He shrugs. “Told you.”
“Lucky.”
“Was I right, or what?”
“You weresoright. Hold on a second. I need to set up some shots from different angles,” I tell him, and he agrees, cheerful and patient, watching me work as I capture the strange sign. He even helps boost me up by my waist, letting me stand on his bent knee, so that I can get a better shot from above.
How could all of these things exist on one tiny island—the Narragansetts’ settlement, the religious colony, the pig farming, wars, hurricanes … all of that, only to be deserted and forgotten? It’s as if it’s one big time capsule of humanity’s successes and failures, and all that’s left is a marker of what happened. A marker, a sign, one last communication:Don’t forget us.
The best sign in all of Beauty.
Maybe the best sign in my entire collection.
“It’s so weird and beautiful,” I tell Lucky after I change out my film.
“Just you wait. This place gets weirder, if you’re interested in exploring?”
“Well, I didn’t come all the way out here to get back on the stupidNarwhal, I’ll tell you that. You promised me a colonial ghost town.…”
“Did indeed,” he says, looking upward. “Wish the sky looked a little better. The forecast said the storm passing over Connecticut should miss us, but those clouds are starting to worry me. Should probably ask the lighthouse keeper about them. No one knows weather patterns like sailors and lighthouse keepers.”
“And meteorologists, maybe.”
“I suppose,” he says, smiling. “Come on. Let’s check in.”
Problem is, we can’t. When we hike to the lighthouse, there’s a sign on the door that cheerfully informs us where the keeper is:GONE FISHIN’. It doesn’t say when this person will return, or even what to do about the fee. So Lucky runs back to the boat and finds a pen and paper, writes a note with our names and the time, and sticks it under the door with money for our fee.
“Hope that’s good enough,” he says gruffly. “Would it kill them to have someone on duty here during the summer? I mean, come on. This is peak tourist season. Not to mention that the pier is about to collapse. They need to put some damn money into this place. Why isn’t anyone here?”
Wow. Bad mood descending and fast. What’s up with that?
“Well, we did just sort of show up here without telling anyone,” I remind him. “They had registration online.”
“Fair point,” he concedes, still gruff.
“Should we walk around the island? We don’t need a lighthouse keeper to give us permission for that, right?”
“Guess not,” he says, looking a little less grumpy.
“Besides, we’re supposed to be being a little bad. At least, that’s what someone told me, I don’t know.”
His shoulders relax. “All right, Saint-Martin. You win. We’re outlaws today. We do as we please.”
Whew. Crisis averted.
Inside a little plexiglass holder that squeals when I lift the lid, there’s a small stack of tri-folded maps. They show a walking path around the island and point out several colonial buildings, including a church and a “burying ground.”
I crane my neck to kiss him lightly on his lips. “Take me to the burying ground. I want to snap a million pictures.”
“What about the haunted trading post?”
“It’s hard to decide. But wait. You didn’t even notice something.”
“What?”
“I didn’t get sick once on the way out here. Does that make me an official water rat, or what?”
“Well, damn. It certainly does.” He fist-bumps my hand and then grabs me around the waist and half-kisses, half-tickles myneck, making me shout out in surprise. And after I nearly fall over laughing, we settle down and stop fooling around, and he takes over map duties. Then we begin exploring the island.
