say anything he got up off the bed and said, “Breakfast is at 7:30. Don’t be late or you won’t get anything.” And with that he was gone.
It didn’t take long for me to unpack. I sat on my bed and watched Martha trying to stuff all her clothes into two of the four drawers. I finally took pity on her and gave her one of mine. However, the suitcase and the remainder of her clothes we had to leave between the two beds because there was nowhere else to put them.
“What did you think of Darcy?” I asked innocently.
“Salesman par excellence,” said Martha and laughed.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. The guy everyone loves because he makes you feel good. So what is he doing as an assistant to a botanist, of all things?”
“He’s young. Couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Maybe he’s just trying out his wings. After all, if he can ingratiate himself with this ragtag bunch of people he’d make a hell of an event planner,” said Martha.
“Or maybe there’s more to it than that.”
“Oh, Cordi, there you go, glass half empty. How can you read anything negative in Darcy? And why ever would you want to? He’s a gem.”
I stared at Martha, realizing that she had a point. Except that ever since I had stepped on this island I had felt like I was in a glass house. One move and it would all shatter around me in so many lethal shards. I shivered. It was a weird sensation and I didn’t like it one bit.
“Good lord, Cordi. How can you be cold in weather like this?” She slung an unfamiliar camera over her shoulder and headed for the door, followed by my raised eyebrow. “Darcy lent me a night-vision camera. I have to check it out.” It didn’t seem to matter to her that it wasn’t dark outside yet.
I lay in bed for a long time, listening to the sounds of the woods and the chirruping of frogs, until I finally fell asleep to the wind whispering through the trees.
I was jerked awake by the sound of firecrackers going off. After I picked myself up from where I had plastered myself to the ground, I traced the unearthly racket back to Martha, who was snoring shotguns on every breath in. Too bad she couldn’t be as quiet sleeping as she obviously was coming home from her photography junket. The one other time I’d spent the night with Martha I hadn’t remembered that she snored. Must be a new thing, I thought.
After that I didn’t sleep much, and by the time I’d watched my clock tick through from 3:00 to 5:00 I’d had enough. The darkness had given way to dawn and I could just make out the trunk of the oak outside my window. I took my time getting dressed and then fished out my flashlight and tiptoed out the door, though why I bothered to be quiet I don’t know. Martha was making more noise than I ever could.
Because my cabin, along with all the others, had been built at the base of a dune line it felt as though I was in a valley as I walked outside, a valley with hills covered in palmetto — a miniature palm tree, three or four feet high, with fingered fronds just like the bigger palms, hence palmetto or “little palm.” As I stood there, looking up the side of the enormous dune upon which the main building stood, I saw the pale grey of early morning topping the rise, peeking out between the latticework of the oak branches. Everywhere I looked were live oaks, wispy pale green strands of hanging moss clinging to their branches like hair.
“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
