The Troop

When the black boats were well clear, a small explosion rocked Mr. Walmack’s boat. A gout of flame shot up from the engine. A sound like a shotgun blast trailed across the sea.

“What the hell?” Ephraim’s face settled into an expression between bafflement and fear. “What just happened right now?”

Nobody had an answer—not for what happened to Mr. Walmack or his boat, or for anything that’d happened since that strange man staggered out of the sea two nights ago.

Nothing made sense anymore. Everything existed beyond logic.

The cigarette boat sank and was gone in a matter of seconds.

25

BEFORE THEY entered the woods, Newton stepped inside the cabin. He needed his field book and the rope. His heart was beating like a tom-tom. Fat beads of sweat popped along his brow before he even walked through the shattered doorframe.

Don’t do this, his mother’s voice chimed in his head. Please. This is so very dangerous, Newt.

Newton’s mom had always been protective of her only son. Elizabeth Thornton was crowned Miss Prince Edward Island the day after she’d fallen pregnant with Newton. “Fallen pregnant” was a common phrase on the island: as if local women were constantly toppling off things—stools, ladders, cliffs—and getting knocked up on the way down. The man who’d done it was a “contest stylist”: a fey grifter who mentored unwitting contestants. For a fee, he’d teach them to Vaseline their teeth to a pearly shine or strap packing tape around their breasts to give the proper “uplift.” Such men trailed along the pageant circuit like gulls following in the wake of a crab trawler, picking up scraps.

This particular stylist put a bun in Elizabeth’s oven the night before the Charlottetown Spud Fest. He was gone the next day, no different from the itinerant potato pickers who descended on the island like locusts in the fall only to blow back to the mainland on the first winter wind. Newton never asked after his father. He and his mother made a tiny perfect circle, and he was happy within its circumference—and as for those skills a father might’ve taught, well, there was Scoutmaster Tim, who struck Newt as a far better (surrogate) dad than a contest stylist could ever be.

Complications during the delivery led to severe scarring of her uterine walls. Newton would be the only child Elizabeth would ever have.

Some people around here have lots of kids, she’d tell her son. It’s like they’re trying to get it juuuust right—the perfect child. Well, I got that right off the bat! I guess this was God’s subtle way of telling me I didn’t have to try anymore. I can always find another man, but I’ll never be able to find another son.

Oh hell, and could Elizabeth find another man. All she’d have to do is step outside and whistle: they’d come running from all directions with flowers and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate clasped in their callused hands. Elizabeth Thornton was a pure stunner. Another common phrase—“Island women are like Christmas trees: nobody wants them after the twenty-fifth”—didn’t apply to her: her face had taken on a luminous haunted quality as she’d aged. It only intensified her beauty. She had no shortage of suitors despite being saddled with a teenager—even one as oddball as Newton.

But she resisted all advances and lived alone with her son in a small house on the edge of town. She was happy. Her son was happy. But Elizabeth was a perpetual worrywart. Much to Newt’s chagrin, she wanted to drape him in bubble wrap before sending him out into the world. She didn’t even approve of him being in Scouts. But it was the only social outlet he had—the kids at school could be so cruel; the sons of lobstermen and potato farmers didn’t understand her sensitive boy. At least Scouts was better than Newt spending his afternoons in the woods alone, cataloging ferns and tubers.

“You be careful,” she’d told Newton at the boat launch before he’d left for Falstaff. She kissed his forehead and mussed up his hair. “Don’t eat any funny mushrooms or chase after things that might bite you.”

“Mom, please,” Newton had said, mortified.

Her voice was in his ear even now, ever present, as he made his way through the storm-splintered cabin.

Newt—oh Newt my baby boy, this is not a good idea.

What choice did he have? His books were in here. The rope, too. Without them they might starve. And Kent might die just like the Scoutmaster had.