A mouse flitted past me down the hill. At once, I lifted the shovel and swung it. I wanted to smash the creature to a pulp. I aimed for the furry spine, but it was too quick for me. I made contact with the granite instead, sending a ringing jolt up both arms.
4
THE FARALLON ISLANDS have their own ghost story. I heard it for the first time today when Mick steered me outside for a walk. I did not want to go; my leg was cramping, a residual soreness from my fall, a deep ache. My side had not yet fully healed and was giving off twinges of pain. I had been overdoing it on the slick, rocky terrain, unaccustomed to this new topography. Still, I couldn’t say no. In the weeks that I’d been here, Mick had become my favorite.
I imagine you flashing that wry, maternal smirk — and I won’t say that you’re wrong. Mick is not quite handsome. He has a rough-hewn frame and a lantern jaw, and it seems that he was manufactured on too large a scale. He gestures while he talks, his burly arms sweeping through the air. He is kind. There is an easy, generous sweetness about him, a characteristic I have not found in any of the others here — a trait I would like to possess myself.
Today he showed me the coast guard house. I have been curious about this structure since my arrival. It stands perhaps a hundred feet from the cabin, and from the outside, the two buildings are as alike as twins. They share a geometric symmetry; both were clearly constructed for longevity and sturdiness rather than beauty. They have gray, drab walls, cloudy windows, and black roofs — all the color beaten away by the wind and rain. Mick and I circled the coast guard house several times. Until today, I had not understood why it was uninhabited. It seemed wasteful to cram seven of us into one tiny cabin while another option sat right next door, empty.
Once I got a closer look at the coast guard house, however, I began to understand. Its walls had an uncertain aspect, like soldiers who no longer felt the need to stand at attention. Every window was cracked. The door sagged on its hinges. The porch was rotten. The only inhabitants appeared to be bats. Their droppings were splattered across the walls and windowsills, curdling the air with the stench of ammonia. I found myself standing at a distance, as though the whole thing might suddenly collapse. Mick shaded his eyes with a hand, looking up at the dingy walls with something like fondness. He explained that the coast guard house was a relic from another age; it had been constructed over a hundred years ago. Our cabin was equipped with modern comforts like heat and electricity, but the coast guard house never entertained such luxuries. It sat untouched and ignored by the current population, like the ruins scattered around the city of Rome. A dying place on the Islands of the Dead.
As the afternoon wore on, Mick and I wandered. You might not believe that anyone could walk so far on such a small island, but we roamed for hours. Mick led me across Blowhole Peninsula and Cormorant Blind Hill. We passed the helipad, a slab of pavement, crisp and out of place on the plateau. (Its presence there always irks me. Only an emergency of the direst sort could summon a helicopter from the mainland. A medical crisis. Life or death. The helipad is a constant reminder of menace.) Mick and I passed Sea Pigeon Gulch, where birds floated serenely on the tide. He was able to identify them for me — an auklet, an oystercatcher, a puffin. It was a bright, cloudless afternoon, the sky an almost painful shade of blue. The ocean was so flat that my depth perception disappeared from certain angles. It looked as though the water had been pinned up like a blanket from a clothesline, a vertical fall of cloth.
I have yet to make sense of the islands’ layout. There is a map tacked to the living room wall, and I have often examined it — an image that gives the impression that a chunk of granite has been dropped from a great height, shattering and strewing islets every which way. The oddest names are printed on that map. Garbage Gulch. Funky Arch. Emperor’s Bathtub. Some of the landmarks have more prosaic, shape-oriented titles: Tower Point, Low Arch, the Tit. The rest are named after the creatures you might find there. Sea Lion Cove. Mussel Flat. Great Murre Cave. I have studied that map often enough to memorize it, yet I can never seem to get my bearings when I am out on the grounds. In fact, I am half-convinced that the islands are not rooted at all, but move around whenever my back is turned, taking up brand-new positions elsewhere.
Finally Mick and I scaled Lighthouse Hill. I was leery. This is the highest peak on the island. The climb took longer than I had expected. Mick walked directly behind me, in case of accidents. Soon I was sweating through my layers, peeling off my jacket and looping it around my waist. The ground receded beneath me. I saw Lucy and Forest heading toward the cabin together, miniature figures, paper dolls. At last, out of breath, I reached a flight of steps carved into the stone.
As I stepped into the lighthouse, I wrinkled up my nose. The walls were so smeared with guano that they resembled a Jackson Pollack painting. Lichens and moss curled in the corners. The view, however, was something to behold. In every direction, I could see for miles — not quite to California, but across the whole of the archipelago. For the first time, I got a good look at what lay to the north. A huge hand seemed to be lunging up from the bottom of the ocean, a crescent of granite spires. Eagerly I readied my camera. Mick was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. Among the northern islets, the rules of gravity seemed altered. The light was bizarre, a patchwork of shadows strewn across the waves. One rocky promontory would be outlined in gold, the next as black and empty as the night sky. There was an arch with spines like a stegosaurus. Through my telephoto lens, I saw bodies in the water. The sea lions were frolicking where no ship could ever have ventured.
“—likes your room best,” Mick was saying. “She really seems to prefer it there. Forest says he wouldn’t take that room for love or money.”
“Ah,” I said, adjusting the focus.
“I don’t mean to scare you. Just giving you fair warning. Forest hasn’t seen her personally, of course. Not like me.”
“Hm.”
“Are you even listening to me, mouse girl?”
I smiled. This sobriquet had been bestowed on me by Lucy, in a spiteful way, as though my unsettling encounter with the islands’ signature rodents had marked me for life. When Mick said it, however, it had a different sound. It felt like an inside joke between the two of us.
Names have power. I have always believed this. I’ve never known an Anne who wasn’t docile and mild. A Karen is usually sensible, trustworthy — whereas a Shane is bad news. And a woman named Melissa is always a little crazy.
Evidently, I am doomed to be a crazy woman here. The others still call me Melissa. I have not yet found the right moment to fix the misunderstanding. At first it seemed impolite, and when a few more days had passed, I felt as though I’d waited too long, and now it would be hard to admit that for two weeks I have been responding to a name that isn’t mine. Mick usually calls me Mel, which I rather like. Lucy calls me mouse girl. Galen calls me you. Forest calls me nothing. Andrew calls me Melissa, with a sibilant hiss, the way a snake might say it.
An interesting virtue of all the traveling I have done is the possibility of adopting new identities among new people. This has happened without fail in each location. During my time in the rainforest — always wet, always hot, crouching in a blind for days in an attempt to get a decent shot of the elusive birds of paradise — I pretended to be hardy and easygoing. During my time in the arctic — always cold, always lonely, photographing the northern lights in a kind of hallucinatory daze, treating the moon like an old friend — I pretended to be solitary and serene. On the islands, it seems I have taken this process one step further.