“Looks like you need a hand, Trevor,” he said.
“In more ways than one,” growled Trevor. “Welcome back, David,” he added, but with gritted teeth.
“Still haven’t come around yet, huh?” asked David. When Trevor didn’t respond he said, “And here I thought you’d actually taken a liking to sea turtles.” And he laughed, but without any humour.
Trevor didn’t answer this cryptic comment but instead scowled, got up, returned his tools to a toolbox, and went up to the bow of the boat. Seconds later the engine coughed to life and Trevor released his lines and we were off. While the marina had been nothing to write home about, where we were going was quite another story. We motored into the inland waterway separating the mainland from the barrier islands and the Atlantic Ocean. There was a swell as we rounded a headland into the open ocean between two barrier islands and I felt my stomach begin to lurch. I had visions of myself aboard the Susanna Moodie, the ship that had taken me to the Arctic the previous summer and had left murder and mayhem in its wake, along with nauseatingly horrible seasickness. I tried to calm down by reminding myself that it was only a half-hour trip, or so Duncan had said. We were headed toward a long narrow island that danced in the distance, its white-sand beaches taking up the sun and flinging it back in a brilliance of dazzling light. I concentrated on that and the queasiness subsided. As we drew closer the island came into focus, the dark green of the live oaks in sharp contrast to the white of the beaches.
“I wonder why they call it Spaniel Island?” asked Martha. It was a rhetorical question that to our surprise actually garnered an answer. David had materialized at our sides and was gazing at the island with what looked like relish, his green hoodie now thrown back to reveal a circle of bright white hair outlining the bald spot on the top of his head. When he saw us looking at him he rearranged his long thin face and aquiline nose to look more or less neutral. I wondered why he had bothered.
“It’s the quintessential story of a dog and a boy,” he said. “Originally the island was called Little Island, rather unimaginative, if not descriptive. It is actually only ten kilometers long and maybe a kilometer wide, off its diet.”
He leaned against the railing of the boat and continued. “It was 1949. A mother and father and their three young children and the family Springer Spaniel were on the beach.” He pointed to the island. “See? The south end on the sea side. They had found a nice place on the white sands, very close to where a tidal creek penetrated into the island. It’s actually still there today. When the tide is going out these creeks become fast moving rivers. The little boy, the youngest, crawled over to the creek and the sandy embankment gave way and he fell in.”
Martha’s face was illustrating every detail of the story and I almost laughed, but it wasn’t exactly the right moment to do that.
“The tide was going out, and the little boy was being carried out to sea and was going under. The parents couldn’t swim. That’s when the spaniel catapulted himself into the creek and swam to the child, grabbing it by the back of his T-shirt and swimming with the current until it was weak enough to let the dog and the boy cross over to some islands of sand that had been exposed by the tides. It was a little miracle and the powers that be renamed the island in honour of the spaniel.”
“Why didn’t they name it after the animal’s actual name?” said Martha, her face a mixture of worry, indignation, and joy.
“Because the animal was named Bunchkins,” said David as he reached back and pulled the hoodie up over his head. The wind had sprung up and I wished I had a hoodie too.
We stood in companionable silence for a while, and then I said, “What brings you to Spaniel Island?”
He looked at me, his eyebrows almost meeting as they rose in a quizzical salute, as if he was trying to size me up. “I’d like to say that I come here quite often to rejuvenate, which is true, but this time I am here on some unpleasant business. In such a place of beauty it seems a shame that the banalities of life should intrude.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that little bomb and, in fact, he didn’t let me. He wanted to know why we were here. After I told him he chuckled. “I hope you don’t think it will be a vacation rooming in with that lot.”
Hearing him call my research a vacation grated on me, but I let it go. Instead I said, “You know them?”
He chuckled again and the smile on his face was not soft and warming — it was jeering and predatory and it made me very uncomfortable. “All a bunch of prima donnas,” he said and glanced at me again as if to say “Are you one too?”
I tried to imagine a research station full of prima donnas and couldn’t. Biologists may be eccentric, even opinionated, but most of them would not be classified as prima donnas. Although, maybe not. He seemed to be reading my mind.
“All right. Not ALL prima donnas. But they are a strong bunch of individuals and they make me uncomfortable always talking about their research as if it was the only thing on earth.” Did I detect a hint of anger in his voice?
“They’re just a harmless and dedicated bunch of biologists,” Martha said helpfully. I glowered at her. She had just pigeonholed my life in one lighthearted sentence.
“Dedicated? Yes,” he said and turned to stare at us. “But harmless? No.”
chapter three
We came into the interior of the island through a tidal creek that meandered and wound its way through the glistening of exposed mud banks — the tide was falling and the tall, thick reeds that lined the banks as far as the eye could see were giving up the secret places where little crabs and other crustaceans took refuge. The creek was narrow and the current was fast and it took some skill to drive the boat without bashing into a mud bank. The reeds encompassed us so that we could no longer see the island. We were essentially in a wandering maze, only the cobalt blue sky to show us there was another world outside the reeds. And then we broke out of the reeds to the higher ground of the island proper and the end of the tidal creek. After we landed at a rickety wooden dock, built on stilts to allow for the tides, we found ourselves in a relatively treeless area, on bare, compact sand with numerous buildings spread about — mostly sheds and garages — and lots of ATVs. It was really quite ugly and I wondered what I had got myself into. Trevor had scooted off the boat with lightning speed, after a lightning fast “Welcome to the Compound” speech, and disappeared into one of the outbuildings. But David stood nearby, presumably waiting for a ride, just as we were.
Even at 6:00 at night it was blisteringly hot. The tangy smell of the salt mixed with the pungent decaying smell of the mud and the ugliness of the landing area made it difficult to believe that this was, in fact, a beautiful island, or so Duncan had said. Martha and I found a tiny scrap of shade to hide in and waited. We heard them before we saw them — the unmistakable roar of engines with mufflers no longer used to heavy labour. It wasn’t long before two ATVs came barrelling around one of the sheds and stopped in front of David, who was lounging against a picnic table incongruously placed so it had a view of one of the sheds. David slowly rose to his feet as a woman with gossamer blonde hair and a scary pale face extricated her considerable girth from one of the ATVs and glanced over at David before taking in Martha and me and our luggage. “Good thing we brought the trailer,”