PREFACE
The following tales are as true as you want them to be. The island of Malaga
is real. You can see it while munching on a clam roll at the Sebasco Clam Shack or while lingering too long in a skiff on
the water off of it, wondering why the darn waves haven’t rolled you in or the swell heaved you out. In the sky the
osprey hover over, wondering what wind brought them to such an ancient nest. Hearty Razorbills, pushed
by easterly gales, question why they hide their eggs between the sacred rocks. It is a small island. Narrow
ledges halt at the water’s edge, where once began a pasture, that reached to the mainland. The island
seems to have a living bottom weaved by crustaceans, mollusks and sea worms. Its beauty then comes up to the shore. Sea weed
drape the lichen stained rocks where sea gulls go to sit and Puffin whoop ‘hey Al’ hoping to find “him”
between the granite blocks. The inland is virgin conifer, border lined with birch and elm. Around them applaud an astounding audience
of flowers, each one knowing when to bloom and when not. Patches of fireweed ignite where the sun hits and ants rule whatever
world lies underneath.For-the-most part the forest overflows
the cup of land as if done by a generous flower arranger. Its pine needles are as soft as fern, its grass wisps of hair. It
is close yet far away. From the mainland shore a boy can take a giant step and fall softly upon its leafy breast. It is so
close yet away. The Abenaki Indians emerging from the woodlands to the west saw a tall cedar growing from the
sea and called the island ‘Mologo’-which means cedar. The name soon became ‘Malaga’. It was a place
for sea hunters to drop their tangled weirs and later broken traps on its northern beach. No soul ever stayed there overnight.
To the townspeople on shore it might as well have been just a big green buoy guarding boats from the rocks. As the Nineteenth Century
turned into the Twentieth, Maine took a census to find its tax base. It noticed its poor, and expelled them from its towns
and villages. A Blackman who had once owned nearby Horse Island moved his family to Malaga for who knows what reason. Others
followed: poor whites, runaway slaves, Penobscot and injured fishermen, all running away from something or running to it.
. Suddenly the island became human; families intersecting with families, aunts becoming sisters, newborns arriving as uncles
to grown men. The island became clothed. It became a threat. As long as it remained naked, no secrets lurked within. Then the tragedy happened.
A movement came about to cleanse Maine of it in-bred and feeble minded. In 1912, the Governor took pleasure in cleaning up
Malaga. He burned down homes, plowed under whatever gardens that were there, dug up the graves and kidnapped the residents.
Tongues around wood stoves say the real reason was he wanted to build homes for summer people like he did on Mt Desert
Island. Good Godfrey, he tried but he couldn’t! No one could cleanse the island of its soul, the tales and myths, made
up or not, of its now forgotten people. Maybe I’m
superstitious but not one foundation stone for ‘summer people’ was ever laid on the island. These
stories are the reason why.
THE MYSTERY - 1755
“Take from
me, me merri grog
And trade it for a bole of tod
The world is combed with many
Strange things
That’s why me likes me brandi
Sling…”
Alton McGonagall rose from his stool at the Four Naughts, staggered side-ways through the door, and onto the road
growling that verse. It was getting to midnight and Mrs Locke had flushed the boardwalk with six buckets of water. Now she
stood motionless with the seventh one in anticipation that the stomach of her last customer might recall its night work as
well. Wavering, Alton noticed Mrs. Locke standing there with the bucket. “Me
lady, would you please have the courtesy to dowse this working man with a little of that….” “Get on with you Alton. You’ve
had enough liquids.” He tumbled toward a brace of ‘Gansett Pacers hung to a coach, and slowly climbed up the high seat. It was
then he vomited. For
twenty years, Alton drove the coach for Overland Transport, riding the westward route. That’s twenty years, three hundred
and sixty thousand times of bouncing up and down, that’s forty-six times around the earth. He figured he deserved every
bowl of whiskey his head could throw back. He liked the power of being a man of travel with the ability of changing here to
there, of transporting men of means closer to their money; and bringing loved ones closer to their homes. He gazed down at
the helpless brood at his feet, wondering how he could untie them from the iron post. “Here you go, Alton!” Mrs. Locke, sensing a
catastrophe, reached down unleashed the reins and tossed them up hooking on Alton’s left arm. A shout from somewhere signaled the brood of
‘Gansett’s to lung forward, and before Locke
could blink an eye, Alton and the coach disappeared into the night. It was only after Mrs. Locke picked up her pail she noticed
that Alton had taken the wrong coach; his was only a few feet away. The coach barreled down Bath Road which overlooked Casco
Bay and took the fork to Settlers Lane. Then it dashed across a moonlit field and waded through a restless stream which slipped
from the New Meadows River. “What’s that?” Alton’s eyes popped opened when he felt the reins. His reins boasted studded
stars and his horses were speckled grey. Now he gripped rough hide tied to sorrel mares. He pulled the reins hard, his butt
bone dug into the wood bench. The horses screamed; their harnesses tightened. The coach struggled to a halt. Muffled moans
and cried lurked somewhere in the dark. His heart pounded and he took a deep breath and exhaled. The sounds were coming beneath.
He jumped down into the deep mud the coaches’ wheels had churned up. “My God!” In front of him was the strangest carriage he had ever seen The
body was without windows, iron chains looped on its crown, a single door bolted with a huge latch stuck
to its side. Although it was obvious that the system’s design was meant only to contain something valuable; Alton easily
pulled back the bolt. The moaning and the crying ceased. He looked inside. Human shapes carved in the darkness. He angled
back to let the moonlight in. Around eight Africans, half naked, shivering in tattered wool blankets huddled within. They
smelled of a ship’s devil’s hole. Alton knew well the cursed smell. When was a teen age boy seeking adventure, he signed on to the notorious
schooner “Milly” that rode the Atlantic looking for commerce. After a month the “Milly” ran down a
slow Portuguese slaver and the crew forced on board seventy-five Africans heading for markets in the Azores. The Milly’s
captain desiring the highest profits, set sail for the barracoons of Havana. Provisions were inadequate and the Africans already
expose to small pox quickly succumbed. After three days the smell became unbearable. Alton and another man were made to climb
down the devil’s hole, pry the dead from the living and drag the lifeless bodies up to be tossed, one by one in the
Atlantic. There was one African about his age, bronze and lanky with a face made of fine bones and teeth as white ivory. Alton
remembered once the boy smiled at him as he gave him a sip of water. The boy was in high fever and it wasn’t enough
so he offered Alton the ochra shells he wore about his neck for an additional swallow. Alton refused. Although there was enough
water to allow the crew eight cups of water on a daily basis, there wasn’t even one additional sip for the dying. Now
Alton struggled to keep the limp boy from sliding back into the hole. Alton grabbed the boy’s neck and the shells of
the necklace dug into his palm.. The boy’s ooze mixed with Alton’s blood. He never forgot the
image and swore not to go to sea again. That’s why he made his living navigating land.
Alton heard shouts far
in the distance. He was certain it was the agents coming for their cargo. He turned to the Africans and pleaded: “Get out and run for your lives!
They’re coming!” Alton looked around for a place for them to hide. He
was surrounded by small bushes and thin ailing pine. A cloud slipped from the moon and a beam rolled across the tide waters
revealing the island of Malaga. “There, swim there! No one goes there. It’s an island lost and forgotten, cursed by Turkeyheads. They’ll
never find you there.” He shouted. Suddenly a young man emerged from the carriage. He was completely naked. Muscles covered
his thin ebony frame. His eyes blazed fury. He bounded out like a deer towards the rocks and dove into the water. The other Africans just huddled in
the shadows in silence. They heard the shouting too, far in the distance. Maybe they thought whoever was coming would save
them from this mad man. Mad he was, and now he was sober. He slammed the carriage door, bounded up the foot bar, stretched to the overhand
and on to the bench. At the crack of the whip the team of horses broke out in amazing speed. The plan was to go back into
town, ring the church bell and make all of the townsfolk aware of the nasty transactions occurring in their midst. The horses
hit Old Center Rd pounding by the rattled fences, over the Town Bridge by the cemetery, down Rope Lane and its thatched hovels,
to the Market where it meets Broad and west south to the church. There they stopped. Blocking the fork in the road was Constable
Bill Wells and some strangers. “Whacha up to Alton?” The Constable approached with a lantern. “Billy, you must let them free, you must! God help
us!” “We
know that there was a mistake Alton, but that’s a pretty large order to be drinking.” “What do you mean?” “I mean whatcha hauling. Lest
it take a year for an ordinary man to finish, but for you maybe a week.” The Constable held up his lantern. Alton looked behind him. He was pulling a wagon with
beer barrels pyramided partially hidden beneath a huge black canvass. It only looked like a carriage. “Are you alright Alton?”
In the lantern light, the Constable could see that Alton’s face was bleached white. For a month, Alton told his tale from his chair at the Four Naughts, trying to get Mrs.
Locke to admit that it was a coach, not a wagon he mistakenly took that night. On the first anniversary of the event, which
was well toasted, Alton went in search of his nightmare and was found the next morning in a barn in Harpswell dead drunk.
He became the town’s laughing stock even though at night folks could see camp fires on Malaga Island.
THE PARASOL .
“Hush!” Lydia Herschel-Brown was so thin you could spit through her, and she was getting thinner everyday.
There was no doubt in anybody’s mind that one day she would set like the sun was trying to do beyond her. She had only
two wishes left in her life. One was to see Africa with her own eyes. There she sat, strapped in her wheel chair on Mr. Phillip’s
white launch with a pair of opera glasses gazing at Maine’s version of Africa. Her mother and nurse Liz surrounded
her with peppermint colored parasols. Her husband, Michael sporting a small Prince Albert beard and one of those straw band
hats straight from France, held her hand. It would have been a perfect study if it was on the Seine or at least the Kennebec,
but not on the old basin which cupped Malaga. They looked like some Bangor photographer had told them to hold their breaths
then went out for a beer. That’s how they floated on the basin that late summer afternoon. “What a dreadful pity we didn’t go
to the Columbian Exposition, Lydia,” Michael commented, knowing that Lydia was too ill to go to Portland let alone Chicago.
“I understand they installed an authentic African village with pygmies running around in the most unspeakable state.” “Hush!”
Lydia responded with a slight smile curving beneath her opera glasses. Everything was so still, as Brunswick people would say, ‘even the water obliged’.
“Look dead to me.” Old Gus said to Little Girl as he
peered out at them through the knot hole he never got around to fixing on the port side of his fish shack. “Deader
than a bunch of widows at a dance!” Little Girl was only four years old and wouldn’t have understood what he was saying if she could.
He went back to stripping down the large haddock on the bench in front of him. People said of Old Gus that he was a
queer man who always did good. He was dawn black with skin as thick as oak bark. He had fisherman’s eyes and
head. He was used to seeing people from the mainland floating up in a skiff, or a dingy to take a glimpse
of the island. He wasn’t used to seeing a launch spending the whole afternoon doing it.
Lydia coughed. Suddenly
everything on the boat came alive. Parasols closed. Shawls draped over her shoulders. Handkerchiefs covered faces. Hands reached
for the medicine bottle in a bag at the bottom of the boat. “Michael
we should return before sun sets. She needs rest.” Lydia’s mother cautioned. “Mother we can’t go now.
The natives haven’t come out yet. We don’t know if she’s with them or not. ” All of Lydia’s life she had been in love
with Africa. Not Africa the place but Africa the dream. She dreamt of animals that came from fairytales. She dreamt of jungles
that came from Harper’s Illustrated. She dreamt of a child of Africa that came from her desire to do “good”
in the world. That was her second wish. She wanted a child to hold. She had been only married a year before she got lung fever. Her husband
Michael wasn’t the aggressive kind. While waltzing even after their engagement he refrained from touching her waist
without a glove. And things of the bedroom, well we must leave those matters in there, as Mrs. Herschel advised, where they
belong.
Little Girl was the island’s
orphan. The Council tried to match her up with Missy after she lost her girl April, but Missy still boarded April in her heart.
The Council then asked Mattie. She had an empty cot and a place at her table. She claimed she was too old to take on the child.
Even Mother Johnson didn’t think it was feasible to raise a girl along with four boys in a one room shack. Family after
family regretfully refused to harbor her. Part of the reason was because no one knew who her parents were.
The real reason was how she arrived on the island. Old Gus found Little Girl alone in a row boat beached on Malaga sand. She
was bundled in a crate like Moses on the river Nile. No one knew where she came from, just that she was mulatto. She had been
with Old Gus ever since. Little Girl went a whole summer and a winter without saying a word. That was alright because folk
said Old Gus babbled enough for both of them.
“Look at them out there; you’d think that they’d never seen a fish
house before.” The old man picked Little Girl up in both arms so she could see for herself. All she could see were the
parasols that seemed to float by themselves on the water. They reminded her of the candy that Old Gus traded for a month before.
“Lydia, haven’t
you had enough of this?” The back of Mrs. Herschel’s hand rested on her daughter’s forehead.
Lydia pushed it away because it blocked her view of the fish house. Mrs. Herschel always tried to protect her daughter. Her
world had been one of filigree and lace. Germans by stock, they were shipbuilders from Waldoboro. Lydia grew up dining at
a dinner table with a bronze model of a five mast schooner sitting smack in the middle of it. But when
she stood at her bay windows to watch the construction of her father’s ships her mother pulled the drapes. “Darling, I don’t think
we are ever going to see anything”, remarked Michael as he left the tableaux of parasols. He balanced himself across
the redwood deck to the steam boiler where Mr. Phillip’s impatient deck boy stood by with a watchful eye for the signal
to depart. “We’ll
see her. She was in my dream!” Lydia replied to her husband as she refocused her opera glasses on the barnacle covered
fish shack. “She was in my dream.”
“They are still looking at
us. I wonder if they want to buy some of them steamers.” Old Gus stooped to a basket filled with
clams. The girl watched him intently. Old Gus knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep Little Girl for long. Think of it,
she lived in a place where an old queer man gutted and flushed fish; an old queer who never had a woman let alone a child
to care for. Some of the women thought the arrangement was outrageous even though they were not willing to take her in.
The Council contemplated sending her back to the mainland so the churches of the town would see fit to do what they
all do in such circumstances. Holding the basket high he angrily kicked the door open. Hearts stopped on the launch. Parasols dropped. Breasts
clutched. Opera glasses fell. The sight of the basket of clams above boots emerging from a rickety door even startled Mr.
Phillip’s deck boy who must have seen the combination hundreds of times. The boy instantly sounded the horn.
-When Old Gus walked through
the doorway, Little Girl followed. Through her opera glasses, Lydia saw a blonde frizzy haired, wide nose, thin lipped, girl with blue eyes and brown
arms reaching out toward her. She tried to get up from her wheelchair. She begged the deck boy to bring
the launch closer to the beach, but at Michael’s insistence the launch moved in the opposite direction. In the confusion
a parasol fell overboard. Little Girl ran into the water after it. Hearing the horn, the islanders rushed to the knoll overlooking the beach. Once
there they saw the launch slip away. Then they saw the little girl in the water. Old Gus, who was still intent on selling
his steamers, didn’t notice her at first but when he did he looked like Moby Dick pushing aside the Atlantic to get
to her. Missy, followed by Mattie rushed down the small hill as if yelling could save anyone. Old Gus got the little one
and soaked to the bone handed Little Girl to Missy for that motherly curing. She held the child so tight
in her ample breast the action pushed opened her heart. “Do you think they tried to steal her?” Mattie said to Old Gus, remembering
the tales of the days when slave catchers scoured Maine looking for human property. “Might have, they looked pretty weird to me. They
wanted something. Now what do we have to give?” Quickly the islanders arrived on the beach and hugged and kissed Little Girl as if they
never seen her before. They shook hands with Old Gus who they always thought was someone special but never
had the opportunity to express it. When the islanders surrounded Missy to congratulate her, the orphan tumbled unnoticed
from her grasp and ran to the drifting peppermint parasol beckoning to her from the swell. As quickly as the sun skedaddles
after it reaches the horizon, the small girl slipped beneath the waters. Although the launch was some distance away, the sailing party watched the horror through
their opera glasses. “Do you think the little girl will be alright? Maybe we should notify the constable, or someone.”
Mrs. Herschel asked her son-in-law. “Too late, Mother Herschel she’s gone.” Michael sighed as one does at the end of a well produced
opera. But
Lydia’s reaction was different. Nurse Liz testified at the hearing that she thought she saw Lydia unleash the restraint
that secured her chair to a rail and push her self off the deck. They found the chair the next day, Lydia was not in it. Two weeks later a storm swept
in like a November broom and blew up drift wood and roots and all kind of things to a shape on top of Mary’s rise.
To Old Gus who could see it from his shack it looked like a mother and a child. And to the folk on the mainland -those
who had binoculars,-it looked like what it was a mystery.
