The Gift
As usual with these things, nothing much came of it. The Interior men went around the island taking notes — she saw them only once, in the distance, two crouched figures grubbing in the dirt at the base of a stunted bush, no different from the sheep except that the sheep bore wool — and then they were gone. Herbie came out of his funk once they’d left and he wrote a series of impassioned letters to Bob Brooks, the Secretary of the Navy, the Department of the Interior and their local congressman too, whose name nobody seemed to know till one of the Coast Guard men supplied it, and then he went back to being Herbie, bounding from one thing to another like the bees dancing over the geraniums that had somehow managed to struggle through the soil in the courtyard.
Things held. Time moved on. The Nazis took Paris and drove the British Expeditionary Force into the sea at Dunkirk, 1940 became 1941, the sheep went on grazing and she served lamb five nights a week, week in and week out, while Herbie’s moods soared and fell on his own mysterious schedule and the girls grew taller and smarter and saw their test results rank in the highest percentile for their age groups nationwide. The winter was rainy and the spring wet, which made for fat sheep and abundant wool just when demand was growing because of the war in Europe. Summer rose up to loom over them, vast and static, and the girls, let out of school, roamed the island like wild Indians and learned to invent games for themselves. There was the radio, there were letters from her mother, visits from friends and a precipitous falling away of the interest of the press in the Swiss Family Lester in light of the rush of events, which, to her mind at least, came as a blessing.
In the fall of that year, they had a brief spell of sunny weather that rode in on the hot winds off the Santa Ynez Mountains across the channel, mountains they could suddenly see from the yard, revealed to them where no mountains had been for weeks on end. After school each day that week she packed a snack, gathered up towels and a blanket and took the girls down to the beach for a swim, Herbie leading the way and the girls racing the last hundred yards in a pure shriek of elation. Herbie was a great one for swimming and he’d taught both girls to do a creditable breaststroke and Marianne the crawl and butterfly, but mostly they swam in chilly water under a leaden sky, so this was a treat, a real treat, and as long as the weather cooperated they took advantage of it. She’d just come out of the water herself one afternoon, everything slow and lazy, the girls taking turns burying each other in the sand and Herbie propped up on his elbows with a book, when the Hermes suddenly emerged from behind the headland to the east to slide across the harbor on a long glimmering train of light. “Look at that — it’s the Hermes,” she said, almost as if she were thinking aloud, and in an instant Herbie was on his feet and the girls up out of the sand and waving their arms over their heads. “But that’s odd, isn’t it? I didn’t think they were due for what, three or four days yet?”
They stood in the fringe of surf and watched as the ship came to anchor and a clutch of familiar faces appeared along the rail. The girls jumped in place, kicking up jets of spray and crying out, “The Hermes! The Hermes!” in a singsong chant. It was a moment of high excitement, and if she thought with a pang of dinner and what she could possibly serve — or eke out — it was a fleeting thought. She waved and grinned and so did Herbie. They kept on waving as the dinghy was lowered and the oars flashed and the sun leapt up off the sea and fractured and regrouped all over again. She recognized the seaman at the oars, but the man in the bow was a stranger — and it looked as if no one was coming ashore but him, since typically the captain and at least two or three others crowded into the boat to come visit with them.
The mystery was resolved a few minutes later, when the stranger bounded out of the boat, neatly sidestepping the outgoing wave so that his boots didn’t even get spattered — boots exactly like Herbie’s, and he was wearing short pants like Herbie’s too. He had a backpack, a tent and two canvas duffels with him, and they helped him haul it up the beach. And who was he? He was Frank Furlong and he was a surveyor.
Herbie bristled. “You’re not one of these land management people, are you? Because I thought I made it clear—”
“No, no, no — I’m a civil engineer. I specialize in remote sites — out of doors, that’s where I want to be, not hemmed in in some office someplace. The Navy sent me out here to survey two possible sites for a beacon, but it’s your guess as good as mine whether in these economic times they’re ever going to get it built.” Even as he spoke he was patting down his pockets in search of something — which proved to be individually wrapped pieces of saltwater taffy, which he solemnly handed to the girls, Betsy first, then Marianne, who just stood there gaping up at him as if they didn’t know enough to say thank you.
“Girls?” she prompted.
“Thank you,” they said in chorus.
“You’re very welcome, little ladies. And if your mother allows it — and your father — maybe we’ll just find another little piece of taffy for later on.”
Before she could think she said, “Won’t you join us for dinner? It’s nothing fancy, I warn you—”
“Fancy? I wouldn’t know fancy if it came up and bit me.” He was squinting against the sun, his eyes a pale rinsed-out blue. She saw that he hadn’t shaved in a day or two, whitish stubble crowning his chin and climbing up into his sideburns. His hair hadn’t gone fully over to gray yet, but to see him there in his hobnailed boots, short pants and soft-collared shirt, he might have been Herbie’s twin, minus the epaulettes. “Most nights when I’m out on the job,” he said, bending to heft the pack, “it’s pork and beans out of the can.”
* * *
The first night they invited Frank to pitch his tent in the courtyard, out of the wind, but by the second night he was installed in Jimmie’s room and frequenting the Killer Whale Bar with Herbie. Herbie took to him right away, once his initial suspicions were allayed, and even went out in the field with him when he could spare the time. She was glad of it. Herbie needed a little male companionship — Jimmie hadn’t been around in months and Bob Brooks’ visits were sporadic at best — and for the week and a half Frank was with them, his mood just took off like George Hammond’s airplane, and when George flew in the three of them sat out in the bar for hours, their voices running up and down the ladder and the sharp bursts of their laughter rolling across the courtyard till the windows rattled in sympathetic vibration.
One night after George had flown back home, she, Herbie and Frank were in the living room listening to the radio, the girls in bed and the wind blowing a gale. At some point the radio went out — the wind, Herbie said — and they sat by the fire, talking in low voices and listening to the wind-borne sand scratch at the windows. “Sounds like a thousand cats out there trying to get in,” Frank said, getting up to poke the fire.
“Where are the cats?” Herbie asked, turning to her.
“Mr. Fluff’s in with the girls,” she said. “The others are out prowling, I guess.”
“On a night like this?”
“Don’t worry, they can take care of themselves. And who knows, they might even catch a mouse or two. Did you know, Frank, that Herbie has a soft spot for mice, if you can believe it?”
“Mice? You’re not serious, are you?” Frank shot a look over his shoulder, the poker arrested in his hand. “I hate to say it, but they’re dirty animals. Turn your back a minute and they’re up on the counter getting at your plate. And believe me they’re hell when you set up camp and then you’re gone all day in the field. They gnaw, that’s the worst of it. Leave anything around, and I don’t care what it is — a hammer, your underwear, your toothbrush even — and they’ll chew it up.”