“Oh my god! Oh my god!” came his desperate reply. “Help me! Someone help me!”
I called to Emily, walking toward her, carefully picking my way over fallen logs and around the patches of devil’s club. She did not look at me but continued toward the sound of Heathcliff’s cries. Moonlight glowed blue, revealing Everett darting away from her, glancing over his shoulder as he went, and I watched him stumble and fall, landing in the prickly grasp of devil’s club, where he floundered, his focus no longer on the specter moving toward him as the thorns grabbed at his flesh. Emily stooped down, pursed her lips, and clicked her tongue as she did to call the fox, and Heathcliff emerged from the shadows, slinking past the boy to her side. She turned and looked at Everett, her gray eyes piercing, with an intensity I had never seen before.
Arnie and the others reached Everett and helped him to his feet. His face was scratched, and tiny welts covered his arms and hands where the spiky stems had punctured them. The front of his pants were stained, wet. He shook off the arms that supported him, wiping at his face with the back of his hand, and turned to walk away. I wish he had kept walking, that the others had just followed, but after only a few steps, he stopped and spun around, glaring at Emily, at the fox cowering at her feet.
“You’re a goddamn Indian witch,” he said, his voice hoarse, almost a whisper. “I’ll get you for this.”
And he did. Oh, how he did.
33
Elizabeth
The days became shorter as winter approached. The cottagers did not return to the island after their Labor Day excursion, but Heathcliff visited frequently. Emily and I concealed pieces of venison or bits of pork rind beneath our skirts and delivered them to a large flat rock beside the woodshed. She grew full, her coat shiny and her tail lush, and our simple offerings became unnecessary but welcome additions to her diet of mice and birds. Pa ignored her for Emily’s sake, and I loved him all the more for it. Even Mother took to setting aside bits of kitchen scrap in an old dented pot and giving it to Emily to bring outside after dinner. There were no more chickens to tempt the fox; our few remaining hens had stopped laying and had found their way into the soup pot. But I feared for her fate when the seasons changed and the coop was again alive with feathered clucking.
I needn’t have worried.
I will always remember that winter for two reasons. One was the wreck of the Hartnell in November. The other was the death of Heathcliff.
It was Heathcliff who alerted us to the disaster that was playing out on the icy, wind-tossed waters of the shipping channel between Isle Royale and Porphyry.
I was asleep in the bed that Emily and I shared. The light was running, its barely discernible rhythmic hum a steady, unregistered backdrop to the angry conversations of wind and waves as an early winter storm worked its way across the Lake. I woke with a start. Something had stirred me, reaching into my dreams. I gazed about me, shadows settling into shape and substance in the darkness. And then I heard the bark of a fox.
Instinctively I reached for Emily, my hand sweeping across empty bedding, feeling only a residue of warmth.
Heathcliff called again, and I knew Emily had gone to her.
Mother and Pa were asleep. It was rare that they both slept at once, especially when the weather was foul. They usually took turns throughout the night, checking the light, monitoring the fuel, measuring the wind, and chronicling it all in the logbook. I can only assume that exhaustion had overcome them. But the light was blinking, and I could see nothing amiss. I slipped into my boots and pulled on a jacket, the noise of the storm drowning the sound of the door banging against the wall of the house in the wind. I pulled it shut behind me, and looked at the sweeping ribbons of light shining out across the dark water. The beam danced against wind-driven snowflakes, creating a sparkling curtain around the island.
A sloppy layer of snow covered the ground. It was enough to brighten the darkness, and I could make out the path that led down to the point. The rocks were rough, black, and porous and I picked my way carefully. The wind whipped up a tempest on the Lake, and the waves crashed spectacularly onto shore, a frigid shower that mixed with the falling snow.
Emily was standing on the point, looking out across the heaving black sea. Heathcliff was far back from the reach of the waves, pacing along the ridge above the beach, her ears flat, pausing intermittently to call out her warning.
I was weary of my sister’s wanderings, self-absorbed behavior that left me chasing about on nights such as this, risking health and limb to drag her back to the warmth of our home and the safety of our bed. It was the first time I can remember ever being angry with Emily.
“Emily!”
My voice was caught by the wind and drowned in the water that hung in the sky, sleet chased by the gale.
“Emily!”
She turned when I called, looked at me, and then turned back to the Lake, lifting one arm, pointing out into the blackness. The light’s beam swept pathetically against the wall of mottled darkness, and I caught a faint glimpse of a boat, listing dangerously, being carried by the waves toward the black volcanic rock of Porphyry Point. Its engine was silent, the crew likely struggling to control the vessel, if they hadn’t already abandoned ship.
I left Emily, a white figure, standing on the black rock beneath the beacon. Within minutes I’d called for Pa, and he’d launched Sweet Pea, the little outboard motor roaring to life as he nosed out into the heaving swell. Mother stoked the fire and set pots of water to boil.
The wait was interminable. Emily refused to come inside, so I joined her on the point, where we stood wrapped in woolen blankets, watching the disjointed images as the drama unfolded, dramatically illuminated by the light. The Hartnell was a cargo vessel, likely making her last voyage of the season from Duluth, and how she had blown so far off course I could only speculate. Had she been seeking shelter, running from the fierce winds and pounding waves of a classic November gale, hoping to tuck in around Isle Royale and the shelter of McCargo Cove? Perhaps. If she had, something had gone wrong, terribly wrong, and the revealing eye of the light showed her drifting aimlessly, pushed by the wind and waves, until she grounded solidly, her metal hull buckling as she came to rest in the shallow waters of Porphyry Shoal.
I heard shouts in the darkness and the sound of the outboard motor. Emily and I, lanterns in hand, met Sweet Pea onshore. There were five men crowded into our little boat, wet and shivering, their faces pale and eyes darkly ringed with shock and fear.
“Take them to your mother. Get them warm.”
Pa remained in the stern of Sweet Pea, the beaching waves lifting the boat and tumbling it around, drenching him with each pass.