Isle Royale by John Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

seemed ill suited to this domestic setting. She was calm like the water, and yet, behind her crystal eyes burned fire. She was a free spirit, more at ease piloting a sailboat than serving tea or knitting clothes. She considered herself a modern girl of the Twenties, ready to take on the world, except for the fact that she was temporarily stuck in the middle of nowhere. But she made the best of things, and if truth be told, she enjoyed the rugged atmosphere of the lighthouse and Isle Royale.
    “Sally, dear, fetch me a glass of water.”
    “Yes, Grandma.”
    Sally filled a glass from the sink and then turned. In front of her sat her grandmother, a kindly looking old woman with gray hair and bifocals perched on her button nose. Next to her sat Sally’s father, Edward, hunched over a steaming bowl of water, a towel draped over his head.
    “Better today, Dad?” asked Sally, handing her grandma the glass of water. In response, a groan escaped from under the towel. Sally’s grandmother took the glass of water and poured in some sort of brownish-reddish powder from a medicine jar, creating a foul-looking concoction.
    “He’ll be fine with a few days’ rest and another glass of this,” Grandma said, holding the glass out and nudging Edward with her bony elbow. A louder groan came from under the towel. It moved.
    Assistant Lightkeeper Edward Young emerged. With sunken eyes and a pasty white face, he looked like death warmed over. But when he saw Sally, his face crinkled with a feeble smile.
    “I’m doin’ fine, pumpkin. It’s Grandma’s home remedies that got me down.”
    They both laughed. It was the first time Sally had seen her father smile in the two days since he’d been sick. At first they thought he had flu, or maybe even scarlet fever. The first night, he was burning up with a temperature of 103 degrees, quite a serious matter considering that the nearest hospital was hours away by boat, if they could even find a boat to take them. But thanks to Grandma, who forced him to drink as much water as possible to prevent dehydration, plus (or despite) her home remedies and liberal amounts of Williams Anti-Pahn Ointment, Edward was making a slow recovery. It must have been a common virus, Grandma had declared, not the dreaded flu. Which was a relief, because otherwise they’d all be under quarantine. (Of course, as Sally had noted, they were already quarantined at Wolf Point Light, for all practical purposes.)
    “Hush now,” Grandma admonished Edward. “Take your medicine.”
    The assistant lightkeeper grimaced, then downed the liquid as fast as he could. When the ordeal was complete, he retreated under the towel, groaning pitifully. Grandma rapped him lightly upside the head.
    “Stop that,” she scolded. “You’re a grown man, for heaven’s sake.”
    Sally smiled and turned back to her dishes. When her mother had died giving birth, Sally’s grandma had moved in to help take care of the baby. Devastated by the loss of his beloved wife, Edward had never remarried, and Sally’s grandma had stayed on all these years, even when Edward had joined the Lighthouse Service and moved the family to the ends of the earth. She was the only mother Sally had ever known, and neither she nor her father could imagine what life would have been like without her.
    Sally smiled again to herself as she put the dishes away in a stack on a shelf over the sink. Then, out the window, she saw Ian MacDougal approaching the cliffs just below the lighthouse. The teenager was carrying a long length of rope slung over his shoulder.
    Sally bit her lower lip, then turned around again. “I’m done with the dishes now, Grandma.”
    “Did you finish your schoolwork?” the old woman asked, as she put away a jar of homemade boysenberry jam.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Sally turned back to the window and watched as Ian tied one end of the rope to a gnarled pine tree on the lip of the cliff, wrapped a section around his waist, and then disappeared over