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By Root 241 0

boat, a smudge on the horizon. She took some solace in the fact that he was up and out on the water so early, for whatever she’d said to him couldn’t have gotten away with him that bad, but then she remembered that Woodrow was not the type to lie about sulking. Whatever happened he went to work. Perhaps work was how he dealt with it, the pain. She felt a kinship there, for this is how she’d managed the loneliness in her own life, though she’d never admit as much to her sister or, God forbid, the Tape Recorders. First of all, to admit to loneliness would send the wrong message to them all—that everything she needed in the world was not contained here on this island that, sooner now, not later, she was going to have to leave. It was one of the first questions little Liz had asked whenever she managed to get with Whaley away from Dr. Levinson, who back then would not let Liz do much more than hold the equipment, fetch him water or bug spray. “Don’t you get lonesome over here?” she’d asked. Whaley would have likely acted ill had Dr. Levinson asked this question, but he never would have asked it, for it wasn’t his type question. He was more interested in hearing lore about Theodosia, or about how they celebrated First Christmas instead of Jesus’ birthday. Little Liz, though, how could Whaley get mad at that girl who was just as ignorant as she could be about anyplace not Washington, D.C., where she had been raised up.

No, honey, I don’t ever get lonesome. Never have. Plenty to keep me busy. I don’t need television or movie theaters to take my mind off my troubles because at the end of my day I am just not that troubled.

There were so many lies in that answer she didn’t even want to untangle them all. Maybe not lies—only what Maggie called playing it up to the hilt, the primitive Banker role. Once you got going down that road it was hard to admit you liked to sit out on the church steps and read aloud grocery store prices of an evening. Didn’t fit with the image. She had the island to protect too. Wasn’t anybody else going to protect it, since it wasn’t but three of them left and she was the only one of them could tell the story the way Dr. Levinson and them needed it told.

That morning Whaley watched Woodrow’s boat until it slid over the sunlit horizon and then she walked home feeling as hollow low as she had in years. She told herself it was lack of sleep making her feel this way, for stormy nights excepting, she always slept like the dead, went to bed at dark and got up at first light, was out when her head hit the pillow and stark awake when she swung her legs off the mattress at the rooster crow. At home she went straight upstairs to her room and crawled in bed with her clothes on.

Maggie woke her around two o’clock that afternoon.

“You feeling poorly?” She shook her shoulder lightly, and Whaley stared at her and then at the room, the full blaze of afternoon sun through the windows.

“What time?”

“Well after lunch. Two almost.”

“I didn’t get to sleep till late.”

“Woodrow didn’t come back yet,” said Maggie.

He was usually back by noon, especially in the summer heat. Whaley said, “Maybe something’s wrong with his motor.”

“I’m worried about him for some reason.”

“You’re worried because you’re a worrier.”

“Too old to change, I guess,” said Maggie as she left the room.

Whaley got up and got herself some toast and tea and went about the day’s chores but it didn’t feel right, this day—things were off kilter, her rhythm was awry, she felt, well, bad, empty, for sleeping the day away, and her sister’s worry had gotten away with her too. Especially when Woodrow didn’t turn up by suppertime.

Or the next day.

They didn’t have any way of getting ahold of him, of course. There were other boats on the island but they had not been afloat in some time. When Maggie suggested they drag one of them down to the water and set out looking, Whaley dismissed this as craziness, said someone would come to them if anything happened to Woodrow.

Out in the yard plucking a tern that afternoon, she decided he’d taken such offense at her