LONGER, as the island cleared, I stayed in the cabin. I did not shave, nor did I visit the bathhouse, which was shut up now, anyway. I ate our last stores of food — hungrily, greedily, as if both nursing the wound within and feeding the fever that spread through my veins. At the end of the week I opened the door and stepped outside. By now the streets were empty. The whiskey traders had remained in their camps, and silence had descended, encasing every building in Port Hebron in a thin glass shell. The few noises were the sharper for it: a rodent scurrying from the sight of me, the crackle of a fire burning unchecked. Even the scent of the air was changed, carrying nothing but a tinge of smoke. In this strange, vacant quiet I felt my new beard. I searched abandoned cabins and wrapped myself in the furs and hides left behind. I bent to the ground and darkened my cheeks with mud. Then, at last, I went down to the water and yelled for my new brothers to come.
ERASER
I lift up the lid of the livewell and look inside. A couple fish — bass, largemouth — sit in place, not really swimming.
“What’s up, fish?” I say.