The Shore (22 page)

Eventually Jackie was noticed, but not before an older man had given him a handful of raisins, which he'd lined up in rows along the barrel top beside him and eaten in pairs, and a second had offered him a chaw of tobacco, which he'd politely declined. His uncle hailed him over and went into the back room, and Jackie followed him.

“Glad you've come over, I have enough apples to feed every herd on Assateague. Anderton will be waiting to show you where to unload; there's a gut that runs up to the clearing I want to use for the first fermentation, the press is already there. What you need to do, now, is load up with apples and cart them over. Anderton's readied the clearing. You can just beach the skiff and leave them covered, so the ponies can't get at 'em. Once everything's moved we can get to pressing.”

Jackie hung in the doorway. “What happens if someone finds the clearing?”

His uncle considered this a moment.

“Nothing against the law about pressing apples, or having barrels of juice, or making vinegar. It's only when it turns alcoholic instead of running to vinegar that you get into trouble, and that won't be for more than a month. You'll have till then to decide how much of a hand you want to have in it, and whether you want some of the profits when it's sold.”

After some minutes of deliberation, Jackie nodded his assent. “Where are all these apples at?”

Loading the skiff took more effort than Jackie had imagined. The store backed onto one of the canals that had been cut to let the low-lying island drain properly in the rainy season, and for that he was grateful. First he'd run back down to the dock and rowed around the island and up the network of canals so as to be as close to the store as possible, then carried the apples down a bushel at a time and wedged them into the skiff before covering them with canvas. Uncle Leo then set him on one of the barrel seats in the shop and gave him cheese and apples and let him listen to the old men chew the fat while he shook the soreness out of his arms. He considered telling his uncle about what he had seen in the wash house, but thought better of it. Alice would skin him like a deer if she found out that he'd followed her; he didn't even want to think about what she'd do if he told on her.

The skiff sat low in the water on the row back, and to Jackie the trip felt as though it took twice as long. He was used to rowing; he'd known the rock of a boat since before he could walk, but they'd rarely had heavy or large loads to take across, and his shoulders were aching by the time he found the gut that his
uncle had described to him. It was a little narrower than a creek, and wound tightly the farther into the island it went, but it was surprisingly deep, and he managed to avoid getting hung up on waterweed or the bottom itself. He was slightly dreading meeting Anderton, having to keep up with the man while unloading the skiff, and the uncomfortable silence that he knew there would be throughout, so he was disproportionately relieved to see Anderton's eldest daughter Hannah waiting for him on the bank instead, plaiting marsh grass into a basket and kicking her bare feet into the dirt. Hannah was younger than him by a few months, and they'd sledged down Lighthouse Hill and stalked rabbits together for years, though he hadn't seen much of her since Alice had left and more of the daily chores had fallen to him. He felt a little shy now; he couldn't put his finger on why, but proud too. She helped him beach the skiff, and they began unloading the bushels of apples, not hurrying because there wasn't anyone watching, their feet sinking slightly in the soft black mud.

“You know what they plan on doing with these?” he asked her loftily, in a tone meant to convey that he knew well enough.

“Course I do,” she scoffed in reply. “What kind of fool drags this many apples out to the middle of nowhere to make vinegar?”

Jackie felt embarrassed. Maybe it was only a big secret to him and Mama, and the whole village knew that Leonidas Wallace and the lighthouse keepers were making brandy in the woods.

“They're gonna build a lean-to to keep the rain and things out of it. Pa said I could help if I promised not to get my fool neck broke,” she continued.

“Well, Uncle Leo asked me to watch the still when the time comes,” Jackie answered. “Bet you don't get to do that.”

“Naw.” She made a face. “Ma'd miss me if I were gone all night, and anyway, I don't want to be stuck watching some fire for hours and hours with no one to talk to and nothing to do. You can keep it.”

“You don't mind not talking and not having anything to do, if your job's important,” he answered. He knew by the look she gave him just how much she didn't believe him, a one-quirked-eyebrow look that he knew she'd practiced, but he was glad that she didn't say anything.

As they unloaded the skiff they played that they were soldiers on the front lines in France, carrying wounded comrades out of the trenches to be treated by beautiful nurses who wore red lipstick and spoke in high, breathless voices. Hannah provided the dialogue because she'd seen movies on the mainland and knew what they would say. They each took a handle of a bushel, lifted on three, and carried the load to the edge of the clearing, where they set it down carefully and determined what kind of wound it had suffered, and whether it would survive. The clearing was small, and overhung with deciduous trees, and Jackie half-wished he had found it first so that they could keep it to themselves.

The game made the work go faster, though bodies felt no lighter than apples, until every last basket was arranged square to its neighbor in an edge of the clearing and carefully tucked under the canvas. Hannah dug out an apple for each of them before helping Jackie push the skiff off the muddy bank and climbing in opposite him. As he backpaddled them out of the gut she
took a large, juicy bite of hers, and he refused to continue on until she'd held up his apple so he could have a bite as well.

It was late in the afternoon when she helped him tie off at the dock and they washed the marsh mud from their feet, but they took their time walking up the path to the village. Jackie paused at the trail off to his house, unsure. Reacquainting himself with Hannah was proving to be quite enjoyable.

“Want to come up and see the hiding place? Pa's been working on it, here and there,” Hannah offered, sensing his reluctance to return home, and he followed her along the path to the lighthouse.

The hill was steep and thick with shrubs, with the shell path the only safe way up on the village side, and then only when the weather was good. It would have made for a deadly sledding hill, but the scrubby grasses and hardy bushes kept the hard-packed earth from washing down with every storm. The lighthouse could be seen from any point on the south end of the island, and cast a cool light down on them all through the night; Jackie had never slept in complete darkness. When the lighthouse was built it had been lit with fish oil, which had been kept in brick-lined vaults beneath it. The switch to kerosene had required that an above-ground fuel hut be built in case of explosions, and the vaults had fallen into disrepair. They'd been warned away from them as children, and so of course developed a fascination with them. The roofs had caved in, and Jackie could still trace most of his more serious lickings back to being caught in, around, or near the vaults, or else having thrown one of the girls' dolls in to make them go down after it.

He expected Hannah to take him to the top of the hill, to one
of the vaults that they had played in, but instead she stopped halfway up and struck out laterally across the hill, clinging to the twisted bushes to keep from slipping. Behind a particularly dense patch of brush she stopped and waited for him to catch up, which he did with considerably less dignity than he would have liked. When he was close enough he realized that she was standing on a narrow shelf cut into the bank, and a segment of the hill was draped in dusty burlap and scattered with plants. She knelt down and twitched aside a corner so he could see.

The room was larger than he'd expected, nearly as large as his kitchen, except with a lower ceiling. They had salvaged bricks from one of the vaults and laid a tight, neat, level floor, and he could tell that they were in the middle of building up the walls and digging back deeper into the hill. The ceiling was supported by a thick pine scaffolding, but Jackie doubted it was necessary; the whole room looked as solid as the hill itself. Two bulbous shapes huddled in the corner near the picks and shovels. Wrapped in muslin and tied off with sisal cord, they looked like overly large gourds, but Jackie knew that they had to be the stills, already bought and carefully hidden for when they would be needed.

“They sure done that quick,” he observed and slid back out into the sunlight.

“Been working on it for weeks now. Sometimes I come down and look out,” Hannah answered, and Jackie decided not to mention that he'd only just found out about the plan. It galled him that she was so in the know.

“Would make a nice little house, wouldn't it?” he said, trying to steer the conversation elsewhere.

“Get awful crowded though, once you started having babies,”
she said, and sat down with her legs dangling. They could see boats moving across the bay below them, and the dun smudges of the barrier islands and the marsh. It was a comforting sight, so peaceful and so alive at once. He supposed he could forgive his uncle for letting Hannah know before him. She had just found out because she happened to be around. He had been asked to help, to be a partner in it all. Below them he saw his mother, moving slowly through the garden, scattering the chickens, and he realized how low the sun had sunk in the sky. With a wave and an “I'll be seeing you,” he turned and started off down the hill.

Smoke drifted from their chimney, and as he stepped toward the house he could see her in silhouette in the doorway, bent over the fire. They would be having the eggs that he'd collected the day before for dinner, he knew, and they would probably still be hungry afterward but neither of them would say anything, and tomorrow he would work the garden or fish, and the same the day after and the day after until winter, when they would be hungry and cold and still not say anything. His mother's face was seamed from the sun and the salt and the worrying, though she wasn't that old. There was no way out for them, and when all the other islanders finally left for Chincoteague, for town life and sociability, they would be left alone, with no company but the lighthouse keepers. The sale of the church had been a simple declaration of defeat for the village: they would not stay, could not stay, any longer. The only thing worse, Jackie thought, than leaving the island was being left behind on it.

He paused in the doorway, watching his mother moving slowly, stiffly, between the sideboard and the table, and behind her was Alice sitting in one of the rush-bottomed chairs against
the far wall, hands motionless in her lap, eyes pinked with crying. His mother's mouth was pinched tight, and he scraped his feet on the top step without a word and sat down at the table. The sight of their faces made his stomach go cold; he wanted to ask what had happened and at the same time wanted to linger in that space of not-knowing, where everything was still all right. Then the weight of his secret fell on him.

When they'd been playing in the clearing it had felt so simple, a game on a grander scale, with adults involved. But he knew—he just didn't want to consider it—that if he or any of them were caught with the fermented mash, or tending a still, or in any way in connection with the finished bottles of brandy, they would be going to prison. He didn't want to imagine what his mother would say to that, having the sheriffs show up on the doorstep of their tiny house and take him away.

His mother glanced at him as she set a cup down in front of him, and in that moment he knew that there would be no more games over baskets of apples. She needed him to be an adult now.

“Are you all right, Alice?” he asked quietly, timidly.

“Your sister is just home for a visit,” his mother said quickly. “She's all right, just a little tired.”

“There's no sense in lying to him, Mother,” Alice snapped back. To Jackie, she said, “I'm ashamed of it, but that doesn't make it not true. I was dismissed from Mrs. Thompson's, for engaging in a romantic relationship with one of the guests.” Her face had gone red with embarrassment, and her eyes remained fixed on the table, but her voice was steady. “He's promised to marry me, but if his parents will not consent we will have to wait. And I will have to find other work.”

“It isn't the end of the world, Alice. Someone is bound to want you as a shop assistant—”

“After they know why I was dismissed?”

“That won't bother everyone,” Jackie interjected. “You could work at the oyster factory and they wouldn't care. Maybe Uncle Leo knows someone that would give you a job—he sent you to Mrs. Thompson in the first place.”

“Shh, Jackie!” said his mother.

“No, he's right,” said Alice. “I can shuck oysters if I can't do anything else. There are just as many women as men working there, I shouldn't think I'm above it.”

That grim pronouncement was followed by a few moments' silence as they bent their heads over the dishes and their mother quietly intoned the usual prayer. Jackie had guessed correctly: eggs, and peas from the garden, over thick slabs of dark bread and under a satiny sauce.

“What's his name?” he asked after the first bite.

“Liam Fields.” She was trying to keep a straight face, but couldn't help the smug way one corner of her mouth quirked upward.

“Should we know who that is?” her mother asked.

“Sam Fields's son.”

Jackie choked on a chunk of bread; his mother only fared better because she took smaller mouthfuls.

“I was ashamed of being caught and dismissed, not ashamed of the romance itself.”

“Well, that's good news, I suppose,” their mother replied. “A pity the satisfaction won't keep us in food over the winter.”