“I do want to get to bed early, Pix, but I'd like to see the Fraziers and especially your renegade priest again. Could Ben and I come for the aperitif?"
“Of course, and Faith, you'll never guess! The Prescotts took turns watching the weather vane all night until they got some expert down from Orono this morning. And Eric was right. There was no way the gold could have been hidden in it. Too heavy. Anyway, the man didn't mind climbing on theroof, so he went up, poked around, and took scrapings. It's copper through and through. So now it goes in the next auction Gardiner has, and they'll all go to bid against Eric and Roger out of spite and disappointment. Since the weather vane was part of the contents of the house, if it had been gold, it would have been the Prescott clan's. That's a lot of trips to Florida for the winter."
“From everything I hear about her, Matilda would have enjoyed all this," Faith commented.
“Definitely. Fortunately, she liked me—or didn't dislike me, I should say. I used to take her some of my strawberry preserves every once in a while. Oh, and Louise Frazier told me that your quilt top is probably the last one Matilda made. She was piecing one with those colors when Louise visited her just before she died."
“Thanks, Pix. It's nice to know who made it. If she appreciated your delectable jam, she couldn't have been too horrible." .
“Oh, she wasn't horrible at all just lonely and unappreciated, I think. Sam used to enjoy talking with her, sparring really. He thought she should have gone into politics. She was bright and totally honest, and had so much drive. Too much for her family. She liked to be in charge, and when she got old and couldn't be, they were used to keeping their distance."
“I want to hear more about all this, Pix, but Ben's awake. He's starting to hurl things violently out of the crib, always a bad sign, so I'd better go. When do you want us?"
“Around five?"
“Fine. I'll see you soon.”
Faith hung up and raced upstairs before one of Benjamin's missiles found the window as a target. Everything was on the floor, and Ben, having taken all his clothes off, was just climbing out of the crib. She carried him into the bathroom and sat him on the potty seat. Unpredictable in all things, he had virtually toilet trained himself. Just as she was culling information from all the experts and getting ready to start, he had announced, "No diapers," and had scarcely looked back. It was big-boy underpants—BBUs, as Tom called them—from here on in.
An hour later Faith was sipping a glass of wine and eating cold mussels and the remoulade sauce she had taught Pix how to make. She was enjoying herself. Samantha was reading to Ben, which she appeared to be able to do for hours on end without going crazy and/or speaking like Mr. Rogers.
John Eggleston was regaling them with tales of the island during Prohibition, which he had heard mostly from his neighbor and good friend, Elwell Sanford.
“Of course Elwell swears he himself wasn't involved in any of this illegal activity, although his constant references to a `friend of mine' leave me a mite skeptical. Maine was a rum runner's dream, with this convoluted coastline—twentyseven hundred miles of small coves, harbors, and inlets sandwiched into a four-hundred-mile loaf. And all the islands off shore. People tell me there are still cases buried on the Point, but I haven't heard of anyone finding one recently, Elwell's classic story, which I must admit I have heard up and down the coast, is about one of the Marshalls who was feuding with his neighbor. They were both selling hootch. One stormy night a revenuer came to Amos Marshall's house, desperate for a drink, he said. Well, Amos looked at him. His slicker was weatherbeaten and he needed a shave, but his boots were brand-new; so Amos sent him up the road saying he had taken the pledge himself, but his neighbor could oblige. The neighbor, unfortunately, wasn't so observant.”
Everyone laughed, and Pix said, "Maybe you have heard it elsewhere, but I'm sure it started here.”
After the laughter died down, Elliot Frazier remarked, "Of course we have the modern-day version with the illegal drug traffic. You're right about the coastline, John—it is virtually impossible to police it, and boats are landing the stuff all the time."
“When I first came to Sanpere in the late sixties, it had just started, or people had just become aware of it, and every newcomer to this island was thought to be either a drug peddler or an undercover agent. They certainly didn't know what to make of me," John said, laughing. "I used to fill in duringthe summer for a preacher over in Cherryfield, and when that got back to the island, they were even more confused."
“But John," Louise interrupted in her soft, faintly Southern voice, "you were doing so much good work with the teenagers here." She turned to Faith. "There was, and is, a big problem with alcohol on the island, and some drugs. There is really nothing for these kids to do here. John was the one who started the community center.”
A different kind of ministry, Faith thought. John Eggleston was certainly a compelling figure, and she could imagine he had quite an effect on kids once he got going. She liked his stories and certainly he was to be admired for whatever he'd done for Sanpere, yet there was still a suggestion of fire and brimstone lurking just behind the pupils of his eyes and the clarion surety of his voice made her uneasy. A man who thinks he is absolutely right in everything he says and does. She had the feeling that if you ever got in his way, he'd roll implacably over you. No turning the other cheek here. Maybe that was why he had left the ministry. Tom wasn't a doormat, but he had a sense of his own limitations, humility in the presence of imponderables. Faith slid in somewhere between the two. She hoped she'd go around, and not over, but knew too that humble was not her best pie.
“Faith, whatever are you thinking about? You have the most peculiar expression on your face—sort of like the two corners of your mouth can't decide whether to go up or down," Pix commented.
“That's about it, Pix. I was thinking about good and evil," Faith replied, not realizing until she said it that that was what she had actually been considering.
There was silence for a moment as they all looked at her. Then Elliot Frazier asked, "Is this in light of the auction? I ask that because the day triggered many thoughts for me, starting with the whole event. Was it good or evil of Matilda to separate things that way? We knew her well, and I am still puzzled that she wanted to have the house dismantled after she died. The things in it were as much a part of the house as the structure itself for her."
“I hadn't connected my thoughts to the auction, but you may be right. I certainly have been restless since yesterday. There seemed to be so much tension, and I don't even know all these people." Faith looked at him with a feeling of respect. An insightful man.
The Fraziers had moved to Sanpere almost forty years ago. They were in their early thirties then, with two small children. Elliot had had a serious heart attack and they had wanted to get away from the stress of life in Washington, where he had built up a thriving accounting firm. At about the same time, Louise had inherited enough money from her family to enable them to buy their lovely old house on Sanpere. Elliot never had another heart attack. He had retired years before from the job he got the first year they were here—postmaster of Sanpere Village. They were the exception to the rule—most people on the island had forgotten the Fraziers weren't born on Sanpere. They moved comfortably among all the groups on the island. Sanpere had few secrets the postmaster and his wife hadn't heard—and kept.