Osprey Island

IN JULY OF 1969, a year after Roddy had left Osprey Island in the skirmish of his parents’ tug-of-war, Eden Jacobs was reading the latest issue of National Geographic, when, between a tribute to Ike Eisenhower and a photo travelogue of Switzerland (“Europe’s High-Rise Republic”), she discovered an article of considerably greater personal interest. The opening photograph was arresting: a screaming bird, its wings spanned across a double-page spread. “THE OSPREY: Endangered World Citizen.” It had been quite some time since Eden had spotted an osprey on her daily beach walk. Mornings, Eden laced on her sturdiest shoes and patrolled a stretch of Scallopshell Beach, Roderick’s heavy WWII-issue spyglasses trained to the sky. She did not waver in her morning rituals, and over the years could boast having spotted any number of owls and red-tailed hawks and what have you. But the sighting of an osprey, its eagle-wings stretched majestically across the sky, that was rare—even on an island named for the creature—and, by 1969, getting rarer. The National Geographic article confirmed it: the osprey, as a species, was nearing extinction.

“It’s because of chemicals,” Eden told her husband that evening at dinner. She helped him to another serving of potatoes. “Dee—Dee— Tee,” she enunciated. “It’s one of the ones they use for pesticide. That’s what’s killing off the ospreys.”

“Maybe they’re pests,” Roderick suggested. He pushed a forkful of meat into his mouth. Relations in their home had been strained in the turmoil and wake of their son’s departure, but it was Roderick who’d been broken by it, not Eden. She had won—the boy was off in Canada with the rest of the cowards—and Roderick had taken his defeat badly, if quietly, in the end. It had taken the fight out of him.

“You hush,” Eden scolded. “This is serious.”

Roderick succumbed. He was a large man, physically imposing, but really no match for his wife in most things. Too heavy a drinker, he had never overcome the sense of his own intellectual inadequacy— that he was, ironically, just intelligent enough to recognize.

“Listen,” Eden instructed. She lifted the magazine from the table beside her. “If taken from an insecticide-polluted area, fish may introduce poisons into the birds’ bodies. The author”—and here Eden’s voice rose with importance—“world-famed ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson”—she spoke his name as if he were her own flesh and blood, repeating it as if to congratulate herself on such a prestigious relation—“Roger Tory Peterson believes that this may be the reason for egg failures in Connecticut River eyries.” Eden looked up at her husband. “We’re just across the sound from there,” she said, “and they mention us in the article.” She flipped a few pages forward and began reading again: “Ospreys are more than just birds to be enjoyed. They are an alarm system of things gone haywire in the river, the estuary, and the sound. They are sensitive indicators of the environment.”

“Probably true,” Roderick conceded.

“More than probably,” Eden added. Then she said, “I’m going to do something about it.”

Roderick’s body tightened. “What are you, one woman, going to do about it?”

“I’m going to build nesting platforms,” she said, “first of all. To help them know they have a safe place to lay their eggs. But it’s the eggs themselves that are the problem,” she told him, “and they’re worst in this area. The eggs are breaking before they hatch. They weigh twenty-five percent less than they used to. The eggshells. Twenty-five percent less.”

“How are you . . . ?” But she didn’t let him finish.

“We have to stop them from using those pesticides,” she said. “I’m talking to Mayor Worth tomorrow.”

“There’s no farms on Osprey anymore,” Roderick said.

“And I probably can’t stop farmers from using them on the mainland,” she agreed, “but we can ban them from here for good so no one can start. And we can try to get to people so they know.”

“Whoa! There’s no we here, Eden. Stop that with we. This is you, Eden. This is you alone.” This was Roderick, putting his large foot down wherever he could, just to feel the stamp. Roderick was born on Osprey, met Eden on a summer trip to Maine, and had her knocked up and home with him on the island before Halloween, and though she’d succumbed to the facts of her life early on—wife, mother, Islander— she’d never acquiesced to Osprey’s ways. This embarrassed Roderick; it marked him as a man who couldn’t control his wife.