Keeper

"Goddamn it, if I catch another skate I'm tossing my pole in the ocean!"

My brother-in-law was losing his cool, but then again who wouldn't after an afternoon of hooking nothing but the ugly bottom-feeding skate. Our previous dreams of striped bass had given way to vague hopes for bluefish, winter flounder, even a sand shark at this point. Anything but another skate.

I adjusted my sunglasses and smirked in his general direction, keeping my eyes firmly out to sea. Gloucester Harbor was brilliant, blue, and barren; definitely one of the more scenic ways to throw twenty bucks of bait to the crabs and the other lowlifes of the deep, if nothing else.

Still, Gabe had a point. We'd been fishing this spot every weekend for a month now - in the morning, in the evening; at high tide, low tide, ebb tide, and neep tide; chucking sea clams and chunk herring and mackerel; using the dipsy rig, the fish-finder, and countless other half-remembered, half-improvised forms of tackle; with circle hooks, j-hooks, octopus hooks, even Japanese red steel hooks that drew blood when we snelled them.

And what did we have to show for it? Aside from a couple of dozen skates, nothing. Not even a schoolie or two, let alone a striper that was more than the legal size of twenty-eight inches, head to tail.

A keeper! How foolish we had been, when we first started fishing last summer, Gabe and I, with our Wal-Mart rods and reels and our plastic sea worms. Having started out with an uncanny string of beginners' luck, we thought it would be just a matter of weeks before we landed ourselves our prized keepers - or "keepahs," as they call them up here. Striped bass are only one of a variety of species of fish that you may find on the end of your line when casting into the chilly waters off the New England coast, but they're the only one that count.

"Fuck!" Gabe cried out as his pole jerked noncommitally, as it tends to do when a skate has gone and hooked itself on the end of your line. A family of curious sightseers who'd ventured out along the rocks of Stage Fort Park clucked at this unwholesome outburst.

I turned and looked up, eyeing their white tube socks and matching windbreakers from my vantage point about thirty feet below them. We'd set up at the bottom of a jumble of huge granite slabs that tumbled headlong into the harbor, and periodically forgot that despite the fact that it appeared to be just us, the gulls, and the passing boats, there were in fact tons of people crawling around the park.

Situated just south of the city of Gloucester, Stage Fort Park offers stunning views of both the harbor and the still somewhat sleepy fishing town from the natural promontory and the decrepit man-made fortifications. On the weekends it was a natural draw for locals on picnic, out-of-towners looking for a little scenery, and would-be fishermen such as Gabe and myself.

"Whoops," my brother-in-law said to me, and offered a lame apology to the matron of the red windbreaker party, who was too busy herding her blonde little ones away from the foul-mouthed anglers who reeked of bait.

"Townies," I heard the father mutter as he brought up the rear, looking down at us fishing with a mixture of loathing and longing before disappearing from view.

I laughed - at the squeaky clean tourists, at the skate that Gabe proceeded to reel in amidst even more profanity, at the idea of being confused with a native. Me, the city kid. Gabe caught me chuckling and let a few choice words sail my way:
"What the hell's so funny? I haven't seen you catch a motherfucking thing all day!"

"Hey," I shot back. "At least I'm not feeding the skates."

Gabe spat as he heaved the speckled brown creature out of the sea and onto the rocks. Flat and almost eerily beautiful in the water, skates tend to curl up and spasm unpredictably when caught, making it twice as hard to get off the hook as other fish.

"Gah! He swallowed the hook. Damn it all to hell..."

He moved to cut the fishing line and kick his unwanted quarry back into the deep when a voice called down from above.

"You're not going to throw that away, are you?"

Gabe and I looked up, but couldn't see our mystery guest. We looked at each other, shrugging. "Why not? Fucking skates aren't good for anything anyway."

"Not true!" The man had somehow clambered down the rocks in the time it took Gabe to find his Swiss Army knife, and interposed himself between my brother-in-law and the gasping ball of a fish. "Please," he said. "Allow me to take it off your hands, if you're not going to keep it."

"Keep it?" I asked. "You're not going to eat that thing, are you?"

"Of course I am! In my mother country, we eat skate wings all the time."

Gabe made a face. "Where is that?"

The man was already pulling the hook out of the hapless creature's gullet, as if by magic. "Sicily," he said.

"Sicily isn't a country." Gabe, always the troublemaker, had struck a nerve in our newfound friend. He picked up the skate by the tail and shook it at us proudly.

"Now you watch what you say! If we Sicilians aren't our own people, then who are we? Italians? Phtoo!" he spit into the waves.

I tried to steer the conversation to something a little less inflammatory. "So are there a lot of Sicilians in Gloucester?"

"Oh, yes!" the skate-wielding stranger nodded excitedly. "We've been coming here for generations, back when you could still pull big fish out of this harbor."

"What do you mean," my brother-in-law asked indignantly. "Are you saying there no keepers in there?"

The Sicilian laughed. "Oh, you might get lucky - it's a big ocean, after all - but you're not going to find fish like that here."

Gabe tossed his rod and reel down in disgust at this bit of insider information; I however read between the lines and asked the obvious follow-up question:

"So where will we find them?"

The Sicilian smiled, flashing a solid gold incisor and his diseased gums, but said nothing. Instead, with a sudden whirl he smacked the still-flapping skate against a broad, flat rock, killing it instantly.

"Got a knife?" he asked. Gabe rooted through our tackle box and handed him a rusty, blood-encrusted blade. The Sicilian took it and began carving the wings off of the dead sea creature's body.

"You can only eat the wings," he explained as he cut. "They're a little tough sometimes, but they taste like scallops. Not bad." The edible portions of the skate having been salvaged, he tossed the rest of the carcass to the crabs and the gulls.

"Grazie, signores." The Sicilian took his prize and started back up the rock wall.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Gabe called out. The old man paused. "I thought you were going to tell us where to find a keeper."

The Sicilian muttered something unintelligible, or was he singing? There was something lyrical in the words that escaped his lips, as if he was singing along to an unheard melody. Although it was well over ninety degrees outside, I felt a shiver run down my spine.

"Just up the coast there is a place. Farrell's Island. You'll find your fish there."

He had kept his back to us while he spoke this, but craned his neck around to give us his parting words, which he delivered with that sickly sweet brownish-gold smile.

"Just remember to tell them that Tantalo sent you!"

Gabe and I pored over a road map of Cape Ann, following every nook and cranny of its rocky coastline. Manchester-by-the-Sea, Magnolia, Gloucester, Rockport, Annisquam, Pigeon Cove - not a Farrell's Island to be found. We bought a USGS survey of the area - still no luck.

"What the fuck!" my brother-in-law exclaimed as we went through atlas after atlas in vain.

I was equally frustrated, but not quite ready to give up. "It's got to be here. Maybe we should ask around in the bait shops?"

May at Surfworld never heard of the place - a bad sign, to be sure, as she'd been selling bait and tackle and collecting fisherman's lore for a good half century or more. "You shoah you got the name right?" she drawled as she made change for an angler in hip waders who was going out to try his luck on the Joppa Flats. "I cahn't say I've ever heard of any Farrell's Island befoah."

Petey's Bait, at the other end of the Cape, was drawing a similar blank. "That's a weird one," Petey said while restocking his bait freezers with herring and mackerel, stacking the frozen fish likes cords of wood, three feet deep.

"But wait. 'Farrell', you said, right? Wasn't there a sea captain named Farrell from way back? Maybe not. That'll be ten dollars for the sea clams, what with the Governor's cut."

"Farrell's Island?" the foul-mouthed bait purveyor on Route 60's infamous rotary growled. "What asshole was telling you two nancy boys about Farrell's Island?"

Gabe and I looked at each other and shrugged. Old Dooley was always good for a package of clam necks when the other bait shops had long since closed for the season, so we figured that maybe he knew something; we were right. Unfortunately, there was a big difference between knowing that Dooley knew something and getting that knowledge out of him. This was especially true when it came to the inside information about fishing spots, which anglers generally guarded as if they were nuclear secrets.

"So there is such a place?" I asked.

"I didn't say that."

"Come on, Dooley." Gabe had a better rapport with the old geezer, so I let him try.

"We've bought enough bait from you to keep you in boat payments. We're not asking what rock to fish off of, just where this goddamned village is. Be a sport."

"A sport?" Dooley cackled. "Trust me when I tell you I'm being more of a sport by not telling you jokers about Farrell's Island. Go to Plum Island, boys, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other amateurs. Or better yet, get a boat with a fishfinder, for Chrissakes. Just don't go askin' anymore about that place. It's a waste of your time.

"And speaking of wasting my time, buy some bait or get the fuck out of my store!"

"We're onto something," Gabe said to me as we clambered back into my beat up grey pickup without air-conditioning or an FM radio even. He took a swig from his now-warm iced coffee and spat it out the window. "That old bastard knew the whole story. They must be pullin' up cows from that spot, wherever it is. Now the only question is, how do we find it?"

The library was the next logical stop. Massachusetts is blessed with some of the best small town libraries in the country, each an invaluable trove of regional lore. I knew this from my day job as a professional archivist. Although I officially worked for the Commonwealth, I spent a lot of time with local collections and archives, and thus had gotten to know how useful the neighborhood library actually was in this neck of the woods.

My town's public library was no exception. With a collection extending back to before the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690's, the library was the kind of place you could spend weekend after weekend in and not even scratch the surface. Located in a dusky brick building half-swallowed by ivy, the library smelled like the very history it preserved, the unmistakable must of books slowly, inexorably crumbling into dust.
Gabe and I had brought a competing odor into this high-ceilinged temple to the past, as in our excitement we opted to cut straight to the chase, lest the library close for the weekend. The reference librarian on duty crinkled her nose at the scent of herring blood and sun-ripened surf clam that hung around us like a Gypsy's curse.

"Are you gentlemen lost?" she asked hopefully. Now I've heard all of the stereotypes about librarians, the mousy, bespectacled matrons who wear their hair in a bun wrapped as tight as a tourniquet, with zero tolerance for noise and the hidden penchant for sado-masochism. In all my extensive travels around the state, not once have I met one of these fictitious creatures - until now.

"Err, hello." I started, extending my right hand then withdrawing it as I remembered the fish guts. The librarian had not made any motion to receive my hand, however, but stared at it and us coldly instead. "Could you point us in the direction of your maritime history stacks?"

"Naval History is E 182," she answered without even blinking. "Around to the left. Try not to get anything on the leather upholstery."

I was curious all of a sudden: "When did you switch over to Library of Congress classifications?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Last time I was here, it was all Dewey Decimal. A lot of the collection not even that!"

The librarian eyed me suspiciously over the brim of her bifocals. "And what exactly do you know about cataloging?"

"Enough to know a job well done when I see one. Your handiwork?"

Pause. "Yes."

"This should have taken years. I work at State Archive, and I'd give my right arm for someone like you in technical processing."

The middle-aged matron actually blushed at this, as my brother-in-law gaped incredulously. "Why, thank you. Come to think of it, let me show you the way. Those E's can get a little tricky. You can freshen up in the employee bathroom, too, if you'd like."

The librarian's name was Cassandra, and she'd just come down from Bangor, Maine to take the evening and weekend shift here at our library. "I miss living Downeast, no doubt," she confided to us as she ran back and forth to the stacks, fetching us materials. "But the library there was just filled with kooks."

"How's that?" Gabe asked, clearly amused now at how thoroughly I'd charmed this potential ogre.

"Stephen King kooks. Nineteen out of twenty questions at the desk were about Mr. King and his oeuvre."

I laughed at the unlikely combination of Stephen King and the word, only to draw a reproachful cluck from Cassandra.

"Now don't me wrong. Mr. King has been nothing but generous to the city of Bangor, including the library. And I must admit a fondness for the man's work, especially his short stories!

"That being said, I could do without the relentless fanaticism that's surrounded his success. You can't even go out for coffee in Bangor anymore without encountering a pilgrim or two. Not that I should complain, of course. If not for the kooks, I would have gone mad decades ago. But there are only so many times you can tell people what breed of dog Cujo is."

Gabe started to open his mouth, but Cassandra beat him to it:

"Don't you even think about it, mister!"

I chuckled and cracked open a book that looked promising. A Catalog of Ships And Their Captains - 1600-1700. Thumbing for the index, I stumbled upon the first promising lead of the day. Farrell, Jonathan T. Page 120.

"I think I may have something here!"

As Cassandra ("call me Cassie, dear!) and Gabe looked on, I flipped back through the book with a quickening pulse, only to find that the page I was looking for was missing. Not blank, but gone altogether. 117, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124...

"What the --?"

Cassie had a disgusted look on her face. "Vandals." She looked closely at the monograph's binding. "Someone razored the page out. I haven't seen that sort of thing since my days in the serials stacks at the University of Maine. This island of yours must be a real old timers' secret! I'll have to have a word with Eunice about this. It's a sorry day when you have to start thinking of installing metal detectors in your town library!

"As for the book, perhaps there's another copy nearby. Let me go to my catalogs and see what I can do. Back in a moment." Cassie gave my arm a squeeze as she brushed past me. Now I was the one who was blushing.

My brother-in-law was grinning at me as the librarian disappeared around the bookshelves, a little bit of a sashay in her step that wasn't there before.
"When are you going to break the bad news to her, chief?"

I eyed my unencumbered ring finger. Having already lost our original wedding ring trolling for tuna on a party boat, my wife had forbidden me to wear the replacement band when going out fishing. If she had known that this would in turn open me up to the advances of easily-flattered public librarians, however, she might have reconsidered her edict.

I winked back at Gabe. "As soon as we catch that keeper, that's when. And not a word of this to Wendy until then. Got it?"

Cassie had returned, looking a little crestfallen. A preliminary search had turned up no copies of the tantalizing title within the Metro Boston area.

"The Woods Hole library might have it, though, down in Falmouth. I could have someone there fax us the missing pages on Monday, if you'd like." Once more her tone was hopeful-sounding, only this time I didn't get the impression that she was trying to get rid of us. Or more to the point, me.

"That would be great, Cassie. Thank you."

I kicked Gabe in the shins under the table before he could say anything stupid and beamed at the smitten librarian.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Gabe cried out in an excited voice. At first I thought he was loudly protesting my pre-emptive boot, but then I noticed he was pointing down at a picture in the reference book he'd been perusing.

The volume in question was a collection of prints by Fitz Henry Lane, the celebrated Luminist painter from Gloucester who'd made countless paintings of the New England coast. The plate that my brother-in-law was transfixed by was just such a simple seascape - rocks, choppy waves, a sailboat with maddeningly detailed rigging, and a sun that even in the reproduction seemed to glow as if it lit from behind - but it was the title of the painting that made the heart leap:

"Untitled (Sunset on Farrell's Island?), 1864."

The three of us stared at the print for what seemed like an hour, before I broke the reverie with a caveat.

"This only proves that Lane knew the legend, and that's assuming the title of the painting isn't a fanciful reconstruction on someone else's part."

Cassie nodded in sage agreement, but Gabe was unconvinced. "But what if he knew? What if he'd been there? Look at the rocks - look at that weird promontory on the left. We could find this spot, I'm telling you."

"But where would we start, Gabe?"

"That's easy," he answered, sweeping aside the picture book to reveal the oversized folio map of Cape Anne we had begun our investigation with. "The plate was titled 'Sunset on Farrell's Island', right?"

Gabe and I had thanked our zealous local librarian and headed back onto the road, the pickup groaning as it climbed the modern concrete piling bridge to Beverly, the Salem Harbor a wine dark puddle beneath us as it caught the remains of the daylight. After the bridge, we turned sharply off of Route 1A and onto 127, the winding coastal route that hugged Cape Anne's outline like a form-fitting dress.

Gabe was clutching a photocopy of Lane's painting, a road map, and a book of nautical charts that I'd borrowed on my library card. Cassie had stamped the due date into the back of the tome with a wink and a hungry smile; I had uneasily smiled back.

"Yeah?" I answered my brother-in-law, worrying about how much daylight we had left.

"So it's gotta be within a certain spread of latitude, bro. Even figuring for seasonal variation, you're looking at about half the eastern coast of the Cape."

Gabe was good with figures, something that had always eluded me. Right now I couldn't visualize the mental mathematics that was going into solving this problem of perspective, but I knew enough to know that he was on the right track.
The early evening sunlight was filtering through the dense canopy that sheltered the road, painting everything preternatural shades of green, red, and gold. I looked for a turnoff that would take us closer to the water.

"Now these charts can help us narrow things even further. There are only so many shoals and offshore islands - it's just a process of elimination!"

"So long as we have light."

"Right."

"And weather permitting," I said ominously as tendrils of mist began to peek through the undergrowth of the unmarked partially-paved road we were now following.
New England is notorious for its fog, which can roll in without warning on summer or autumn evenings, inconveniencing many a late sunbather and putting myriad small boats and their unseasoned weekend warrior captains into mortal danger. As we worked our way closer and closer to the water, the mists thickened significantly. I turned on my headlights and downshifted the truck as Gabe spat.

"I can't believe this shit!"

"Easy there, Gabe. We can just come back this way tomorrow morning, after it all burns off."

"I guess."

I could tell he was more than a little disappointed that the hunt had been postponed, so I offered a consolation of sorts. "We still have some bait in the cooler - why don't we just find a place to cast off and see what dumb luck'll get us?"

Gabe was still sullen, but the lure of a trying out a new fishing spot was too much to resist. "Deal. But we're not giving up 'til we find this island, bro. Right?"

"I'll clear my schedule."

We parked where the road started to bow back towards 127, grabbed our poles and gear, and trudged through the trees following the smell of the sea. Not more than a quarter of a mile into the woods we found ourselves on a series of slippery basalt shelves that thrust right into the waves. The mist was now so thick that we could see about thirty feet of ocean in front of us, maybe less. We would be casting out into the soft grey nothing that had engulfed the Cape.

"Last one rigged is a rotten egg," Gabe said.

I went for a j-hook with a seaworm, as our supply of these hideous centipede-like critters was still alive and wriggling, whereas the chunked herring we'd been using earlier was taking on an even more unappetizing funk than usual. I launched the worm, hook, and lead sinker into the wall of mist - there was no sound of the rig hitting the water, but I could feel a tug almost immediately as something large and hungry sampled my bait.

"A hit?" Gabe asked, so excited he looped his World's Fair knot around his thumb instead of the swivel snap.

"Huge!" I said. The line was pulling to the right with a force that almost swept me clear off the rock. I played out some slack and ran alongside my quarry, adrenaline coursing through my veins.

"Holy shit, Gabe, I think this may be it!"

Striper, bluefish, dogfish, barn-door halibut - I didn't know what this thing was yet, but I knew it wasn't another skate, and that it wasn't getting away. Finding a nice dry leverage point among the rocks, I attempted to reel in the beast while Gabe fumbled for gloves and a knife, just in case. The resistance was so great, I thought for a moment I'd snagged on a rock, but it kept pulling to the right with the force of what felt like a whale.

Afraid I'd hooked something larger than my rig could handle, I nevertheless decided to take my chances and try to reel this thing in. "Go for it!" Gabe called out in encouragement as I gave the graphite rod a massive tug.

There was a not too distant cry in response, accompanied by a splash and a torrent of curses. My brother-in-law and I looked at each other in confusion.

"Sonofabitch baitchuckers!"

"Hello?" I called out into the mist. Now we could just make out a dark hull and a flash of fisherman's yellow, bobbing in and out of focus.

It was a dory. Every now and then you see them along the coast of Cape Ann, but these days they're more ornamental than functional, painted in bright blues or reds that have been unblemished by barnacle or salt. Not this one, however, which had long since lost its coat of paint, if ever it had one.

The doryman himself was similarly worn, although his classic foul weather gear had retained a sunny hue that seemed bright enough to read by (despite the fact that such a getup had been out of style for decades). As the boat came into closer view, we could see that its oarsman had a bushy white beard that, had he kept it neat and trimmed, would have made him look like one of those Old Salt buoys always on sale in the gift shops that hawked nautical tchochtkes.

"He looks like the Gorton's Fisherman!" Gabe put more succinctly. I couldn't help but snort in laughing approval.

"I had a boatful of fish when you hooked me," the old salt muttered in our direction as he worked the oars in order to maintain his craft's position in the choppy waters. "Don't take much to capsize her when she's loaded. I was lucky I could right her before losing myself along with the catch!"

"What the hell kind of fisherman is this guy?" Gabe asked me under his breath.

I ignored him and tried to apologize for my actions, but the doryman seemed remarkably upbeat for just having lost a whole bunch of whatever it was he'd been catching here. He hovered in closer and closer, fighting the incoming swells pushing him towards the basalt ledges.

"Hey buddy, you're gonna lose it on the rocks!" Gabe called out, but the fisherman was unfazed. As each wave caught him, he heaved the oars with a grunt and set the dory back aright in a graceful whirl of his arms. He did it without thinking, as if he'd been born fighting the tides in a weatherbeaten boat. I stared at the man in fascinated silence.

"Always more fish in the sea, boys - especially here." the doryman said with a knowing laugh. Gabe and I looked at each other.

"And where exactly are we?" Gabe asked, but the doryman answered with a question of his own:

"Do you happen to know what day it is?"

"Saturday."

"No, no - I want the date," the old salt clarified, annunciating the final t as deliberately as he could.

"It's the eighth."

"No, I meant --" the doryman started, then stopped himself in mid-sentence. "You know what, it don't really matter anyway. Catchin' anything, boys?"

Gabe scowled. "We haven't caught shit all month, unless you're counting skates."

The old salt hooted in derision, which only served to anger my brother-in-law. "So what's your secret, grandpa?"

The doryman stopped rowing just long enough to fix Gabe with a glance that made him flinch. "Son, I'm old enough to be a lot more than your grandfather. But you mind your manners nonetheless, you hear?"

Gabe said nothing; the doryman began to retreat back into the mists and out of sight. Desperate not to lose our chance to pick the old salt's brain, I called out to him:
"Wait! Don't go!"

But it was too late - man and boat had been swallowed by the ever-darkening gloom as evening gave way to a moonless summer night. The only trace that remained of the pair was the sloshing of the oars and a half-hummed melody that lingered over the dull slapping of wave against rock. That song! It was the same tune that the Sicilian had been singing, earlier this morning. Farrell's Island couldn't be far from here at all.

As much as we wanted to continue our search, however, the fog and the night were combining into an impenetrable dim that made me wonder if we'd even be able to find the truck. I reeled in my rig with a hurried hand. The seaworm I'd offered up had somehow survived the whole ordeal, alive, intact, and still doing its revolting primitive dance of twisting and jerking on the j-hook. I pulled it off, and tossed it into the waves with a shudder, and packed up the tacklebox while Gabe remained standing, pole still in hand, and staring out into the dark mists. I tugged at his shirt and he broke out of his reverie with a start.

"Let's go, before we lose the light entirely. We'll come back tomorrow, I promise."

Tomorrow didn't pan out as planned, unfortunately. Despite sunny skies and a total lack of coastal fog, not only couldn't we find where we'd been along the rocks the evening before, but even the road we had taken was now eluding us as well.

"I don't get it, bro." Gabe was disgusted with our lack of navigational prowess.
"How many back roads are there along the coast anyway? We've driven the whole Cape from Beverly to Gloucester, and still - nothing. I don't fucking get it."

I had to admit, it was a strange thing - as if last night's route had disappeared entirely without a trace. We drove all day, asked for directions in gas stations and the mom and pop stores, even knocked on a couple of doors, but no one could help us.

"Farrell's Island?" a woman asked from behind a screen door. "I've lived here all my life and never heard of it. You sure you got the name right?"

"Pretty sure."

"What's all that racket about, Miriam?" a man's voice called from deeper within the house we'd cold-called. Miriam yelled back without taking her wary eyes off us:

"Coupla boys asking about some place called Farrell's Island."

There was a choking sound from the man, whom we still could not see. Then the sound of footsteps on a creaky hardwood floor as a hulking shadow approached the threshold.
"I'll set these fellas straight, Miriam - you go fix dinner now."

"Do you think they mean--?"

We could see the man of the house clearly now as he interposed himself between his wife and the screen door - six feet tall, with a neck and shoulders of a professional football player, and the eyes of someone who knew more than he wanted to.

"I said let me handle this, woman!" he growled, sending Miriam back into the dark of the house's interior with a harumph. As soon as she was gone, however, his voice softened, almost to a whisper:

"Who told you about Farrell's Island?"

Gabe and I smiled in unison. "Some guy in Gloucester," my brother-in-law said. "A Sicilian, right? What was his name again..."

"Tantalo," I answered him, seeing the glimmer of recognition on the big man's face.

"So you guys are looking for the big one, eh?" His grin was broad, as if what he'd said was the punchline to a joke that no one had told us.

"Sure are," Gabe said. "So you've been there?"

The big man kept smiling, if only on the outside. "Yes, I have."

"So where the hell is the turnoff? We've been up and down 127 all weekend and I'll be damned if we could find it..."

"It doesn't work that way, gentlemen." His smile was frozen upon his lips, which appeared dry and bloodless.

"What do you mean?"

"You don't find the island; it finds you."

Gabe and I exchanged a glance at this. "Come again?"

The big man's smile was hanging by a thread. "That's all I can tell you. Now I think it would be best if you were on your way."

"That's what passes for help in this neck of the woods?" Gabe was agitated, but the man had lost his smile entirely now.

"Please go now." I could feel his bulk menace us even through the screen door.

I tugged at my brother-in-law's sleeve, eager to leave this house and its unhelpfully helpful owner as far behind as we could. Gabe gave me a melodramatic grunt but relented. As we turned to leave, however, the big man cleared his throat and began to speak:

"It's not worth it."

"What isn't?" I asked, surprised.

"The thing you're looking for."

"Farrell's Island?"

"Quit searching. It may not be too late for you two."

"Too late? What are you talking about!"

"Nothing is worth what he asks!"

I realized with a start that we had been misreading the big man. All this time he was exuding something much more troubling than the prospect of physical violence, inflicted upon us by him.

It was fear.

I backed slowly off the porch, hoping Gabe would follow - fortunately he did, muttering about how everyone on Cape Ann was crazy. "'It finds you'!" he scoffed as we clambered into the truck. "What the hell was that shit?"

"I'm not sure," I said as I started up the engine. Still shaken, I fumbled with the column shift before putting the pickup into gear, as tendrils of mist crept through the underbrush in the failing light. So much for the weekend.

I had a message from Cassie waiting for me when I arrived at work on Monday - sure enough, she had obtained the missing pages from the library at Woods Hole. As the book was rather old, the photocopies hadn't come out clear; and as she was loathe to fax them in such poor condition, would I mind coming back to the library to pick them up?

I sensed the trap, but decided to walk straight into it nonetheless. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. I wasn't unhappily married, not by any stretch of the imagination. And though my job had provided me ample time and opportunity to cheat, what with the necessary fieldwork and myriad archivists' convention all over the country, I'd quite frankly never felt the temptation to do so.

Until now.

Maybe it was the way she'd reorganized the old Public Library's collection - simple and elegant. Perhaps it was the frustration of the hunt working its way upon my baser instincts, urging me to make something of all this spent effort, since it seemed like we wouldn't be finding this mystical island or any stripers worth keeping this summer. Or maybe I was just bored.

Whatever the reason, I was all over Cassandra as soon as we were alone, locked in the staff lounge. She had been hoping for as much herself, although I couldn't help but notice that her ruse of a story had in fact been correct. As an elderly volunteer read childrens' books to toddlers just a room and a half away, Cassie and I rolled around on a table spread with photocopies that were in fact unsuitable for faxing - pushing and pulling, groping and sighing. She gathered up the rumpled papers with a sheepish chuckle when we had finished; I kissed her and promised I'd call.

"More research?" Gabe asked me when I told him that Cassie had hit upon another promising lead. Although she actually had, I didn't see the fruit of her research until we had both devoured each other again, this time in the microfilm room ("Where nobody's sure to find us," we both joked, laughing at it in a way that only librarians could).

The maddening thing was that Cassandra never ceased to provide more information, which she had tirelessly been tracking down in between our furtive meetings. I parlayed this steady stream of possibilities into weekend after weekend of searching with Gabe, who never tired himself in his quest. When the weather permitted, we rented a cheap motorboat and felt out the nooks and crannies of Cape Ann, while whenever I could steal away from work and the house I explored the contours of my newfound lover.

Did my wife suspect? Not in the slightest. Ever devoted to her husband, who had never given her reason to doubt in the past, she simply took my protestations about deadlines and forced overtime at face value, even when I came home after midnight with another woman's scent on me.

Gabe, on the other hand, saw what was going on immediately but chose not to say anything, even to me. Cassie was too good at stringing us along with tidbit after tidbit of useful information for him to risk what he now considered his only chance to bag a keeper.

Gabe didn't even want to fish anymore. "We gotta find the island, bro," he'd say, poring over his ever more worn charts, which were now covered with red magic marker and black magic marker in hopeful circles and furious scribbles. "I'm saving my tackle for the big one, not another fucking skate. What news from our friend the librarian?" he'd ask, knowing enough not to accompany me to the library anymore, lest he witness too much to ignore in good conscience.

Once or twice in the beginning he'd tagged along in what proved to be excruciating visits. Invariably I'd make up an excuse to leave, only to double back again when the coast was clear; he caught on soon enough, and merely started asking me to relay the new leads. Gabe was quite the pragmatist, especially where fishing was concerned.
I was obsessed with this librarian; she in turn was fixated on solving the riddle; while my brother-in-law only had eyes for his keeper - a fine trio we made.

Something had to give, and give it did at long last as September yielded to October and the stripers began their migration back to warmer waters for the winter. "The Fall Run", as anglers called it, was the the best chance to catch a striped bass of legal length. In need of enough nourishment to sustain them for the long journey south, stripers of all ages would snap at practically anything resembling food, sometimes churning the waters in a boiling frenzy of hunger for fishermen who were lucky enough.

It was also the last chance to land a striper. After the Fall Run, the coastal shallows would be barren, save for the skates and the rock crabs. Gabe and I had tried to fish the odd warm late October and early November tides in years before, only to learn why most bait shops close up after Columbus Day until the next spring.
We knew time was running short for all of us. Summer mania in the end had no choice but to surrender to the crisper, more reasoned thoughts of fall, but that knowledge only seemed to intensify what remained of our respective passions. Cassie became an expert in Captain Farrell, I became an expert in Cassie, and Gabe - he became an expert in looking the other way, always towards the fish.

Always.

"That's funny," my wife mused as she sorted through the day's mail.

"What?" I'd been sitting at the kitchen table, pretending to enjoy an hour at home before 'urgent business' would call me back to Cassandra's tight embrace. My daughter had finger-painted a flock of pterodactyls, and was attempting to elicit a positive reaction out of me. "Pretty dinosaurs, honey."

"They're angels, Daddy!" She stomped off in a huff, her masterpieces in hand; I tried to feel guilty, but could only feel Cassie's hot skin against mine.

My wife continued, oblivious. "Someone sent you a package today. I must have been upstairs with the baby. Sorry. I can pick it up for you tomorrow, if you'd like."

"Sure," I said, wondering when Cassandra would call my cell phone and set me free from the agony of waiting. "Who's it from?" I asked, not caring what the answer was. Anything to fill the time.

"That's the funny thing. It doesn't say."

Oh, shit.

It could only be one person. You damned fool, I thought to myself, did you really think she was going to play it cool forever?

Cassandra was a remarkable woman, no doubt, but in the end she was only human like the rest of us. My mind raced as I thought of what she might have sent. Flowers? Candies? Too trite. No, it was bound to be something personal and heartfelt and thus impossible to pass off as anything other than it was.

Even to my wife.

"That's okay, honey." I thought on my feet, or tried at least. "I need to swing by the post office tomorrow morning anyway. The Library of Congress needs the third part of that project I've been working on, and you know how slow the mail room at work can be."

She did, too. My wife was a librarian once herself, before the pull of motherhood proved stronger than a well-organized archive. I could see that she bought the excuse, but nevertheless my wife persisted:

"But that's out of your way, sweetie. You've been running yourself ragged - let me pick up the package, and I'll mail your stuff for you, too. It's no bother; I need to buy stamps anyway."

My wife's selflessness, however unwitting, had me checkmated. I couldn't press the issue without calling attention to it, so I abandoned any thought of preemption and headed straight for damage control. How bad could it be?

My cell phone rang. "Sorry, honey. I've got to take this."

Cassie was livid when I asked her if she'd sent anything to the house. "How dare you! Didn't I promise you? No games, no strings attached!"

"I know, I just thought--" I began, too stupid to know when to keep my mouth shut. We were naked, in the periodicals reading room, and although we were still entwined I felt her body tense and grow chill.

"Thought what? That I was lying? That I couldn't bear to be without you? That I was so consumed with jealousy I had to mail you a book of love poetry or my panties? Is that what you thought?"

"Cassie, please--" I started, only to be cut off again.

"Get out of my library."

Whatever unease had seeped into my life paradise was proving to be infectious. The last time Gabe and I went out in our rented skiff to painstakingly scour another few square miles of sea, he'd flown into a rage when I called out the wrong heading. Even though I was only off by a hair's breadth, it was as if I'd committed an unforgiveable insult.

Of course we both knew that I had, though not the one he was berating me for. "Watch where you're fucking going! We don't have time to do this shit again, if we fuck it up."

I said nothing in response. What could I say? We were committed now, the three of us. Or so I'd assumed until the mystery package. Despite Cassie's protestations, I knew it would be my undoing, and so I prepared for the worst as I headed back home from work the next day - Cassandra hadn't called, nor had my wife for that matter, which only added to my feeling of dread.

When I came home to find my wife in a merry mood, I knew I was done for. Although I couldn't read any trace of hidden anger in the smiling face that greeted me at the door, I knew that something awful was lying in wait for me. It had to be.

"How was your day?"

"Fine," I lied.

"I mailed your project this morning, you're very welcome, no need to thank me."

"Thanks?"

"See - that wasn't so hard!" she gave me an impish peck on the cheek and headed for the kitchen.

"What about the package?" I asked, unsure if I wanted an answer.

"It's on the table," my wife sung over her shoulder, already busy at work in the final preparations of the evening supper. I slung my satchel over a chair and looked at the anonymous gift - just as she said, there it was, unopened, unmolested, uninvestigated by a paranoid spouse.

I sighed audibly.

The package was oddly bound and suspiciously lettered. Had I encountered something like this at the Commonwealth Archives, I would have contacted the bomb squad; but as relieved as I was, I threw caution to the wind and tore into the waxy brown wrapping. My daughter was drawn to the spectacle, like an extra birthday or an early Christmas. "Is it a present, Daddy?"

So much for opening it in secret. I was reasonably sure, however, from the package's exterior that Cassie had in fact been telling the truth - it certainly wasn't from her, unless she had changed her perfectly flowing cursive script for misspelled block lettering. So instead of shooing my little girl away or secreting the wrapped bundle away to the master bedroom or the garage, I let her stay and enjoy satisfying her curiosity. "Go ahead, rip away!"

The outer layer of the packaging was thus stripped in short order, revealing another layer of wrapping, comprised of an old newspaper. I was taken aback at the sight of a hundred-year old Salem broadsheet being used in such a manner, but even more shocked at the condition of the paper, which was like brand new.

"Let me open it from here, sweetie," I said cautiously, prying my daughter's fingers off of the impossibly-preserved newsprint, eliciting a round of 'No Fair's and a stomping, door slamming exit on her part.

So much the better. Alone now, I eased off this layer with care - saving the paper for a later investigation of its own - only to be confronted with yet more wrapping, this time of straw that smelled of the sea. Salt marsh hay, which used to be dried in bales along the Cape Ann estuaries that were so numerous that they looked like herds of buffalo in an old time panorama of the West.

I savored the smell but was baffled, and shredded the hay fully expecting another inexplicably quaint packing material. There was none. Inside the tangle of salty straw was an ivory box no bigger than the palm of my hand. Its entire surface - the lid, the bottom, even the little feet on which it was meant to stand - had been hand-carved into myriad tiny shapes, sinuous whorls, swirling forms. I squinted at the carvings as my daughter (who'd crept back into the room when it was apparent that her tantrum had drawn no response) squealed:

"Look, daddy! It's a dolphin!"

I blinked and squinted again. She was right - a dolphin had been made to leap from the box's lid, its graceful hump rising out of intricately-chiseled waves to form a kind of knob.

Dolphins, sharks, octopi, seahorses, tuna, sting rays - or were they skates? - a veritable bestiary had been captured in miniature. I marveled at the box as I turned it over and over again in my hands. What incredible workmanship, I thought, wondering what would have motivated an artisan to carve sea creatures into a piece of elephant tusk.

Then it dawned on me: this wasn't ivory, it was whalebone! What I was holding in my hands was doubtless very old and very illegal. I imagined that representatives from Salem's own Peabody Essex Museum would be breaking down our door at any moment to reclaim what could only be the showpiece to one of their exhibits.

Who the hell sent me this thing? Certainly not Cassie, who indeed would have had more discretion than to send such a gift to my home, if it were intended as such. My face turned red and my neck burned still at the foolishness of accusing her out the blue, I wondered if there were any way to undo that damage.

Gabe wouldn't have sent such a package, either - he was too cheap to foot the postage, when he just could have walked it over. That and the lettering was completely unlike the neatly tight block script that is so favored by architects.
Who, then?

"Open it, Daddy!" my daughter cried out.

"What?" Not only had I been lost in thought, but I'd also been so thoroughly enchanted with the box's exterior that I forgot to wonder what exactly was inside.

"Daddy! Open it!"

I did as she commanded, pinching the dolphin's back by the dorsal fin and pulling the lid open. The hinges were spring-loaded, and opened with a snap, causing both me and my daughter to jump; I almost dropped the mysterious box onto the hardwood floor.
The inside was even more wondrous than the outside - a brass fish rolled slowly round and round a peg that had been set into the whalebone, its individual scales pricking a brass comb as it rotated to pick out a song note by note.

I blinked. The fish was a striped bass, knowingly reproduced down to the tiniest detail. And the melody. The melody...

I ran to the phone and dialed my brother-in-law's phone number. "It's time," I said without explanation. He didn't need one; Gabe hung up and began riffling his basement freezer for bait.

It was a clear and moonlit night, which put me somewhat on edge. I'd been expecting the fog which had perfectly foiled our previous attempts to locate this elusive village and its miraculous fishing hole, whereas tonight you could see starlight reflected in the waves as we glided through the dark but calm waters of ebb tide.

It finds you. Yes. At last I understood. Not being able to find Farrell's Island was a kind of test, and at long last we had passed. All but the most obsessed would have given up by now. But not us.

"I see something ahead," Gabe called out to me from the bow of our motorboat, his voice quivering with excitement. I saw it, too - there were lights ahead of us, and land, neither of which should have been where we were now. We had crossed this part of the sea countless times, only to find empty depths and laughing gulls; now there was an island.

This should have made our blood run cold, I'll be the first to admit it, but it didn't. Despite that we were approaching a landmass that we both knew couldn't possibly exist, we grinned like idiots and gunned the motor. The lights grew brighter but softer at the same time - oil lamps, I thought to myself, and definitely not electric lights - and Gabe and I could see the silhouettes of houses, docks, and even a steeple.

Look sharp now ye maties
Here comes Captain Farrell
With a hold full of codfish
And rum by the barrel!

That familiar melody tinkled over the waves, this time accompanied by lyrics that, inexplicably, my brother-in-law already seemed to know. We sang along and realized that we weren't alone in doing so; our voices were part of a chorus that was knitting itself together through the dark. The harbor was thick with boats - motorboats such as our own, but dories, skiffs, and even more primitive craft as well - but somehow we all knew how to make our way to port without running afoul of each other.

We've sailed for a fortnight
From merry old England
To fish for a month now
Or maybe the season.

The village was throbbing with life, despite the late hour. Gabe and I tied up our boat alongside a rickety wooden pier and joined the others. There were fishermen of all races, age, and manners of dress, but we paid them no heed. We had come here to fish - every last one of us - and that was all that mattered.

So lock up your daughters
And hide the fine china
Captain Farrell is back
And you know that he'll find 'em!

As one, we converged on the tiny village's main square, with a bounce in our step and our fishing gear in hand. There was no mistaking the direction, as all of us had been here before, even if only in our dreams. I flashed a grin at Gabe and he clapped a brotherly hand on my back as we walked.

The Captain's a good man
Let's not be mistaken
But your soul is his bounty
Once your first keeper's taken!

The square was already filled with the early-comers. Everyone stood expectant and armed for a night of battle with the creatures of the sea. Some of the anglers had brought in addition to their rods and reels fishing gaffs and hooks, ambitious equipment indeed. I tested my line and fussed over my lures, while Gabe cut bait. And all the while, we sang:

The fishes he'll find ya
If your luck is hurtin'
But don't think of leaving
This one thing is certain:

I blinked at the crowd, certain that I'd recognized a face. So I had - it was Tantalo, stepping up the stairs of this fishing village's town hall so that the assembled throng could see him clearly. Our voices diminished in volume, as if on cue, or did the Sicilian's voice grow so as to drown us out? I do not recall, only that our chorus then seemed to subside and all we could hear was Tantalo's clear countertenor as he finished the shanty we knew by heart.

The price you will pay here
Is known by us well
When you fish with the Captain
You'll end up in Hell!

Why we laughed at this is now beyond my comprehension. Just the memory of that sickly smile on the Sicilian's face when he sang that closing verse is enough to make my gut churn and my entire soul shudder. Why, oh, why did we not leave then and there, never to speak of this phantom island again, nor to think it, save in our nightmares?

But laugh we did, like the timeless band of brothers we were. I looked at my fellow fishermen - this one a sunburned Celt in a Boston Bruins jersey, another a bare-chested man tattooed in Portuguese, a third dressed like a pirate of old with the tackle to match. Here and there was a newcomer like Gabe and myself, standing next to men (we were all men, I remember now - the village seemed bereft of the female gender) who seemed to have stepped out of the nautical history books we had pored over all summer long.

And then he appeared, the oldest of them all, a severe-looking gentleman whose arrival in the square gladdened our hearts. Captain Farrell was a gaunt man with sunken eyes and cheekbones seemingly carved from granite, as was his chin. What few facial hairs dared to sprout from such a craggy exterior were wild and weedlike, like alpine vegetation.

Captain Farrell had survived no less than six mutiny attempts in his career. Apparently he had a habit of not knowing when to call it a good season of fishing. Though he routinely outperformed his peers as far as the catch was concerned, his crew would grumble that they came back to the European markets too late for the best prices. This crew, however, would make no such complaints. We were his, body and soul.

"Welcome," he growled over the hush that had fallen over the crowd at his sudden appearance; we stood and listened, electrified.

"They say there ain't no fish in the sea no more." Captain Farrell had climbed the stairs to stand beside the old Sicilian, who stepped back down in deference to his master. "They say that the hungry ocean is barren now, and she won't give us what she once did. They say that the fisherman's lot is a doomed one, and that you and I might as well pack it in and become farmers or shepherds.

"Rubbish, I say!"

We shouted out our assent at this - even Gabe and I, who by no means were making a living off our catch as the good captain had. Has. Does. All distinctions were lost here, as the madness for fish bound us in a manner that rendered the accidents of time and space which made us who we were irrelevant. The madness defined us here on Farrell's Island, nothing more.

"Make no mistake, my brothers. There are plenty of fish out there to be caught, as in days of yore. You simply must be willing to pay the price." The captain looked out over the square with an approving gaze that seemed to penetrate each and every one of us to the innermost depths of his soul. He smiled thinly.

"But enough talk now. The fall run has come, and these fish won't be catching themselves, will they? Off with you!"

We dispersed as orderly as we had assembled, towards the beaches and rocky ledges of the island, where we'd set up our gear and cast off into the starlit night, all the while singing our hymn to Captain Farrell. Gabe and I found a low hump of a rocky promontory that was unoccupied and started to fish. Our rigs hummed through the air with every cast, in perfect tempo with the music that surrounded us.

The fish were ready for us, ravenous for our bait and our lures. Gabe roared with laughter when he scored a hit that nearly jerked the rod clear out of his hands, and I was just as thrilled as the same thing happened to me seconds later. Now this was fishing! We both reeled in stripers that were a good twelve inches longer than anything we'd caught previously that summer but tossed them back without hesitation, confident that this was just the prelude to hauling in a keeper for the record books.

Another cast, another striper - both of our second catches were larger than our firsts. Again we let them go, only to hook even bigger fish on the next cast. And yet again. With each cast the hits grew stronger and the stripers at the end of the line longer and heavier, until we needed to help one another to haul the massive beasts out of the water and onto shore.

"This is amazing, bro!" Gabe called out to me, his forehead glistening with sweat by the light of the moon. We'd been fishing for hours now, but showed no signs of wanting to stop or even take a break, despite the burn in our arms and the ache in our legs.

"My last fish was fifty inches," he boasted. Mine had been forty-two. I played out my line and braced for the next hit. It came as expected without any waiting, but it wasn't as solid a strike as the ones before. It didn't feel like a striper at the end of my rig...

More like a skate. The ecstatic haze that had filled my mind lifted somewhat as I reeled in the all-too-familiar bottom feeder. I looked over at Gabe, but he was lost in his own world. I could see the skate trying to flap his way off my hook now and back into the glassy obsidian deep. I gave my rod a swift tug and hauled the ugly fish onto the rocks.

The skate was gasping and twitching as I tried to steady it to retrieve my gear. Normally I wasn't all that careful when catching skates, preferring to lose my hook and sinker rather than to have to wrestle with the accidental catch, but that night I certainly didn't want to waste any time on re-rigging - not with those hungry giant stripers out there just waiting for the next cast!

I could just barely see by the light of the rising moon, which reflected off the bone white belly of the skate with a preternatural sheen. Again the mists in my head parted here and there, especially as the skate groaned like a human being when I grasped the hook buried in its gullet with my pliers. I stepped on the skate's wing and pulled hard, but the barb refused to come unstuck.

Although skates like sharks are mostly composed of cartilage, they are surpirsingly resilient creatures, which is why many fishermen give up on trying to extricate their gear when a skate has gone and swallowed the hook. I was intent on getting my line free, however, at first because I didn't relish the thought of tying a new line by moonlight, but then out of a growing sense of panic over my catch's suffering as it gasped, coughed, and yelped in pain.

The hook wasn't just buried in the skate's throat, I realized. It had caught on something else already in there, a foreign body of some sort. Probably the rig of some other angler who couldn't be bothered. Trying not to hear the poor creature's hideous cries - how did Gabe not hear them as well and keep fishing? - I dug deeper with the pliers, twisting the rusty tool in hopes of dislodging both my hook and the unseen blockage. The skate flapped its one free wing and slapped my leg with its trifurcated tail.

"Ahhhhh! Ahhhhh!" it cried out in a voice like mine. I tugged one last time, desperate to end this creature's piteous cries, and I felt the resistance give way all of a sudden. My line came out completely - sinker, swivel snap, leader, and hook - and on my hook was...

How was this possible?

I grasped the catch inside the catch in a state of shock, with a numb fist. The fog had blown away completely now from the corners of my mind, and I realized that it was time to leave.

Gabe was still oblivious, fishing away with a demented grin on his face. Leaving my gear, I ran over to him and tried to shout over the surf and the sea-shanty chorus, which to my ears was now an awful cacophony of screams and gasps - like a chorus of skates. I shook my brother-in-law when he made no sign of having heard me; he shrugged me off, singing, readying his line for another cast.

"Gabe!" I yelled with every ounce of strength that remained within me, and for an instant I saw a flicker something behind the glaze of fishing revelry in his eyes.
Then it was gone.

"What the fuck, bro! I had a real monster on the line, and now I've lost it."

"Gabe, we have to get out of here." My throat burned as I shouted. Was the chorus growing louder?

"No goddamned way. Tonight's the night. I'm coming home with one for the record books!"

I could barely hear myself. I screamed, "Gabe, none of this is real!"

"Who cares, bro? Who cares!"

The chorus had been growing in volume, and now I knew why - there were myriad dark shapes converging upon our fishing spot, fellow fishermen, Captain Farrell's mates. As they drew nearer, however, I realized that I no longer recognized these people. The camaraderie of the square had melted away, and as I regarded them with fear I could sense that they were looking upon me with hatred and loathing in their deathless eyes.

"Gabe!" I started one last time, but he shoved me aside as his pole nearly bent in two from the force of an unseen leviathan. I stumbled as he whooped with delight and the shadow men closed around him and swallowed him up. "Gabe!"

It was no use - he had taken the bait without hesitation or reservation, and was lost to me. I had to leave him, before I joined him.

The way back was easy, as if the island were trying to get rid of me now. I raced across the barren rocks headlong - wondering later how it was that I didn't stumble - and back to the fishing village. Its town square was lifeless now, or had it always been that way? I shuddered at the perfectly whitewashed clapboards and virtually untrodden cobblestones and dashed for the pier to the tuneless chorus, which sang that final verse over and over again now:

The price you will pay here
Is known by us well
When you fish with the Captain
You'll end up in Hell!

Above the awful din I could hear my brother-in-law's voice, as clear as if he had called me on the phone. He sounded ecstatic, not damned; it was almost enough to draw me back to the surf and try my luck one more time.

Almost.

I opened my still-clenched fist and gazed upon the dull white gold band I had lost all those years ago. Now I know all about billion-to-one occurrences - the whale that jumps out of the ocean and crushes a yacht, the woman thrice widowed by lightning, the man who hits the lottery only to die in a plane crash on the same day, the long-lost wedding ring found in the gut of a fish.

This was more than a coincidence, though. It had to be.

I found the motorboat where we'd left it in the harbor. The other boats were no longer there; they had never been there to begin with, I knew now for certain. I started the engine and brought the skiff around. Although I could still hear Gabe leading the demented shanty, I dared not look back, for fear of what I'd see - my brother-in-law in the belly of the leviathan, a keeper for the keeper.

I never saw him again, nor did I ever meet my paramour librarian after that terrible night. In a weak moment I had tried to visit her at the library, but was told that a woman meeting Cassie's description didn't work there, and moreover had never worked there. I wondered if the blue-haired volunteer at the front desk who answered my inquiry knew what she was talking about. After all, this was the same clueless octogenarian who had read nursery rhymes to children while Cassie and I had made noisy love in the rooms next door. She was a feeble-minded old bat, I told myself as I left. Pure and simple.

But I will not return to that library, fearful lest I discover that my summer passion was spent with something not quite human. I am tempted at times to call the information desk and ask whether the collection is still arranged according to the Dewey Decimal System rather than the Library of Congress classification, but I'm terrified of what the answer would be.

Next to a smiling picture of Gabe, my daughter's finger-paintings still cover our refrigerator. Although I still can't make out the angels in her drawings, I no longer see dinosaurs when I look at them.

I see skates.