But all this was long ago. This mighty production had not taken place for years.
By Ruth Thomas’s nineteenth summer, in 1976, the only Ellis who still came to Fort Niles Island was Dr. Jules Ellis’s eldest son, Lanford Ellis. He was ancient. He was ninety-four years old.
All of Dr. Jules Ellis’s other children, save one daughter, were dead. There were grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of Dr. Ellis who might have enjoyed the great house on Fort Niles, but Lanford Ellis disliked and disapproved of them, and he kept them away. It was his right. The house was entirely his; he alone had inherited it. Mr. Lanford Ellis’s one surviving sibling, Vera Ellis, was the only family member for whom he cared, but Vera Ellis had stopped coming to the island ten summers earlier. She considered herself too frail to make the trip. She considered herself in poor health. She had spent many happy summers on Fort Niles, but preferred now to rest in Concord, the year round, with her live-in companion to care for her.
So, for ten years, Lanford Ellis had been spending his summers in Fort Niles alone. He kept no horses and invited no guests. He did not play croquet or take boating excursions. He had no staff with him at Ellis House except one man, Cal Cooley, who was both groundskeeper and assistant. Cal Cooley even cooked the old man’s meals. Cal Cooley lived in Ellis House throughout the year, keeping his eye on things.
Senator Simon Addams, Webster Pommeroy, and Ruth Thomas walked on toward Ellis House. They walked side by side, Webster holding the tusk against one of his shoulders as if it were a Revolutionary War musket. On their left ran the stagnant Ellis Rail. Deep in the woods on their right stood the morbid remains of the “peanut houses,” the tiny shacks built by the Ellis Granite Company a century earlier to house its Italian immigrant workers. There were once over three hundred Italian immigrants packed into these shacks. They were not welcome in the community at large, although they were allowed to have the occasional parade down Ellis Road on their holidays. There used to be a small Catholic church on the island to accommodate the Italians. No more. By 1976, the Catholic church had long since burned to the ground.
During the reign of the Ellis Granite Company, Fort Niles was like a real town, busy and useful. It was like a Fabergé egg-an object encrusted in the greatest detail. So much crowded on to such a small surface! There had been two dry-goods stores on the island. There had been a dime museum, a skating rink, a taxidermist, a newspaper, a pony racetrack, a hotel with a piano bar, and, across the street from each other, the Ellis Eureka Theater and the Ellis Olympia Dance Hall. Everything had been burned or wrecked by 1976. Where had it all gone? Ruth wondered. And how had everything fit there, in the first place? Most of the land had returned to woods. Of the Ellis empire, only two buildings remained: the Ellis Granite Company Store and Ellis House. And the company store, a three-story wooden structure down by the harbor, was vacant and falling in on itself. Of course, the quarries were there, holes in the earth over a thousand feet deep-smooth and oblique-now filled with spring water.
Ruth Thomas’s father called the peanut houses in the back of the woods “guinea huts,” a term he must have learned from his father or grandfather, because the peanut houses were empty even when Ruth’s father was a boy. Even when Senator Simon Addams was a boy, the peanut houses were emptying out. The granite business was dying by 1910 and dead by 1930. The need for granite ran out before the granite itself did. The Ellis Granite Company would have dug in the quarries forever, if there had been a market. The company would have dug the granite until both Fort Niles and Courne Haven were gutted. Until the islands were thin shells of granite in the ocean. That’s what the islanders said, anyway. They said the Ellis family would have taken everything, but for the fact that no one any longer wanted the stuff from which the islands were made.
The threesome walked up Ellis Road and slowed down only once, when Webster saw a dead snake in their path and stopped to poke it with the tip of the elephant tusk.
“Snake,” he said.
“Harmless,” said Senator Simon.
At another point, Webster stopped walking and tried to hand the tusk to the Senator.
“You take it,” he said. “I don’t want to go up there and see any Mr. Ellis.”
But Senator Simon refused. He said Webster had found the tusk and should get the credit for his find. He said there was nothing to fear in Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ellis was a good man. Although there had been people in the Ellis family to fear in the past, Mr. Lanford Ellis was a decent man, who, by the way, thought of Ruthie as practically his own granddaughter.
“Isn’t that right, Ruthie? Doesn’t he always give you a big grin? And hasn’t he always been good to your family?”
Ruth did not answer. The three continued walking.
They did not speak again until they reached Ellis House. There were no open windows, not even any open curtains. The hedges outside were still wrapped in protective material against the vicious winter winds. The place looked abandoned. The Senator climbed the broad, black granite steps to the dark front doors and rang the bell. And knocked. And called. There was no answer. In the noose-shaped driveway was parked a green pickup truck, which the three recognized as Cal Cooley’s.
“Well, it looks like old Cal Cooley is here,” the Senator said.
He walked around to the back of the house, and Ruth and Webster followed. They walked past the gardens, which were not gardens anymore so much as unkempt brush piles. They walked past the tennis court, which was overgrown and wet. They walked past the fountain, which was overgrown and dry. They walked toward the stable, and found its wide, sliding door gaping open. The entrance was big enough for two carriages, side by side. It was a beautiful stable, but it had been so long out of use that it no longer even had a trace of the smell of horses.
“Cal Cooley!” Senator Simon called. “Mr. Cooley?”
Inside the stable, with its stone floors and cool, empty, odorless stalls, was Cal Cooley, sitting in the middle of the floor. He was sitting on a simple stool before something enormous and was polishing the object with a rag.
“My God!” the Senator said. “Look what you’ve got!”
What Cal Cooley had was a huge piece of a lighthouse, the top piece of a lighthouse. It was, in fact, the magnificent glass-and-brass circular lens of a lighthouse. It was probably seven feet tall. Cal Cooley stood up from his stool, and he was close to seven feet tall, too. Cal Cooley had thick, combed-back blue-black hair and oversized blue-black eyes. He had a big square frame and a thick nose and a huge chin and a deep, straight line right across his forehead that made him look as if he’d run into a clothesline. He looked as if he might be part Indian. Cal Cooley had been with the Ellis family for about twenty years, but he hadn’t seemed to age a day, and it would have been difficult for a stranger to guess whether he was forty years old or sixty.
“Why, it’s my good friend the Senator,” Cal Cooley drawled.
Cal Cooley was originally from Missouri, a place he insisted on pronouncing Missourah. He had a prominent Southern accent, which-although Ruth Thomas had never been to the South-she believed he had a tendency to exaggerate. She believed, for the most part, that Cal Cooley’s whole demeanor was phony. There were many things about Cal Cooley that she hated, but she was particularly offended by his phony accent and his habit of referring to himself as Old Cal Cooley. As in “Old Cal Cooley can’t wait for spring,” or “Old Cal Cooley looks like he needs another drink.”