know.
Of course, the shack she’d chosen hadn’t dropped down from the sky, though there was certainly something of the numinous in its manifestation there on the bluff in her moment of need. The fact was, it had been created by human agency, by people who had wants and aspirations and very definite monetary goals, as Alma knew full well. Because her grandmother’s story was her touchstone, because she’d read through the newspaper accounts, researched the archives and written papers on the subject in high school and college both, she could say with absolute certainty that Beverly had washed up at Frenchy’s Cove on West Anacapa, the largest and most westerly of the three islets. The shacks—or cabins, as they were originally designated—had been built in 1925 by investors from Ventura, who’d hoped to run a sport fishing camp on the location. They were constructed of board and batten, with simple effects, designed to suit the rugged sorts who might come out to the island for the fishing but didn’t necessarily want to spend their nights in a cramped berth on a yawing boat.
Unfortunately for the investors, the rugged sorts never materialized, the venture failed and the cabins sat unoccupied until a squatter named Raymond “Frenchy” LaDreau moved in and took possession three years later. He lived there alone, making his living off the sea, entertaining the occasional visitor and begging water from every ship that anchored in the cove, whether it be a working boat out of Santa Barbara or Oxnard or a pleasure craft come across the channel for the weekend. What his thoughts and expectations were or whether he was lonely or at peace, no one can say, but he stayed on until 1956, in his eightieth year, when his legs failed him after he took a fall on the shifting stones of the path up from the beach and was forced to return to the mainland for good. He was the owner of the shirt and trousers Beverly was wearing and the cans she’d opened, and he would have been present and accounted for and happy to offer them himself, except that he was away on one of his extended trips to the coast at the time and had no way of knowing he was needed. When finally he did get back, all he felt was outrage over the violation of his space and his things, but it was nothing new—it had happened before, the shacks set there on the bluff like a provocation to the kind of people who think the world exists for them alone, and it would happen again. He would have to buy more peaches, that was all, more beans and creamed corn, and maybe, if he thought of it in the rush and hurry of the hardware store in Oxnard, a padlock.
Beverly woke that first day to the declining light and creeping chill of evening. She sat up with a start, uncertain of where she was, and there were the rats, gathered round, staring at her. They were leisurely, content, taking their ease, draped over the chair pulled up to the counter, nestled in the refuse on the floor, hunched over their working hands and the things they’d stolen to eat. Enraged suddenly, she shoved herself violently from the bed, casting about for something she could attack them with, drive them off, make them pay —and here it was, a shovel set in the corner. The rats fell back as she snatched it up and began flailing round the room, the heavy blade falling, digging, caroming off the walls. Within seconds, they were gone and she was left panting in the middle of the room, the shirt binding, the pants grabbing at her hips and the sea through the window as hard as stone.
She went out the door then, the rage still building in her, muttering to herself, letting out a string of obscenities she never until that moment realized she knew, and began tearing through the heap of driftwood stacked behind the shack. Without thinking, without regard for her unprotected hands or the sobs rising in her throat, she flung one log after another over her shoulder and onto the flat between the shacks. When all of it
Of course, the shack she’d chosen hadn’t dropped down from the sky, though there was certainly something of the numinous in its manifestation there on the bluff in her moment of need. The fact was, it had been created by human agency, by people who had wants and aspirations and very definite monetary goals, as Alma knew full well. Because her grandmother’s story was her touchstone, because she’d read through the newspaper accounts, researched the archives and written papers on the subject in high school and college both, she could say with absolute certainty that Beverly had washed up at Frenchy’s Cove on West Anacapa, the largest and most westerly of the three islets. The shacks—or cabins, as they were originally designated—had been built in 1925 by investors from Ventura, who’d hoped to run a sport fishing camp on the location. They were constructed of board and batten, with simple effects, designed to suit the rugged sorts who might come out to the island for the fishing but didn’t necessarily want to spend their nights in a cramped berth on a yawing boat.
Unfortunately for the investors, the rugged sorts never materialized, the venture failed and the cabins sat unoccupied until a squatter named Raymond “Frenchy” LaDreau moved in and took possession three years later. He lived there alone, making his living off the sea, entertaining the occasional visitor and begging water from every ship that anchored in the cove, whether it be a working boat out of Santa Barbara or Oxnard or a pleasure craft come across the channel for the weekend. What his thoughts and expectations were or whether he was lonely or at peace, no one can say, but he stayed on until 1956, in his eightieth year, when his legs failed him after he took a fall on the shifting stones of the path up from the beach and was forced to return to the mainland for good. He was the owner of the shirt and trousers Beverly was wearing and the cans she’d opened, and he would have been present and accounted for and happy to offer them himself, except that he was away on one of his extended trips to the coast at the time and had no way of knowing he was needed. When finally he did get back, all he felt was outrage over the violation of his space and his things, but it was nothing new—it had happened before, the shacks set there on the bluff like a provocation to the kind of people who think the world exists for them alone, and it would happen again. He would have to buy more peaches, that was all, more beans and creamed corn, and maybe, if he thought of it in the rush and hurry of the hardware store in Oxnard, a padlock.
Beverly woke that first day to the declining light and creeping chill of evening. She sat up with a start, uncertain of where she was, and there were the rats, gathered round, staring at her. They were leisurely, content, taking their ease, draped over the chair pulled up to the counter, nestled in the refuse on the floor, hunched over their working hands and the things they’d stolen to eat. Enraged suddenly, she shoved herself violently from the bed, casting about for something she could attack them with, drive them off, make them pay —and here it was, a shovel set in the corner. The rats fell back as she snatched it up and began flailing round the room, the heavy blade falling, digging, caroming off the walls. Within seconds, they were gone and she was left panting in the middle of the room, the shirt binding, the pants grabbing at her hips and the sea through the window as hard as stone.
She went out the door then, the rage still building in her, muttering to herself, letting out a string of obscenities she never until that moment realized she knew, and began tearing through the heap of driftwood stacked behind the shack. Without thinking, without regard for her unprotected hands or the sobs rising in her throat, she flung one log after another over her shoulder and onto the flat between the shacks. When all of it
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