An Island Day
Living on a remote island is a fulfilling existence. While it compares favorably and unfavorably with life elsewhere, depending on relative points of reference, it is, nonetheless, a complete experience. The fullness of life in such surroundings is found in the nearly unavoidable interaction with others.
Vinalhaven is such an island. Fifteen miles from the mainland, its twelve hundred people are sufficiently removed from the mainland as to occupy an insular environment wherein everyone works and lives. Some of us travel extensively, others never leave. Still, when push comes to shove, as it often does, we live here and respond to one another continually. We are required to endlessly consider ourselves in the context of others and it’s the time spent in such compelling contemplation that gives our lives a wholeness.
The people out here are, we so often hear, just a reflection of people elsewhere. That’s true to the extent that some of us are tall, some short, some outgoing, some shy, some troublesome, others eternally pleasant, here liberal, there conservative and so forth. As a population we differ, though, in that we are intimately involved with one another and we share and continually contribute to a mercurial body of common knowledge that is our community baggage. In it we find our strengths and our shortcomings, our accomplishments and our misdeeds. More than anything else, though, we find a communal circuitry and involvement with one another whether we like it or not, and some of us don’t. Nonetheless we’re all players. Nothing is more present than familiarity.
The process begins early on, a winter day for instance. Ralph walks by the house with his dog and glances in, expecting to see you at the table. He knows you’re having oatmeal, real oatmeal, brown bread, coffee and grapefruit. He’s been walking by for so many years that he has witnessed all stages of your breakfast; knows the menu, knows the sequence of preparation and knows you’re listening to National Public Radio because during warmer months your window is open. He knows you are obsessive-compulsive and he knows you know it but aren’t acquainted with the term. He scuffs his feet a little on the pavement knowing it will cue your dog, whom your morning fire is just beginning to thaw out, to come alive with a challenge. He knows his own dog will answer and then you’ll look up. Yours is the first face he will see today and his is the first you will encounter although, in absence of a little moonlight, you only know he’s there; you can’t see him. He waves at you and you wave at the blackness and an island day begins.
Ralph walks on and you think about him for a minute. You remember the time his ninety year old grandmother stood up at town meeting and encouraged him to persevere in a heated argument over an appropriation to widen the ditch down at Frog Hollow. “That’s it; you tell em Ralphie deah. You folks should listen to Ralphie,” she admonished those assembled. Anyone else would have been embarrassed but not Ralphie. He belongs to a family of long island standing and the capacity for embarrassment has been bred out.
A truck goes slowly by; must be Goober. Goober’s only scraped a little patch of frost off his windshield, enough to get him downtown if he scootches down and peers over the top of the steering wheel. He doesn’t have to watch out for much. No one is up and around this time of day, except Ralph and his dog, and there they are, just as expected, turning right at the fountain. Giving them a wide berth he waves out the side window, gets one in return, and resumes a course roughly in the center of the street, a heading he maintains until he sees other headlights. At a timely juncture he shifts a little to the right assuming that the other driver has cleared his own windshield and can see where he’s going. The pattern of headlights and the six ambers on top of the cab with the second from the right burning like phosphorous through its broken lens, tells him it’s Sonny in his Bronco. No need to waste a wave. Given the headlights, neither driver can be seen. Goober’s reminded that Sonny once falsely accused Goober’s father of having botched a roofing job as a means of securing work for himself. Well, that was a long time ago, still Goober gloats a little because not much has gone right for Sonny since - diabetic wife, his own health not much, his two boys in constant trouble.
Sonny knows Goober hasn’t cleaned off his windshield enough to see anything. He pulls a little left, knowing Goober is using Sonny’s lights to navigate by, to see if he can drive him into the snow bank. He doesn’t like him; hasn’t since Goober’s wife joined others on the Planning Board in voting down his boy’s application for a redemption center in a residential zone. “They come here from away, all of them board members, and they ought to go the hell back,” he offered at the time and his assessment hasn’t moderated any. “As a matter of fact every do gooder on every committee in town moved here from somewheres else, someplace where they wasn’t in control; come here and took over.” Rounding the corner by the fountain, he saw Ralph walking that pitiful excuse for a dog, miserable little fluffy thing wearing that stupid sweater.
The siren sounds, a jarring and scary sound at 5:30 in the morning, especially in the winter, lots of wood fires. Hopefully it’s just a chimney fire. Sonny wheels the Bronco around and heads for the station. Carl Anthony is already there manning the phone. Turns out Harold Middleton has had some sort of spell. They’re going to try and fly him out. Fifteen or twenty pickups head up island to park along the length of the landing strip, illuminating it enough so the little Cessna can land. Sonny drives off to join em’. Carl is worried about Harold, a retired teacher who moved here twenty years ago or so with his wife, bought a little piece of land and carved themselves out a little niche in the woods and in the community. Truly humble, they fit in nicely. Behind the scenes, to the extent that sort of thing is possible in these surroundings, they have worked to help others, particularly islanders. Carl was such a beneficiary. When his boy got his arm mangled by a wood splitter, travel arrangements to and from and lodging near the Boston hospital for the visiting parents and family were anonymously provided.
Emily rides up to the strip in the ambulance with Harold and, in spite of his grim condition, in spite of his grip on her arm and in spite of all the attention he’s receiving, she’s drawn to the focused expression on the face of Herbie, the thirtyish leader of the volunteer EMT squad who is monitoring Harold’s vitals. She recalls that a few years ago Herbie won nearly three million dollars in the state lottery. Typically he didn’t talk about it and not many mentioned it to him. After a time he got a new guitar and, after some more time, he hired a country western band to come out and play for the townspeople, kind of a gesture of appreciation for just living here. But there still seemed to be a lot of money left so he’d come to Harold and Emily and asked for help managing it. The Cessna lurches in and takes off with Harold.
Herbie and three EMT’s head back to the medical center in the ambulance. The sun’s up now and there is more activity. On the way they pass Dottie MacFarland. No one who knows her can encounter Dottie without remarking on her remarkable transformation and these four do. Ten years ago Dottie, on an infrequent foray, slipped on the ice and broke her ankle. Weighing nearly 400 pounds, it was impossible for any number of men to get her on her feet or into a vehicle. The water company’s little utility back hoe had to be used to hoist her into the back of a truck in a jury rigged sling and then out again at the medical center. This morning she waves brightly as the jogs off in the opposite direction. She weighs maybe 140. Whatever combination of things she brought to bear on this accomplishment is not common knowledge but walking certainly was a mainstay. From the moment she was back on her feet she walked at least three times a day. For the first few months it was only for tiny distances but everyone could see that it was every step she could muster. Everyone followed her progress too, seasoning it with encouragement or admiration or contempt.
Dottie thought about Herbie, Candy, Ben and Ricky as they passed by, two in the cab of the ambulance and two in the Ford Escort behind and how hard they’d worked to make this ambulance service a reality. Candy had been in her class in school and had resented the ease with which Dottie performed athletically and attracted boys. Not long after graduation Dottie passed up an opportunity to go to college and all sorts of financial aid to marry Mark Philip. When she realized what a mistake she’d made she just kind of grew with her problems. Candy had gone to Colby, begun a career at Bigelow Labs in Bar Harbor, married a fellow biologist and had two daughters. Suddenly she turned up here with those two little girls in tow and she never left again. She raised them in the bosom of her family and this community. Now the girls were grown and gone, one married and the other, an extraordinary young woman, was a senior at Harvard. Of course it wouldn’t have been possible if Ben hadn’t - well never mind. I’ve probably told more than enough already.
.