Dark Nantucket Noon
Dark Nantucket Noon
Jane Langton
Open Road Integrated Media Ebook
“I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.⦔
CAPTAIN AHAB
in
Moby Dick
For Maryalice Thoma
1
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at itâa mere hillock, and elbow of sand â¦
HERMAN MELVILLE,
Moby Dick
Below the little plane the water of Nantucket Sound slipped over itself, the gusty wind from the east rippling the surface in an endless rapid sparkling hastening succession of white-capped waves, while the larger waves below them seemed motionless from the air, a geologic mold of ocean water. But of course the larger waves were moving too, more slowly. And, obeying a deeper compulsion, the vast watery volume of the Atlantic Ocean was rising in response to an urgent tide that yearned across the earth, sending a bulge of water dragging after the moon from the old world to the new, carrying it heaving and pulsing along the New England coast, smashing up after last night's storm upon the granite boulders of Penobscot Bay, running up into the tidal flats of the Ipswich River and the clam beds of the town of Essex, stirring the lobster pots of Gloucester and Marblehead, agitating the scum and garbage floating around T Wharf in Boston Harbor, pounding on the fisted forearm of Cape Cod, carrying away granules of colored clay from the cliffs of Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard, washing in white breakers against the shoal that curved northeastward from the body of the island rising below the plane.
Everywhere at once the Atlantic was in motion, rocking in its bed, lifting at the summons of the massive moon, shifting the uneasy hulks of sunken vessels lying on the bottom: the
Andrea Doria
, many fathoms down, the
City of Columbus.
The tide was running in the sea; it was an ocean walking.â¦
Kitty was coming to the island only to see the total eclipse of the sun, that was all. She had taken the plane at Boston, and when it came down at the Nantucket airport she would jump into the rented car that would be waiting for her, drive to the remotest corner of the island, look up at the eclipse, and then take the next plane home.
She was coming only to see the eclipse. There was no chance at all that she would run into Joe Green. The fact that he was living on the island with his wife had nothing whatever to do with her coming. Nothing at all. She had wanted to see a total solar eclipse all her life, and here it was, only a few miles offshore. Nantucket happened to be the only place on the North Atlantic seaboard where totality would be visible, so she had had no choice. And just because she had once made a fool of herself over Joe Green, just because he had settled down on the island and married his second or third cousin or whatever it was, that was of no consequence. She would see what she had come to see, and go home.
Therefore it was odd the way the sight of the gray sickle-shaped island in the glittering sunshaft on the Atlantic Ocean alarmed her. It was positively crawling with invisible antlike Joseph Greens. They were everywhere. Kitty imagined herself aiming a powerful telescope at the island at randomâat that long neck of sand ending in a little stick that must be a lighthouse, or perhaps at that stretch of red carpet in the middle of the island. She would squint one eye through the telescope and adjust the focus until the fuzzy field of view sharpened, and there before her would be Joe's face with its amiable mouth and big kindly nose and light eyes. And those eyes would be staring up at her, seeing her, identifying her through the plane window and the wrong end of the telescope, turning cold with anger at this invasion of his privacy.
At the Nantucket airport Kitty climbed out of the plane, letting the wind blow her hair like a veil over her scowling face, avoiding the eyes of the people clustered at the gate, Joe Greens, every one of them. He had multiplied, he was just at the edge of her averted gaze, he was looking through the baggage on the pavement, he was shouting greetings into the wind, he was selling her a local paper and a map of the island, he was handing her the key to her rented car, he was crowding the waiting room, he was loaded down with sleeping bags and heavy parkas and eclipse-viewing apparatus, he was talking excitedly in a loud voice. All the Joe Greens were exchanging congratulations about the brilliant day after the storm during the night, and they were swapping information about what to watch forâthe solar corona, and Baily's beads, and the shadow bands, and the flash of red at the very end. But of course when any of these multitudinous Joe Greens opened his mouth Kitty knew it wasn't really Joe, because his voice had been different. She couldn't remember it exactly, but it wasn't this one or that one.
So it was a relief to find the little green car in the parking lot just where the man had said it would be, and her key worked in the lock, and she got in and slammed the door, grateful to be out of the wind, and dumped her bag on the seat beside her, and heaved a great sigh. Joe Green couldn't see her now, unless of course he was that man off vaguely to the left climbing into a station wagonâthere, now he was gone.
Kitty started the engine to warm the car, and unfolded her new map. Where was that long neck of sand she had seen from the air? There had been a lighthouse at the end, but the rest of the long sandy beach had looked roadless and deserted. There it was. Great Point. She would go to Great Point. How much time did she have? She looked at her watch. Almost two hours before the partial phase of the eclipse began, three before totality. And it was the two-and-a-half minutes of totality that she had come to see, when the light of the sun would be completely blocked out by the moon, and the sky would darken, and the solar corona would appear. It was supposed to be awe-inspiring, breath-taking, wonderful. Three hoursâplenty of time. Kitty picked up the Nantucket
Inquirer and Mirror
and turned the pages idly.
On page one there was a picture of Nantucket's Maria Mitchell Observatory, and an article about the expeditions from Johns Hopkins and the Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole. They were going to photograph the eclipse at the observatory and make spectrographic studies of the solar prominences. They would all be there now, thought Kitty, the scientists, milling around, checking their instruments, getting ready, jubilant because of the crystal sky after last night's storm.
There was an article with the headline
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
, and Kitty made a mental note to read it carefully later on. Then a name caught her eyeâ“Homer Kelly.” Homer Kelly? It had a familiar ring somehow. She ran her eye down the paragraph. “Ex-Lieutenant-Detective Homer Kelly, noted scholar in the field of nineteenth-century American literature, is spending a few weeks on the island to complete his study of the men who sailed with Melville.” Oh, yes, that was who Homer Kelly was. Kitty had read the biography of Thoreau he had written with his wife. What did this article mean by calling him an ex-Lieutenant-Detective? Had he been some kind of policeman?
Well, enough of that. Kitty folded the newspaper and stuck it into her bag, which was a roomy canvas carryall with a pair of leather handles. Then she looked at the map again. To get to Great Point she would have to go west first, then turn a sharp corner and head northeast on a road marked “Polpis.” Good. Kitty put the map into her carryall next to the newspaper and shifted gears.
On the road she kept her eyes straight ahead, looking neither left nor right, while Joe Greens whizzed past her every now and then, going the other way. There were torn leaves and twigs on the pavement, and Kitty guessed they had been blown off in last night's storm.
SOFT TIRES ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT
The road had petered out into sand beyond the big gray shuttered hotel, and now it had come to an end altogether. Kitty pulled up, locked the car and set off with her bag over her arm. There was nothing in her ears but the noise she made cleaving the air, the slightest of slight sounds, diminishing as she picked up each foot in turn, increasing as she swung it forward. There were muddy puddles in the wheel ruts, and she skirted them. To her right a row of houses looked uninhabited, boarded up. To her left lay the wind-streaked water of the harbor. Where was the open ocean? Kitty stopped and opened out her fluttering map, then struggled to fold it up again. The sea should be just over there to the right. She plowed up a steep slope, clutching at beach grass, and came out on the open Atlantic. The water was a cold dark blue, foaming up at the bottom of the steep short beach. And there was something in the water, far out, sleek black heads and finny tails. Seals! sporting and playing, diving for fish.