My Nana Minnie turned from her stovetop chore—stirring a wooden spoon in some simmering glop—and considered me coolly. Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, she said, “Yes’m, June Bug?”
Keeping my voice laconic, my tone breezy and nonchalant, I asked whether there were any tropical islands within a walkable distance.
Her stirring hand lifted the spoon from her witch’s cauldron and brought it to her crooked mouth, where a darting, furtive tongue tasted the concoction. Smacking her lips with great gusto, my nana said, “Did you say ‘islands,’ baby girl?”
My mouth fixed in a smile, I nodded my head yes. Islands.
Her requisite cigarette smoldered between the fingers of her free hand. This morning as every morning the sunrise found her gray hair wrapped around curlers and pinned tightly to her pink scalp. Papadaddy Ben remained abed. From the world outside the farmhouse resounded the racket and squawk of fowl announcing their successful ovulations.
My Nana Minnie continued to muse over the bubbling production of her noxious cookery. One could almost discern the click and whir of cogs within her head. The tick-tock of gears meshing was nearly audible as she searched her memory for any facts concerning a local island. Giving a short cough, a snort, she said, “No real islands,” adding, “not unless you count the traffic island out in the middle of the highway.”
What she proceeded to describe was a nearby traveler’s comfort station which was sandwiched between the numerous traffic-choked southbound lanes of a major highway and the equally congested northbound lanes. I had seen the place: a squat building of concrete blocks cowering in the center of a parched, lemon-yellow lawn spotted with the dried feces of domesticated dogs. I’d glimpsed the place only in passing, from the tinted window of a Town Car en route to my exile on Nana’s farm, but the concrete hovel seemed to shimmer with the acrid stink of human waste. A small number of cars and trucks had occupied parking spaces along the edge of the ragged lawn, abandoned by the various persons who rushed to void their bowels and bladders.
This place qualified as an “island” because it was isolated, cut off from the surrounding upstate countryside by the slashing rivers of high-speed vehicles. In lieu of a more conventional island, perhaps this one might serve my purpose.
I lingered over my breakfast. Regarding The Voyage of the Beagle, I’d read up to the point where Darwin drinks the bitter urine of a tortoise. Clearly I was not the first reader challenged by the idea of our hero quaffing a frosty mug of turtle pee, for a previous reader had underlined the entire passage in pencil. In the outer margin of the page a different reader had used blue ballpoint pen to write, Pervert. Occasionally these comments seemed fortune cookie–cryptic. Occluded and coded. For example, listed in a column down the outer margin of one page, noted in pencil were the words If I ever have a baby girl, Patterson says to name her Camille. Elsewhere, jotted in blue ink were the mysterious words: Atlantis isn’t a myth; it’s a prediction.
These two fellow travelers—the pencil scribbler and the blue-ink vandal—had become my reading companions, always present to share the Beagle book with me. Their snide, insightful comments leavened my own reaction to the many otherwise tiresome depictions of lizards and thistles.
In what was clearly a child’s hand, another penciled notation read, Patterson says to start collecting flowers for my husband’s funeral someday.
A squiggle of blue pen said, Leonard wants me to pick some flowers for my dad.
As if to illustrate these notes, pressed between the pages were buttercups. Yellow buttercups. Purple violets. Proof of long-ago free time and long holiday strolls and fresh air. Brown ribbons of ancient grass. A record of sunshine. Bits of physical evidence documented a vanished summer. And not just the colors of summer… here were the smells as well! Dried sprigs of rosemary, thyme, and lavender. Rose petals still pungent! These layers of paper and words had preserved them, like an armor. Each primrose and morning glory I came across I was duly careful to leave intact.
From her station at the stove, my nana said something, her words ending on a high note, a question.
I responded, “Excuse me?”
Taking the cigarette from her lips, exhaling a plume of smoke, she repeated, “How are you liking that The Call of the Wild?”
I looked at her, my eyes wide with incomprehension.
“The novel?” she prompted, nodding at my book opened on the kitchen table.
Obviously she hadn’t seen the cover closely enough to know its actual title.
She asked, “Did you read to the part where the dog gets himself kidnapped and took to Alaska?”
Yes, I nodded. My eyes returning to my reading, I agreed that the dog lived a very exciting life.
“Did you read to the part…,” she asked, “…where the collie dog gets took by Martians in a flying saucer?”
Again, I nodded, saying the scene in question was quite thrilling.
“And,” my nana prompted, “was you scared when the space aliens impregnated the Irish setter with radioactive chimpanzee embryos from the Crab Nebula?”
Automatically I agreed. I said that I simply could not wait for the film version. I glanced up just to check the sincerity of her expression, but my nana merely stood there, her dour peasant body garbed in the usual calico apron worn over a shapeless gingham Mother Hubbard, the latter liberated from all style and color by a lifetime of launderings. I made a mental note that this Wild book must be a real humdinger.
As she dipped a second taste from the bubbling pot, lifting the spoon to her pursed lips and blowing to cool its steaming contents, the telephone in the parlor began to ring. As she’d done countless times, my nana set aside her dripping utensils and waddled out the kitchen door and down the short hallway. The springs of the divan squealed as she settled herself. The ringing stopped, and she coughed the word “Huh-lo?” Her distant voice dropped to a conspiratorial hush, and she said, “Yeah, she went and grabbed the evolution book, all right. That Maddy’s a pistol.” Between coughs, she said, “Yeah, I told her about the island….” Choked and breathless, she said, “Don’t you fret none, Leonard. That girly is more than ready to do battle with evil!”
Here, Gentle Tweeter, I turned a page in my Beagle book and discovered more ancient words. Handwritten down the margin in blue ballpoint pen, they said, Leonard promises that one day I’ll raise a great warrior as my daughter. He tells me to name her Madison.
DECEMBER 21, 9:05 A.M. EST
Now, Voyager!
Gentle Tweeter,
So it was, that summer of my exile to tedious upstate, that now-vanished sunny yesterday, I found myself standing at the fraying asphalt margin of State Route Whatever, the outer edge of six northbound lanes packed densely with horn-blasting, gear-grinding tractor-trailers. The morning air smelled wretched, polluted with axle grease, tar, hot oil, and the smoke of burning dinosaur juice.
No explorer had ever set forth to ford more dangerous seas.
My own path would lead at cross-purposes to the flow of automobiles, their momentum, the hiss and growl of their radial tires, the stuttering thunder of exhaust brakes. Through this deadly parade of speeding metal I could see the opposite shore, my destination: the island where vehicles parked to void their occupants, and those occupants hurried to the cinder-block restrooms to deposit their own excremental contents.