MICHAEL D. BEIL steams south toward a dilapidated wooden dock and above me a single gull cries then swoops down to see if I have anything anything to offer it Pogo our English setter sets beside me body quivering and tail high in the air I reach down and stroke the top of her head but she doesn't take her eyes off the gull for a second My heart leaps when we bump against the pilings at the ferry dock and lines are made fast we have arrived Without a word Pip slips her tiny hand into mine together our hearts pound out a rhythm that I am sure can be heard over the whin ing engine and shouts of dockhands Our stepfather Thomas gathers Pip and me along with his own three boys Blake Nate and Jack with his long arms Everybody ready We should get a family picture This is a big- Let's not I say When I was five and Pip three our dad died when the small plane piloted by his best friend crashed into the Connecticut River a few hundred yards short of the runway at Goodspeed Airport That same summer Thomas's wife was killed by a falling tree branch while she was jogging jogging in Central Park Four and half years later Mom married Thomas They had been friends nothing more they both insisted in college and reconnected at a class reunion So we had kind of a Brady Bunch thing going for a couple of years but then three months ago Mom died and what was left Thomas and his kids and then Pip and me I don't know 2
WRECK AT ADA'S REEF what we are exactly but it doesn't feel quite like a family C'mon Lark Pip says squeezing my hand We should I am saved from the indignity of a family selfie there on the foredeck by one of the ferry's crew Okay folks Need to ask you to move along We wind our way down the steep metal staircase and onto the gangplank When I reach the end I hesitate before taking the final step onto the worn wood planks of the pier but there is I know no turning back For the next seventy two days yes I'm counting this is home I'm not off the hook for that family portrait yet though Thomas has already recruited a woman in a yellow slicker to take our picture in front of a sign that announces Welcome to Swallowtail Island and is busy composing the shot Lark since you're the tallest in the back with me and Blake WELCOME TO SWALLOWTAIL ISLAND
MICHAEL D. BEIL I grunt and move into my assigned place Sometimes it is easier just to do what Thomas wants and get it over with The woman in yellow says Smile and I do my best to provide something that at least resembles one My teeth are clearly visible so that counts right With that little bit of torture out of the way the other five of us leave Blake not quite fourteen in charge of our bags and the cage holding my budgie Bedlam and trudge toward town to get our bearings and to find a ride to the house that has been in our family since the 1920s and where Mom spent her summers as a kid The last time I was here was the summer summer I turned ten the same summer that Mom first got sick After that it was like someone hit PAUSE on our lives For the next two years the only traveling we did was on I 95 between Connecticut and Lenox Hill Hospital in New York It was a lawyer who pressed PLAY calling us into his office the week after Mom died to tell Pip and me that the house on Swallowtail Island now belonged to the two of us As we amble along Main Street strangers in a strange and strangely quiet land a light ground hugging fog filters out the town's imperfections the peeling paint the cracked and frost heaved sidewalks the shuttered storefronts making it appear 4
WRECK AT ADA'S REEF more charming than I remembered it to be Slowly though the fog lifts higher and higher until it hovers just above the tree tops and the sun begins to peek between the maple branches highlighting Swallowtail's blemishes in a golden glow But who am I to call out its flaws I mean it's not like I'm perfect ask anyone When Thomas first told us that we were going to spend the summer on Swallowtail Island it was his idea that I start keeping a journal to help me deal with my issues He first brought it up when Mom got sick but I wanted nothing to do with it Trust me I said You really don't want to know what I'm thinking most of the time It's not for me he said It's for you I'm not going to read it You're right I don't want to know what you're thinking But it's good for you to know and sometimes the only way to do that is to write it down What's supposed to go in it I asked Whatever you want What you'd like to say out loud but don't that is if there is anything that fits in that category You're a very observant person Unusually so I'd say But you're so much more than a mere observer You're constantly gathering and analyzing data plugging it into your own formula of how the world works You're a born scientist On top of that you have a baloney detector that would make Holden Caulfield proud So observe Gather Rant Draw pictures if you want There's no rules unless you make them Marcus Aurelius wrote in 5
