Catta hoped that, once he had committed the entire island to memory, he could begin to walk at night. To build up to that would take some time, several summers at least. There was a record posted in the library for the fastest circumnavigation of Seven Island (six hours, thirty-three minutes), but his grandfather said he had never heard of anyone trekking all the way around the island at night, and certainly not without a flashlight. Catta was slowly reducing what he carried with him, and someday he would know how to fish without a rod, light a fire without a match. He would see at night without a flashlight. He would know what to eat out in the woods or—better—he would go for days without eating. He was teaching himself to read the position of the sun and stars and the gradients on the island, what they meant for navigation, and where to find drinkable water (which the Old Man said was almost nowhere apart from the spring near the house). Catta wanted to see an owl to prove the Old Man wrong; it made him sad to think that owls would never come to Seven.
When he walked into the kitchen, Martha was kneading out biscuit dough on a long wooden cutting board. She took a short glass and pressed it through the dough to make biscuits, and when she knocked the discs from the glass onto the baking sheet, they made a little sound: thock.
“You should be in bed,” Martha said without looking at him. “If you don’t sleep, you won’t grow, and then you’ll be short and have a complex.”
Catta stared at the dough left on the cutting board. Long sleep was impossible here. There was too much to do, and to wake with the others meant living in fear of James.
Martha turned away from him and smiled. They were good friends, she thought, but this one would suffer. Them that want are always wanting, a preacher had said to her once. He said some people are given things—one can do this and another that—but then this other one sees something that floats up there out of reach like a cloud. Those are the damned, the preacher had said. He had shown her how to put out her hands, even in the dark, how to feel for a heartbeat in the soft places. Catta didn’t have God, as far as she could tell; none of the Hillsingers did. That preacher had a lot of God, and in the end he had broken on the rocks. Maybe he had too much.
When Martha turned off the faucet, she heard the faint grinding of stone on stone under the kitchen floor, and then she knew for sure that it was Catta who kept the little packet of strange things down there, wedged behind a loose brick. It was a long, thin packet of aluminum foil with fishing hooks, fishing line, matches, some gauze and bandages, iodine tablets, and two Indian arrowheads that were sharp. She had found it while trying to figure out how so many crickets got into the basement, and she hadn’t known which of the children left it there.
Catta stowed his emergency kit in the waistband of his shorts. The biscuits were done when he came back to the kitchen and he was glad that Martha made a few extra-big ones, which he liked best. She cut one open and put the bright-orange Seven Island butter on it along with the special blueberry jam.
“Where are you going so early?” Martha said.
Then Catta saw Penny Quick sitting on the floor on the other side of the kitchen, eating a biscuit. He had been sure he was the only one up. She was about his age and the niece of Billy Quick, although her parents were not currently on Seven. There were often random children in the Cottage—the beds were almost always full, and occasionally Catta was told the other boys and girls were cousins. Sometimes they belonged to guests at one of the houses, and sometimes they were not explained at all. Catta had seen Penny walk into the woods by herself at least once, which made him think she was less useless than other girls who were not named Sheila.
“I’m going to Indian Head,” Catta said to Martha, although he expected to go much farther.
“Get back for lunch, or your mother’ll run frantic.”
“Can I have a biscuit to carry?”
“No—your mother’ll blame me for encouraging you. You come back and see her about lunch.”
“Martha, you’re a tough broad,” Catta said.
Martha stared at him for a second, and then laughed until she had to sit down. Someone had said it in a movie Catta saw on television, and he was glad she laughed. Martha wiped her eyes, inadvertently marking her own face with flour.
“You got some stuff there,” Catta said, handing her a towel, and then Martha shooed them both out of the kitchen because she did not care to have the Quick girl around while she was working. Penny Quick asked questions, and she was watching all the time. The alert ones were the most dangerous, and Martha had never seen her before last week. The only children she trusted were the ones she had known since they were babies, and not even all of them. No one in their right mind, she thought, would trust James Hillsinger, and Martha had given him his bottles as an infant.
Catta debated stealing into the Hill House to get food so he could hike past lunch, but that would take time. It was risky. His mother worried when he came home too late in the day, though his father and the Old Man liked it when he stayed out on the trails, even when he missed dinner.
He walked out the screen door and Penny Quick was already on the porch, finishing her biscuit.
“Where are you going?” Penny said.
“The woods,” Catta said.
It was true, of course, although the woods were a multitude of different things—the kaleidoscope turned every day. Some days he had mastered them, or certain parts of them, other times he was scared, and still others he was sure the trees were speaking to him. Once or twice he exhaled, and he would have sworn the leaves shook. Sometimes he could see three turns ahead of him; sometimes he was lost, and he walked in widening circles until he found a trail or the ocean. Other times he felt known or marked in the bad way, cut off, cast out specifically by name.
“Can I come with you?” Penny said.
It was a hard question. If Penny came, she might see the part that was impossible to talk about and then that part would seem more real, and he would know it was not something he had imagined. But then the magic part might not happen if he was not alone.
“I bet you don’t have food,” she said.
“I just ate breakfast.”
“I bet you don’t have food for later.”
She pulled a sack from under the porch stairs and showed him a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, a small flask, an apple, and three chocolate-chip cookies.
“Did Martha give you that?” he said.
She didn’t answer, but she smiled. There was too much he did not know yet for him to share the woods with anyone. He could outrun her if he had to, though she would probably not follow him. If she did, he could lose her either on or off the trails.
“Come on,” he said, choosing to be brave.
Catta started walking down the path that led by the harbor to the chapel, and Penny fell in behind him. Past the chapel lay the woods.
16
October 1955
Harlem, New York City
When the school’s principal entered, Hannah Quick was sewing buttons onto a sock puppet. The sewing was more difficult than she had expected—she was never good at it, and out of practice—although Hannah was helped by the size of her belly. She was six months pregnant, and the thread and buttons rested conveniently there, as if on a shelf.
Something for you from the Board of Ed, the principal said.
Official communications were normally left in the pigeonholes in the faculty room, but in this case the principal had carried the letter in to her, using both hands as if it were fragile or dangerous.
Thank you, Mr. Decker, Hannah said. My hands are full just now, but I’ll read it as soon as I can.
The principal was visibly disappointed. He must have had minor fantasies, she thought, of seeing her recant in tears once they showed her the instruments of torture.