Colony (71 page)

“If I meet one mosquito I’m out of here,” I called.

“I don’t care if you’ve found the Holy Grail up there. How much farther?”

“Here,” Mike said, and we broke out of the undergrowth to a clear space about halfway up the dome of the island, a place of gray stone that had a blasted look of great age, as if a monstrous bolt of lightning had struck here in the dawn of time. Mike pointed silently.

On the other side of the clearing stood a dead fir, or the trunk of one. It had been broken off about halfway up. In the space where the first branches had begun, a sort of bowl had been formed, and in it a large nest was cupped, as in two sheltering hands. It was not the size and depth of the eagles’ nests, but it was larger than anything else I had seen.

The sun, directly overhead, dazzled my eyes, and I put my hands up to shade them. And then I saw them clearly against the cobalt of the sky: four of them, elegant flat raptor’s heads hooded in black-brown, cold yellow eyes staring, curved beaks and white throats and bellies shining. One of them lifted powerful white-speckled wings and beat at the air, and they all gave shrill, angry cries:
cheereek!
I stared, feeling the air vibrate with the wind from the wings, seeing the patches of black on the cheeks that I had read about. Ospreys. Not fully grown, I did not think; their wings had not achieved the four-to six-foot wingspan I knew the adults had. But almost grown. Ospreys. For the first time in colony memory since my mother had destroyed their nest and sent them into exile, ospreys on Osprey Head.

“Oh, Mike,” I breathed. “Oh, Mike!”

We stayed there, being as still as we could, for nearly half an hour. The ospreys made short circling flights around the nest but did not leave it. They shrieked and flapped at us, too, but still did not go.

“Folks are out getting lunch,” Mike said under his breath. “These big spoiled brats aren’t about to leave when grub’s on the way. We’d better go now. The adults are bigger and fierce as hell when something gets near the nest.”

We scrambled back down to the beach, slowly now, my eyes dazzled with the wild power and beauty of the young birds, the salt knot swelling until I could scarcely swallow. I knew I would remember the sight until the day I died.

“Thank you for making me come,” I said, when we had sat down in the shade of the boulders and uncorked the wine.

“It would have been terrible to miss this.”

“Does it change anything?”

I shook my head slowly. “No. But it makes things…better.”

“Did you know that the parents virtually never leave the nest?” he said. “They’ll stay through anything: storm, fire, drought, direct attack, gunfire even. You can kill them. They’ll stay until the nest doesn’t exist any more.”

The knot spread swiftly up my throat to the base of my tongue. I actually put my hands to my neck. I thought I was going to…what? Scream? Choke? Weep? The ospreys, who would stay until the nest didn’t exist any more, stay through anything with their children, die there with them….

“I’ve always thought they were far better to their young than most humans,” Mike said, watching me.

I could only nod.

“I wanted you to see them before they’re gone,” he said.

My heart stopped, still and cold. Then it jolted and shuddered on. I watched him but could not speak.

“Your great good friend Warrie Villiers owns Osprey Head now,” he said. His voice had not changed; he might have still been talking of the birds. “He

bought it from the Park Service late this winter. It’s tough to do, but it can be done, if there’s enough money. The island never was anything but a drain on the service, and Warrie had enough money to make it a done deal within a day or two. Still does, I hear. Yep, old Warrie has great plans for Osprey Head. There’s going to be a yacht club and marina the likes of which even Northeast Harbor hasn’t seen, right here. He’ll have to dredge, of course, but hey, that’s nothing.

Around where the bridge is, on the side that faces Retreat, you’ll be able to see the whole project. Going to be a resort to end all seaside resorts along there, with condos and shops and tennis courts and maybe a nice little nine-hole golf course.

And a marine repair facility. And all kinds of pretty things.

Right where the old cottages are now. Going to take up the whole waterfront half of Retreat, it is. He’s calling it Cape Villiers. A nice international touch, don’t you think?”

I stared at him, saying nothing.

“It isn’t going to take him long to get all the property he wants,” Mike said. “He’s got a good start now. I don’t know what he’s been telling all the old ladies who’ve signed on, but he wouldn’t have to tell them much. They know his folks, don’tcha know. Magic words up here, always have been. And as for money, he’s got enough to buy the rest of the colony if he wants it. Though he probably doesn’t. Just the half on the water. Of course, the other half won’t be quite the place it’s always been.”

I still did not speak.

“Where did he tell you he got the money, Darcy?” he said.

“From his wife’s family? From his dear mama, dead so tragic-ally before her time of hepatitis? Bull-shit. He might have gotten a little from the girl’s folks, to get him out of the family and out of Italy, but I know for a fact his mother died of AIDS in a charity

hospital without a penny. He got a lot of it from Gretchen Winslow personally, along with a lot of Gretchen, and he got the promise of the rest from her family’s bank. Good business, it is. Cape Villiers will sell like hotcakes. Best loca-tion on the East Coast.”

“That is a lie.” All I could do was whisper. My throat was monstrously swollen. I thought it would burst.

He scrubbed his face with his fingers and spoke through them.

“I wish to God it was. It’s not. I checked. Anybody could have; the site and project plans are on file in Augusta, and I got the rest from a private detective in Portland. I hired him after Grandpa called me late this spring and told me Warrie was up here buttering up old ladies and buying up property.

Grandpa paid for the detective. It didn’t take long. Any one of the folks in Retreat could have found out at any time; your uncle Petie could have done it without even hiring a detective, the circles he moves in. It was just that nobody did. They all knew his family, you see. It’s all true. I have the report, and photocopies of the site and the plans. He doesn’t know I have them, of course. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do with them. I guess I was going to use them if I needed to. And maybe I still will. I think it depends on you, whether I need to or not.”

I looked at him mutely, fighting cold salt bile and the awful swelling in my chest and throat.

“He can’t do it without Liberty,” Mike said. “He won’t have septic access without Liberty’s half of the meadow. Your grandmother is the only holdout he’s got; when she’s gone, if someone doesn’t keep Liberty, he’s as good as got it. He could pay millions for it; in the end almost anyone would sell. I just don’t think he figures he’ll have to.”

I thought of the laughter we had shared on the water—was it really only yesterday?—and his soft voice

telling me about the hospital and his mother, and the feel of his hand in mine as we ran up the lane together, laughing.

The feel of his hand on my hair….

“No.”

“Stay, Darcy,” Mike whispered. “Stay and fight him.

Without Liberty he can’t do any of it. Stay on after she’s gone. All you have to do is accept the cottage. She wants you to have it, she’s told me that.”

“I can’t, oh, I can’t….”

High above us, in the thin, hot blue air above the clearing, the scream of a young osprey rang. I lifted my eyes from the beach and looked up. Far away out over the sea, the pure line of great wings slashed the sky, angled in the characteristic dip that only ospreys in flight have. The parents were coming home with food for their young.

“Then do it for them,” he said.

The knot in my chest exploded, and I felt a great primitive surge of grief and fury pour out behind it. My ears rang as if there had been some awful cosmic cataclysm; I could not hear the noise I made. But I could feel it, flowing up from the very pit of me and out into the still air, feel the force and fury of it. I don’t think I ever made words, but the sound doubled me over physically, jerking me as if I had been thrown. Mike held me hard on the beach as I half lay, half knelt on the loose shingle and shrieked and vomited all the endless red rage I had never been able to find, in all those years in the hospital and even before, out into the air of Osprey Head.

When I finally stopped, my throat was as raw as if I had a illness, and my ribs and lungs and stomach hurt. Tears still pumped from my eyes over my face and down onto my hands and Mike’s arms. The world seemed too bright and too sharp, and everything was thick and queer and soundless. It took almost half an hour for my breathing to slow.

“Stay,” he said again, finally, holding me to him, my body boneless with depletion. “Stay.”

I spoke against his shirt. It was as wet from my tears as if he had been in the sea. I could feel his heart beating, and his ribs under my clutching fingers. I let my hands and arms go loose.

“I can’t stay here,” I whispered. “I was never strong enough for this place. You have to fight too hard to stay here, Mike.

I’m through fighting. I can’t fight any more.”

“You’re never through fighting, Darcy,” he said into my hair. “Nobody is.”

“No. Not in this place. This is not my place. There is no one of mine here.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “There is.”

I did not answer him. Presently we waded back to the
Tina
and he set the mainsail for the long beat home. I did not speak the rest of the way; my throat felt flayed and bloodied, and every muscle in my body ached as if I had been beaten.

Hot water and then bed. Sleep. Just that.

We tied up at the boatyard dock.

“I’ll run you home,” he said.

“No. I’ll cut through the woods. I want to walk.”

“You’ll have to decide now, Darcy,” he said.

“Then,” I said, turning to look at him as I stood at the edge of the little wood, “I’ll decide. I’m going home. I’m going as soon as I can pack and get out of here. Uncle Petie and Aunt Sally can take Grammaude back. They always do.”

He stood looking at me and then turned away and walked down the dock toward the boathouse.

“Have a nice trip, Darcy,” he called back over his shoulder.

S
he came into my bedroom as I was finishing packing. I had not brought much with me, just what I had had in the hospital. It did not take long. I had glanced out onto the sun porch when I reached Liberty and seen that she was asleep there on the chaise, Zoot around her throat like a muff, and had not wakened her. It was going to be hard enough to tell her later. Let me have a little time. The sight of her, still and small under the Spanish shawl, her face so very old and de-fenseless, hurt me like a hot poker on naked flesh.

“I wish I could have been more use to you,” I had said very softly, and went upstairs.

“Darcy,” she said from the doorway as I closed the suitcase, and I turned to look at her. I had not heard her come. She held on to the doorframe, and all the life seemed to have drained from her, even from the black eyes. I thought she would simply sink to the floor, and went and supported her by her thin, knobbed arm and led her to the bed. She was trembling all over, like a small half-frozen animal. She sat on one side of the suitcase and I sat on the

other. Across it, she said to me with bloodless lips, “What has happened?”

I told her. I told her everything I could remember of what Mike had said, and when I could remember no more, I simply stopped talking and waited. She would see, must see, why I could not stay.

“Well,” she said after what seemed a very long time, “it’s good to have it out on the table. It’s better, really, than I was afraid it would be. This can be handled. You’ll have to stop him, of course. It’s yours to do, but you can do it quite easily.

All you have to do is hang on. I was afraid too much would be asked of you, but you can handle this.”

Some of her color came seeping back as she spoke, and her voice strengthened until, by the time she finished speaking and sat looking at me, it was quite strong. She smiled.

“What do you mean, it’s mine to do?” I said. The high, silvery ringing started again in my ears, and I could feel the rage building once more. I thought I had spewed all that out, back on the beach at Osprey Head.

“Because you’re my granddaughter, and my daughter’s daughter,” she said. “Because you’re the great-granddaughter of the woman who taught me this: it’s what we do, we women. We hold this place.”

The rage exploded and I heard myself shouting at her:

“Granddaughter! Great-granddaughter! Daughter! What is this shit? What are you talking about? The hell with this place, the hell with holding it! I’m not anybody’s granddaughter, or daughter either! Neither I nor my poor crazy mother ever had a real mother! She never loved me in her life, and you never loved her; she told me! She told me! You simply would not be a mother to her, and she would not be one to me; you loved only Petie, Petie and Granddaddy, and a Mama never loved
anybody
but Granddaddy! All those men, only those damned men…. Always and only the great, perfect, walking-dead Chambliss men!”

Grammaude sat still, stricken.

“I never told either my son or my daughter that I loved him best,” she whispered. “And I am certain your mother never told you or anyone else she did not love you just as much as she did her father—”

“She didn’t have to, and you didn’t either,” I cried furiously.

“You spent a lifetime showing them and everybody else! They didn’t have to hear it from you, those men; they
knew
they were enough. This whole place up here, this whole little paradise, is for them; men are emperors here! It’s the girls who need so desperately to hear the words, and they never do! Not up here! Not in this place…. Grammaude, damn you, you should have stopped him that summer!”

“Oh, God!” my grandmother cried softly, and I stopped shouting and looked at her, and I saw anger in her white face. Real anger, hot and living. I had never seen it, not even at my most outrageous childhood excesses, not even at Warrie Villiers. Not this kind of anger.