The Island Read online

  This book is dedicated

  with deep affection to

  MIKE PRINTZ

  for his great-hearted love of books

  and the art of writing

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  For the Best in Literature

  Copyright

  he island lay in almost the exact center of a small lake in northern Wisconsin, seven miles north of the town of Maypine, fifteen miles east of the town of Pinewood — both named after the pine forests that had once been prominent and were now logged off — and was thought so unimportant that it appeared on no topographical maps of the area.

  Indians had named the lake after its principal fish, a rough bottom-feeder called the sucker. When white men came to put their name on it, they followed suit and called it Sucker Lake; and for that reason the lake had been spared the building and crowding that came to many lakes in the northern fishing regions. Fishermen bent on spending their vacations and money trying for lake trout or bass or muskies were decidedly shy about taking time to fish a lake named after a soft-flesh fish many considered fit only for fertilizer or pet food; and then too, suckers were normally associated with muddy lakes and dirty water — neither of which brought tourists. For that reason no resorts were built on the lake or anywhere nearby; and since the land around was rocky and had poor topsoil, no farmers settled there and the lake was left alone to exist much as it had since an Ice Age glacier had scooped it out and filled it.

  Somehow the glacier, in its slow grind across the north, had missed a U-shaped spot in the middle of the lake and left a rise of land that became a rocky island. The left arm of the island was a sandy-dirt beach, from which the main body ran south, curved east and then back again to the north, making a small north-facing bay about a hundred yards across. Wild rice stalks lined the bay, and some tree snags rose out of the water — old hardwoods that had died and not yet rotted.

  There were fewer than four inches of topsoil on the island, and no large trees could grow, only a handful of poplars about twenty-five feet high, some small jack-pine not over twenty feet, and a scattering of red willow and hazel brush, all of which covered only the main body of the island itself and did not extend up into the arms of the U. The rest of it was covered by timothy grass and tightly woven weeds and clover, up to waist height where the soil was thickest, down to nothing where the rock was exposed.

  The shore of the island facing north was a rim of beach about ten feet wide; the outside or southern edge was made up largely of rocks, curved and rounded by the ageless chewing of small waves pushed by the fall wind before the freezeup. On the right arm of the U a flat rock, about twenty feet long, projected out into the water and made a platform or table. This rock was so square it seemed almost sculpted — although it had been broken naturally by the glacier along straight fault lines — and seemed somehow out of place because of its sharp corners and flawless edges.

  It can only be guessed what had happened on and to the island in the time before. Summer to winter to summer, over countless ages, it had been forming and changing. Once there had not been a lake, only a swamp and giant beasts that shook the ground when they passed the high point that became the island. Before, all was covered by sea, and fish as large as boats, huge sharks, swam hunting past the rocks that became the island. When the sea was gone, there came the ice, the great sheet of blue-white cold that covered all there was, and everything died or was made to sleep and wait for thousands of years. And when the ice was gone, it left a huge lake, a freshwater lake as large as many seas; and when that was gone, before man still, before we know of men or before there were men to know of men, the massive lake withdrew and left the smaller lakes. And from that time on it left the island.

  From the time before, it is only possible to guess, only possible to dream of the battles of the dinosaurs tearing the earth and sharks as large as boats whipping ocean currents with their tails, only possible to imagine the saber-tooth tigers and mastodons and the men who could live with nothing but their minds as tools. From all of that time the small island in almost the exact center of Sucker Lake in the northern part of Wisconsin cannot be known, can only be part of theory and ideas. Hopes. Wishes. Dreams.

  But in the summer of the middle of his fifteenth year on earth Wil Neuton discovered the island, or was discovered by the island — he was never sure which — and from that time on it is not necessary to guess about it any longer but only necessary to know Wil.

  Part of our problem is that we run around naming things without asking them if they want to be named. Then after we name them, they don’t know they’re named anyway. A tree doesn’t know it’s a tree; a fish doesn’t know it’s a fish; and if the fish did know, it would probably be upset by it. Who wants to be called fish?

  — Wil Neuton

  ven at fourteen, Wil Neuton towered over his parents. They were short, and somehow the genes had jumped a generation and made him tall — six feet, two inches — and had given him breadth, a strong body with wide shoulders and long legs and muscled arms with big hands. He was brown-blond, with brown eyes and some freckles across his nose and cheeks, the kind of freckles parents and aunts who visit once a year “just love” but which the owner of those freckles hates. When he was small, one visiting aunt, whose name was honestly Clara, would reach down and pinch his cheeks and say things that were supposed to be cute about the freckles. But when Wil grew taller, and taller still, Clara gave it up because she had to stand on tiptoe to get a good hold on his cheek, and even Clara, in her once-a-year wisdom, knew that it looked silly to be hanging on the cheek of somebody over six feet tall.

  But the freckles were still there, as well as even, white teeth and a fast smile that made tight crinkles at the corners of his eyes. When Clara could no longer grab his freckled cheek, she settled on his teeth and smile. On her yearly visits she would insist, “Smile and show me your teeth. Come on, smile now.”

  The first Thursday after school let out for the summer, Wil’s father caught both Wil and his mother at the same time in the kitchen before they could get away, and he began a conference. He loved to hold conferences, but they tended to be boring in an amiable way, and his wife and son tried to avoid them. This time he sat at the table with a fresh cup of coffee and smiled up at them, beckoned them to sit down, and said, “What would you guys think about moving?”

  Wil said nothing. His mother, who was only slightly thin and had a usually composed face, smiled back nervously and pushed an imaginary hair out of her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean move. You know, like pack up and move.”

  “Is this another one of those Alaska things?” she asked. Two years before, Wil’s father had gotten sick of his job with the state highway department and had come home one day and announced that he had a chance to go to Alaska and work on a road out of Nome and they should start packing. Wil’s mother developed a nervous tic in her left eye, which had taken almost a month to disappear. It wasn’t as bad as the time a year earlier when he had come home one afternoon and announced he’d come across a plan to raise foxes and retire at forty-six. When he started building the cages in the basement and seemed about to order the first fox, Wil’s mother put her foot down. “Because if it is, Jim …”

  “No, no. This isn’t like that. The truth is I’ve been promoted, and they want me to take over a district in the northern part of the state, up by Pinewood. It’s a real opportunity, and I’ve pretty much got to do it…. So how do you guys feel about moving?”

  Wil took quick stock of the situation. They now lived in Madison, a fair-size city, with things to do, things to see. All of his friends were here. And he was used to the school, knew which teachers were dorks and which weren’t, knew what to expect, knew that he could get through the neighborhood alive …

  “When?” his mother asked.

  “Well …” his father hedged.

  … and knew where the bike shop was to get his Sekai repaired and where to get good hamburgers, knew how to fake volleyball in the phys-ed class to get a good grade, knew which water fountains in school were usually full of gum, which stalls to avoid in the school bathroom …

  “When?”

  “It’s kind of different for all of us. I mean, you don’t have to go up there when I do. I thought I would sort of go ahead, and then you could kind of follow me when I’ve found a place….”

  … knew how to avoid Moose Ackerman, who liked body contact and thought everybody else did, knew which hobby shop had the best models, knew which video store had the best tapes, knew which music outlet had the best albums, knew which roads were best for pacing bikes, knew where Cindy Mattson lived …

  “When?”

  “I’m going up there Saturday, but like I said, you two could come later. Maybe hold back until Monday or even Tuesday.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  … knew where Cindy Mattson lived, knew where to buy the best Polish sausage in the world, knew which bookstore had the best games, and finally, had already dissected the fetal pig in biology, which he vowed under pain of death never to do again …
br />   “Wait. Wait.” His father held up his hand. “I know it’s sudden, but there it is, and I have to go. I just found out yesterday that the district administrator up there had personal problems and had to leave….”

  “Probably went insane,” Wil’s mother interrupted. “From the loneliness.”

  “Oh, come on, it’s not that bad. I bet Wil doesn’t think it’s that bad, do you, Wil?”

  Wil was still thinking about the fetal pig and had a fetal-pig-dissecting look on his face, which didn’t help to soften the blow of his words. “I’ve got to be totally honest, Dad — totally honest.”

  “Well?”

  “I think my whole life is going down the toilet.”

  Sometimes old wisdom isn’t so good. I complained once about household chores, and my father told me to sing and act happy when I did them even if I didn’t feel that way. That’s what his grandfather told him to do. So the next time I edged the sidewalk I tried singing “la, la, la” in time with my cutting strokes. As near as I can figure, it didn’t help at all, and I came within half a second of being nicknamed “La-La Neuton” as Tim Peterson came down the street from my rear and nearly caught me off guard.

  — Wil Neuton

  oving proved to be easier than they’d expected. After the initial arguing had died down — Wil thought of it as a small, friendly war with no prisoners — his father explained that a house came with the move, a small house located in the center of the district, provided by the state highway department. The old administrator was already moved out. So they rented a truck and loaded up everything in Madison — as near as Wil could figure — and drove one hundred and sixty miles north to unload it.

  Of course, there was more to the move than that. It took only four days — and nights — but some major shifting had to be considered. Wil went by Cindy’s house three times to tell her he was leaving, but she was already at her lake home with her parents — and while that sad fact probably didn’t matter to Cindy, who didn’t know Wil well enough to remember his name, it mattered to Wil. His best friend, Judah Timmons, was no help either.

  “It’s kind of like dying, isn’t it?” he said when Wil told him he was moving north. “Kind of like just slowly dying.”

  “Thanks. For cheering me up.”

  “You’re welcome. Does this mean that I get to try getting Cindy to notice me now? You know, the way you tried to get her to notice you?”

  And his second-best friend, or equally best friend, David Collins, was just about as compassionate. “Who are we going to get to ride in front when we pace bikes now? You’re the only one big enough to break the wind for all of us. I mean, that destroys the summer. Maybe you could stay here alone and go up next fall….”

  But finally, on Sunday evening, they piled into the rental truck, and Wil held a small cage with his tomcat, Bob, in his lap, and they drove north for four and a half hours, winding on small asphalt roads past the farms and into the northern forest, at last turning off the paved roads and taking a gravel road four more winding miles to a yellow house with brown trim that looked a little old but clean in the headlights.

  “Home,” Wil’s father said. He was going to say something else but stopped when he saw the look in his wife’s eye.

  Wil was sitting on the right side, and he opened the door and got out, put the cat cage down, stretched, then bent over and released Bob, who made a straight, gray-hair-line for the small front porch and scooted beneath it, where he sat emitting a low, throaty growl. He had never spent time in a cage, never ridden in a truck, never had to move, and apparently, Wil judged, didn’t think much of any of them.

  Leaving the truck lights on, Wil’s father went up the porch steps to the front door. “They said they’d leave a key … yup, here it is. Isn’t that wonderful? They said they’d leave a key and there it is, right where they said they’d leave it.”

  “Jim …” Wil’s mother sighed. “Is there some light in there?”

  As soon as she said it, the house and the front lawn were flooded with light. The minute his father found the switches every mosquito within miles seemed to hit them. Wil grabbed his mother’s arm, ran for the house, and got her inside, both of them slapping and scratching.

  “Few mosquitoes,” his father said. “But the house has screens.”

  The house proved to be clean, with decent furniture and a stove that worked. They rummaged around in the truck to find three dishes and some pans and cooked beans and franks and ate them, sitting quietly in their exhaustion. There were beds but no linen, so they spread blankets on them, and Wil took the room nearest the front door. Without taking his clothes off, he sprawled out on his back.

  He hurt all over. To the same mental file he had begun for fetal-pig dissections he added being on the downside of a chest freezer that is being carried up from the basement and heavy wooden dressers being carried from upstairs down. At one point, while his father was screaming at him, “Lift! Lift!” he felt as if he were being driven into the ground and was glad he wasn’t sharp on the bottom end or they’d never have gotten him out. For a moment he tried to feel sad, tried to summon a mental picture of Cindy or miss his friends, but he was too tired; his eyes closed and he went to sleep listening to the death-whine of mosquitoes against the screen and the low rumble of Bob out underneath the porch.

  * * *

  e did not know what awakened him. One second he was asleep, and the next his eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling, not realizing where he was or how he got there. The sun was streaming through the windows and cooking his head. He had been sleeping flat on his back, hard and down, without moving and with his mouth open, and now he was awake to a taste that can come only from sleeping with your mouth open after eating half-warm beans and franks, and he couldn’t think of where he had packed his toothbrush. He turned his head sideways and saw a face looking at him through the window — a face so ugly it drove him off the bed and down along the wall.

  It was an old face, an old man’s face, round, with no hair, and ears that stuck out to the side; when the mouth opened in a smile, Wil saw just one tooth, sticking up from the bottom in the middle, and the lips were rimmed with a gummy brown substance that squeezed out at the corners.

  The window was open, and the face emitted a sound through the screen which seemed something like “Aucht.” Then it disappeared sideways for a moment. There was a great, glopping-spitting racket, and it reappeared, a thin line of brown juice rolling down from the lower lip onto the stubbed chin and Wil thought: I am going to throw up if I don’t quit looking at him. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the face — it was like a live Halloween mask.

  “Aucht,” the face said again. “Emil Aucht.”

  Dad, Wil thought, Mom, but it didn’t come out. He smiled, rose up a little, and pretended to understand. Probably a maniac, he thought — probably a maniac with an ax, and he needs to chop somebody up. That’s why the other guy had to leave the house and his job. Ax murderers running around. I’d leave, too. “Emil?”

  Now the face nodded wildly. “Emil Aucht. Nee hep. Stuck.” Each word was punctuated by a brown spray that left the screen dripping. Wil had to look away.

  But now he knew something. It was a name. Emil Aucht was his name. Nice name. Nice name for an ax murderer. Probably has a chain saw out there — high-tech ax murderer. Wil stood and moved carefully along the wall to the door, nodding and smiling all the way, and when he got to the doorway he slid sideways out of the room and almost screamed. “Mom! Dad!”

  No answer. In the kitchen there was a note on the table.

  Wil: We’ve run to town for food. You were so tired we thought it best to let you sleep.

  Love, Mom.

  They found him, Wil imagined, holding the note from his mother in his hand, the ax buried to the handle in his skull, the walls splattered with … He shook his head.

  “Emil Aucht! Stuck! Nee hep!”

  Wil turned and saw the man standing now at the open front door, looking at him through the screen. He was wearing bib overalls with no shirt, and there were tufts of hair on the tops of his shoulders. In his right hand he was carrying a shovel, and Wil had a momentary picture of the shovel buried in his skull, with the note in his hand. But he couldn’t make the idea of a crazed shovel murderer work, so he walked to the front door.