“Elise,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
* * *
Gray skies, a month of gloom, no visitors, one day indistinguishable from the next. Three meals to put on the table. Seven hours in the classroom. Twelve midnight at the weather station and right back there again at six a.m. Floors to mop, pets to feed, dishes to wash, laundry to boil up in a pot on the woodstove that choked her lungs and made her eyes smart, her hands as rough as if they’d been carved of oak, her nails chipped and black with their half-moons of dirt no matter how faithfully she tried to keep them up. The girls were restless, the sun was a memory and Herbie was always out somewhere, shoeing the horses, mending fence, wandering far afield, as bored and weighed down as she was — blue and getting bluer. That month — it was March of 1940, Marianne nine and Betsy six and both of them growing out of their clothes — she found herself drifting around the house like an automaton, her legs in motion but her mind a thousand miles away. For the first time she almost wished she’d relented and let Herbie fly them all to San Francisco — at least it would have been a break in the routine.
One Saturday afternoon, when she felt she just had to get out of the house or go mad, she asked Herbie to look after the girls, shrugged into her jacket and went out for a walk. The girls had begged to come, but she was firm with them—“I just need a few minutes’ peace, that’s all, and I’ll be back for dinner, don’t you worry,” and then she told Herbie to keep an eye on the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove, and she was off.
The day was mild, the wind light and blowing up out of the south for a change. It was spring, the first breath of spring, and the revelation took her by surprise — she’d come out to the island a new bride in this very month ten years ago, not knowing what to expect, and here she was living an adventure she could never have dreamed of when she was a girl at school. It was as if she were the heroine of a novel, like the stalwart mother of the shipwreck story the press kept identifying them with (who also happened to be named Elizabeth, which, in light of things, had seemed to her an ominous coincidence).
But what was wrong with her? Everything was fine. The girls were growing, everyone was healthy, the ewes dropping lambs and the wool bringing in a regular if niggling profit, while Herbie was doing his best to mask his disappointments and throw himself into the work of the ranch. And here it was spring and she was out walking in this grand majestic place she had all to herself. The sky stretched flat overhead, sheep glanced up at her, startled, and trotted off on stiff legs, still chewing, the ocean smells drifted up the cliffs and the gulls shone white against the bruised gray backdrop that ran out over the water and faded away to infinity. She felt sustained. Felt whole and free. At first she walked aimlessly, letting her feet take her where they would, and then on a whim she decided to go out to Harris Point, Herbie’s favorite spot, a place where they’d picnicked and gathered arrowheads and where the views wrapped round you as if you were in the crow’s nest of a ship at sea.
It wasn’t far, no more than three miles or so, though the terrain was rough, a checkerboard of the usual dips and gullies, loose sand, scree, dirt compacted like concrete. She traced her way along the narrow peninsula and hiked up to the point, where she cleared a spot for herself with a vigorous sweep of one shoe before spreading a blanket so she could sit in comfort and look out to sea. She didn’t know how long she stayed there, letting her thoughts wander till she wasn’t thinking anything at all, but eventually she pushed herself up and started back, the image of the stove and the steaming pot rising before her. The children would be hungry, Herbie impatient. And she would come in the door to their various murmurings and mutterings and the excited barking of the dog, boil the spaghetti, grate the cheese and serve the meal, as always, and be thankful for it too. As always.
She retraced her way across the broad apron of the plain, moving quickly now, the sun burning suddenly through the clouds to hover over the water in promise of better things to come and the sheep scattered in dense white clots across the hills. The breeze was light still, still warm, and even before the ranch house came into view, nestled like a long low fortress behind the running line of the perimeter fence, she could smell the smoke of the stove and the faint sweet scent of the marinara sauce mixed up with it. Before long she was there, making her way along the outside of the fence, listening to the gander stirring up a fuss in the yard and feeling better, infinitely better — she’d just needed to get out, that was all.
As she came round the corner to the front of the compound, she pulled up short: Herbie was standing there at the gate with two strangers dressed in city clothes. Which was odd enough to begin with, but what was odder still was that Herbie was blocking the gate, rather than stepping aside to invite them in. The first thing she thought of, absurdly, was Fuller Brush men — or Jehovah’s Witnesses. And then it came clear to her — reporters, more reporters. As she got closer though she could see that Herbie was agitated, his shoulders squared and his face gone dark, and why would that be? He loved reporters, welcomed them all, the more the better.
“No, no you won’t,” he was saying, his voice caught high in his throat. “You don’t have the right.”
The men — they were nearly indistinguishable, but for the fact that the one nearest her was chewing gum, working his jaws furiously as Herbie gestured in his face. “It’s nothing to get agitated over,” the man said.
“Agitated? You think I’m agitated? If I was agitated I’d go in there and take one of those guns down off the wall. No,” he said. “No, it won’t happen. Bob Brooks, you talk to Bob Brooks—”
That was when they became aware of her. They all swung their heads to take her in as she passed along the outside of the fence and came up to where they were congregated at the gate. “Hello,” she said, looking first to the strangers, then Herbie.
Both the men fumbled with their hats. The gum chewer gave her a strained smile. “Mrs. Lester? Hi. I’m John Ayers, and this is my associate, Leonard Thompson — we’re with the Department of the Interior and we’ll be out here for the next week, conducting a survey of the vegetation and wildlife, and we just thought we’d stop in to say hello. And introduce ourselves.” He tipped his hat a second time, a quick reflexive gesture. The gum snapped. “Just to be neighborly.”
“We just got here — on the Coast Guard boat?” the other put in. “We’ll be setting up camp on the beach down there in the harbor. Beautiful place, by the way, if only we’d get a little more sunshine, huh?”
Herbie had nothing to say to this, though she could see how upset he was — any encroachment on the island set him off, and though he understood perfectly well that the land was under the aegis of the federal government, which granted the lease for grazing rights to Bob Brooks and could pull the plug on all that any time it wanted, he tended to forget that fact, or brush it aside. Or deny it altogether. The federal government was an abstraction, distant and insubstantial, but he was real and so was she and so were the buildings and the sheep and the land beneath their feet — the land he worked and possessed and took the value of. Federal government. FDR. He held them in contempt, the same sort of contempt he held for the poachers who came ashore to steal their sheep.