“You’re up early.”
I spun around at the sound of the voice, my heart racing. In the dim light he was hard to make out. His jet-black hair was tied back now and he was dressed as if for a fall day, with a long-sleeved black shirt buttoned right to the neck, like a nerd. And like a nerd his trouser legs were tucked into his socks. As he came closer I caught the distinct smell of perfume. I thought I must be mistaken, but when he stopped in front of me all I could smell was the scent of a woman’s cologne. I don’t like to think I’m prejudiced but I almost took one step back because it was so unexpected.
“My name’s Sam,” he said and held out his hand. It was gnarled and calloused, a working man’s hand. Definitely not the hand of a man who wears women’s perfume.
I gripped it and said, “Cordi.”
I could see now that he had a mist net slung over his shoulder and he was carrying a yellow toolbox with the black silhouette of a bat stamped on its top. Not a bird man then.
“Bats?” I asked.
He smiled. “You got it. I’m studying the parasites of the big brown bat.”
I wondered what it said about the man that he had chosen a nocturnal mammal to study. When everyone else was asleep he would be awake and vice versa. A man who either did not need the company of other people or a man living his life as an outcast, but not by choice. Of course, there was a third possibility that Martha would definitely point out to me had she been there: a man simply doing research on an animal he found irresistible.
“Do you mist net them at their roost?” I asked as I eyeballed the net over his shoulder. Mist nets are gossamer- thin nets used to capture birds, and in this case bats, so that they can be tagged and their behaviour studied.
He shifted the mist net on his shoulder. “The area around the roost is the easiest place to capture them as they leave to go hunting for the night, or come back in the morning, but there’s a danger of catching too many. I’ll show you if you want? It’s not far from here.”
His vehicle was a modified golf cart with a two-person front seat, and I settled in beside him as the engine coughed to life. I imagined many hearts in the various cabins jumping to attention at the sound of that motor and hoped that none of them were weak. We drove out of what Darcy had called the clearing — the more-or-less empty area that surrounded the research station on three sides — and down the leaf-lined, sandy road through a tunnel of trees. It was still dark here, but when I looked up the sky was turning blue.
The road wound its way through the forest, the wheels leaving no marks on the compacted sand. Sam pulled into a dent in the forest and got out of the cart. I followed and he led me along a sandy path, palmetto encroaching on all sides and overhead the ubiquitous oaks. And then we broke out into the open.
“Beach is just over that dune line,” he said. But I wasn’t looking at that. I was looking at the burnt-out wreck of an abandoned building, its skeleton and intact roof still reaching for the sky as sand from a naked sand dune spilled down into its foundation like the sand from an hourglass finally set free.
“We’ve missed them. They’ve already come home.”
I looked at the building and wondered who had once made their home here, besides the bats. There was a sign hanging by one black chain at the front door that said HUNTER’S and I could almost imagine the laughter and the fun they had once had here.
“C’mon — we might just catch the sunrise.” Sam was striding past the building and into the valley between two dunes. I had to run to keep up. And then there it was.
We topped a dune and the beach stretched in both directions, vast and mysterious, primeval, white, and empty of human life. And into the midst of this incredible beauty the sun had risen just above the ocean’s horizon, red and distinct as if someone had cut a hole in the sky to let it shine through. But it wasn’t shining yet. It was still blood red and flat, and you could look at it without hurting your eyes. It all seemed out of time. This is what it could have been like millions of years ago, when some other creature stood here and looked at the sun.
We didn’t say anything. We just stared at the red ball as it turned into an orange orb of flame, at the blue of the sea and the jagged crests of the waves, at the shifting sands and the pelicans flying low to the water. Surely such moments as these are what we live for, what keeps us going until the next one? You share something like that with a stranger and they are strangers no longer.
In silence we walked down to the water’s edge, the white sand now stained dark by the sea — the tide was going out. I turned and looked back at where we had come from but there was no sign of Hunter’s, just the dazzling white of the dunes marching inward to be clothed by trees. I looked all down the shoreline and there weren’t any cottages to be seen from the beach. It felt as though we were the only two people on the entire island — in the entire world.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” said Sam. “It seems incredible that such an eclectic bunch of islanders could get together and agree on how to conserve this island so well.”
“How does it work? Do they own the land?”
“The land was divided up into one hundred lots and each lot was sold to pay for the price of the island. They have a board of directors and a set of bylaws and each resident has one voting share. Everything is done democratically, so nobody can complain that something has been foisted on them. But it makes for some fireworks when there is disagreement.”
“You mean like the horses?”
“Yeah. Some of the islanders feel that the horses are a natural part of the island and should be allowed to procreate. They feel strongly that this is the philosophy of the island — to let things take their course.”
“But the horses are not endemic to the island?”
“No, but the islanders don’t care. The horses got here through an act of God — a shipwreck — and therefore they are a natural part of the island. Or that is their philosophy.”
“Is God a factor here?”
Sam laughed. “No more than anywhere else. I mean he always pops up, doesn’t he? Even among a group of people trained in science.”
His comment begged a question.
“Who?”
Sam laughed. “Well now, I don’t like to gossip, but our esteemed director is a devout Catholic.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that one and he continued, “Tricky situation for her. She believes in the conservation of the island but how does she square her Catholicism to birth control for horses? Or does her religion spread that far?”
“Fortunately for her,” I said, “it’s all moot.”
“Why’s that?” Sam looked puzzled.
“Well, she doesn’t have a voting share, so there are no worries.”
“Actually, you’re wrong. She owns a cottage on the island. Bought it last year. So she is very much in the thick of things here.”
“And which side has she weighed in on?”
Sam stared at me. “Dunno,” he said gruffly, but I got the distinct impression he knew exactly what side she was on. He just wasn’t going to tell me.
chapter five
Sam dropped me off at the stairs to the mess room and, in daylight, I climbed those countless steps in a twisty turny path to the top. It was pretty impressive now that the no-see-ums were gone and I could actually see. The main building, which housed the dining room, blended in like a Frank Lloyd Wright building and was bracketed by the branches of a dozen oak trees so that it looked like a treehouse of awesome proportions. I could see our cabin down in the large U-shaped clearing, or rather the pathway to it as the trees, with their cloaks of Spanish moss,