The Rattled Bones(39)

“Aye, aye.” Sam hops off the boat, gives Hoopah a high five as if he’s been doing it for years.

I let Sam do the off-loading. He’s a fast learner, and that’s everything I need right now.

“Good ta see ya, Rilla.” Hoopah climbs aboard, leans his back against the wheelhouse.

“It’s good to be seen.” I toss the remnants of the chum buckets overboard. The gulls screech, their long wings and fierce beaks fighting each other for the bloody fish that coat the water. I spray the bait containers semi-clean, tuck them back into place.

“Good day on the water?”

“Getting there.”

“Looks like ya help’s working out.” He throws a nod in Sam’s direction. “I remember the first day ya helped ya dad at sea. Never seen a man with more pride.”

I was barely four and remember it only from pictures. “A long time ago.”

“Time’s a tricky thing, Rilla. Feels like yesterday ta me.”

Time is the trickiest of things. The way the girl reaches me across time, across death. The way it feels like maybe I’ve known her before.

“Ya need to stay on the water.”

“How’s that?”

“Old Man Benner’s got his eyes on ya fishing grounds.”

I clean the chum knife with a rag, hang it next to the ruler. “I’m aware.”

“Then ya know ta be careful.”

“I will, Hoopah. I appreciate you looking out for me.”

“I owe your fathah a hundred favors or more, Rilla.”

And I see the loyalty in his eyes, that spark of remembering, of never forgetting. I want to know if the girl had someone looking out for her too. Or is she asking me to remember? Because no one else has?

“He’d appreciate it, Hoopah. You know he would.”

“Hope so, Rilla. Hope so.”

Sam reboards the boat, hands me today’s weigh-in slip. Four hundred and eight pounds. “Not bad.”

Hoopah lets out a laugh that soars up from his middle. “Ya right about that, Sam Taylah.” He wags his finger at Sam but says to me: “Ya got yourself a good sternman there, Rilla, and I’m glad ta see it.” He shakes his head like he’s letting the last bit of laughter break free. Then he sucks his lip between his teeth, lets out a whistle that calls his dog to his side. “See ya tomorrow, Rilla.”

“Tomorrow.”

“See ya.” Sam waves, still enthusiastic, even though every inch of him must ache.

I navigate away from the dock, and Sam moves to the back of the boat, readies our lines for tomorrow’s run. When I near the shores of Malaga, I put the engine in neutral, let the tide slide us toward the University of Southern Maine boat. My mouth plays with the question that’s been on my mind since reading the girl’s plea. “Sam?”

Sam’s rinsing his hands overboard, wringing the day’s work from his fingers. “Rilla?”

“How would it be if I helped you on the island?” This is the easiest way to ask for help that I know—by offering it.

“Malaga?”

“Are you digging on another island?”

He laughs. “No.” He slips off his coveralls, hangs them in the wheelhouse. “It’s just that . . . I don’t know . . . You always seem like you’re kinda in a rush to get off the island.”

“Maybe.” Definitely. “But not anymore. Not since I read your research.”

Sam reaches overboard to grab his skiff, drops over the edge and into his boat. He waves me aboard. “I’d dig it if you worked in the dirt with me, Rilla Brae.” He gives me a soft wink and I laugh.

I wish I were brave enough to tell Sam about the girl, her request. And how I think she was from here. That I think the island might have more than artifacts buried. That secrets are restless on the island. I drop anchor, strip off my Grundens, and join Sam in his boat.

At the site, Sam hands me a trowel no different from the kind Dad used for masonry work around our property. He shows me how to carve out small sections of earth with a gentle hand, then screen the dirt for remnants of buttons, glass, tobacco pipes, anything that wouldn’t come by the dirt naturally.

Maybe to find the answers, I need to know everything Sam knows, the truths that might exist outside of photographs and articles and the eviction notice. Then maybe I’ll be able to tell him about the girl’s visits, her song. I want the whole puzzle of the story, so I start with one piece as I sift a small dollop of earth against the thin metal lines of a screen.

“My best friend, Hattie . . . her grandmother remembered what happened out here.”

Sam leans back from the edge of the site, rests his forearms on his thighs. “Tell me.” His eyes are hungry.

“Hattie’s nan told Hattie about the islanders being taken to Pineland.”

“?‘Taken’ is a nice way to put it; ‘forcibly committed’ is more accurate.”

“Yes, right.” The faces of the children crowd my head. Which one didn’t know what a telephone was? Who was that boy who spent four decades locked in an institution because he couldn’t identify an object that had no function in his island life? The girl would have known that boy, all the children. They would’ve been family, in the way of island living. “Hattie’s nan told her she regretted it, what was done to the people here.”