Do Not Answer #7
Lena looked toward the hallway.
“The first time?” Mason asked.
Keller sat on the edge of the desk.
“The station closed twenty-two years ago. My father stayed another month to inventory equipment. He didn’t come back on the final supply boat.”
“What happened?”
“Three weeks later a fisherman found him walking along the highway outside Port Mason.”
Mercer laughed, but without humor.
“How did he get off the island?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“And then he returned?”
“Six years ago.”
“Why?”
Keller looked toward the boarded window.
“He said he had left someone here.”
“Who?”
“I thought he meant a coworker.”
“You thought?”
“The other man died before my father disappeared the first time.”
Ruth looked up.
“Then who did he leave?”
Keller did not answer.
Mason picked up the fuel can.
“We start the generator.”
“You still want lights?” Mercer asked.
“I want the radio.”
“What if that’s how it talks?”
“Then we turn it off.”
Mercer pointed at the telephone.
“It doesn’t need electricity.”
Mason looked at him.
“Neither do you, but you keep making noise.”
Mercer glared at him.
Mason and Keller carried the tools through the back door.
Mercer remained inside.
Ethan said, “Go help them.”
“Why?”
“Because there are two of them and you’re standing here.”
Mercer looked at the telephone.
“I’m staying where I can see it.”
Lena understood. She did not want to admit she understood.
The generator coughed to life several minutes later.
The building vibrated.
A ceiling light above the desk flickered weakly, brightened, then settled into a yellow glow.
The telephone did nothing.
Mason returned with a coil of cable.
“There’s a radio room at the end of the hall.”
Keller came behind him.
“The equipment may be ruined.”
“Some of it isn’t.”
They followed him down the hallway.
Mercer took one of the chairs and wedged it beneath the front-door handle before leaving the main room.
The radio room was narrow and crowded with metal cabinets. A desk ran beneath two windows. Most of the equipment had been stripped away, leaving pale rectangles in the dust.
One radio remained.
Mason connected the cable.
The dial lit.
Static filled the room.
Mercer stayed in the doorway.
“Turn it down.”
Mason adjusted the frequency.
Keller read numbers from a card taped above the desk.
A voice surfaced beneath the static and disappeared.
Mason turned the dial back.
“—Coast Guard Sector—repeat—”
Keller grabbed the microphone.
“This is the Alderman. Six survivors ashore on St. Orra Island. Do you copy?”
The reply broke apart.
Mason adjusted the gain.
Keller repeated the message.
This time the voice answered.
“—Alderman survivors, remain sheltered. Search vessel unable—conditions—first light—”
Mercer stepped into the room.
“First light?”
Keller pressed the button.
“Confirm rescue at first light.”
Static.
Then:
“—remain sheltered—”
The signal vanished.
Mason tried twice more.
Nothing returned except distant voices that did not seem to be speaking to them.
* * *
Mercer paced once around the room.
“That’s twelve hours.”
“Probably less,” Mason said.
“It gets dark at six.”
“Then it’s less than twelve.”
“You know what I mean.”
Ruth leaned against the wall.
“We stay inside.”
Mercer looked toward the corridor.
“With the telephone?”
“The Coast Guard knows we’re here.”
“Unless that wasn’t the Coast Guard.”
Nobody answered.
Mercer looked around.
“You all thought it.”
Mason switched the radio off.
“We heard a recognized call sign and a standard response.”
“You recognized it?”
“Keller did.”
Mercer pointed at Keller.
“That does not help.”
Lena’s father looked at the dark radio.
“Turn it back on.”
Mason shook his head.
“We got what we needed.”
“What if they call?”
“They told us first light.”
“What if someone else calls?”
Lena knew who he meant.
“Dad.”
He looked at her.
“It’s a radio.”
“I know.”
“You don’t sound like you know.”
He stepped away from it.
Mason took the station map from Keller’s case and spread it on the desk. A narrow line led from the station to the ruined tower and then continued north toward a cliff marked SIGNAL POINT.
Beside the square representing the station, Keller’s father had drawn a circle several times in black ink.
Mason pointed to it.
“What’s below us?”
Keller leaned closer.
“Storage cellar.”
“Access?”
“Kitchen.”
Mercer said, “No.”
They looked at him.
“We are not going underneath the building.”
“I asked where it was.”
“You asked because you want to look.”
Mason folded the map.
“I want to know how many ways something can get inside.”
Ruth left the radio room.
Lena followed her into the hallway.
“Are you okay?”
Ruth kept walking.
“No.”
The honesty made Lena like her.
Ruth returned to the stove and held her hands over it.
“You should take off that sweatshirt,” she said.
“I’m cold.”
“It won’t dry while you’re wearing it.”
Lena pulled one sleeve away from her arm. The fabric clung to her skin.
Ruth opened a cabinet and found two wool blankets sealed in plastic. She handed one to Lena.
“Change in the other room. I’ll make sure your father stays here.”
“I don’t have another shirt.”
“Wrap yourself in the blanket.”
Lena looked at her father.
He was still in the hallway with Mason and Keller.
Ruth lowered her voice.
“It will be warmer when it dries.”
Lena went into the bunk room and closed the door most of the way.
She removed the life jacket first, then struggled out of the sweatshirt. It peeled from her arms with a cold sucking feeling.
She wrapped the blanket around herself.
Danny’s sweatshirt lay dark and wet on the floor.
For a second it looked as though somebody small had collapsed there.
Lena picked it up and draped it over the end of the upper bunk.
A drop fell from the hood.
Then another.
She heard a soft scrape beneath the lower bed.
Lena stood still.
The room contained two bunks, a dented metal trunk, and a wooden chair. There was barely enough space to turn around.
The scrape came again.
Something under the bed shifted against the wall.
Lena pulled the blanket tighter.
“Dad?”
No answer.
She stepped toward the door.
A boy whispered from beneath the bunk.
“Len.”
Lena stopped.
Danny had called her Len when they were little. By eleven he had started calling her Leonard because it annoyed her. He had never explained why Leonard was funnier.
The voice beneath the bed said, “Can you get my whistle?”
Lena looked at the narrow black space between the mattress frame and the floor.
She knew Danny was not under there.
Knowing did not keep her from imagining his face turned sideways against the boards.
She backed toward the door.
“Lena?”
This voice came from the hallway.
Her father pushed the door open.
She nearly screamed.
He saw her face.
“What happened?”
“There’s something under the bed.”
He stepped inside.
The room was quiet.
“Something moved.”
Her father crouched.
Lena said, “Don’t.”
He looked underneath.
For several seconds he stayed that way.
Then he reached under the frame.
“Dad.”
He pulled out a flattened cardboard box.
A dead mouse lay on top of it.
Its gray body had dried nearly flat. One rear leg caught against the cardboard when he dragged it forward, producing the same scraping sound Lena had heard.
Her father sat back.
“That’s all.”
Lena looked at the mouse.
“I heard Danny.”
He did not tell her she was wrong.
“What did he say?”
She hesitated.
“He asked for the whistle.”
Her father touched his pocket.
“You heard him clearly?”
“Yes.”
“From under there?”
“I thought so.”
Her father looked beneath the bed again.
He picked up the cardboard and pushed it back.
The mouse disappeared into the dark.
“Maybe the others were talking.”
“They weren’t saying my name.”
“No.”
“And they don’t know he called me Len.”
Her father stood.
“I knew.”
“You didn’t say it.”
“I might have.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
Lena stared at him.
He looked away first.
From the main room, Mercer shouted.
They ran out.
Mercer stood beside the boarded window. One hand held the edge of a loose plank.
“I saw a light.”
Mason crossed the room.
“Where?”
“Through the trees. Toward the water.”
“Rescue?”
“What else?”
Keller looked at the clock above the desk. It had stopped at 2:17.
“They said first light.”
“They may have sent someone closer.”
“In this weather?”
Mercer pulled the plank aside.
Cold air entered through the gap.
Beyond the glass, the trees had begun to disappear into evening.
A pale light moved between them.
It appeared once, vanished behind a trunk, then returned farther downhill.
Mercer slapped the window.
“There.”
Mason looked.
“Could be reflection.”
“From what?”
“The room.”
Mercer switched off the ceiling light.
The pale glow remained.
It moved steadily toward the coast.
“Boat lantern,” Mercer said.
Keller shook his head.
“The beach is south.”
“Maybe they landed somewhere else.”
“There are cliffs below that side.”
“You’ve never been here, remember?”
Keller’s face hardened.
“I know the shoreline.”
Mercer released the board.
“I’m not spending the night waiting for dead people to call me.”
He went to the front door and pulled away the chair.
Mason caught his arm.
“You don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a light.”
“You don’t know whose.”
“I don’t care whose. People carry lights.”
“So do towers.”
“The tower is the other direction.”
Mason did not release him.
Mercer looked at his hand.
“Move.”
“We stay together.”
“That worked beautifully on the boat.”
Ethan stepped between them.
“He’s right.”
Lena looked at him.
Mercer did too.
Ethan nodded toward the window.
“If there’s a rescue crew, they need to know we’re here.”
Mason said, “We have flares.”
“Then use one.”
Keller moved toward the equipment case.
“No. The trees are too close.”
“We use it outside.”
“The wind could carry it into the roof.”
Mercer opened the door.
Rain had slowed to a mist.
“I’ll go to the edge of the trees.”
Mason blocked the doorway.
Mercer’s face flushed.
“I am not your prisoner.”
“No.”
“Then move.”
Mason did.
Mercer looked surprised.
Mason took a flare from Keller’s case and handed it to him.
“Five minutes downhill. If you don’t reach open ground, come back.”
Mercer took the flare.
“I’m not twelve.”
“No one said you were.”