anything with a sea view was pretty impressive. I wondered how many of the co-operative had railed against that. I was lost in thinking about myself walking down this trail at the dawn of time, when the ATV screeched to a halt and Darcy pointed at something ahead of us. I had to squint because it was pretty small, whatever it was, but as the vehicles inched closer I saw it was an armadillo, that very prehistoric looking creature with the funny back. It meandered across the road, looking lost and vaguely like Piglet with a set of armor. It scurried into the palmetto and was lost to sight. But we could still hear it rustling, the same way its ancestors had done for countless generations. What is it that makes the passing of time, huge amounts of it, seem so sad and melancholy? Is it that such vast amounts of time are something we can never know and bridging the gulf between our own small lives and eternity is impossible? We can only imagine. Wow, I thought. This island is pretty powerful. Not that my musings really hold much water. It’s a barrier island after all, and barrier islands come and go, shaped by the wind and the ocean’s currents. Regardless, this island had been around longer than I had, and the armadillo’s ancestors were older than mine.
I spent the rest of the trip watching the live oaks recede down the trail and was somehow disappointed when we reached our destination. I shouldn’t have been though. It was pretty impressive and not what I had imagined at all. In my head I had seen the station overlooking the sea, but since this wasn’t allowed I had altered my vision to match the ugly one we had seen at the compound. The research station was a series of tasteful wooden buildings built seemingly at random among the live oaks that soared overhead. But the centre of attention was a large wooden staircase that snaked its way up the face of a dune to a handsome log building that poked its roof out through the canopy. I had read up a bit on barrier islands and this one was essentially long and narrow. Behind the beach, which we hadn’t seen yet, were a series of dunes that marched inland. The further inland they were the more clothed in vegetation they became. It was this vanguard of dunes that the large building was perched on, its underbelly exposed to anyone looking up at it. Apparently the island residents had been loath to cut down any trees, because everything seemed positioned so as to avoid any of the trees. Or so I surmised.
There was a whole bevy of ATVs at the bottom of the main staircase, like a miniature army taking a break in operations. It was dinnertime. We could hear voices wafting on the breeze — the windows were all open. I was hot and sticky and cranky and feeling decidedly unenvironmental, and open windows meant no air conditioning. Stacey made way for Darcy and the trailer, with me still in it, and he pulled up in front of the stairs to the dining room. As soon as he stopped, in the still evening air a horde of no-see-ums descended on us and my skin began to itch all over. No-see-ums, punkies, sand flies — those irascible insects, with their gigantic jaws, that are no bigger than a grain of salt — the entire insect, not the jaws. If you’ve never met a punkie you would swear you had some awful itching rash or worse, because they are really hard to see. In fact there’s a story about two medical students on a wilderness trip in Newfoundland who actually thought they had come down with some exotic and nasty disease after being bitten by no-see-ums. They cut short their trip and made a beeline for the nearest emergency room where they were laughed all the way out of the waiting room.
We went up those stairs faster than they deserved — as I sprinted by I could tell they were beautifully made out of two-inch cedar — just to get out of the clutches of those swarming no-see-ums. Ah, the wilderness, blessed with beauty and cursed with biting insects. I shivered and raced into the dining room ahead of everyone. Unfortunately for me my entrance coincided with the moment when everyone was taking a break from talking, and they all stared at me as if I was an apparition. The ten seconds it took for Darcy to land at my side was an eternity, both to me and to them. Their curiosity was palpable.
But most of them lost interest and turned back to their meal when I didn’t do a pirouette while standing on my hands. At least, that is, until Martha catapulted into the room, frantically waving her arms around and jerking her body about as if she was convulsing. She gave me a venomous look as if I had been the one to force her to come down here in the first place. Once again everyone was looking at us and I felt an overwhelming urge to stand on one of the tables and announce who Martha and I were. So I did. Not stand on the table, but I just bellowed out the news that I was a zoologist studying buntings and I looked forward to meeting everybody while I was here. I mean, no one else was introducing us. I had to break the ice somehow. I felt Martha clutching at my arm.
“Jesus, Cordi. What was that all about?”
“Just trying to be friendly.”
“You never do that. Ever.”
The building we stood in was a wooden panabode and it was dark, even though the sun was still high in the sky. The windows were small and there weren’t many of them, and it was hot as hell in there. I could see sweat glistening on just about all the diners as the stark electric lights strung from the ceiling made a stab at turning the darkness into light. Six wooden picnic tables filled up most of the space but only two were full — the two farthest away from the hot kitchen. What with the cramped space I shuddered to think what it would be like when every seat was taken. The pungent smell of sweat was covering the smell of the food, but by the looks of it, it was some kind of fish. Actually, it didn’t look half bad and I kind of wished I could smell it.
Darcy motioned us over to one of the tables. “This is the mess,” he said. I surveyed the tables quickly. Two people deep in conversation occupied the one closest to me and I felt reluctant to interrupt, so I chose the other table. It was occupied by a diminutive redhead sporting a shiner that clashed with her hair. She seemed distracted, or maybe depressed. Whatever it was had made her face look sour and pinched. I wondered what could have happened to her. She was so young. Maybe twenty-three. Too young to be embittered, surely? She was sitting alone at our end of the table, as if by choice, and at the far end was a man who was engrossed in a magazine with the headline: “Sex and Lies.” Stocky, plain looking with unkempt, long, straggly black hair and a heavy beard shadow, he didn’t seem the type to be reading a gossip rag.
My thoughts were interrupted by Darcy, who plunked two laden dishes down on the table in front of us, right next to the woman, and went back to get something for himself.
I glanced at the woman sitting right beside me, and said, “Mind if we join you?”
She glanced up and gave me a fleeting smile, and I could see that the shiner was accompanied by some big-time swelling.
“Looks painful,” I said, shamelessly fishing for information.
“I banged into my cabin door,” she said, staring at me, seemingly daring me to contradict her. I wouldn’t have even thought to contradict her except for the pleading look in her eyes that was there only for an instant and then it was gone. So fast I couldn’t really be sure it had been there at all, so I ignored it.
“I’m Cordi. And this is Martha.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said.
Right, I’d already forgotten my earlier episode. I held out my hand.
“Rosemary Nesbitt.” She gripped my hand without much interest. She was obviously somewhere far away and Martha and I had interrupted her.
“So I see you have met Rosemary!” Darcy placed his tray across from us and sat down.
“She’s our resident vet-in-training. Singlehandedly nursed a baby armadillo back to health.” Darcy’s smile was big and broad, but oddly disconcerting. I looked at Rosemary. She was staring at him, the way one stares at something of little interest, but he ignored her and said, “Rosemary is in her third year of vet school and …”
“Fourth and last year,” interrupted Rosemary. She turned and looked at me then. “I’m here
