Blaze Island Read online

  They had to leave the car in the ferry hold for the crossing. Upstairs, people gathered inside the cabin, laughing, chatting, men and women her father’s age or older, in sweaters and jackets, who must live in whatever faraway place they were travelling to. There was a machine that served coffee. One of the women, in a red jacket, waved. Miranda’s father headed outside, onto the passenger deck in the bow. Surging from its mooring, the boat swung round so they were facing the sea, bracing themselves against a sharp north wind, a wind ready to lift Miranda off her feet if she gave it a chance. Still pale and gaunt but without his sunglasses, her father seemed to be drinking in the wind, his mouth wide open. A thin green line appeared in the distance, hovered, then vanished in a grey roll of fog. Miranda gripped the railing. On their right, a few small islets, dotted with evergreens and seemingly without houses, swept past.

  Alone, she stumbled through the wind to the stern where the ferry’s wake streamed out behind them, widening across the bay. The wake pulled her old life with it, turning everything Miranda had ever known into a milky froth. When she pushed her way to the bow, her father held out a hand to her, a hard, sure grip.

  “Say goodbye to the rest of the world,” he shouted in her ear. “We’re going where no one will ever find us.”

  Hand in his, Miranda struggled to find her balance and not be swept away.

  Back in the car, waiting for the signal to drive off the ferry, he showed her where they were on a paper map. “Here’s Blaze Island,” her father said, “and here,” he pointed to a dot at the far end of the island, “is where we’re going to spend the night.”

  They clanked off the ferry into fog so thick it was as if the world had disappeared or they themselves had vanished off the face of the Earth. Somewhere in Miranda’s depths stirred a kernel of curiosity, beneath the still tight clutch of bewilderment and fear.

  “I can’t see anything,” she said.

  “We’ve survived so many storms, blizzards with visibility far worse than this.” Her father spoke as if she, too, had been along on his adventures. “Miranda, my love, we’ll weather the weather together.”

  He said if they were careful they had enough money to live for years. In this new place, they would start a new kind of life. They would leave his enemies far behind. Once more he reached out his hand and she grasped his fingers tight in hers. “Say it with me now.”

  “We’ll weather the weather together.”

  “One more thing. Actually two. First of all, don’t mention the word climate. Not to anyone. Nothing about my being a climate scientist. And, second, from now on I’ll have a different name. A new name for a new life. You’ll still be Miranda but I’ll be Alan, not Milan. Alan Wells and Miranda Wells. Let’s practise.”

  . . .

  The afternoon before the storm, Caleb had arrived by car at the island’s airstrip, a half-hour’s drive from Pummelly. In the middle of the island, it was small as these things went, a long ribbon of pale pavement enclosed within fencing topped with barbed wire, surrounded by bare rocks and ponds and scraggly tuckamore, the small trees leaning northeasterly, pushed by the prevailing winds. If you ever got lost on the island you oriented yourself by the lean of the windswept trees.

  The old man had told him that the visitors were due to arrive by two, but the wind must have been with them because when Caleb pulled his car into the parking lot, the gleam of a plane was already on the tarmac, parked close to the terminal. Terminal was hardly the word for it. Or maybe it was, since the large shed, with an uneven patch of pavement out front, resembled a place at the end of the Earth. On the other side of the fence, four men stood near a small, sleek jet. Not a turboprop. Three strangers clustered around Alfred Harder, who worked for the airport authority and drove out to the strip whenever a flight came in, who was staring in wonder at the luminous aircraft. A light wind pushed out of the south, the sky already thick with cloud.

  There were no commercial flights to the island, other than when the ferry broke down for over forty-eight hours. Then the government put on a small plane to carry people across the bay. You lined up in the turquoise-walled terminal, in a room that held an ancient wooden desk. Behind it, Alf Harder or Mitch Buckle wrote your name down by hand in a lined notebook. Then you waited to hear whether or not your name was called and if you’d made your flight.

  Two of the men standing close to Alf Harder were ex­tremely tall, well over six feet. A mane of white-gold hair cascaded to the shoulders of one man, who had a presence that commanded attention as soon as you set eyes on him. Caleb assumed he was going for a hipster look, although he was older. A silk scarf protruded from the chest pocket of his jacket, which was made of some soft, ridged fabric. Corduroy. And sneakers. Aiming for boyish as well, was he? The other man was slim but stiff, younger, hair neatly cut. He didn’t seem at home in his sporty outerwear, as if he’d let someone else dress him or he’d had an idea of the journey and dressed to fit it, only the idea was nothing like where he actually was. The short man wore a leather jacket so shiny it looked fake.

  Words floated to Caleb as he approached the gate. Hurri­cane Fernand. Started the day at Midway in Chicago, well out of the way of it, yeah, but have a lot of business on the East Coast. Grim. Unfolding disaster. Will be in the thick of it soon. Stopped off in Toronto. Fly into Logan or LaGuardia, whichever opens up first.

  The man with the mane was like the stag with the biggest antlers, a great rack, like the creature who’d stepped into the road in front of Caleb one misty morning as he drove along the highway between Pummelly and Tom’s Neck. He’d swerved. The animal had almost killed him.

  Where was the pilot, Caleb found himself wondering. Who was the pilot? None of them seemed to fit that part, though the antlered man was talking to Alf Harder about ramp presence, advanced cockpit environments, unbelievable short runway performance.

  A woman stood beside Caleb. He jumped. Where the Jesus had she come from? Anna Turi. The old man had told him she’d be with the others. Eyes on them, he’d somehow failed to notice her. She must already have come through the gate and been in the terminal building. Also: her appearance was so unlike any other time he’d set eyes on her.

  Her long hair hung loose, the colour of autumn grass. Always before Caleb had seen it braided or knotted on top of her head or stuffed inside a hat. On her two previous visits to the island, she’d been bundled into jeans and rain jacket. Well, no, the first time he’d set eyes on Anna she’d been wearing pyjamas, when he’d walked into the old man’s kitchen and immediately bolted out again, in shock to find a third person, an unknown person at that, standing at the counter chopping onions and tomatoes first thing in the morning. The shock still reverberated through Caleb whenever he remembered that moment. Five summers ago, that was.

  Now, bright red lipstick coated Anna’s lips. High-heeled black boots ran up her legs and her hands were stuffed in the pockets of a white trench coat, cinched at the waist. City clothes. Caleb supposed there was no one particular way that Anna ought to look, yet her transformation unsettled him, as Anna had a habit of doing. She did not seem at ease. The real question was, why was she here, and with these men?

  “Hello, Caleb,” Anna said in her lilting, lightly accented voice. She was watching the men closely.

  “Have a good flight?”

  “Gratifyingly uneventful.”

  On the other side of the gate, Alf Harder, in boots and well-worn coveralls, was telling the antlered man that the plane ought to be safe where it was. “When the wind blows, she’ll blow out of the southeast. May be a spot of rain and a bit of a breeze.”

  “Well, we plan to be on our way by the end of the afternoon,” said the antlered man. “The hurricane’s heading out to sea last radar I saw.”

  “Here for a visit, are you?”

  “Reconnaissance,” said the antlered man with a brilliant smile. “Heard about this place. Anna told me about it, actually. I’ve an interest in remote locations. They appeal to my soul. Somewhere out o
f the direct line of hurricanes, that’s of interest these days, for all kinds of reasons. Heard it’s beautiful. Happened to be heading this way. So I wanted to see it for myself.”

  All this seemed performed for Alf Harder’s benefit, yet it was hard to tell if Alf was taken in. Caleb wondered if Alf Harder, who lived in Tom’s Neck, knew about Anna’s connection to the old man. Caleb kept waiting for Alf to ask the antlered man if he was here to visit Alan Wells, bracing himself, because the old man’s involvement was supposed to be secret, but Alf didn’t ask.

  The two other men, the tall and the short, came through the gate after Alf and the antlered man, who disappeared into the terminal to take care of paperwork. Wind tugging at her dark blonde hair, Anna made introductions. Len Hansen was the tall man in the crinkly windbreaker with many pockets. He had a distracted handshake and was juggling a leather attaché case and his phone. Tony McIntosh possessed a hungry, greasy air, smudged glasses. His handshake was firm but moist.

  “This is Caleb Borders, who works for us,” said Anna, glancing over her shoulder as if to make sure Alf was out of earshot.

  Inside Caleb a shout rose: he might work for the old man but he certainly didn’t work for Anna. However, the old man had given him reason to understand that it might be best, in front of these men, to keep his mouth shut.

  “We’ve booked a guesthouse for you,” said Anna. “Even if it’s for a few hours, you’ll have somewhere to make yourselves comfortable, refresh, wash up.”

  Oddness hung all over this meeting, Caleb thought. But then, in the last while, there had been a buildup of odd events.

  Two months ago, the old man had asked Caleb to book all three rooms in Teresa Blake’s guesthouse in Tom’s Neck, called Bakeapple House because of the salmon-orange colour of its exterior walls, for a week. Caleb told Teresa, as the old man had told him, that the guests would appear sometime in this window, he wasn’t sure when. The old man would pay for all five nights regardless, with one stipulation, the breaking of which would have the direst of consequences: his name was not to appear anywhere on the reservation. He’d give her a fine gratuity to ensure that. Then, as instructed, Caleb went next door to Margaret Hynes’s restaurant, Never The Like, the best on the island, found Margaret in the kitchen and told her that Alan Wells wanted her to cook for some people staying at Teresa’s guesthouse in the middle of September — at Teresa’s place so they could dine in private. Meals of hand-caught fish and foraged greens and local berries. Also, when speaking to them, she was never to mention the old man’s name, for which compliance she would also be paid. Handsomely. The request made Margaret grumble, What are they, royalty? But when she heard how much the old man was willing to offer her, she agreed.

  A week ago, the old man had stepped out of his office shed, holding out to Caleb, who waited in the yard, a small stack of white cards. Business cards, it turned out. With Caleb’s name printed on the front, no less. Everything beneath might as well have been in another language. Caleb Borders, Site Manager. The ARIEL project. Underneath all that was his actual phone number.

  “I’m expecting visitors in the next few days,” the old man said. “If all goes well, three men are flying in with Anna. If they ask you any questions about who you work for and what you do, show them one of these. Otherwise, keep these cards to yourself. They’re only for emergencies.”

  All this seemed cracked, though the old man’s manner was undeniably serious.

  “Are you going to tell me what a site manager does?” Caleb asked.

  “Looks after a property, takes care of things, pretty much what you do now,” said the old man.

  What Caleb did now was chop wood and stack it, at the house and in at the old man’s cabin, pick up groceries, run errands, sometimes going all the way across the bay to Gander to pick up supplies and packages from the post office box the old man kept there. That was mostly it.

  “The important thing is,” said the old man, with the same intensity, “you’re not, under any circumstances, even if they ask, to mention my name. If anyone from here asks you about the visitors, say they’re Americans, they’re here for a quick look around the island.”

  “Right,” Caleb said, slipping the cards into the breast pocket of his coveralls. “A quick look. Got it.”

  Then the old man had upped his wage, which aroused a crowd of complicated feelings in Caleb, gratitude, and also pain alongside the conviction that the old man must still value and trust him, despite all that had happened with the girl. Hope, yes, a strong bolt of hope.

  And so, frightened of troubling a temporarily calm surface, Caleb had not asked more about the what-was-it-called project.

  The antlered man, when he reappeared outside the terminal, moved towards the car as if he expected the air itself to part around him. His body had assertiveness and rhythm. Up close, you could see that much of his hair was silver. He was perhaps around the old man’s age. The old man had authority, too, but it was that of an intensely physical man, coiled. It made a different impression. The antlered man was saying to Alf, “Heard from my wife who’s outside DC, some flooding but she’s safe. My daughter’s out west, so well out of the trouble. Son’s far enough inland he ought to be fine, though as usual it’s been radio silence on that front.”

  Alf Harder climbed into his red truck and waved goodbye.

  Without consulting the others, the antlered man settled himself in the front passenger seat, a white canvas knapsack wedged between his knees. A pack of crows was making a murderous racket in a nearby spruce. Who were these people? The wind rose fitfully, clouds swooping past in grey swells. The car wasn’t big. It was more usually used for carrying lumber and tools and other building supplies, but Caleb had done his best to tidy it.

  “All right, Anna,” said the antlered man, “we’re here. I could have cancelled given the havoc on the coast, but I didn’t, because our meeting, our being here, feels even more necessary. Time to start throttling back on all this climate variability, so let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Yes,” Anna said. She slid into the middle of the back seat. With a glance over the car at each other, the other two men climbed in on either side, pressing their thighs up against her thighs, glimpsed by Caleb in the rear-view mirror as he tried to make sense of the antlered man’s perplexing words.

  “Roy Hansen,” the antlered man said. He extended his hand, taking notice, it seemed, of Caleb for the first time.

  “Is that your plane?” Caleb asked. Then, “Who’s the pilot?”

  “Who else?” Roy Hansen said with a forceful laugh. He shook out his mane of hair. “I pilot many, many things.”

  “Hey, Roy,” said Len Hansen from behind them. “I’m not getting any service, are you?” The two men shared the same last name, a similar chin and mouth, though other things about them seemed decidedly different.

  “I’m not either,” Tony McIntosh announced.

  Caleb started the ignition. Roy turned his sleek silver phone off, then on again.

  Anna said, “Some providers don’t work out here. Isn’t that right, Caleb?”

  Leaving him to affirm this.

  “That’s impossible,” Roy Hansen said. “My service works everywhere on Earth.”

  Anna’s phone pinged: it did seem to be working. She retrieved it from her pocket. Caleb checked his, just to be sure. He made the turn onto the gravel access road. Goldenrod and yarrow swayed at roadside. The horizon was a jagged line of pine.

  Caleb turned to Roy Hansen. “You can make a call on my phone if you want.”

  Again, Roy Hansen laughed, a laugh that was superficially friendly yet utterly patronizing, as if he, Caleb, were a child, as if one call were as useless to Roy as a hundred. “Thanks,” he said.

  The laugh made Caleb stiffen.

  A pilot, Roy had called himself. Yet he didn’t seem like a pilot to Caleb. Granted, his knowledge of pilots was limited. Were these visitors like the old man’s other visitors — here to study the weather? Roy had sp
oken about climate variability. Somehow these ones did not feel like the others. Roy Hansen’s manner seemed a little king-like. Tempus, the name unfurling up the plane’s tail, was an American airline company, Caleb knew that much, founded by a man who’d started out in a rock band, gone from rock star to airline mogul. Caleb took another look at Roy, the hard jaw, silk scarf in his pocket, the way he shook out his cascade of hair. Time flies, we fly faster, that was the Tempus motto. Ads, jingles, you saw and heard the phrase everywhere. Caleb had never flown Tempus but his cousins had, on trips to Disney World.

  He turned onto the highway, ponds to either side of them like open mouths, harrier hawk on an updraft. Caleb’s mind swooped up into the hawk; he pulled it back.

  Anna said, “Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll have to move the meeting to tomorrow.”

  “What the hell do you mean?” Roy Hansen demanded, swivelling.

  “Our director says the storm’s tracking farther north. Where our base is, it’s in a remote part of the island. There might be problems getting you back.”

  “It’s a small island. It can’t be that difficult.”

  “Nevertheless, that’s what he says. He’s out there now.”

  “Text him back. Why can’t he come to us?”

  Caleb tried to make sense of all this. It sounded like the old man was in at his cabin, and this was where he wanted Anna to bring the men. On the island the blow wasn’t predicted to be so bad, however destructive the hurricane had been elsewhere. What had the old man heard? And why couldn’t he come to Tom’s Neck? The wind was rising, but there was no storm yet. Unless the secrecy of whatever they meant to discuss demanded that the meeting take place somewhere remote. Not at the guesthouse or the old man’s house. Maybe the old man had his own reasons for insisting on a delay; he’d booked the men rooms in Bakeapple House after all. Caleb wondered how much Anna knew about the old man’s plans. More than he did, he didn’t doubt.