He stood before her with his face painted a deep, dark red with stripes of vibrant blue over his upper lip, nose and chin. On his head he wore a kind of coronet, made of a substance like stiff hair, colored red. He had jewels of quartz in his ears and bracelets of little white round bone, fastened together with a leather string.
"Oh, yes," breathed Wanda, "you gave me the visions, didn’t you?"
"Yes." Gluskabe smiled gently at the old woman.
"In my vision, Turtle swam up to the water’s surface and started to pull the Island back into the sea. When I asked him "Why?" he replied, "There is no longer any place to put Earth." ....... here Wanda paused, uncertain how to continue. "There was something in my dreams that I do not understand."
At the man’s patient look, she continued. "The shell on Turtle’s back was broken.
Instead of the usual number of plates, thirteen, he only had a few left. What does that mean?"
"Yes," he replied, "the shell would be broken now." He sighed heavily, "Old Woman, each plate on Turtle’s back stands for the Abenaki nations that belonged to the Wabanaki Confederacy. Turtle’s shell was made this way to remind us that everything in the natural world is connected. To tell us that there is balance and rhythm and a plan to all things. Turtle’s shell reminds us of this and also reminds us to keep that balance."
Listening closely, Wanda nodded her head to show understanding.
"Your visions tell you that the balance in Creation has been lost." Gluskabe smiled both sadly and gently at the elderly woman sitting before him. "There are things I must tell you. Things that you must remember in order to pass them along to our people. These are words of great importance."
Wanda Kneeland leaned forward eagerly, clasping her withered hands together in her lap. Waiting for what was to come next.
Once again, Sam had not slept well. At some point during the middle of the night, she’d finally given up on all thought of sleep and had made her way to the chaise in the dark, dragging the comforter from the bed with her. Making a small nest for herself by the window, Sam contemplated the dark, star-ridden sky as she smoked.
When she was a child, Sam would spend long summer evenings after supper in the field behind her house catching jars full of lightening bugs. Eventually, when she tired of that, she would stretch out on the scratchy ground, still baked full of warmth from the day’s sun. She would lie there as still as could be, trying to count each and every star in the endless heavens above her. Even now, she could precisely remember the awesome feeling of insignificance that would overtake her as she lay looking up at the vast expanse of night sky. Smiling, Sam remembered how she would often doze off where she lay, stretched out on the grass, as her young mind had contemplated infinity. Somehow, miraculously it seemed at the time, she always awoke in her own bed the next morning. Years later, of course, Sam understood that her father had been responsible for moving her. But when she was a child, it was just one more magical thing that could happen during the Island’s tranquil, summer nights.
Infinity, she thought, taking a deep drag off her smoke. Almost thirty years later, it was a concept that still intrigued her. The very idea of all that fathom less space surrounding this tiny planet, Earth, had fostered her desire from an early age to be part of the space exploration program. When she had seen the video of Neil Armstrong jumping on the moon in 1969, she had been hooked for life. Sam was ready to have another drag when she started coughing harshly. Talk about being hooked for life on something, she thought, disgusted with herself and complete lack of willpower. That’s it, she thought resolutely, I am quitting these damn things right now. Sam smashed the smoldering cigarette out and put the ash tray aside.
"How smug we are to seriously believe that we were all alone in this universe .......
" Snuggling deeply down into the comforter, Sam drifted off into sleep.
The dull thump of something decidedly heavy hitting the side of her house abruptly woke her a few hours later. Peering groggily over the windowsill, Sam could just make out the rear end of the battered VW parked in the drive below.
"Swans Island Paint Company," she thought wryly as she watched Per and an extremely large man jointly wrestle an uncooperative extension ladder into place.
Chapter 7
Happy Joyce lived on five acres situated high on Hockamock Head. Ever since the old lighthouse station that overlooked Jericho Bay had been abandoned in 1963, Happy was the sole inhabitant on that lonely stretch of the Island. And that was just fine with him.
Happy was fond of boasting that he could trace his family back to Swans Island’s first white resident. Thomas Kench was his name. He had fled to the Island as a deserter from the Revolutionary Army, and for fourteen years had existed as a solitary recluse. Kench had been part of Benedict Arnold’s ghastly march on Quebec in the autumn of 1775. Like his comrades, he had become sick, cold, and desperately hungry. He had survived the long, arduous trek to Canada only to freeze in a tent during the winter months on the open Plains of Abraham. While a raging smallpox epidemic killed men all around him, Kench had come through it strong enough to be one of the first American soldiers to climb the cliffs, scale the walls and attack Quebec’s Citadel. Kench was one of the few to make it back to American lines, struggling and straggling all the way through the wilderness to Maine hip deep in snow.
By 1776, Kench had withstood all he was going to. He deserted and fled, heading to the lonely islands off Mount Desert. One a day late in October, Kench grounded out his boat on a tiny islet of Swans Island. After years of solitude, he took a Penobscot woman for his wife, sired six children and lived well into his nineties to tell the story.
Happy was about as ornery as his ancestor. He owned a ramshackle Cape Cod style house on a rocky bluff that looked straight out to Marshall Island. It was, by anyone’s standards, a perfectly fine house. Nonetheless, Happy preferred to cook his meals outdoors and sleep in one of the several dilapidated, broken-down automobiles he kept spread out over the property. In the spring and summer, as it was now, Happy generally slept in a rusty, silver 1962 Chevy Impala convertible. This way, as he said, he had an unobstructed view of the stars in the night sky. He liked to lie fully stretched out in the back seat, slowly drawing on his pipe, watching the twinkling lights overhead. Every once in a while, Happy would be fortunate enough to spot a shooting star or two. A comet was a real treat. Overall, most people agreed that Happy may not have known much, but he sure did know his night sky with all it’s various and mysterious constellations.
Somewhere, on a rather vague level, Happy was aware that the Island’s other citizens, most of whom he had known for all of his 82 years, considered him a little strange and eccentric. If the truth were to be know, Happy was more than likely outright certifiable. But due to the innate, fundamentally held Yankee belief that each man has a basic right to his own privacy, the locals pretty much left Happy to his own devises ......... and that was how he liked it.
This particular Wednesday evening, Happy was just tossing the day’s catch of clams into the boiling pot on top of his Coleman stove when a sudden movement to the east caught his attention. Pushing his grimy cap back on his head, Happy looked up, watching the gradual streaking of lights as a plane made it’s way almost leisurely over Jericho Bay.
"That boy better pull her up some, Spike, or he’ll be taking a bath." Happy commented to his customary companion.
Spike, alertly watching the bright lights getting even brighter as the craft slowly went still lower in the sky, whimpered nervously.
His master, though, had gone back to tending his clams and didn’t pay anymore attention to the dogs’s uneasiness.
"Just a couple more minutes for supper ... " Commented Happy, checking his antiquated pocket watch before shoving it back into his pants. Rummaging around deep in the trunk of the Chevy, Happy surfaced triumphantly with a paper plate and plastic fork. Irritably, he abruptly turned around to address Spike, who had finally stopped his whimpering and was now loudly barking.