When the Surveyors first came we welcomed them. Fed them, gave them our best drink, even sang and danced. They did not know our tongue well, nor we theirs. Only the handful of fishermen that had dealings on the mainland were able to act as translators. From this we gathered that they wanted to stay a while, perhaps build a home. We could hardly find fault with this—but it was odd.
You have to understand that the Island was a place people left—not came to.
The first house taken down was Mr. and Mrs. Kríy’s, who had died the winter before last. The house was already abandoned, and no one was left to claim it, but soon money was being offered for the land nearby. We’ll take it off your hands, worth even less than I’m offering you honestly, many people wanting to come here, don’t you know. It was all quite odd. Many of the young left first, and none could blame them. On the mainland maybe their gait would be lighter and their smiles bigger. No one could blame them.
A hard life is still a hard life, even if it’s all you’ve known.
I have met people who scratch their heads and ask how we could ever leave, and also those who say that we should have left sooner.
From the cliff I watched many islanders leave. The stretch of land that connected to the coast was underwater during high tide. If the seas were calm, you could get a boat across to the mainland. The Surveyors groaned about the sea often, as if their complaining would make its swells yield. I never liked the stretch much myself. When the other kids played on its long open sands, the images of great waves or whales swallowing me whole came unbidden. I still believed in the sea monster tales then, born of that frothy seafoam. The smell of low tide and brine made my stomach roll and the taste of fresh fish for lunch rise in my throat.
I never walked it at all until I had to leave.
It comes to me, always. The two hills. Houses carved into slopes, braced against salt winds. The sound of a hoe turning soil, or oars sandalled in water. Gull cries, the start of a song, both the same.
Everyone called the high hill Onhill and the low one Underhill. The Red Hot House was Underhill. It was neither red nor hot. It had blue shutters and rooms that always stank of cold mold. Every Sunday, we gathered and sang and danced and spun tales. On those nights the home was crowded floor to ceiling, men on haunches and in chairs waiting for a new tune to start and to pounce on some poor young girl. Before heading back home, all of us children gathered at the feet of Ory, who would tell us stories. Some were real, with the characters being people we knew, or had come before us. But others took place on stranger tides, far beyond what I’d ever known, like the family from the island of Ca’im.
They lived alone and dedicated their life to the old ways. The family always went to a nearby island for food and supplies, for Ca’im was a rocky island with bad soil. One cold season, the seas were too rough for them to leave or anyone to come. They were stuck alone for months. After the food ran out, the wife began to slip. She became mad and cut up her husband and children, and fed their bodies to the sea. When the people of the nearby islands were finally able to make way to Ca’im to check on them, they found the body of the mad wife in a rocky cove, clutching the clothing of her lost family. It was a sad tale, but I always paid extra attention when Ory told it. She knew this too, for she would ask me to sing the Song of Ca’im afterwards, which is the song the wife is said to have sung as she died.
Though there were smiles and cheers all those nights we came together and I sang, there was a feeling that this wasn’t going to last—that we weren’t. Us, with our small houses and crooked talk, were going to be teeth removed at the root. In our place would be a string of pearly whites, waiting to clamp down into a straight smile. I was young and didn’t understand the way of the world. But even I knew no one keeps rotten teeth around if they can help it.
Soon the Surveyors were asking about more houses, offering checks in numbers higher than any of us had ever seen. Many accepted, and many balked.
Since those days I have heard violent tales. Of people going to new places and slaughtering its inhabitants for the land, taking what they want outright. No such violence took place here. No weapons were raised.
But still—I remember Ole Miss Zel, with the forgetting disease.
I remember me and the other island boys mocking her. We would ask what season it was and laugh at her response, at her inability to tell night from day. Yet, the Surveyors still managed to get her signature for the land. Her family from the mainland were supposed to pick her up, but the seas had turned at the last minute and left them delayed. I saw her early the day she was supposed to leave, ambling up Onhill in a baby blue nightgown soiled from the waist down, and had thought nothing of it except disgust. I was scared of older people, that we could all be like them one day.
Later the next day the fisherman began clamoring their bells and we all followed the sound to the Onhill bluff and looked below. Against the rocks and among the seafoam was a body covered in someone’s tattered jacket, for respect. But sticking out was the unmistakable baby blue hem, and swollen legs. I watched a crab scuttle across the ankle before closing my eyes.
The people gathered began to pray. In the silence was the sound of the wind rustling the women’s dresses, like ripping paper. From the silence came the low moan of one of the fishermen, my uncle, beginning the grieving song.
Ole Miss Zel’s death led us all to a right state of sadness. But there was still the gathering on Sunday. Dancing, singing, tales.
They laid her in the ground two days later, when the seas calmed enough for her family to get across. Her skull was so badly damaged by the rocks, her sister had to coax it back to a normal shape for the viewing, but it was still a sad shape.
At least, that’s what I remember. Years have made me question things, strengthen others. It’s all more terrible or beautiful in memory than it truly could have been.
The day the last of us left I was awoken by my mother at sunrise. Her shawl brushed my face as she leaned over and shook me. She had breakfast made and father was out with uncle and our sole neighbor loading up the cart. We would have to leave quickly, before high tide came in. There weren’t enough men left to man a boat to get us across.
By then it had been a long time since I had seen anyone my age, no scrawny knees or creaky on-the-verge-of-puberty voices. Only three of the original homes stood. New ones were being built, bigger and grander. I was nervous about soon seeing others, and almost giddy at the prospect of meeting new people.
I gathered all the scraps of the island drawings I had done over the years into a bag, along with the lap harp grandad had handmade for me on my twelfth season. There wasn’t much else to hold on to.
We made our way down to the beach. Father looked no one in the eye, and kept his head down. The amount they were offering was now so great he would have been a fool to not accept. The soil and seas weren’t offering up nearly as much as they used to either, and it was hard to say if there would have been enough to feed us through the winter. But still; I wanted to stay. The thought shocked me. I wanted to stay. I pretended not to see mother take his hand in hers, bring it to her lips.
“At least we stayed until the last.”
As we walked the stretch of sand that led to the mainland, long and filled with the low tide smell of all creatures moist and brined in the shoal, I didn’t mind my old fear of being washed away. Most of all, I worried about whether to look back or not. Grandad always said looking back was a sign of respect, and why wouldn’t you? But I had this feeling that looking back was for people who were never going to see a place again. And what if I did look back?
Would I see the new houses Onhill and the bones of new ones being put up, a boatless dock? And if I looked back it would surely mean I thought I was never coming back.
Just as the stretch met the mainland sand, I turned my head over my shoulder. Slightly, just a peek out of the corner of the eye. And from this distance, it was as it had been. An island, ash green against a fish bone sky. The tide was coming in and the fine necks of the birds stretched as they swooped down to the waves to catch fish in their bills. And if I looked hard enough, surely I would have seen all the islandsmen at the dock, readying a boat for the day’s labor, the clamor of oars and their salt coarse throats humming a glad tune.
Two hills, wind weathered.
I looked back, if only slightly.
I looked back.
And I suppose that’s why I never saw it again.
