Ashes Read online

  As if he had to ask. Accounting. The same as always.

  "The same as always," she said. "I got another raise last year."

  The ladder and how to climb it. Karen knew the book by heart, learned by rote at the feet of Henry who called himself Hank. Or was it Hank who changed his name to Henry?

  Such confusion.

  So many sharp edges and reflections.

  "Why are you here?" John asked.

  "I already told you."

  "No. I mean, really."

  She picked up a piece of colored glass, a remnant from a miniature church John had built and then smashed. She held the glass to her eye and looked through. Blue behind blue.

  "I got to wondering about you," she said. "How you were getting along and all that. And I wanted to see how famous artists lived."

  Famous artists didn't live. All the most famous artists were long dead, and the ones who swayed the critics during their own lifetimes made John suspicious.

  "I'm the most famous artist nobody's ever heard of," he said.

  She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the glass. "That's one thing I don't miss about you. Your insecurity."

  "Artists have to go to dangerous places. You can't get too comfortable if you want to make a statement."

  Karen put the piece of blue glass on the desk beside his mallet. She went to the portrait again. She pointed to the curve of her painted hip. "Maybe if you put a little more red here."

  "Maybe."

  She turned. "This is really sad, John. You promised you were going to throw yourself into your work and make me regret ever breaking up with you."

  He hated her for knowing him so well. Knowing him, but not understanding. That was something he'd never been able to forgive her for.

  But then, she wasn't perfect. She was a work in progress, too.

  "You can't even finish one lousy painting," she said.

  "I've been working on my crow collection."

  "Crow collection? What the hell is that?"

  "Shiny stuff. Spiritual stuff."

  "I thought you were going to make that series of twelve that was going to be your ticket to the top."

  He looked out the window. The room smelled of kerosene and decay.

  She waved her hands at the mess on the workbench. "You gave up me for this."

  No. She left him for Hank or Henry. John never made the choice. She wanted him to give up art. That was never an option.

  "I guess I'd better get going," she said.

  He thought about grabbing her, hugging her, whispering to her the way he had in the old days. He wanted her naked, posing. Then, perhaps, he could finish the portrait.

  "It was really good to see you," he said.

  "Yeah." Her face was pale, a mixture of peach and titanium white.

  She paused by the studio door and took a last look at The Painting. "Frozen in time," she said.

  "No, it's not frozen at all. It's a work in progress.

  "See you around."

  Not likely, since she lived two thousand miles away. The door closed with a soft squeak, a sigh of surrender.

  John looked at the portrait again.

  Karen here before him.

  Not the one who walked and breathed, the one he could never shape. This was the Karen he could possess. The real Karen. The Painting.

  He possessed them all. Anna under the floorboards. Cynthia beneath the canvas. Sharon in the trunk of his Toyota.

  John hurried to the bench and grabbed up his tools.

  The Muse had spoken. He realized he'd never wanted to build himself, or dream himself alive. Art wasn't about sacrificing for the good of the artist. Art was about sacrificing for others.

  For Karen.

  She was the real work in progress, the one that could be improved. The canvas awaited his touch.

  John uncovered Cynthia and went to work. By midnight, The Painting was finished.

  It was perfection.

  SHE CLIMBS A WINDING STAIR

  Outside the window, a flat sweep of sea. The ocean's tongue licks the shore as if probing an old scar. Clouds hang gray and heavy, crushed together by nature's looming anger. In the distance is a tiny white sail, or it might be a forlorn whitecap, breaking too far out to make land.

  I hope it is a whitecap.

  Because she may come that way, from the lavender east. She may rise from the stubborn sandy fields behind the house, or seep from the silver trees beyond. She could arrive a thousand times, in a thousand different colors, from all directions above or below.

  I can almost her hear now, her soft footsteps on the stairs, the whisper of her ragged lace, the mouse-quick clatter of her fingerbones on the railing.

  Almost.

  It's not fear that binds my limbs to this chair, for I know she's not bent on mortal vengeance. If only I could so easily repay my sins.

  Rather, I dread that moment when she appears before me, when her imploring eyes stare blankly into mine, when her lost lips part in question.

  She will ask me why, and, God help me, I will have no answer.

  I came to Portsmouth in my position as a travel writer on assignment for a national magazine. In my career, I had learned to love no place and like them all, for it's enthusiasm that any editor likes to see in a piece. So neither the vast stone and ice beauty of the Rockies, the wet redwood cliffs of Oregon, the fiery pastels of the Southwestern deserts, the worn and welcoming curves of the Appalachians, nor the great golden plains of the central states tugged at my heart any more or less than the rest of this fair country. Indeed, much of my impression of this land and its people came from brief conversations and framed glances on planes, trains, and the occasional cab or boat.

  So the Outer Banks held no particular place in my heart as I ferried across Pamlico Sound to Ocracoke. To the north was the historic Hatteras Lighthouse, the tallest in the country, which was currently being moved from its eroding base at a cost of millions. I thought at the time that perhaps I could swing up to Hatteras and cover the work for a separate article. But assignments always came before freelance articles, because a bankable check feeds a person much better than a possibility does.

  So on to bleak Portsmouth for me. At Ocracoke, I met the man who was chartered to take me to Portsmouth. As I boarded his tiny boat with my backpack and two bags, my laptop and camera wrapped against the salt air, he gave me several looks askance.

  "How long you going to stay?" he asked, his wrinkled face as weathered as the hull of his boat.

  "Three days, though I'm getting paid for seven," I said. "Why?"

  "You don't look like the type that roughs it much, you don't mind me saying." His eyes were quick under the bill of his cap, darting from me to the open inlet to the sky and then to the cluttered dock.

  "I'll manage," I said, not at all pleased with this old salt's assessment of me. True, I was more at home in a three-star hotel than under a tent, but I did hike a little and tried to be only typically overweight for a middle-aged American.

  The man nodded at the sea, in the distance toward where I imagined Portsmouth lay waiting. "She can be harsh, if she's of a mind," he said. Then he pushed up the throttle and steered the boat from the dock in a gurgle and haze of oily smoke.

  We went without speaking for some minutes, me hanging on the bow as the waves buffeted us and Ocracoke diminished to our rear. Then he shouted over the noise of the engine, "Hope you brought your bug repellent."

  "Why?" I said, the small droplets of ocean spray making a sticky film on my face.

  "Bugs'll eat you alive," he said.

  "Maybe I can borrow some at the ranger station," I said.

  The man laughed, his head ducking like a sea turtle's. "Ain't no rangers there. Not this time of year."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Hurricane season. That, and federal cuts. Government got no business on that island no way. Places like that ought to be left alone."

  My information must have been wrong. Portsmouth was now administered b
y the National Parks Service, since the last residents had left thirty years before. An editorial assistant had assured me that at least two rangers would be on duty throughout the course of my stay. They had offices with battery-operated short-wave radio and emergency supplies. That was the only reason I had agreed to take an assignment to such a desolate place.

  Not for the first time, I silently cursed the carelessness of editorial assistants. "The forecasts are for clear weather," I said, not letting the boatman know that I cared one way or another.

  "You should be all right," he said. "Least as far as the weather's concerned. Still, they blow up quick sometimes."

  I looked around at the great blue sea. The horizon was empty on all sides, a far cry from the past glories of this area's navigational history. In my research, I had learned that this inlet was one of the first great shipping routes in the south. Decades before the Revolutionary War, ships would come to the shallow neck and offload their goods to smaller boats. Those boats then distributed the cargo to towns across the mainland shore. Spurred by this industry, Portsmouth had grown up from the bleak gray-white sands.

  "A lot of shipwrecks below?" I asked, more to keep the old man talking than to fill any gaps in my background knowledge.

  "Hells of them," he said. "Got everything from old three-mast schooners to a few iron freighters. Some of them hippie divers from Wood's Hole said they saw a German U-boat down there, but they was probably just smoking something funny."

  "So the bottom's not too deep here?"

  "Depends. The way the sand shifts here from one year to the next, could be fifteen feet, could be a hundred. That's why the big boys don't come through here no more."

  And that's why Portsmouth had died. As the inlet became shallower, ships no longer wanted to risk getting stranded or else breaking up on the barrier reefs. The town had tried to adapt to its misfortune, and was once an outpost for ship rescue teams near the end of the 19th century. More than a few of the town's oarsmen were lost in futile rescue or salvage attempts.

  Then ships began avoiding the area entirely, and the town residents left, family by family. The population dwindled from its height of 700 to a few dozen in the 1950s. The stubborn Portsmouth natives continued to cling to their home soil despite the lack of electricity, no steady food supply, irregular mail service, and a dearth of doctors and teachers. But even the hardiest finally relented and moved across the sound to a safer and less harsh existence, leaving behind a ghost town, the buildings virtually intact.

  "There she is," the boatman said, and I squinted against the sparkling water. The thin strand came slowly into view. The beach was beautiful but bleak, a scattering of gulls the only movement besides the softly swaying seagrass. Low dunes rolled away from the flat white sands.

  "Used to be a lot of wrecks right along this stretch," the boatman said.

  "I read that they'd go out in hurricanes to rescue shipwrecked crews," I said.

  "Brave folks, they was," he said, nodding. "'Course, you'd have to be brave to set down roots in that soil, or else crazy. My people came from here, but they left around the First World War, when the getting was good. They's still lots of them on the island, though."

  I was confused. "I thought the town was abandoned, except for the rangers."

  He gave his dolphin-squeak of laughter. "Them that's under the sand, I mean. In the cemeteries. Got left where they was buried."

  He guided the boat toward a crippled dock that was barely more than black posts jutting from the shallow water. The engine dropped to a groaning whine as he eased back the throttle. When we came broadside to the dock, he tied off with his crablike hands. I climbed out onto the slick, rotted planks.

  "You ever go back?" I asked. "To have a look around, to walk through the houses that your folks used to live in?"

  He studied the swirling foam and shook his head. "Nope. The past is best left dead and buried. You'd be wise to remember that."

  I took my baggage from him, and I thought he might at least help me carry it to dry land. But he didn't move from the helm.

  "You'll meet me here at four o'clock on Friday?" I asked.

  He nodded, avoiding my eyes. "Unless a hurricane blows up, I'll be here."

  "I trust the check came through okay?" I knew that publishers' checks could sometimes be excruciatingly slow in arriving, and I didn't want my ticket back to the mainland to be voided. This man was my only link with civilization, unless I somehow gained access to the short-wave radios.

  "The money's good," he said. "I reckon that's the only reason you're doing this."

  "That, plus I'm curious," I said. "There's not many places where a person can get lost in time anymore."

  "Just make sure you don't get too lost," he said. "See you on Friday. Be sure and stay out of the houses, and for the Good Lord's sake, don't go in the graveyards."

  He untied and shoved away, then turned the rudder until his back was to me. I waved, but he didn't turn around. The boat was out of sight by the time I had wrestled my bags up to the sandy hills that protected the island from the worst of the wind.

  As I crested the dunes, the dead homes of Portsmouth lay sprawled before me. They were as gray-white as the ground, the paint flaked from the Colonial-style houses by decades of natural sand-blasting. The houses were hundreds of feet apart, all perched several feet off the ground by concrete or brick piers. A few water oaks and scrubby jack pines filled the expansive gaps between the structures. I set down my bags on the first porch I came to, at a three-story home that was the tallest on the island.

  I didn't believe the boatman that the island was completely lifeless. Even if the ranger stations were abandoned, surely a few campers or day-tripping sailors were on the island. I didn't think my equipment would be stolen, but my laptop was worth several thousand dollars. And if my food supplies were stolen, I couldn't walk around the corner to a convenience store and replenish them.

  Despite the boatman's warning, I entered the house, the old dark pine boards groaning under my feet. The shade was a relief from the August sun, and the narrow windows broke the breeze until it was comforting instead of brutal. The several rooms on the bottom floor were empty. I found the stairs to the left of the parlor and climbed the well-dried treads. On the second floor, I found a couple of old chairs, one a rocker. I then explored the third floor, which was barely more than a gabled attic. The view was spectacular from the lone window, and I could see most of the town as well as both the lee and Atlantic shores, since the island was scarcely a mile wide. The window also had a small ledge suitable for typing. I determined to make the room my headquarters for the brief duration of my visit.

  Under park rules, visitors could tour the homes but were forbidden to stay in them. I was usually scrupulous about such matters, but if even the rangers had left this place to the elements, then I rationalized my squatter's rights by the fact that I myself was a natural force. Besides, after my article came out, perhaps renewed interest in the place could generate some users' fees for the National Park Service. Good publicity never hurt come budget time.

  The sun was sliding rapidly behind the sea to the west. I stuck my supplies in a dark doorless closet, carried the rocker up to the room, and sat before the window to rest. Looking down, I imagined the town as it must have been a hundred-and-fifty years ago, with a bustling trade down by the shore, children running through the rutted sandy streets, women in long dresses going about their business. Perhaps a horse or two, certainly no more, had plodded along pulling carts laden with shipping goods, kegs of water, thick coils of rope, and sacks of meal or flour. I could almost hear the sailors' cries and shanties as they loaded and unloaded their longboats.

  Behind an old drooping oak to the north lay a gated cemetery. Some of the markers had fallen over, and the few angels and crosses that still stood against the wind were pitted and worn. I thought of the boatman's words, how the cemeteries should be avoided. But nothing wrote out the history of a place better than the names and da
tes of its dead, and I knew I could not resist visiting them.

  I may have dozed, though I rarely slept before the sun did. The next thing I knew, I was walking in the cemetery, feet bare against the wiry grass. The sky was a deep azure, moving toward a nearly starless twilight. The sea breeze moaned between the marble markers, the air tasting of salt and seaweed and driftwood.

  She arose from nowhere, as pale as the sand. Dark hair spilled across her pretty face, and her eyes were in black contrast to her skin. Her dress was Victorian-era, long-sleeved and elegantly white, the waistband high, the shoulders and hems sewn with lace. She came forward from the shadows and held out her hands.

  She was young, probably eighteen, though her hair was not at all of modern fashion. For a moment, I thought she and some of her friends might be having a costume party on the shore, gathered round the bonfire with guitars and wine and laughter before coupling off for sandy sex. But her expression was far too serious for a beach party refugee's.

  "Please, sir, there's a wreck in the bay," she said, her voice tremulous but strong. "Can you help?"

  "Pardon me?" I said.

  "They're out there," she said, waving a wild hand to the east. "The Walker Montgomery ran aground, forty hands on her, sir. Our men shoved off in the boats, but now I fear they, too, have found trouble. They have been gone so long, sir, so very long."

  Her eyes brimmed moistly in the glimmer of the sallow moon. I shook my head, sure someone was playing a prank on me. They must have seen me and taken advantage of the isolation at my expense. I fully expected her companions to emerge from the darkness, laughing boisterously, then inviting me for drinks.

  But her eyes stared, beautifully haunted eyes, eyes that bore into me like harpoons. No mirth was hidden in them. She touched my arm, and her fingers were cool. "Help them," she said. "Help him."

  "Him?" I said stupidly.

  "My Benjamin," she said. "At helm of the lead rescue boat."

  I held my hands apart. "I… I don't understand."

  She pulled on my sleeve, her hair shielding her eyes. "There's another boat by the bay," she said. "Perhaps you and I, working the oars together, can reach them in time. Please hurry, before the storm takes them all."