Off the Wild Coast of Brittany Page 13

  Natalie let out a shiver. “She’s scary.”

  Natalie veered off to the right to show Alex another small fenced area full of graves.

  “This is the cemetery that was set aside for the victims of the eighteen eighty-five cholera epidemic. They didn’t understand at the time how contagion worked, so they buried the victims farther away from the town, just in case. During the epidemic so many people died that no family was left untouched. That was when les Fémanes, the women of the island, began to wear la jibilinnen.”

  “Sorry—the what?”

  “Back in the day, the women of Brittany wore white coiffes, or headdresses. You’ve probably seen them in pictures; they’re pretty distinctive. They’re depicted in a lot of van Gogh paintings, and local women still wear them for regional festivals. Anyway, when the cholera epidemic took so many of the islanders, the women began to wear a black mourning headdress called a jibilinnen.”

  “I think I saw photographs of women wearing them in the album at the house. But those photos were taken in the forties and fifties.”

  “They continued to wear them for decades, long after the epidemic passed. They say on an island there’s always something, or someone, to mourn—a lot of men never return from sea. When the Germans occupied the island during World War Two, they asked the women why they wore black, ‘like witches,’ and the response was, ‘Nous sommes en deuil pour la France.’”

  “Meaning?”

  “They were in mourning for France.”

  “I’ll bet the occupying forces loved that.”

  “Not many Fémans are willing to talk about what happened during the war—most of them were very young, or not yet born, of course. Still, I hoped to get some stories for my book, but they’re pretty guarded. Except for this.”

  Natalie gestured to a large granite sculpture of the Cross of Lorraine just beyond the cimetière des cholériques.

  “After hearing General de Gaulle’s speech calling on the French to join the Allies, every man of fighting age on the Île de Feme sailed to England in their fishing boats to volunteer.” Natalie read aloud the inscription carved into the stone: “‘Kentoc’h mervel’ is Breton for ‘We would rather die.’”

  “Wow. And they left the women and children behind?”

  Natalie nodded.

  “Where’s their monument?” asked Alex.

  “Their what?”

  “Where’s the monument to the women who had to survive on the island, find a way to keep the children and the elderly alive—not to mention deal with an invading army?”

  “That rarely merits a statue.”

  They heard a low rumble and turned to see Korrigan, the half-feral dog, staring at them, her head low and threatening.

  “She doesn’t look happy,” said Alex.

  “She never looks happy. But she’s never hurt anyone, as far as I know.”

  “Poor thing. I should carry some treats with me for the next time I see her.”

  After a moment of staring, Korrigan limped off, disappearing in the direction of the little stone cottage.

  “This is my favorite spot on the island,” said Natalie, leading the way out onto the shoals by the water and taking a seat on a rock.

  Many of the twisting, strangely carved rock formations were decorated with lichen the chalky greenish blue color so common to French shutters and doors; others sported bright yellow and orange growth. Small tidepools held barnacles, mussels, and anemones. Gulls cawed overhead, the waves lapped rhythmically upon the rocks, and the ever-present scent of sea surrounded them: dead fish and brine. Up ahead, the island’s lighthouse stood, proud and silent and reassuring.

  On such a sunny, calm day, it was hard to imagine being at sea during a storm, waves breaking over the bow. . . . What would it be like to see that warm flash of light from the beacon and know, perhaps, that someone knew you were out there? Struggling. Drowning. In need of rescue.

  “So, I e-mail with Hope every once in a while, and Faith occasionally,” said Nat. “No word from Charity, though.”

  Alex shook her head. “I get a very occasional postcard from her, so I can tell you she’s still alive. But she’s keeping her distance.”

  The last time Alex had spoken with Faith and Hope, it was to inform them of her situation. Now Alex considered telling Nat as well, even starting to formulate the phrases in her head. But the impulse died before she uttered a word.

  Nat hid things. She always had. Her candy bars, her thoughts.

  And with Nat so invested in creating an image of her perfect life on the Île de Feme, where would Alex fit in? Would she be yet another thing for Natalie to be embarrassed about, to ignore? It was better to leave it alone. Alex would spend a little vacation “time-out” here on the island, and then perhaps she would be more ready to face her new reality.

  “I feel as if everything changed after the book came out,” said Nat.

  “Well, we were raised never to talk to strangers. And you pretty much told the world everything.”

  “I know. I struggled with that. I often wonder what Mom would have thought of the book.”

  They fell silent, thinking of Carla. Lighthouses reminded Alex of their mother. The rhythmic turning, a bright flash of emotion, then a long interval of flat nothingness.

  “She gave me her blessing, you know,” said Nat. “When I told her I was going, that I had to leave.”

  “She did?” This was a shock. Then Alex thought back on that day, returning from town with the news, walking into the kitchen that smelled of steam from the boiling canning jars. Carla had turned toward her with the saddest eyes in the world, as if she knew what Alex was about to say before she said it.

  “She gave me two hundred dollars,” said Nat.

  “She—what? Mom never had any money. None of us ever had any money. Where did she get two hundred dollars?”

  “I have no idea.” Nat shook her head, sighed, looking at the lighthouse. “I almost didn’t take it. But she insisted.”

  “I’m glad you did. I would have given you money if I knew you were leaving.”

  “I couldn’t tell you, Alex. You would have tried to stop me, or told Dad.”

  “I wouldn’t have.”

  Nat stared at her for a long moment, seemingly unconvinced, before looking back to the lighthouse.

  “I still feel like it was Dad’s fault that Mom died,” Nat continued. “Maybe if she had seen a doctor . . .”

  “She wasn’t powerless, Nat. If Mom really wanted to see a doctor, she could have. I offered to take her—actually, I begged her to let me take her.”

  “Then why didn’t she?”

  After a pause, Alex said: “I don’t think Mom really wanted to live. I think she was weary. Dead tired of waiting for the apocalypse, of never having it come.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Natalie

  The Morgen family didn’t take the usual family vacations. No trips to Disneyland, certainly no Hawaiian getaways, and camping trips to the great outdoors would have been pointless since that was their everyday reality. But every year, The Commander ordered Carla and the kids to load up the car to attend the annual gathering of “preppers” in a dusty town about an hour away.

  The year Natalie turned fifteen, the rally was held in a sad-looking outdoor mall where half of the storefronts were vacant, their dirty shopwindows still emblazoned with names like Angie’s Blooms for All Occasions and Margene’s Wedding Gowns.

  There were booths selling just about everything imaginable: from Civil War memorabilia to essential oils and naturopathic remedies. Stands for guns and ammo vied for attention with those offering food dehydrators, tents, and prepacked bug-out bags. Long-whiskered vendors sold camo-decorated ponchos and boots and vests and even gas masks. The Commander was in heaven, and spent hours chatting with those who specialized in backyard bomb shelters a
nd massive storage tanks meant to be buried and filled with water and gasoline.

  By this time, the older girls—Hope, Faith, and Charity—had already left the family, and Carla was busy selling her herbal tea blends at a small card table, so Alex and Natalie meandered through the aisles of exhibits and sales booths. Natalie was wondering at the possibility of slipping away to see if the town had a library when a young man behind a booth advertising underground bunkers held up a small yellow pepper and asked:

  “Are you here for the doomsday peppers?”

  “The what?” Natalie asked.

  Alex rolled her eyes and kept on walking.

  “You know how they call us doomsday preppers? Well, these are doomsday peppers. Get it? They’re superhot. Wanna try one?”

  Natalie looked at him skeptically.

  “I’m Ivan.”

  “Natalie.”

  “Well, want to come over and give this pepper a try?”

  Ivan was tall and thin, and his nearly whiskerless cheeks were pockmarked with acne scars. But it was the first time anyone—especially a boy—had looked at Natalie as though she was someone other than the youngest Morgen daughter, the family screwup who never got anything right.

  “Can you believe all the nutjobs in this place?” Ivan asked, and Natalie started to relax a bit. “Don’t get me wrong. I know a lot of them. I mean, my father’s in construction, and started specializing in installing bunkers after he built one for our family. It’s kind of dope, really. I like to spend time down there, you know, just to get away from it all.”

  “What do you do in the bunker?”

  “Read, mostly. How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “I’m sixteen. I’ve got my license, and my dad gave me his old pickup truck, so I’ve even got my own ride.”

  “Lucky you,” Natalie said. “Where do you live?”

  “On the Klamath River, near Red Gulch. Ever heard of it?”

  Natalie nodded. That was only about half an hour from their compound.

  “So, you want to try the doomsday pepper?” Ivan asked.

  Natalie hesitated, then took the pepper and crunched into it. “Not bad,” she said, chewing. “Just tastes like a sweet pepper.”

  Ivan laughed. “It is. I just tell people it’s superhot to see how they react. Scares most of ’em off.” He added, in an admiring tone, “But not you.”

  One positive aspect of The Commander’s “free-range” parenting was that Natalie was accustomed to hitchhiking to the library in town, where she now began meeting Ivan. They would look at the books together and then he would buy her sodas and snacks at the gas station. Sometimes they would take a walk down by the river, and other times go out to a small pond with a stolen bottle of rum.

  Ivan was her first kiss, and he might have been more except The Commander stumbled across them in what Natalie initially believed was an example of her father’s omniscience. Later she realized it had been a simple coincidence—Ivan had parked his old truck too close to the main highway that day. Her father saw it as he drove by, assumed it had been abandoned, and came to see what he might salvage from it.

  The Commander’s reaction to finding Natalie with Ivan wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Ivan was familiar with the prepper world, knew how to hunt and to shoot, and stood up well to The Commander’s interrogation. Not wanting to lose yet another daughter to the lure of “big-city boys,” he invited Ivan to join them for dinner. The meal had gone well until The Commander asked Ivan his plans for the future.

  “Not sure, really,” Ivan said. “Ma’am, this biscuit is delicious.”

  “Why, thank you, Ivan,” Carla murmured.

  “Man’s gotta have a plan, son,” The Commander said. “Gotta have a plan for when the world’s gonna end.”

  “See, I’m really not sure about that,” Ivan said.

  “Not sure about what?” The Commander demanded, dropping his fork and staring at Ivan. Natalie tried to catch Ivan’s eye, but he was oblivious.

  “I think we’ll muddle along,” said Ivan. “Hard to believe the world’s coming to an end in our lifetime.”

  “That’s a ding-dong thing to say!” The Commander banged the table with his fist, rattling the dishes. “Read the signs, boy! I’ll tell you what. You’ll be dead soon enough with that attitude.”

  Carla jumped up to get a just-baked peach cobbler, trying to smooth things over. When all else failed, their mother brought out the sugar.

  For the rest of the meal, The Commander lectured Ivan on the many reasons he was wrong. Ivan listened politely enough, but said nothing.

  Ivan’s refusal to back down in the face of The Commander’s ire made him even more appealing to Natalie, and they continued to meet in secret.

  One day a fierce storm unleashed a downpour in the mountains, and the swollen river overflowed its banks and washed out the bridge. The Morgens huddled in their crude storage cellar, The Commander striding back and forth, announcing that this was how it would start, that this might be It. The end they had been waiting for, had been preparing for, had at long last begun. Natalie was petrified. She kept imagining zombies coming toward them when they emerged from the cellar, then—her science education seriously lacking—she wondered how bridges washing out and the electrical grid going down and the government spinning out of control would end up creating zombies. Wouldn’t it just mean the lights didn’t work?

  After two days the deluge ceased and they poked their heads out of the basement to find the world exactly as it had been, just a lot wetter. It was a great relief, yet a strange sort of letdown.

  When Natalie shared this story with Ivan, he said, “You know, sometimes I think they want the world to come to an end.”

  “What are you talking about?” Natalie had never heard such blasphemy.

  “Think about it, Natalie. Does what our parents say really make sense to you? I mean, my parents talk about how they started stockpiling when they were young, first in response to the 1988 foreseen rapture. Then there was Y2K, then 9/11. And yet nothing has happened. Every time somebody says doomsday is on the horizon, it’s like they get, like, excited. Like they can finally say ‘I told you so’ to everyone who called them crazy. They’ll be the only ones prepared. Everyone else will be crowded at the entrance to the bunker, banging on the door, begging to be admitted. And then, when the world doesn’t actually come to an end, they’re disappointed.”

  “We must look so stupid,” Natalie whispered, stunned at her own words. Her thoughts had skittered around the idea, but she had never before dared to give it voice: Her parents might be profoundly, shockingly wrong. About everything.

  “Exactly!” said Ivan, and Natalie felt a thrill at his look of approval. No one ever agreed with her. “They’re the ones who are the fools. But you know, I think it’s even more than that.”

  “Like what?” Having for the first time expressed her dissent from the world she had grown up in, Natalie felt emboldened.

  “Like maybe they do what they do because it’s the only way they know how to go on with their lives. Some people distract themselves with stupid movies and liquor and pizza. Or drugs. Preppers do the same thing. It’s just not as much fun.”

  As she let Ivan’s words wash over her, Natalie thought of her family’s supply “closet” in their basement, a hole in the ground lined with concrete blocks that was bigger than their living room. It held fifty-pound sacks of wheat, rice, oats, beans; dozens of gallon jugs full of water; toilet paper; and assorted canned goods. Once a week her mother took inventory, clipboard in hand, assessing and documenting the supply, rotating items according to expiration dates, fretting over the numbers, her brow lined with worry.

  Since there was no future, they didn’t worry about pensions, or retirement, or health care, but when Armageddon arrived, they would be prepared.

  “Yep, t
hat’s the crux of the problem,” said Ivan. He passed his hand over the disappointingly sparse stubble on his chin, a sixteen-year-old sage. “The world just keeps on a-goin’.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Do you remember Ivan?” Natalie asked Alex, watching the sea breeze playing with her sister’s hair, whipping the dark tresses into snarls. Alex didn’t seem to notice, apparently engrossed in the view of the cove, the lighthouse, the ocean.

  “Wasn’t he your first boyfriend?” asked Alex, after a moment. “That geeky prepper boy?”

  Natalie nodded. “I remember one time he said something about how, after every predicted doomsday failed to arrive, the preppers didn’t so much feel foolish as they didn’t know what to do with themselves. They couldn’t lose themselves in the kinds of distractions that the rest of the world did, so they got depressed when the world didn’t end.”

  “I suppose that makes sense, in a weird way.”

  “James Baldwin said that we waste our lives, turning away from beauty, because we try to deny the presence of death. He said we ought to rejoice in the knowledge that death is inevitable, that we should ‘earn’ our death by meeting life with passion. Or something like that.”

  “Is he another boyfriend of yours?” Alex asked.

  “No,” Natalie said, surprised her sister didn’t know one of her favorite writers. But then, Natalie was the only one in her family to pursue a formal education. “James Baldwin was an author and a poet. He’s pretty famous.”

  “Oh.”

  Natalie pulled out her phone and took more photographs: of her sister’s profile as she gazed toward the lighthouse, the tall spire painted in black and white with feme written in black block letters on the side. She snapped photos of the almost otherworldly rock formations, the orange and green lichen, the tiny barnacles and minuscule mussels clinging to the sides of the tidepools.

  “Can we go up the lighthouse?” Alex asked.

  “Sure.”

  Along the path to the lighthouse, the flat, treeless island narrowed, the ocean near on both sides.