Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Praise
OSPREY ISLAND, SUMMER 1988
Prologue - THE ONES THEY CAME BACK FOR
One - THE LODGE AT OSPREY ISLAND
Two - WHERE THE OSPREY MAKES ITS NEST
Three - THE RAPTOR IS A BIRD OF PREY
Four - TO WHAT DIRECTION WILL YOUR CHICKS TAKE WING?
Five - HOW BLACK THE NIGHT THAT BLINDS OUR HUMAN HEARTS
Six - AS FODDER BLAZES STORED ABOVE THE BYRE
Seven - IN THE SHADOW OF THY WINGS WILL I MAKE MY REFUGE
Eight - THE MECHANICS OF FLIGHT
Nine - AN OSPREY BUILDS ITS NEST OF STICKS AND ALL THE RUBBISH IT CAN COLLECT
Ten - HOW THE OSPREY TENDS ITS NESTLINGS
Eleven - THE BLESSINGS OF HYPOTHERMIA
Twelve - ON THE INTERACTION OF SPECIES
Thirteen - THE NATURE OF THE STRUCTURE OF A LIE
Fourteen - THE BROODINESS OF HENS A Brief Lesson in Avian Reproduction
Fifteen - IF THE PRICE WERE TREACHERY
Sixteen - A LONG TIME HELPLESS IN THE NEST
Seventeen - AS THEY FLEE YOU’D THINK THEY FLOAT ON WINGS
Eighteen - WWCD?
Nineteen - THE SHORE RECEDES, AND I TOO ON THE SHORE
Twenty - GRIEF-SPURRED, SWIFT-SWOOPING
Twenty-one - THAT FLESH OF HIS OWN FLESH
Twenty-two - NIGHT IS THE SUREST NURSE OF TROUBLED SOULS
Epilogue - AN EYRIE OF OSPREY
Acknowledgments
About the Author
ALSO BY THISBE NISSEN
Copyright Page
FOR MY MOM AND DAD,
AND FOR S.I.,
WITH GREAT AFFECTION AND RESPECT
It may be thought that I have not dwelt sufficiently on the generally assumed evil tendencies of certain birds. I have tried to be perfectly just, but there had been so much exaggeration and sensationalism in writing of birds, that I have been careful to investigate all accusations.
—OLIVE THORNE MILLER, The Second Book of Birds
Acclaim for This be Nissen’s Osprey Island
“Much like the great Joyce Carol Oates, Thisbe Nissen creates an exclusive world peopled with both the young and the old. . . . Nissen’s writing is calm and poetic.”
—Baltimore City Paper
“Well-crafted . . . secrets abound in a place where family bonds often go beyond blood relations.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Finally, a perfect beach book with a literary bent. . . . The story unfolds slowly, letting the reader take in Nissen’s carefully crafted prose, but gains momentum at the end, when everything comes undone.”
—New York Post
“Incendiary tension, fueled by grief, alcoholism, and island insularity, build to levels so intolerable that one has to fight the urge to read with one eye closed even while tearing through the pages toward the shocking conclusion. Nissen is the kind of writer who sends the reader compulsively in search of everything else she has written.”
—Library Journal
“Much like her plain-spoken characters, Nissen is a supremely unfussy voice, arriving at surprising places via deceptively simple routes. . . . As a poignant summer reverie, Osprey Island should no doubt satisfy readers who can’t get away to the beach themselves.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Nissen is out to accomplish more than just telling a good yarn. She shows the damage secrets can cause. . . . Engrossing.”
—Tacoma News-Tribune
OSPREY ISLAND, SUMMER 1988
THE CHIZEKS
Bud, owner of The Lodge at Osprey Island, 60
Nancy, his wife, 61
Chas, their son, killed during the war in Vietnam
Suzy, their daughter, a teacher, 36
Mia, Suzy’s daughter, 6
THE JACOBSES
Roddy, maintenance worker at the Lodge, 37
Eden, his mother, 56
Roderick, his father, recently deceased
THE SQUIRES AND THE VAUGHNS
Lance Squire, head of maintenance at the Lodge, 38
Lorna Marie Vaughn Squire, his wife, head of housekeeping, 36
Squee, their son, 8
Merle Squire, Lance’s mother, 54
Art and Penny Vaughn, Lorna’s parents, 69 and 66, respectively
THE LODGE STAFF
Brigid, a housekeeper, 19
Peg, a housekeeper, 18
Jeremy, a waiter, 18
Gavin, a waiter, 19
Reesa Delamico, a hairdresser, 36
Janna Winger, a hairdresser, 19
Prologue
THE ONES THEY CAME BACK FOR
“Örn!” cries the Swede; “Águila!” the Spaniard; and the North American or Briton exclaims, “Look, there’s an eagle!” Probably the most misidentified bird in the world, the osprey or “fish hawk,” with white on its head and a wing span of more than five feet, much resembles its regal relative. Even its scientific name, Pandion haliaetus, compounds the confusion, for haliaetus literally means “sea eagle.”
—ROGER TORY PETERSON, “The Endangered Osprey”
DOWN AT BAYSHORE DRUG, postcards of Osprey Island sell five for a dollar from a spindly display rack by the cash register. They’re all island scenes—the beach at Scallopshell Cove, the clapboard shops lining Ferry Street, the cliffs at the end of Sand Beach Road—but those postcard photographers all seem to have a similar soft spot for the osprey itself, that majestic bird from whom the island took its name. A sunset beach shot—beautiful—but if they can frame the photograph around that great raptor perched high in its nest, a silhouette against the sherbet-colored sky, well, it does make for a dramatic scene. Add OSPREY ISLAND in scrawling script across the sand. Those are the postcards that sell. Also popular: cards with photos of the Osprey Island Ferry as it pulls in to dock, heaving its mighty bulk against those sea-worn mooring pylons, half rotted and suitably picturesque. And if there just so happens to be an osprey perched atop a decaying pylon, or on the steeple of the boat’s whistle, or at the crest of the captain’s tower, well, so much the better. Portraits of the Lodge at Osprey Island—an architecturally impressive structure in some, though not all, of its many incarnations—are also standard, and if you wait patiently for your shot you can sometimes catch an osprey as it lights upon a turret or gable. Sunsets, boats, hotels—ubiquitous images of vacation, leisure, the idylls of a certain class. But it’s really the osprey that makes the picture. An osprey you don’t find just anywhere.
There was in fact a time when you couldn’t find an osprey, anywhere. Back in the days of DDT. But before there was DDT, and before there were nesting platforms built onto abandoned telephone poles, and before the creaking ferry docks, before hotels with gaping lawns just begging to be the site of your daughter’s wedding reception—before everything else on this island was the osprey.
It was the osprey’s cry—kyew, kyew, kyew—that heralded the island’s first European settlers ashore. A blustery autumn day in 1655, and their boat ran aground rather unceremoniously on a promontory known forever after as Shipwreck Point. It was a fortuitous shipwreck: the journeying party managed to wash up on precisely the land for which they’d been aiming. The ship bore a British sugar baron, his young bride, and their entourage, all of whom survived the calamitous landing. They’d come for the island’s fabled forests of white oak: the timber of the sugar barrel.