SAMUEL TUDOR’S COTTAGE OF MYSTERY ................................................................................

DAY 1 DISCOVERING STONEBROOK ................................................................................................. 2

DAY 2 MR. PAUL GOAT ................................................................................................................. 20

DAY 3 TUDOR HOUSE .................................................................................................................... 44

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SAMUEL TUDOR’S COTTAGE OF MYSTERY

(Working Title)

By Daniel M. Cashman

Day 1 Discovering Stonebrook

"Tang, honey,” shouted Alex to his wife, Kate, from the great room of the rented cottage. He

headed up the open staircase to the second floor. “There’s Tang. Isn’t that what the astronauts drank in the

seventies?" Alex had been rummaging through the kitchen cabinets while Kate slept in. “And a big tin of

Folgers coffee.” In one hand he held the Tang, in the other, the mammoth red tin of coffee. The letters F-

O-L-G-E-R-S were in white letters and there was a picture of a sailing ship. “There’s no Juan Valdez or

mountains on it, though. Talk about old.”

In the bedroom, Kate put her glasses on as her husband appeared through the French doors with

his discoveries and noticed his look of consideration as he rotated the coffee relic, looking for an expiration

date. “Honey, don’t even think about it. We brought beans and the coffee grinder. Which reminds me, are

you making breakfast soon? I’ll have a Latte, too.”

“Hey,” said Alex, ignoring her requests, “remember our first date? The Great Coffee Lecture?”

It was a date they would never forget. Katherine Holman and Alexander Fitzgerald had met at La

Barista, a coffeeshop in Uptown, her choice, before going to an afternoon movie, Braveheart, his choice.

The shop had a hodgepodge collection of sofas and chairs and along one wall, there was a mural of

acrobatic, smiling coffee beans juggling coffee cups. Kate had led Alex to a corner table in the back, the

only one free. He had insisted she take the rocking chair while he settled into a lime-green beanbag chair

that at first glance appeared substantial but expelled air with a loud and slow shooosh as his butt sank to

within an inch of the floor. During the descent, he held his cup of hot cocoa carefully, mindful to not spill

in his lap.
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His date, Kate, held an enormous ceramic mug and sipped with elegance; both hands cupped

gently to its sides as she rocked gently in the chair. She held it close to herself, protectively, as if it was a

drink that sustained her.

Alex had remarked that the place looked interesting. “I like the lava lamps,” he had said. “A nice

touch, lava lamps. You know, I’ve never actually been in a coffeeshop before. Are they all so eclectic?”

When his wandering gaze had returned to Kate, her puzzled, somewhat awestruck expression had

told him that something in what he had just said was unsophisticated, which was something that he had

been trying his best to avoid. To regain his standing with his attractive date, he had then expressed an

interest in types of coffee beans, casually mentioned that he normally bought Folgers, and had asked Kate

whether she also enjoyed that particular brand. At this point Kate, finally had enough. She had placed her

cup on the table and tugged at the sleeves of her sweatshirt, preparing for a long oratory that later became

known as The Great Coffee Lecture.

“For starters, Alex, Folgers . . .” she had said, struggling to find the right words. “Folgers sucks,

Alex.” She had gone on to tell him that Colombia (home to the fictitious coffee farmer, Juan Valdez)

produced more washed arabica coffee than any other country in the world. “As a result,” she had

announced with a knowing whisper, “the quality of Columbia coffee is far surpassed by its quantity. This

is true of much of the coffee from South America. But over in Kenya,” she had added, casually gesturing

to her cup, “they have a reputation as Africa's top quality producer—especially in the Nyeri region on the

southwestern slopes of Mt. Kenya. Like France is to wine, Kenya is to coffee. The temperate climate. The

volcanic soil. The seasonal rains. And, it’s a government-run system that rewards growers for better

quality.”

The best part of waking up . . . socialism in your cup, thought Alex, while his date had continued

to gesticulate and pontificate.

“What are the results?” she had said, asking the question for him, as she rocked back in the chair

and rested her feet on the edge of the table. “A well-balanced, medium-bodied coffee with plenty of palate

acidity with overtones of berries and fruit.”

To this day, Alex could not help but think that “palate acidity,” whatever that meant, sounded

painful. A dental term to dread.

Java, he had learned, was more than just another word for coffee—“it’s an island of Indonesia that

has been producing fine coffee for 300 years since the Dutch East India Company brought seeds from

either Ceylon or the Malabar Coast of India.” Kate couldn’t recall which.

To her, she had revealed, coffee was an extension of her being. A physiological social enabler that

far surpasses alcohol as the perfect elixir to stir conversations and stimulate contemplation. What good is

alcohol? It numbs the mind while arousing the body. Two wrongs that often lead to a third wrong, if you

know what I mean. Not to mention the hangovers.

While Kate had not converted Alex with The Great Coffee Lecture, she had won his heart.
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In bed, under the covers, Kate was naked down to her stocking feet. At home, she never wore

socks, but while traveling, she was never without. The quilt covering her had patterns of scene of a forest

and a lake. Kate’s body was right under the lake and her breasts protruded like underwater mountains.

From his birds-eye-view, Alex had a vision of water and fish cascading down the sides in a torrid

flood, washing away the trees, overtaking the cute deer and beer, smashing the huts; turning the quilt into a

big, unsightly swamp scene. All the little people of the quilt world (those that survived the Great Boob

Floods of 2001, anyway) would be incensed and would vow revenge against the monsters that wreaked

such havoc. Lilliputians out to get Gulliver. Tomorrow morning Alex and Kate would wake up to find the

quilt tied down by tiny ropes and they would be pinned under it. As flattering as the image might have

been for Kate (considering that it was her breasts that caused the flooding), he decided it best to not share

any of this. Through the years, he had learned which of his bizarre thoughts were acceptable to say out

loud and which were better kept to himself.

Instead, he shook the Tang canister, attempting without success to loosen the crusted, hardened

lemon flavor crystals. “Wasn’t there a lime Tang, too?” he asked.

“Hello? Are you going to make my Latte? And how about breakfast? We brought ham and eggs

and juice and hashbrowns and everything. You’re all set Big Sir.”

Alex scratched his head and scrunched his eyes. “No Tang, then?”

“My God, you’re nutcase!” said Kate, laughing. She threw a pillow at him. He quickly dropped

the Tang on the edge of the bed, caught it, and tossed it right back and her chestnut-colored hair (the color

of coffee, really) puffed in the sudden breeze as she caught the pillow inches from her face and she laughed

again. Hers was a hearty, Julia Roberts laugh. The sort of laugh that if you snapped a picture of her at just

the moment it burst to her face, you could captured her essence; full of spirit and full of promise like the

moment when a cork shoots from a fine bottle of Champaign for some grand occasion.

As Alex retreated to the stairs, the hardwood flooring creaked and moaned. He was wearing his

big pajama shorts with the palm trees and Kate admired her husband, with love in her eyes. His thick, dark

hair was sticking up all over like it always did in the morning. Into his thirties now (he was thirty-four) his

lean frame was finally getting weighty.

Kate sighed and closed her eyes, enjoying the morning and the soft warmth of the bed. Sleeping

in was a luxury she adored. Then she heard the crackling, metallic, whirring sound of the coffee grinder as

it ground her imported Lavazza beans into tiny bits. Heaven.

While the coffee brewed, Alex found pans and utensils for cooking and got their stuff out of the

refrigerator and Kate came downstairs wrapped in her white robe and hit the couch in the great room. She

picked up the journal that was on the redwood coffee table. Covered in green felt, it had a pinecone design

and the words “Guest Book” stitched across it. The most recent entry, which she read aloud to Alex, was

from last Sunday:

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Loved it here. Weather was nice.

--The Johnsons

“What kind of entry is that?” she asked, scowling. “Why would you even write that? ‘Love it

here. Weather is nice,’ . . . how dumb.”

Alex poked his head out from the kitchen licking a fork that was yellow from stirring eggs.

“Maybe they did love it here, maybe they did have nice weather.”

“But if you’re going to bother writing something, write something.” She leafed through the pages

looking for longer, more meaningful entries. While most guests exalted the scenery, the lake, and the

beautiful cottage, a few also lamented the lack of television. A couple wrote how nice it would have been

to have a gas grill instead of charcoal. One mentioned that a washer and dryer was a ‘must have,’ for those

staying more than a few days and that a microwave would have been nice. Then Kate flipped back to the

very first entry in the book. “Here, listen to this one.”

September 19, 2000

My earliest memory of the North Shore is of our first family trip and I was looking

for tadpoles near Temperance River with my older brother, Thad. It was around this

same time of year—September (well past tadpole season, in fact, keep in mind, we were

just young kids who didn’t know any better). Waves higher than our heads crashed into

the rocks and wind faster than I could run carried icy lake spray to where we were

standing. We were drenched and freezing but we screamed with glee at the gathering

storm. Thad jumped on a boulder and leveled his face in the wind to bellow his best

Tarzan yell. He was caught by a gust that sent him falling backwards and, in midair, his

Tarzan yell rose a couple octaves (exactly as a good Tarzan yell in those days was

supposed to!) until his elbows, back, and head struck rock with a meaty thud that

silenced his scream. He was quiet for several seconds then said “ouch.” Thad was

always goofing off and, as I already said, I was just a little kid, so I thought it was a joke.

I laughed so hard I actually peed my pants. I helped him stumble back to our tent and

giggled at him every time he stumbled and tripped. He ended up with 13 stitches and a

bump that never quite went away. I ended up getting bawled out by Dad for wetting

myself (so, in the end, I got the worst of it). Still, I loved the lake and knew I would be

back.

My fondest memory of the North Shore was my wedding day, nineteen years

later, just before I shipped off to the war in Europe in ‘43. We had the ceremony on the

beach. My wife’s family had a cottage right on the lake, handed down from her great

grandfather who built it. On forty acres, it was the largest cottage on the North Shore at
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the time it was built in 1899. The hand-carved sign over the entrance from the highway

just southwest of Split Rock River was still in fine shape in those days. It read: “Tudor

House.” Tudor was my wife’s family name. They had a long sandy beach (as you may

know, somewhat of a rarity for this stretch of Lake Superior) and a sizable lawn so we

thought it the perfect location for our wedding and reception. Anyway, the day before the

wedding, Friday, the lake was smooth and a beautiful blue-green. The sky, without a

single cloud, was a crisp, deep blue. At rehearsal that evening, the cool air and the

warm, setting sun delighted our early-arriving guests and family members. Alice and I

held hands in front of the Pastor and went through the motions.

th
Saturday, September 19 , roared in from the Northeast. Sometime during the

night, the water and sky joined forces and decided to churn things up. The air became

unsettled and the clouds and waves grew larger and more ominous. With the waves,

came the noise along the beach—a deep roar of millions of gallons of water crashing into

billions of pebbles and grains of sand. Somehow, it never rained. Alice and I bared

ourselves against the wind and lake spray and stoically recited our vows in front of all

present, including those looking on from the warmth of the cabin and rehearsal tent. As I

placed the ring on my wife’s finger we cried for our love and laughed for our weather.

Her veil, pinned to her hair with countless bobby pins, fluttered at my face as I bent down

for our kiss: Man and wife. At that very moment, I knew the lake would forever be apart

of my life and, indeed, when Alice’s mom died in 1955, we moved into the Tudor House

where we lived for thirty-four glorious years.

I am now eighty-four and am hobbled by arthritis. This night, tonight, will be my

final memory of the North Shore, my final memory of this place. It’s been sixty years

since my marriage on the beach and an amazing seventy-nine years since I first saw

Lake Superior. My beloved Alice past away thirteen years ago. I am moving out of the

Tudor House (just moved out this week, in fact). To Florida. I have a niece down there,

Thad’s daughter. That’s all the family I have now. My belongings are already on their

way. Since we never had kids ourselves, I decided to sell the cottage. Developers are

willing to pay a tidy sum for Superior property but I didn’t want the money. Instead, I

gave the property lock-stock-and-barrel to the state of Minnesota. They plan to simply

add it to the neighboring Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. My one condition of donation

was that the cottage and its acreage remain and remain untouched.

Past the trail that winds along the southwest side of the river, it will forever be

tucked away beyond a rise of Birches. Next spring, the drive in from 61 will be bulldozed

and replaced by plants and trees. It will be so well hidden, I suspect, that it will be

forgotten to all but a few who work at the park. I am the only one who can stay there but

I will never go back. If I ever did come back, it would be further up, to this cottage.
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Memories of those happy times with Alice at Tudor House are best left as memories.

Reliving them, smelling their essence in the scent of an oil lamp or tinder box, catching

their spirit in a gentle breeze off the lake, hearing their voices in the crackle of a evening

fire or in the silence after the Grandfather clock chimes the passage of time is too

bittersweet. Alice was too dear. To be so close to her would lead to sadness and

disappointment. No, instead I’d come here. Close, but not too close. Safer that way.

Enough of me! About this place, the reason you, the reader, are most assuredly

reading this entry . . . I am spending my last night on my beloved North Shore here for

three reasons. Two are historical; one is personal.

For starters, this cottage, which was built in 1900, surpassed Tudor House as the

largest on the North Shore. Their builders were brothers, a pair of architects from New

York City. These were their summer homes that quickly turned into retirement homes.

Edward Tudor III, my wife’s great grandfather, built mine (my wife’s family’s, I

mean). He was the eldest. There was a painting of him over the fireplace that is going

to the Lake County Historical Museum. I didn’t donate his journals, though. Kept them at

the cottage. My wife’s family always had the rule that you could take them down but you

had to put them back in exactly the same spot, the spot where he left them, where they

belonged.

A meticulous man and a voracious writer, was Edward, who documented how he

built the place (complete with materials used, dimensions, etc.), then proceeded to log

what he did everyday, tracked the changing of the seasons, and made notes of all sorts

of things. He did all this in an amazingly concise way, as if he went through a rewrite

process and cut out all the tediousness, all the loose ends; an architect drafting the

blueprint of his efficient and structured life. Not what you would expect from a typical

journal.

Samuel Tudor, the younger brother, built this one. Despite having nothing but a

walkpath past Agate Harbor, many construction materials were brought by boat from

Duluth to Agate Harbor and carried with pack mules past his brother’s place plus the mile

northeast around cliffs and through thickets of wood and streams. Other supplies were

brought straight to the property by boat. Like Edward, he used local timber and created

roughly the same layout but with some notable additions (additions that, amazingly

enough, make this place approx. twice the size as Tudor House). He christened this

place “Stonebrook” after the rocky brook that cuts its way to Lake Superior on the north

side of his property.

The second historical reason I’m staying here is that, in addition to being among

the oldest, largest cottages in Minnesota built just one year apart by a pair of brothers,

these cottages share something even more unusual . . .

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On Monday, November 27, 1905, ships steamed out onto Lake Superior by the

rd
dozens. It was the end-of-season rush and, since a tumultuous storm had hit on the 23

th
and 24 holding many ships at port, a period of relative calm was expected. True to

form, the day started as a blessing and all was calm. It was not until 6:00 p.m. that snow

began to fall in Duluth and winds picked up out of the northeast. During the night and

into the early hours on Tuesday, conditions worsened exponentially and the Great Lakes

area experienced its worst storm ever recorded in weather annals. The tempest raged at

winds above 60 mph for more than 12 hours and sailors reported waves higher than

pilothouses and smokestacks.

The 436-foot schooner barge, the Madeira, was in ballast and under tow of the

steamer, William Edenborn. According to historical record, at approximately 3:30 a.m.,

November 28, Captain Talbot of the Edenborn cut the Madeira’s towline, believing that

both vessels stood a better chance separated than tied together. The unpowered

Madeira was to cast anchor and ride out the storm on it’s own as the Edenborn sought

it’s own safety.

But the Madeira did not cast anchor. Instead, she floundered. She tossed about

and drifted aimlessly but ever shoreward for two hours. Captain John Dissette had no

idea where they were. At 5:30 a.m., in the dim early light, there was a great crash that

sent shudders through the steel vessel. To the horror of the crewmen, the Madeira was

being pounded broadside against the base of Gold Rock Cliff! Seconds counted for

hours as the ship’s hull pounded broadside against the rocky cliff with the force and

sound of cannon blasts, until it finally broke apart. The eleven-man crew would have

perished, if seaman Fred Benson had not grabbed a line and jumped from the deck of the

ship as it rose on a high wave to a rock outcropping on the face of the cliff. With frigid

waves crashing against him, Benson climbed to the top of the cliff and dropped his line to

the deck rescuing nine men trapped there. One man, the first mate, James Morrow, was

caught on the aft and was out of reach. The man struggled in the wreckage frantically

looking for a way to get to shore. As the ship sank, he climbed the mizzenmast,

screaming for help, pleading to Fred Benson and the others. Help could not come. The

mast bent like a willow twig and he dropped into the water, carried down with the Madeira

to his death.

In breaking light and driving snow the survivors, suffering from exposure, trudged

through knee-high snow and found the woodshed behind Stonebrook and piled into it.

Fred Benson left his mates, searched the area and happened upon the cottage where,

after telling of their plight and the location of his mates, he collapsed from exhaustion.

At about the same time that the Madeira broke apart, it’s companion, the

Edenborn, with its crew of twenty-five was getting whipped into the mouth of the Split
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Rock River; her bow beaten into the shoreline, her stern in the lake. As she began

cracking, several of her hatch covers popped and fell into the hold. As the stern crew

made their way forward, a giant wave broke over the vessel and three men were pitched

into an open hatch. Two of the men grabbed onto the rim and managed to pull

themselves out but third assistant engineer ElmerJohnson was not so lucky; he fell

straight through the opening to his death. The remaining twenty-four crewmen scrambled

to shore and found shelter at the Tudor House.

The tragedy of that night prompted the construction of Split Rock Lighthouse,

which was completed by 1910. By all accounts, it was a horrendous storm . . . several

ships and many lives were lost to Lakes Superior and Michigan. After several days,

when the toll was tallied, the Pittsburgh Steamship Company had on its ledgers the loss

of two men; one from the Madeira and one from the Edenborn. This is also what

historical record states . . . but ledgers and records can be dead wrong.

As for the personal reason why I’m here now, at Stonebrook, why I’m writing in

this journal; my wife and I were great friends with the last owners. Jonathon Mead, I met

in ’38, in Agate Harbor where I had found work on the docks. I was twenty-one, he was

twenty-six, and he took me under his wing. Unlike me, he was a local boy (I was from

Hibbing) and he told me stories about everything in the area except that which I most

wanted to hear—the recluse architect, Samuel Tudor. You see, Jon’s father, I knew, was

the only person who had regular contact with the man. After Jon’s father was killed at

work in an accident in the Soudan mine, Jon himself started spending most of his free

time with the architect at his place (instead of where he belonged, with me at the bars in

Agate Harbor). Their relationship continued until Jon and myself went off to war together.

Jonathon moved into Stonebrook when Sam Tudor died in 1945, soon after we

returned from the war. Jon then married Margaret Day of Castle Danger in 1950 and she

moved in.

Since ’50, we (Jon and Maggie, myself and Alice) would gather once a month on

Saturday afternoons for dinner and drinks. We would all start together, all joined in the

same conversion: a discussion of the weather, of the daily events in our lives. Then

topics would travel further, beyond our little world, to politics and news of the period; the

ideological inconsistencies of the fifties, the upheavals of the sixties; the social changes

and economic troubles of the seventies. When it was too cold outside or the weather

was bad, we would gather around the fire at either Tudor House or Stonebrook. When it

was warm, we would make a bonfire down at the beach at our place, or trudge up on the

cliff overlooking the lake at theirs. After a couple hours and a few brandies, the wives

ordinarily would remain by the fire, keeping warm, steering the conversation in one
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direction while the two of us headed in another; to the porch or a walk to the lake or

northeast through the woods to the brook. We were the ones to watch the sky turn

shades of orange and pink as the sun set behind the hills. The ones to walk in the rain.

Like me, Jon had a fondness for reading but with him it was so much more than

that. He had an insatiable appetite for history and stories and mysteries and puzzles. In

gathering darkness, with a buzz from brandy or wine, sitting on logs next to his brook, he

would explain theories on the Egyptian pyramids—how and why they were built, what

secrets they contained. While I held a lantern, Jon would scratch hieroglyphics in the dirt

and explain why he believed in the curse of King Tutankhamun. He would talk at length

about the Roman Empire, the Renaissance period, and our own century; the power of

Julius Caesar, the oddities of Henry VIII, the evil of Hitler and Stalin. Walking along the

shore of Lake Superior, skipping rocks in the moonlight, we would discuss the writings of

Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Hemingway.

Of course, we would also talk about the bond between our houses, between us,

and their history and the history of the North Shore. We would be away from our wives

for a couple hours on a couple topics then head back to rejoin them with armfuls of wood

for the fire—our excuse for leaving them in the first place.

Yes, we had a grand time here. As I write this, I miss that time with all my heart.

Maggie passed away in 1984 and Jon died just last month. According to his wishes, his

beloved Stonebrook will now become a rental property. Right or wrong and for what its

worth, it is now available to anyone who wants to come. Whether anyone one day will

decipher the message that lies within and find the key buried with death, is not for me to

say (Jon thought so, I am more skeptical). For these are the things unlock the mysteries

that were Sam Tudor and Jon Mead. They also unlock the secrets of history and life.

For whoever may one day discover the shroud, it conceals a gift—a gift of a brilliant

future, of an endless journey. Perhaps, however, as I suspect, all that this place is about

will go unnoticed. . . A fruitless failure, a masterpiece hidden underneath a journeyman’s

painting never to see the light of day.

I don’t know, Perhaps Stonebrook is a relic and nobody even cares if such things

exist. The world today rotates faster, days are shorter. Life doesn’t mean what it used

to. Families grab vacations in a preoccupied rush like they consume fast-food

sandwiches.

Ah, but I’ve done enough lamenting . . . for you who are reading this are the one

who is different, no?

I have two final things, a warning and a request, I feel obligated to share with

whomever may read this entry and take it seriously. There are treasures here and there
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are also pitfalls. So watch your step. Jon thought of danger as a spice that made life

richer . . . just to forewarn, Jon was heavy into the spices.

Now for my request: Enjoy Stonebrook. Within it’s ancient walls of redwood, on

it’s grounds, it holds history, stories, mysteries and puzzles. Unlike most retreats, this

place is not for those who wish to shut off the brain for a few days, for if you do, you will

miss something. Here at Stonebrook, you may relax, but you must ponder, you must

wonder, you must think. You are in a unique place—please treat it as such.

- Benjamin Horning

After reading the entry, Kate cleared her throat and fell silent. She was hoarse while Alex was

speechless. She closed the journal and her husband remained perched on the edge of a recliner, still

holding the fork, resting his elbows on his knees. Finally, he said, “so you ready to do some thinking this

week?”

“I guess I better be . . . Can you believe all that? Is that part about the shipwrecks true?”

“Yes. My Dad has a book on shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. That storm and those incidents with

those boats are in there. Remember that Edna G. tugboat we saw in Agate Harbor on the way up? That tug

was used to collect both crews and the Edenborn—only the Madeira actually sunk.”

“I don’t know if I like this place, Alex.” Kate was scanning the walls and ceiling. “Too spooky. I

feel like it has some kind of power now. Like we’re being watched or something.”

“Hey, it has a history. Okay, an amazing history. I think that’s a good thing. Character is hard to

come by in a house. . . Scrambled eggs okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Kate absent-mindedly. She had her nose poked in the journal again and was

rereading the entry, apprehensively clicking her fingernails together.

After breakfast and showers, Alex waited in the screen porch for his wife to finish getting ready.

Sitting in an adirondac chair, he tapped his fingers on it’s flat arms, examined the knots in the wood of the

ceiling, and wondered how many hours in his life has been and would be spent, in one manner or other,

waiting for his wife. Say, five minutes a day times seven days times fifty-two weeks. What did that

amount to? He went to the kitchen and found a pencil and piece of scratch paper. One thousand eight

hundred and twenty per year. Okay then. They had been married for three years plus tack on another fifty

or so. Ninety one thousand minutes. Phew. Divided by sixty minutes and you get one thousand five

hundred hours or sixty-three days.

He pondered this as he walked back through the great room of the cottage. “About ready, honey?”

“Five more minutes.”

“Damn.”

“What?” Kate peeked out of the bathroom. She was scrunching her eyebrows with a metal

instrument of some kind. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. Hey, I’ll be out back, okay?”

 12

Behind the cottage, there was an old, frayed, rope swing hanging from a nearby branch that swung

back and forth, riding a gentle breeze. A rusted charcoal grill perched on the small deck next to the porch.

Beyond birch trees and some balsam was a small shed and past that the lake. The day was cloudy and

morning mist still hovered over much of the lake, concealing it. Alex strolled about the yard and caught a

chill so he was glad for his wool sweater.

Ten minutes later, Kate emerged from the cottage, scrunched her nose, turned around, and walked

right back in. Alex stared unblinking at the door. He thought of Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog, and

figured that his wife saw her shadow and now there was going to be three more weeks of fall. She popped

back out again, this time with a hat, gloves, and scarf. “Ready?” she said.

“Yep. Where do you want to walk to?”

“The lake. Let’s go down to the lake.”

They took the dirt path through the trees that led to a shed and Kate stopped. “Look, the

woodshed! Those sailors from the Madeira were huddled inside . . . can we peek in?” She said this with an

excited whisper, like it would be a muddling, mischievous thing to do.

“They’re not in there anymore, it’s just a woodshed.”

“I know, let’s just look though.” Her eyes were big with intrigue. “Come on, open it.” Little

scares during the day were up Kate’s alley, she thought of them as fun. It was the night scares that terrified

her.

“Why me?”

“Because I don’t want to open it. I want you to.”

“It’s just a shed.”

“I know. Go on.”

Alex shrugged his shoulders, turned the wooden bar from the latch, then pulled. Inside it was dark

but the light spilling in from the doorway was enough to make out a floor covered with sawdust and rows

and rows of stacked wood. There was a strong scent of fresh cut wood and sap. “This must be where the

housekeepers keep an extra stockpile. There’s a bunch more wood under the eaves of the cottage, too.”

“Wow. How did all those guys fit in here? Hey!” exclaimed Kate as she pumped her fist into

Alex’s arm. “Maybe Samuel kept a journal like his brother Edward. Maybe he wrote about that storm in

1905 and what happened here that night.”

“Maybe. We could check the bookshelves.”

Kate pictured eight men packed in here. Sitting on wood. Lying on the floor. Perhaps standing

and hugging each other for warmth. What would they have said to one another? What did it feel like to

barely survive a shipwreck, to watch your first mate, your friend, sink into icy, deadly water. What were

they like, those men of a hundred years ago? What were their wives like?

Alex started to close the door but Kate did not move. “Come on, hon,” he said. Together they

closed the door then continued on past the craggy, fissured rocks then stepped onto the beach. At water’s
 13

edge, they stood side by side, taking in the sight. A few miles out, a cargo ship was heading toward

Duluth. Northeast, past the boathouse, a lone seagull soared above the trees then veered out over the water

where it was joined by a second, much smaller gull.

The air had a distinct, natural freshness to it. The sort of freshness, Alex supposed, that can only

be found next to the largest lake in the world; the lake that, his sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Michels, had told

him years ago, holds one-tenth of the world’s fresh water, as much as the other Great Lakes combined.

Gentle waves massaged the rocky shoreline, an endless ebb-and-flow of the ages. Alex moved

behind his wife, wrapped his arms around her. Kate held his hands that were wrapped around her waist and

craned her neck to peck his cheek with a kiss.

“Let’s stay here. Right here, like this. This is perfect,” she said.

Alex closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair lingering with the fresh air.

Kate raised to her tiptoes, stretching, and nuzzled back of her head into his chest, loving his

closeness, his warmth. She smiled a luxurious smile. To her, this was life at it’s finest. Why she got

married and why she married him. She started to say something, to tell Alex this, and he shushed her. Not

a harsh shush, but a long, soft shush. She knew what it meant; honey, I know what your going to say, and I

feel it too. So let’s just let it go unsaid and let the moment carry itself.

The pair of seagulls sailed together, like a parent and child and they heard the sinewy flapping of

wings pumping against air as the gulls flew directly overhead to the outcropping of rocks to the southwest

where one banked, the other followed, and together they flapped their wings in a quick backpedaling

motion and eased themselves into the water thirty feet from shore. The smaller gull followed; it banked,

and made an awkward splash.

“You sure we can only stay one week?” Kate asked.

“Afraid so. I can’t use up all my vacation time now. The project deadline is three months off. I

was lucky to get a week.”

“So who do you think owns this place now?”

“I have no idea. Too bad they didn’t have any kids to hand it down to.”

“How much do you think it goes for?”

“I have no idea.”

For awhile, Kate pondered how many hundreds of thousands it would take to buy Stonebrook. All

the land and the lakeshore footage. The beach. And the cottage was adorable. She made a mental note of

their life savings and realized how dismally short they would be. “Honey?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m cold.”

In the stone fireplace of Stonebrook’s great room, Alex lit a fire that caused a downdraft of smoke

and propelled a large, blackened and sparking section of the front page of the Duluth Tribune sports section

buffeting through the room on a magic carpet ride toward the sofa.
 14

At the urging of his wife, “Alex! Get it, get it, get it, get it!” Alex did indeed get it by closing

ranks with four long strides and breaking the craft into pieces with an ungraceful karate kick just prior to

it’s soft landing on a seat cushion. While he fought this battle, the smoky downdraft continued pouring

from the chimney into the room, enveloping them, and chased Kate outdoors. Alex, breathed through his

shirt, and narrowed his eyes, preparing to do battle with the fire beast. Grasping a section of rolled

newspaper that he lit at one end, he plunged it up the flume, into the heart of the great beast to heat the

chimney. It coughed and sputtered until at last caught a draft and the pressure in the chimney reversed with

a great sucking sound of air and flames as the chimney devoured his offering of fire. The smoke and soot

reversed and shot straight up to the outside.

After the smoke cleared, he shut the porch door and windows and invited Kate to rejoin him. In

front of the roaring fire, she warmed her hands, giving them an occasional rub, while Alex gloated over his

hard-won battle and spoke of his deep respect for the adversarial wood-burning fireplace.

His fingers were blackened with soot and he wiped his temple with the back of one hand and held

a wood poker in the other. “Did you know, honey, that humans have been burning oil for about fifty years,

but wood,” he said, “wood—we have been burning for tens of thousands of years.” He had a foot resting

on the stash of wood by the fire looking like a knight who had just slayed a dragon and demonstrated his

cocky dominance by stepping on this poor creature for all to see.

“Okay, honey,” interjected Kate, “haven’t we talk about this? That little odd section of your mind,

the one that thinks up all these weird things? It really shouldn’t see the light of day. We don’t want anyone

carting you off to the nuthouse. Remember?”

Still, her husband—the spark chaser, the smoke fighter—continued his oratory on the history of

wood and fire through the ages. Then he abruptly stopped. His head jerked passed her, eyes intent on

something in the distance. She saw them grow big and sharp as if from fear or shock. At first his grip

eased on the poker, and it nearly clanged to the floor, but then he tightened his grip. Kate turned from the

fire and followed his line of vision through the great room, into the porch, and outside. Just there, beyond

the windows, thirty feet into the yard, a man-creature the likes of which neither of them had seen was

walking toward the cottage. Staring at the approaching figure, Alex and Kate could not fathom who or

what it might be. The height of the thing was stunning, seemingly close to seven feet. It wore what looked

like a large burlap sack, green plaid pants, and white boots. Draped around its neck was a pink scarf, in its

left hand was a hatchet.

To Alex, it was one of those rare events that smacked of the illogical, that made no sense; a piece

of an unknown puzzle shaken loose from where it belongs and dropped right in front of you like a vision

from another world. As Alex tried to assimilate and make sense of the creature, he went through a rational,

rapid-fire mental process of trial-and-error. Was it Big Foot? A crazed axe murderer, perhaps? Maybe a

circus performer turned lumberjack? Faced with these surreal thoughts, confusion set in. His mind, not

accustomed to the thickness and murkiness of the inexplicable, seemed to arrest his senses, like what
 15

happened when he was in a car crash as a teenager; everything around him mystically suspended while

images and feelings flitted through his mind like snapshots from a thousand dreams.

Finally, Alex gained enough of his wits to deduce that it was in fact a human, and certainly a male.

Beyond this, he was at a loss and he watched slack jawed. Just before he disappeared from view, the

afternoon sun glinted off the man’s glasses and made his eyes flash white, then he was gone, around the

side of the house.

Alex and Kate exchanged looks of disbelief. “What was that?” Kate asked, clicking her

fingernails together. She edged along the wall to the corner of the room in a vain attempt to hide.

The patio door was still cracked open and the front door was unlocked. The entrance to the

kitchen on the far side of the house, he remembered, was still locked. Alex raced across the room cursing

the squeaking floor that announced his every step and locked the front door then did the same with the patio

door. Through the kitchen, he rechecked that point of entry and gained enough confidence to peer outside

through the kitchen windows. “See anything, honey?” he asked Kate.

“He went around front, Alex. Why are you looking out the kitchen windows? Go back and look

out the main entrance.”

Alex turned around and looked out every pane of glass on his way back to the front door while

Kate stood in the corner by the bookshelves. In front, there was nobody but the man’s truck was parked in

the drive. “How could someone so big get so lost?” said Alex.

Finally, along the northeast side, through the window of the kitchen door, he saw the man again—

at least, he saw a portion of him. “There he is!” whispered Alex. “He’s carrying something else and

coming around back again.” The man appeared in the kitchen windows as he rounded the corner to the

backyard. “Wood! He’s got wood!”

Kate, out of curiosity and dread, wanted to be next to her husband so she scurried across the floor

and grasped his left arm, just behind him, so she could also peer out the patio windows at the retreating

figure. She felt trapped, at the mercy of the man outside who seemed to be circling them, like a shark,

swimming ever so slowly looking for the best point of entry, waiting for an opportunity to strike. The

poker in Alex’s hand could bloody the predator’s nose but it would taste it’s own blood and be whipped

into a frenzied madness, one thing on its mind: eat the prey. She had both hands clamped down on her

husband’s arm and kept tightening her grip.

“Honey, ouch!” said Alex, as he shook his arm free and Kate quickly found the waistband of his

shorts and slid her fingers down into it.

The man headed toward the woodshed. His long strides had a graceful, oddly feminine quality.

His shoulder-length hair was half-black, half-gray, and unruly.

Alex continued to marvel at the clothing: the pink scarf, the plaid pants, the white boots. “What

the hell kind of outfit is that for a Big Foot?”

“Nevermind that,” replied Kate, “where’s his axe?”

 16

The shed door was already open so he bent at the knees and lowered himself enough to bow his

head under the doorframe and disappeared within. They heard a hollow chunking sound; an armful of

firewood dropped to the floor. Then there was a series of smaller chunks; wood getting stacked on a pile,

being organized. The man emerged and retraced his path, around the northeast side of the house. Alex

wrested his wife’s hands from his belt and scampered to the study.

Leery standing to close to the window, he draped the curtain open with the poker and peered out.

Next to their car was an old yellow pickup truck. Behind the truck the man was stacking more wood in his

arms. While somewhere past middle age, there was a boyish aspect to him that Alex could not pinpoint.

The face was smooth and reddish from the outdoors; he had long bangs and when he blinked, his eyelashes

brushed against his hair behind the large round lenses that were his glasses. The arms of the burlap top he

wore fell a good three inches short of his skinny wrists.

Upon this closer examination, the man looked much less imposing. Although tall, he was perhaps

just six-foot, five (not seven feet). What struck Alex most were the somber, calm eyes. Far from the fiery

eyes of a crazed serial killer, they were smart and tame and tired. In any event, why would a killer be

stacking wood in the woodshed for them? Certainly he didn’t have a mammoth cauldron hidden out back

for which he needed plenty of wood to build a giant-sized fire to make people soup.

As the man started away from the truck, Alex closed the drapes and rejoined his wife who was

now grasping a fireplace bellows in both hands.

“What’s he doing now? Where is he? Is he coming back around again?” she asked.

“Yes, but Kate, I think he’s okay. I think he’s harmless.”

“Why?”

“He’s just a worker guy. He’s bringing around more firewood.”

“But why is he so huge? And what’s the deal with his clothes?”

“Honey—“ said Alex, then the man was in full view again through the kitchen windows. “Look.”

He pointed the poker toward the back and she turned around to watch. “See? Just bringing us wood to the

woodshed, that’s all.”

Kate remained skeptical, but a foolish feeling started to creep up on her. Perhaps their initial fear

was unwarranted after all. Perhaps they had watched too much television because on television, the tall,

strangely dressed man that suddenly appears in the back of a cottage in the woods is always a killer. In real

life, maybe he really could be just a worker guy.

“Honey,” started Alex again, examining his wife intently, “may I ask you something?”

“What?”

“You have a fireplace bellows in your hands. . . How were you planning to use the fireplace

bellows?

Kate laughed her hearty laugh, suddenly her calm self again, and replied, “No idea. You don’t

think that blowing air at the man’s face would have fended him off?”
 17

On the man’s next return from the woodshed, Kate allowed Alex to step outside and greet the

man, to exchange a quick hello, find out who he was. Sitting on the edge of the low deck, Alex, she

noticed from the safety of the porch, did not say “hello.” There was no exchange of words at all. The man

just went on his preferred northeast path around to the front of the cottage.

Kate then joined Alex on the deck. “What the hell was that? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t even look at me, honey. I guess I was waiting for him to look at me.

Sort of acknowledge my presence, you know? I didn’t want to startle him.”

“Well go on,” said Kate, and she gestured for him to walk around the house. “See if you can get

his attention out front, then.”

At the side of the cottage, Alex heard the pickup start and the sound of gravel getting crunched by

tires. As Alex rounded the corner, he saw the vehicle pulling away. Kate came out the front door and

joined him on the driveway. Together they watched it disappear through the trees.

This was the first full day of Alex and Kate’s weeklong vacation. A respite from their jobs in the

Twin Cities, it was also the trip when they would “start trying.” This was to be a relaxing week and, they

hoped, a romantically fruitful week. If it did prove fruitful, they both knew, certainly it would be their last

full week of relaxation for quite some time.

Kate was a project manager at a manufacturing company. She maintained and coordinated

computer upgrades for the company’s plants and facilities in the Midwest. She was okay with the work but

did not care for the travel. Driving and flying alone around Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, and Wisconsin

was not what her idea of fun. To her, travel meant being with Alex. It meant mountains or water, skiing or

snorkeling. It meant Europe. Anything else was boring, so her job was boring.

Her dream, to own her own coffee shop, to buy the best coffees, to make the mornings of herself

and others a little brighter, was still in the realm of dreams and this gnawed at her. If she did not make the

plunge prior to turning thirty-four (as she had always dreamt), how would things be easier after thirty-four,

with a family.

For work, Alex was on a functional team of an enterprise resource management implementation

project. To him, “Enterprise Resource Management” and the jargon and acronyms that clung to the term

were a jumble of impressive words that sounded empty; if you could rap your knuckles on their impressive

looking shells, he sometimes thought, you’d likely hear a deep, dull sound like that of hollowed out log.

A political science major, Alex often wondered (and lamented) how he got wrapped up in

computer work. On his most angst-ridden days, he did indeed feel wrapped up, as if the job had tentacles

that held him down, spooning its empty words into his ears and mouth, packing his head full of them,

cramming out imagination and his dreams. At times during meetings, even with rapt attention, he could not

resist the thought that the conversations were like those with any parent from a Peanuts cartoon: “Waa waa

waa. Waa-waa, waa waa, waa,” and he felt like Charlie Brown.
 18

If only they could stay here, live here—do what Kate wished and buy this place on the lake, find

honest, enjoyable work, and raise their family. Imagination and dreams, he thought, would gush back,

filling the void. The smell of fresh spring flowers and the bright laughter of a child; the summer sun and a

boy or girl catching tadpoles; a storm off the lake and a fire in the fireplace; winter cold and a child’s snow

angel. These things would make their dreams come back to life, these things were their dreams.

In all the commotion with the visitor, the fire had burned down to glowing orange embers. Alex

added some logs and they both sat down with their thoughts. They talked for a bit about the visitor and if

he would come back but soon they became silent, trying to relax, but a restless overtook them and they both

knew why. Kate picked up the journal and reread the last paragraph of Benjamin Horning’s:

Now for my request: Enjoy Stonebrook. Within it’s ancient walls of redwood, on

it’s grounds, it holds history, stories, mysteries and puzzles. Unlike most retreats, this

place is not for those who wish to shut off the brain for a few days, for if you do, you will

miss something. Here at Stonebrook, you may relax, but you must ponder, you must

wonder, you must think. You are in a unique place—please treat it as such.

“What should we do?” asked Kate.

Alex stood, shoved his hands in his pockets, and then circled the couch and chairs. He wondered

what it meant to relax without shutting off the brain. Wasn’t that the definition of relaxation?

“Hey,” said Kate, “here’s some Latin.” From the journal under Benjamin’s signature, Kate read

aloud a passage, the meaning of which, she did not know: Contemplata aliis tradere.

Alex caught the first word, contemplata—contemplation. But Kate had slaughtered the “aliis

tradere.” She handed him the journal and he read it to himself then translated out loud for Kate. “It says,

‘handing onto others the fruit of our contemplation.’”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, a gift, I guess. A gift of knowledge or of something intangible passed on to somebody.”

Alex handed the journal back to Kate who set it on the coffee table. “The more important question is, what

does it mean to us?”

Kate smiled. She had Benjamin’s passage nearly committed to memory. “It means that within

these walls there is ‘history and stories and mysteries and puzzles.’ Those are all the things that Jonathon

Mead apparently contemplated; it was all that he and Benjamin Horning talked about anyway. Maybe

when you stay here, you’re supposed to look for those things. Figure out a mystery or puzzle and, presto,

you uncover history and understand a story. You discover what this place means.”

“Not bad,” said Alex. “Not bad.” He tossed another log in the fire then sat on the hearth. He ran

a hand across the large flagstones of it. He felt their hardness and ran his fingers over the gritty mortar

between them as if the hearth could tell a story, a story that he could read like Braille. Mysteries and

puzzles, he thought. Mystery and puzzles . . .

 19

They ate a late supper: vermicelli pasta with eggplant, artichokes and Greek olives in olive oil

with Parmesan bread. Alex was not a master chef but was never at a loss for trying a new recipe. They

shared a bottle of Chianti served in the canning jars they found in the kitchen. They dined on the pine

picnic table in the open dinning room as the sun went down and talked about tomorrow, about maybe

seeing Split Rock Lighthouse or going up to Grand Marais.

After dinner, they were going to make a small fire for s’mores but Kate was tired and went

upstairs to bed.

Alone, Alex stood in the midst of the six tall bookshelves, a small library, built into the wall off

the great room looking for Samuel Tudor’s journals. He ascended the small stepladder and scanned several

titles of the top row of the leftmost shelf.

The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis De Sade

Absolum, Absolum! By William Faulkner

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine

Then he walked over to the right-most shelf and sat on the floor to look at the last few titles.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories by Dr. Suess

Zadig by Voltaire

Impressive, he thought, and smiled at the inclusion of Dr. Suess in such a collection. Huck Finn

he had read in junior high and he read Wealth of Nations for a college economics class but that was it (not

counting Yertle the Turtle). Feeling sufficiently ignorant, he scanned the remaining books between A and

Z haphazardly, reading titles here and there, when, within the letter C, he did a double take. At first he

assumed his eyes played a trick but there it was—Contemplata aliis tradere. Curious, he pulled it and

discovered it was a book by or about the Dominican Order of monks and handing on to others the fruit of

our contemplation, he surmised, flipping the pages, was a motto of theirs. From the fifth or sixth page, a

slip of paper fell to the floor. Alex kneeled and opened it. It was a note handwritten in Latin. He

ascertained the meaning of a word here and there but he really did not know the language, only some root
 20

derivatives and sayings, so he could not read what it said. At the bottom though, was a barely legible

signature: Jonathon Mead.

Day 2 Mr. Paul Goat

Lying on his stomach on a small inflatable raft in a protected bay, Alex felt the lap of water caress

and moisten his toes. It soothed him because the day was hot; the sun’s rays warmed his naked back and

legs. The raft swayed in the subtle swells of the ocean; his left side rose up then back down and his right

side followed the lead of his left. The motion seemed precise, a natural metronome. He found himself in a

peaceful trance. Whatever troubled thoughts he had been pondering drifted away like an oil slick in the salt

water to wash up on shore—they would be there for him later if he wished to retrieve them—and his rest

became absolute, free from even the slightest concern.

Then the tempo and size of the swells underneath him increased. This did not introduce concern

but he did open one eye—the exertion was minor, more of a reflex than anything else—then closed it again.

Content with the heightened level of waves, he had a vague desire that they would lift his sense of

tranquility to a higher plane. But they continued to get bigger, too big, and his raft started to sway and spin.

The water turned colder and clouds shut out the sun. Alex raised his toes out of the water and lifted his

head to look around. Gone was the nearby white-sand beach with its palm trees. Gone were the brilliant-

colored fish and the pretty coral. Gone was the serenity. In their place, there was black water and a gray

sky. The sky continued to darken, not just from gathering storm clouds but also from a fast-forwarding to

nighttime. It began to snow and the wind picked up and blew in his face and chest. There was no sign of

land. The frigid black waves had frothy whitecaps and they broke over his raft and crashed into him. He

barely hung on and screamed for help. More waves, more crashing. Suddenly, his raft tore and deflated.

He plunged into the water. He tried to swim but he could barely move his legs. They felt restrained in

some manner, like they were bumping into something soft. He went under. He thrashed about until finally

he managed to kick his feet and swim up into the light, to the surface.

The sun found a hole in the clouds and morning light streamed into the bedroom and onto the bed.

With eyes still closed, Alex’s vision turned from blackness to something that could be called dark-red. For

a moment he felt uneasy, not sure what he would see when he opened them so he shut them tighter and tiny

red balls danced against a backdrop of nothing. Eventually, he dared to blink a few times and Kate was

there, inches away, her mouth open, her face filmy from sleep, lying on her left side on the bed.

Positioned in such a way, he thought, she presented an even steeper incline for the quilt-lake than

yesterday morning. The water would spill from the lake in a great Tsunami. Lilliputian fatalities would be

twice as high. Rebuilt huts would be re-destroyed. After the catastrophe, the best military and scientific

minds in all of Quilt Land would gather to devise a plan. In the most remote, mountainous (driest) part of
 21

their land, a laboratory would be working on the latest in defensive and offensive weaponry, preparing to

wage war tomorrow.

Alex got out of bed, stretched, and walked around to Kate’s side. He couldn’t wait for her to get

up, so anxious was he to show her what he found last night. He gently nudged her arm. “Hon?”

No answer.

“Kate?” More nudging.

Kate didn’t move a muscle but she said, “what time is it?”

“Time to get up. Come on.”

“Not yet.”

“Come on. There’s something you need to see. I think it’s our first mystery.”

Kate rolled over and opened an eye. Alex extended an open hand for her. She took it and he

pulled her out of bed. She plunked her head against his chest, closed her eyes and yawned noisily. “Okay,

I’m up. Can I go back to bed now?”

Alex baked blueberry muffins and made oatmeal. Amidst a puff of steam from the downstairs

bathroom (the one with the shower), Kate emerged in her white terrycloth robe, slippers, and glasses. Her

hair was wrapped in a large white towel. “Okay, Mr. Holmes, what’s this mystery of yours?”

Alex pulled the muffins from the oven and told Kate to check out the table in the library area. She

did so and spotted the Dominican Order book with the Latin saying on the spine. “Hey, neat.” She

drummed her fingers on its cover and said, “So?”

“Open it.”

Kate thumbed through the pages and found the slip of paper immediately. She read aloud the only

thing she could understand, “Jonathon Mead. Wow, honey! Can you read any of this?”

“No. A few words here and there but that’s about it. We need a Latin dictionary.”

“Think they have one in Grand Marais?”

“Doubt it. Grand Marais is too small. Agate Harbor, maybe. At the library.”

Kate walked over to the dining room table, the note in hand. “There’s not one in the shelves

here?”

“I checked. No,” replied Alex.

She drank some orange juice that Alex had set out then broke open a steaming muffin. “We have

a change of plans for today, then, don’t we?”

“Yep.”

The Agate Harbor Public Library is a brick building on Harbor Drive. It didn’t have a parking lot,

so Alex parked their car on the street and they walked up. A sign in the door read CLOSED. The hours
 22

stenciled into the window read that they were closed on Sundays but would be open at 9:00 Monday

morning. “That’s that,” said Alex. “We’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“But I don’t want to come back tomorrow. Is there a bookstore in town?”

“Maybe down by the waterfront. There’s something next to the Ben Franklin that looks like a

bookstore.”

“Good. We can stop there right after we pop into All Things Sweet for a Latte. You want a hot

cocoa, don’t you?”

“How do you know they serve Lattes? You’ve never been in the place.”

Kate looked at him with raised eyebrows.

Alex smiled. Of course . . . Kate would know.

The proprietors of All Things Sweet were identical twins somewhere in their thirties. They had

hair the color of straw on a sunny day and they both wore cream slacks. One of them had on a green top

with a nametag that read Sam and the other had a blue top with a nametag that read Sue. Green and red

were also the colors of their logo in the window—two large S’s shadowed by a slice of cake and a cup of

steaming coffee. For the locals of Agate Harbor, Alex assumed the nametags would indeed prevent some

mix-ups—they truly looked exactly alike, right down to the hairstyle (sort of a bob) and nail polish color (a

deep color, like that of a plum).

The three women in line in front of Kate and Alex had a large order for some type of meeting of

about ten women gathered around three tables near the back. Sam and Sue bounced back and forth behind

the counter but somehow managed to not run into each other. Sam was frothing while Sue was grinding,

then Sue was creaming while Sam was pouring. Sue collected the money and, together, Sam and Sue

gathered the assortment of drinks into two cardboard trays and handed them off to their patrons. Then,

together, they said, “thanks now.”

The whole episode was so much fun to watch that Alex wanted to order one of each item on the

menu to see Team Sam-Sue take it to the limit.

“Can we help you?” asked Jean.

Kate replied, “go ahead, honey, I’m still thinking.”

“Hot cocoa, please.”

The perkiness of Sam-Sue deflated instantly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said, Sam.

“We’re out,” added Sue.

They looked so forlorn that Alex felt sorry for them. “That’s okay. Just a coffee, then.”

“What kind of coffee?”

Damn, thought Alex. He hated coffee questions. He never knew (or cared, really) exactly what

kind of coffee he was served. He just wanted a coffee, no questions asked. For a moment he contemplated

asking for a Folgers but he knew that he would have been gang tackled by Kate, likely with the help of

Sam-Sue, and beaten soundly to a pulp. Instead he said, “Umm, whatever you’re special is today.”
 23

Kate said, “you don’t like Hazelnut, Alex. He’ll have your French Roast.”

“One French Roast coming up. Size?”

Alex had to quickly shift gears from scrutinizing the classroom-sized chalkboard behind Jan-Jean

for the coffee selections to instead locate the cups amidst the countertop machinery and displays to see

what size he wanted.

“He’ll take a large,” said Kate, tired of waiting for her husband. “To go.”

Sue filled him up and he had his coffee in front of him inside of four seconds. Alex took it and

gingerly, quickly stepped aside because he knew his wife was now primed and ready. Like some people

are a master at the game of Scrabble, Kate was a master at ordering coffee. As in scrabble, where the

object was to use as many of your letters as possible to tally the large possible number of points in a single

play; in coffee ordering, Kate’s object was (at least it seemed to Alex) to place the longest, most

complicated order she could concoct in an attempt to spend as much as possible to fill up a single cup.

“I’ll have a Turtle Mocha with one shot of decaf and one shot of regular and I’d like a ½ shot of

caramel syrup but only if you have Davinci syrup—do you have Davinci syrup?”

Sam vigorously nodded her head ‘yes,’ not missing a beat.

“ . . . and of course I’ll take the macadamia nut and go light on the chocolate and make sure the

steamed milk doesn’t get too frothy—you know what I mean?—I don’t like it too frothy. And add a pinch

of cinnamon too. . . that should be it.”

The order, which would have buried a couple of amateurs, seemed to be a welcomed challenge for

Sam-Sue and they went efficiently about their business to meet her spec. As they worked, Kate started

talking shop with them, asking them about their business. Alex knew it would be awhile so he tapped his

wife on the shoulder and mumbled that he was going across the street to the bookstore. Kate nodded,

brushing him away, and he happily retreated out of All Things Sweet, French Roast coffee in hand. On the

sidewalk, he paused to sip his coffee and nearly burned his tongue.

Across the street there was a lawyer office, a gift shop, the Ben Franklin, and the bookstore. Paige

Turner’s Books and Comics. As he stepped off the curb, he thought how unlikely it was that he was here in

Agate Harbor, Minnesota, drinking coffee while in search of a Latin dictionary.

A cowbell announced Alex’s entrance into the bookstore. Inside, the towering, teetering stacks of

books, magazines, and comics nearly caused him to flinch. The store was narrow and long, the size of

about four bowling lanes, and the tight aisles were constricted with jutting books. Here and there were

placards with quotes:

A room without books is like a body without a soul – Cicero

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own

shame – Oscar Wilde

This is not a book that should be tossed lightly aside. It should be hurled with great

force – Dorothy Parker

 24

The large clerk behind the counter, who was neither cute nor perky like Sam-Sue, stared blankly at

Alex. His chubby cheeks and nose were a patchwork of tiny reddish veins and had a rough texture, like the

underside of a leaf. His temples and forehead were laced with thick bluish veins the size of small worms.

The combination was regrettable. His eyes were slate colored and reflected a sadness that surely could

have been obtained from looking in the mirror every morning.

Under the weight of the man’s appearance and demeanor, Alex felt compelled to say something.

“Hi there. . . So, is there really a ‘Paige Turner’ or is that just a catchy name for the store?”

“Paige died four years ago. Heart attack. Stacking Clancy hardcovers. Right over there.” The

man pointed with his forehead to a bookshelf that now held a collection of Harry Potter books and Harry

Potter merchandise.

“I’m sorry,” said Alex.

“She just clutched her chest and said, ‘Oh my God in heaven,’ then bumped against the case, fell

to the floor and was hit in the head and chest by a dozen or so copies of Executive Orders.” The man

puckered his lips and frowned—the worms in his forehead squiggled. “Executive Orders is eight hundred

and seventy four pages. Nothing to sneeze at.”

I’m sorry,” repeated Alex, not knowing how else to react to such a story.

“Her last words were, ‘Clancy is a . . . ’ then she seized up and kind of rolled her eyes back into

her head. She died right where she fell, in a pile of books surrounded by red-white-and-blue bookcovers.

“I’m so sorry,” said Alex, cursing himself that he could think of no other words, because it was the

funniest damn tragedy he had ever heard in his life. The man’s deadpan delivery made it seem like a

comedic sketch. “Clancy is a . . .?” asked Alex, hiding a snicker behind his coffee cup.

“That’s right. Clancy is a . . .”

“Is a what?”

“Don’t know. She didn’t finish.”

“Weren’t you curious?”

“Yes. But she didn’t finish. I shook her and slapped her but she didn’t come to . . . Killed by

books, she was. Every couple years when I’m stacking the latest Clancy hardcover, I think about it. Hope

I go the same way, I suppose.”

Together in a moment of silence, Alex and the clerk with the wormy-veined temples contemplated

the poor woman’s demise.

Finally the man asked, “Well, what can I do for you?”

Relieved that he wasn’t looking for The Sum of All Fears, Alex said, “Do you happen to have a

Latin dictionary in the store? I just need to translate a passage.”

“Latin?” Again his eyebrows furrowed and the worms squiggled, he was deep in thought. He

walked around the counter and ambled toward the back of the store, his wide frame brushing up against
 25

several books in the photography and arts section, mumbling ‘Latin’ over and over. He turned around once

and said, “How about Greek?”

“No, Latin. The passage is in Latin so I need a Latin dictionary.”

“Ah yes, of course.” Again, the man went back to his mumbling as he scanned the shelves of

dictionaries and foreign language textbooks. “Let’s see. Latin. Here we go.” With pride, the man tapped

the binding with a chubby finger. “Anything else?”

“That will do. Thanks.”

The man wound his way back up to the front and Alex found a folding chair in little nook of self-

help books and opened the massive dictionary. Not sure how or where to start, he decided to just go

through the note left to right, word by word. He sipped his coffee—it tasted good, a pleasant palate acidity,

he supposed—and got down to work.

“Honey? Honey, where are you?” Kate whispered from one aisle over, away awash in a sea of

mysteries. Alex leaned out of his little nook and saw her head turn and peek at him between shelves.

“There you are. He said you were back here,” she said then made her way around the back to his aisle.

“How’s it going? Any luck?”

“Not so much.” Alex looked at his watch. Forty-five minutes had gone by. He was done finding

English equivalents to the Latin words but felt lost in a grammatical fog. Much of what he had jotted down

made little sense. Unlike English, Latin is considered an “inflected” language: a language that relies almost

entirely on changes in the words themselves to indicate their grammatical function in a sentence. One class

of high school Latin was enough to tell him that the language had six cases (while English has essentially

just three), but his recollection of what to do with all the endings on the stem words left him baffled.

You want to hear it now or wait for me to finish?”

“Do I want to hear it now?”

“No.”

After a pause, Kate said, “Alright, I’ll wait, then. . . Hey, maybe they have a book on starting a

coffee shop!”

“Maybe. Go ask.” Alex had a vision of his wife trailing behind the man with the worm-veined

temples listening to his story of killer Clancy books and asking her if instead of something on starting a

coffee shop would she instead be interested in a book on starting a flower shop.

Kate retreated to the front while Alex returned to his work, hunkered down like an ancient Monk

translating an obscure piece of work.

The passage started with, Non omnis moriar. He looked to his notes: Non = not, Omnis = all or

every. But how should he translate ‘moriar’? Mora means delay; morium means character or morals;

morior—to die, wither away, decay; but moror means ‘to stay, remain, reside, linger.’ Which was it?

Dying and withering or staying and lingering? The ending of this word was—what was it called,
 26

declension?—the key to the meaning of the entire sentence. Within the ending was the case, the gender,

the number—the whole enchilada.

In ten minutes, Kate was back with five books in her arms, none of which pertained to coffee or

opening up a shop. “Done yet?” she asked.

“Have a seat, honey. I’ll read it to you.” Alex gave her his chair and with the books in her arms

she looked like an eager schoolgirl sitting in the first row of class.

“Ready?”

“Yes. Read it already, will you?”

“Okay.” Alex ran fingers through his hair and began. “Non omnis moriar.”

“Read it in English, dummy.”

“I know, I know, I was getting to it! Okay, here goes: Not all or every delay of morals will remain

and linger or die and wither.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, so what else?”

“More of the same.” Alex grimaced and thought, damn. He was dismally aware that with his one

class of Latin fifteen years ago, he likely knew less of the language than did a three-year-old baby in Rome

who lived two thousand years ago.

“You can’t translate it, then?”

“Not in a way that would make sense.”

“Excellent, Alex. Now what do we do?”

Suddenly, they heard from behind a shelf of poetry, “You two want to buy the dictionary?” It was

the clerk.

Alex looked at the price on the back: $275. “No thanks.”

“I can give you a deal.” The man was now peeking around the shelf.

“How much?” asked Alex.

“Sir, I just looked at my records and that thing has been tucked back here for fifteen years. I own

a bookstore in Agate Harbor, Minnesota. I have no room left in my shop. A Latin dictionary will not be

missed and I can use the space. Ten bucks.”

“Five,” replied Kate quickly, never one to avoid a chance to haggle.

Alex and Kate walked out of Paige Turner’s Books and Comics weighed down by one five-dollar

Latin dictionary, a twenty-five dollar book on wine tasting, and a historical romance that cost them seven-

fifty.

The drive between Agate Harbor and the cottage was not a long one but it was breathtaking since

Highway 61 ran along the shoreline of Lake Superior for much of the way. The first of the two tunnels had
 27

its name in large letters of stone, just over the entrance: Silver Creek Cliff Tunnel. Inside it, there was lots

of room and bright lights and a curve: very new and exiting things for the underbelly of a million-year old

cliff of hard rock. On the other side were more trees and rocks and creeks and then the second tunnel,

Lafayette Bluff Tunnel. As they sped into it, Kate again craned her neck to look behind them, to see the

gaping entrance grow smaller (something she loved doing in tunnels since she was a kid). Alex slowed the

car and they both ducked and bobbed their heads looking all about, trying to see as much of the tunnel as

they could. Exiting the other side, Kate looked back again. “Yep. Lafayette Bluff,” she read from the

sign.

“Should I turn around?” asked Alex, kidding her.

“No. We can go through again tomorrow. I’m hungry.” Kate patted her belly.

As they neared the Split Rock River, Alex and Kate scrutinized the area where the entrance to

Tudor House might have been, but they saw nothing except trees and grasses and bushes. Then Kate

noticed within a split second the subtle absence of large trees in a slender opening that curved from the road

into the woods. “There!” she exclaimed and pointed, “could that have been it?”

It was already gone. Alex saw nothing but trees and suddenly they were driving over the river

bridge. They both gawked at the mouth of Split Rock River off to the right, imagining a large ship, the

Edenborn, half run aground, half in the water, bashed and dented like a pop can kicked all the way home by

a boy. Because the weather was so clear and calm, Alex could barely envision the panicked men

scrambling and jumping for their lives. He imagined seeing them as if it they were captured on an ancient

newsreel of grainy, black & white film, the scene moving in a herky-jerky, fast-forward fashion.

Barely five minutes later, they turned into the private drive of Stonebrook Cottage and pulled up

next to an old yellow pickup truck. Before they got out, Kate exchanged a look with Alex and he knew

what she was thinking. “Honey,” he said, “he’s really just a worker here. I promise.”

“You don’t know that.”

No, thought Alex, he supposed he didn’t. The huge, strangely dressed man lurked about their

secluded rental cottage with an axe could indeed turn out to be a killer just as easily as the friendly, gentle

giant that Alex guessed him to be. “Okay,” he said, “you take the driver’s seat and lock the doors. I’ll go

check things out. How does that sound?”

“I guess. But don’t get too close to him. If he comes at you, run back to the car and we’ll peel out

of here.”

“Peel?”

“Oh shut up. Just be careful, okay?” Kate kissed her husband, a solid smooch on the lips and sent

him off on his mission.

As Alex approached the northeast side of the cottage, he felt like he was searching for a skinnier,

older version of Lennie in Of Mice and Men. Somewhere out back, he would find the childlike character

hunkered over a fire, eating beans with ketchup or stroking a dead mouse. He would be there anxiously

waiting for George because this cottage that he found was the perfect spot to live off the fat of the land and
 28

not have to take orders from anyone and reap their own harvest. Best of all, they could have rabbits and

Lennie would be in charge of them. And, Alex thought, as long as Lennie mistook Alex for George instead

of a soft, cuddly rabbit, all should be well.

Suddenly, there he was. They were facing each other, twenty feet apart. Reality drew up tight like

shrink-wrap and stopped Alex’s breath. The Lennie character was not carrying a mouse and he did not

have bean juice on his chin. Instead, he wore gloves blackened by fresh dirt and he carried a trowel.

“Hello,” said Alex.

No response. There was uneasiness about the man, like he was not accustomed to people, not

used to conversation. He stood erect but his body swayed like a tall tower even though there was not even

a breeze. He had a leg bent at the knee, positioned in front of him to serve as a brace. His pink scarf hung

limply and his breathing was labored.

“Hi,” said Alex again. “Say, if you’ve been wondering, my wife and I are staying here the full

week.”

The man did not look at Alex and instead scrutinized the ground as if looking for something he

had dropped. He was clenching and unclenching his free hand, and Alex was prepared to “peel” out of

there until the Lennie character looked up and seemed to focus somewhere in the vicinity to the right of

Alex. His large eyes blinked rapidly, his eyelids brushed against sweat dampened strands of hair.

“That’s nice,” said the man in a quiet voice.

Alex suspected that he wanted to be left alone, that all he wanted was to walk back to his truck and

go about his business, whatever that might be. Perhaps tomorrow morning, then, they would see him out

back with a chainsaw. The next day he would be dragging a wood chipper and the day after that he would

have some sticks of dynamite or a sword or something. All this would become a routine.

“My name’s Alex.”

“Hello Alex.”

“So, then . . . what’s you’re name?”

“Paul. Paul is what my Mom calls me. Otherwise, Goat. People around here call me Goat.” The

man still swayed and had shifted his gaze to Alex’s feet and legs.

“So what are you doing here, Paul-Goat?” Alex asked this in the most casual, incidental manner

that he could muster. Kate would have applauded his directness for Alex was not often a direct person.

“Planting peonies.”

Both men looked at Paul Goat’s dirty gloves and he them up, like a child whose hands were

covered in frosting, as proof of his claim.

“Don’t you do that in the spring?”

“Not peonies. It’s best to plant them in the fall. The air temperature is cool and the soil

temperature is warm. The roots need to establish themselves.”

 29

“Oh . . . huh.” Alex focused on a cluster of pine trees and the lake in the distance. It was difficult

to look Paul Goat in the eye because it seemed a violation of his personal space, his privacy. “Do you run

this place?”

“I do some maintenance and upkeep. Mostly outside stuff. There’s a maid who comes for the

inside.”

Alex glanced back at his wife and realized that only he would be in her line of sight; Paul Goat

was around the edge of the cottage. He gave her a quick nod (and, he thought, a very good, nonchalant,

“all is well” nod, at that) to say everything was okay but she still did not get out of the car.

“Well, excuse me Alex, I’m going to get back to work.” Instead of continuing to his truck, Paul

Goat went around back, where he came from.

Alex walked back to the car, to Kate, pleased with himself for having solved the Case of the Tall

Uninvited Guest but Kate looked agitated, her hands firmly grasping the steering wheel. She opened her

door a crack and said, “what the hell was that? Are you okay?

“Yes. Why?”

“Why were you swaying like that? I thought maybe he shot you with a tranquilizer gun and you

were going to collapse. And why were you looking all over the place when you where talking? Are you

sure he didn’t do something to you?”

“No, no. I’m fine. It’s just . . . well, you’ll understand when you meet him. It’s just that he

doesn’t look at you when you’re talking with him. And he has a hard time keeping his tall frame still, I

guess. Was I really swaying, too?”

“Yes.”

“It must be infectious, then. A subconscious reaction, like talking to someone who’s blind. When

you’re talking to a blind person, do you look in their eyes?”

“I don’t know anybody who’s blind.”

“My friend—you remember Tony?—well, his brother was blind. At first, when I talked to him,

I’d always look to his eyes but then it hit me; why am I looking to his eyes? They’re not doing anything,

not telling me anything. So I quit it. I started to look at whatever I wanted, just let my eyes roam free. I

liked it. I was liberating. The funny thing is, me and Tommy always had fantastic conversations. I felt as

if I didn’t have to put on a show or focus so much on what he was physically doing when he talked. It was

just mind to mind, like a psychiatrist and a patient, a priest and a penitent. You know?”

“Hmm. So did he absolve all your sins or give you some Prozac?”

“Funny. Let’s go in, I’m hungry.”

After lunch, Alex sat on the couch with the Latin passage, the dictionary, and the Stonebrook

journal. He kept rereading his translation, penciling in changes, trying to make sense of it. Kate was at the

dining table with a mess of pictures from their trip to Europe, stickers, and colored paper, and was busy
 30

cutting, trimming, writing, and taping, assembling these things into a scrapbook. Paul Goat was out back

planting peonies.

Frustrated with his lack of progress, Alex strolled out to the porch. Paul Goat was in the distance

stooping over a sapling, tying a brace around its spindly trunk.

The man, thought Alex, apparently had an entirely different understanding of the purpose of

clothing than did nearly every other human being. White cowboy boots and green plaid pants, had such a

combination been worn before? And the tan burlap-like top with little straps in front that secured around

large brown buttons. As strange as these articles were independently, collectively they were remarkable.

Did he perhaps wear them, begrudgingly, out of necessity? A man of his height, Alex supposed, could not

be picky, especially up here in the north woods where there was no Big and Tall Man’s shop. But the odd

thing was that they did not fit anyway. If you were going to wear something that didn’t fit, why not opt for

something that at least sort of went together or was, at least, not so outlandish? The pants were too short,

the burlap thing was too short, and how could the small, thin pink scarf be explained? Certainly there were

other scarf options. It looked like a dead flamingo wrapped around his neck. Homosexuality, was that the

explanation? Or, the scarf, the whole ensemble, was perhaps some kind of statement?

Somehow, like the clothes themselves, these explanations did not seem to fit. Unlike a person

with no fashion sense, a person who wears things that are old or mismatching (or both), this man’s getup

could only be described as chaotic.

Paul Goat stood up, his tall body dwarfing the sapling like an outed Paul Bunyan hovering over

the forest. Then he headed through the trees, out of sight, to the northeast.

“Honey,” said Alex, I’m going outside. His wife mumbled something that was sounded like an

acknowledgement and he passed through the screen door of the porch, scampered through the trees where

Paul Goat had disappeared, and found a narrow path. Two minutes later, he heard the whispering of a

brook and there he was, sitting Indian-style on the ground, hammering in a tiny wooden stake to support the

wire fencing around another sapling. At first, Alex stood at a distance, not certain if it was okay to advance

but then he took a deep breath and walked up right beside him and kneeled to the ground.

“Hi there.” He felt like a naïve boy scout watching a troop leader who had just gone insane.

“What kind of tree is that?”

Paul pulled a length of wire taut and hammered another stake. Tap-tap-tap. “Northern white

cedar.”

After a few seconds, Paul asked, “So what’s the screen for?”

“Protection.”

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

“From what?”

“To keep the white-tailed deer away.”

Tap, tap. Tap-tap-tap.

 31

“I don’t mean to sound cruel or anything, but why do we care if the white-tailed deer eats the

northern white cedar? They have to eat, don’t they?”

“True, but they can eat them elsewhere. You see, white cedars are good to form cooling canopies

over streams. They keep them from eroding and give fish cover by overhanging the water.”

“So are other trees, though, right? Why not a maple or a birch or an oak?” Alex thought he was

onto something.

“The white cedar is different. Once established, it lives for centuries—up to 500 years. When it

dies and falls into the stream, it provides cover for decades more because they rot slowly.”

Alex looked at the brook. It was not big but he supposed it was large enough for fish. “So what

kind of fish does this stream have?”

“Not much of any kind at the moment . . . too much fishing in Superior, too many deer and rabbit,

too few northern white cedar along the banks. But they’ll come back.”

They were silent for awhile and Paul Goat took his supplies to another sapling. As he worked, he

said, “what do you hear in a brook, Alex?”

“Hmm?” Alex had been staring into a pool, daydreaming. He assumed he hadn’t heard the

question properly.

“What do you hear in a brook? What does it tell you?”

“I don’t know . . . I hear water. I hear rocks. I hear movement.” Alex tossed a pebble into a little

pool and it made a light, high-pitched plop sound. “What do you hear?”

Tap-tap. Tap.

“Laughter. The laughter of little girls. To me a brook is what you say it is, but its more. It has

innocence. It is unassuming and gentle and playful.” Paul Goat paused from his work and tilted his head

toward Alex yet held his eyes on the water and rocks before them. “Can you see it?”

His eyes were alive with passion, which unnerved Alex. Paul had been so melancholy until now.

Alex had to think that perhaps he was finally warming up to a friendship and exposing his true self. “See

what?”

“Life. The essence of life. By my way of thinking, life is not embodied by a mountain, not

enveloped by a forest, not encompassed by a sea, as many people believe. No. None of that. It is captured

here, in a brook—in this brook, this tributary. The water flowing and gurgling before you is fed by the

mountains, it sustains the forest and feeds the sea. It starts from nothing, carries with it, hope, and leads to

something grander.”

“Sounds like the answer to a riddle,” said Alex. He lay on the ground, resting on his elbows, his

legs stretched out. He looked upstream and envisioned two little girls jumping from stone to stone across

the brook. He felt silly doing so, but he let himself go. They were peasant girls from an earlier time,

perhaps centuries ago and wore dresses of drab, rough wool. Their bare feet hopped and skipped as they

bounded about. They smiled and giggled, happy for each other, happy to be playing in the brook. Alex

realized his vision was historically inaccurate since there would not have been girls, at least Caucasian girls
 32

playing by this brook even 150 years ago. But then, this could be any brook, and these girls were just girls

and he heard them now the same as Paul Goat. He knew he would never listen to rushing water ever again

without hearing them and seeing them skip from stone to stone.

“Can I help you with the stakes?” asked Alex.

“I have just the one hammer, but thanks.”

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

Alex laid back, locked his fingers under his head and looked up through trees to the late afternoon

sky and he remembered his Latin passage. “Non omnis moriar . . .” he said quietly, contemplating.

“What?” asked Paul Goat.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing. That’s just from a note I found in the cottage . . . a passage in Latin.”

“I will not die entirely?” asked Paul Goat. He stood up, done securing this sapling. He touched

some needles with a quizzical expression. “Who will not die entirely?”

“You know Latin?” Alex was amazed.

“Some.”

Alex stood up and brushed himself off. “Paul, will you come inside? I want to show you

something.”

At the large table, Kate had just finished her scrapbooking for the day and was putting her things

away when in came Alex with Paul Goat. The tall man was carrying a hammer. After a hasty introduction,

Alex grabbed his stuff from the couch and brought it to the dining table. “Please, have a seat, Paul,” said

Alex.

The man folded himself into a chair and placed his hands on the table, ready for his task.

“Can we get you anything to drink, Mr. Goat?” asked Kate, standing behind her husband.

“Honey,” said Alex, “actually, Goat is a nickname, not a last name.”

“That’s okay,” said the man. “Mr. Paul Goat is perfectly fine, Kate. “Nothing to drink, thanks,

but could I perhaps have a pencil and scrap of paper?”

Alex shrugged and said “Okay, Mr. Paul Goat it is,” as he gingerly unfolded the note from

Jonathon Mead and presented it to the man along with a piece of paper and a pen.

Paul Goat held it loosely in his long, quivering fingers, studying it—his large eyes darted left to

right, gravitating down the paper. He did this twice and was quiet for so long that Alex started to wonder if

he really knew Latin or if he was more like himself—someone who just knew a few expressions. Three

times he referenced the dictionary and jotted notes.

Alex and Kate stared at him, waiting, wondering. It was not lost on them that just yesterday they

cowered in fear from the sight of the man and here they were, today, inviting him in to sit at their dinner

table.
 33

“I will not die entirely . . .” Paul Goat read suddenly and without notice and so startled Kate that

she let out a little squeak. His voice flowed thick and slow, like honey; it was deep and sweet and spread

across them and made them feel warm.

“I will not die entirely. For as long as these written words exist and can be read, I remain alive. If

you have discovered and can comprehend these words, I thank you, for a portion of myself and my

thoughts have consequently been reborn and I am again young and . . . shiny—.”

Paul Goat looked up from the paper and apologized that shiny may not be the right word, that he

was taking liberty when an accurate translation was difficult. Then he continued, “—even though my age

now is old and I am dying. But enough of me. My intent in writing is to present a foreigner.”

“A foreigner?” asked Kate, interrupting.

Paul Goat again flipped through pages of the dictionary. His fingers moved nimbly, expertly and

traced to a word on a page. “If not a foreigner, then perhaps a stranger?”

Alex and Kate had pulled their chairs up close next to Paul Goat and Alex looked at the word in

the dictionary and read it aloud to Kate. “Extrarius: outward, external/strange, unrelated, foreign.” They

both thought on this, searching for a more appropriate word. “No,” continued Alex. It suddenly seemed

obvious. “Mystery! He meant, a mystery!”

Paul Goat resumed his translation, “My intent in writing this message is to present a mystery. In

the year of 1905, a great storm buried a man. This man was lost to the ages as if he never existed, yet he

remains here forever. Within this man’s heart there is a box. Within the box is a stone and a key. Use

them to locate and open something deeper and more substantial . . . for a passage to the past is a passage to

the future. To find your way, you must deduce potentialities, balance probabilities, and chose your path

using equal doses of intellect and passion.

Thusly, My Dearest Reader, within this message that you have found (congratulations!), there is

an insight to ponder and a clue to consider. Use them together to guide you in your sleuthing.

“Signed, Jonathon Mead.”

Paul Goat set the paper down gently and no one spoke, save silence, so enamored and

overwhelmed were they with the mystery they had stumbled upon.

Finally, Dan announced meekly, “we already know the answer to this one, don’t we, Kate? From

Ben Horning’s entry in the journal. He told us about the guy who went down with the Madeira just off

Gold Rock Cliff in the great storm of 1905.”

“But what exactly are we supposed to find?” she replied. “He also said if we located this guy,

there would be some sort of key to history and life. What does that mean?” Kate suddenly wrinkled her

nose. “His body isn’t still down there, is it? Paul, do you know?”

Paul Goat felt uneasy with his new friends so close to him, staring at him. Their warmth, their

breath, their presence was confining. He rose and walked into the great room to catch his breath and look

outside through the porch windows. “I remember the story of the Madeira however I’m not sure what
 34

happened with the dead sailor. I think he was either found washed ashore or, if he was trapped in the

wreck, it isn’t very deep, they would certainly have retrieved it. The biggest piece of the hull rests on a

slope—between twenty feet to forty feet of water.”

“So how do we find a body that isn’t there? Is all this just a metaphor then?” They both looked

toward but not directly at Paul Goat as if he would be able to provide an explanation.

“I don’t know,” said he.

Alex and Kate looked at each other, confused. Alex held the paper close to his eyes as if it might

contain a watermark of answers, but nothing more than the grainy texture of the paper was illuminated. He

said “so what’s the meaning of this note, then, other than providing a clue that doesn’t seem to make

sense?”

“It seems it’s a first mystery so obviously there’s more. A series of them with a sequence,”

replied Kate.

“But is that what this is about? A clue then a discovery, a clue, another discovery, and so on? It

seems there should be a message in them. Right? Something meaningful. Otherwise we’re just mice in a

maze. In the end, maybe there’s a piece of cheese or a cracker jacks surprise. Fun, maybe, but big deal.

Why bother.”

“Well, he did say there was an insight within the passage, too. One thing that struck me as odd

was the part where he wrote that because we are reading this, he felt alive, like he was reborn or

something.”

Suddenly, Alex’s eyes perked up. “Like we woke him up . . . Like we woke up his cottage.”

“Alex, now just stop it. You’re spooking me. If you get me thinking this place is haunted, we

won’t stay another night.”

“I didn’t mean it quite like that.” Alex paused, collecting his convoluted thoughts as best he

could. “To me, the idea of a ghost or spirit in the popular sense is a shallow notion. What I meant was that

by us reading his words we now have an awareness of him as someone who was more than just some dead

guy. As if his passage stirred us to think of him as a person who not only lived, but was someone who

thought and dreamed; someone who contemplated life.

“When you think of dead people,” Alex continued, “you often think of them as being just that,

dead, don’t you? Memories of a person that you conjure from time to time and perhaps you are sad they

are gone, even grief stricken, but that’s about as far as you take it so that’s all they really are and will

forever remain. Dead. To truly appreciate and keep the notion of someone alive; by that I mean their

beliefs, hopes, insights--their treasures; don’t you have to do more than that? Don’t you have to give

yourself the liberty to sense them in away that makes them seem like they’re still with you?”

Alex recognized that Kate and Paul probably thought what he was saying made no sense at all

(after all, he wasn’t sure it made sense, either) but he continued anyway, despite his growing sense of

embarrassment. “To really feel them and relish their existence and what they brought to life and meant to

you, you need to open a channel. If you don’t, they detach from you, like the Madeira was detached by the
 35

Edenborn, and they drift away. When you lose a relative to death, it is important to keep a channel open so

your loved one’s spirit can sail with you and not be lost in a storm.

With rapt attention, Kate stared at Alex. Even Paul Goat was looking at him sideways.

In their silence, Alex added, “maybe that’s what Jonathon Mead wants us to discover or, at least,

uncover from within ourselves. That people must have the c4apacity and willingness within them to open a

channel with someone who’s not physically with them otherwise it will never happen. As to where exactly

the insight may exist in all this, I have no idea.”

Finally, Paul Goat spoke up and said, “I didn’t know Mr. Mead. I started working here after he

passed away but I suspect from his message that he must have known that by the time someone read his

words, if ever someone did, he would be long dead. Since he didn’t have any children, maybe he felt a

degree of meaninglessness if, once gone, he would have been forgotten forever. When you think of it, isn’t

that a more troubling prospect that the prospect of actually dying? So, simply to write what he did must

have consoled him—to know that he had at least planted something that might one day be unearthed, a

buried seed waiting for a distant spring. Only, it seems, his seed, his something, is his very consciousness;

his beliefs, hopes, and insights that lie hidden here at Stonebrook. I think he wants to share them but, like

Alex said, to even attempt to instill such lofty, intangible things, first a channel must be opened.”

Now it was Kate’s turn to speak up. “For starters, you two are nuts. But even you were not

speaking complete gibberish, can one of you sum it up in a way that at least sounds like it makes sense?”

Alex looked from the dining room table to the great room that dwarfed even Paul Goat. It had,

obviously, greatness in size, but it also had a greatness in character. So, it seemed, did Jonathon Mead. “I

think the insight that we are to get from his message is the awareness of the transcendence of the human

spirit. When the heart stops beating, the spirit goes to heaven but it can also stay here. I have never

actually thought of it before but I guess that is my definition of what a spirit is. The co-mingling of the

essence of someone who’s gone with a person who has an openness to receiving them. The spirit of a

deceased mother or father or brother or daughter. The one who’s presence you swear you felt while

praying at their grave, the one who seemed to caress your cheek when you looked at a picture of them at

some years-old event, the one who once spoke to you and steered you right when you had intended to do

wrong. Are they really there? Of course not. But in those instances, you’ve opened up a channel to the

spirit they’ve left behind for you, you’ve kept them alive.

“Look,” continued Alex, “since Jonathon Mead had no children, nobody to keep him alive, maybe

he desired more than anything to reach out to anyone who came to his beloved Stonebrook with the hope

that one day someone would revive him and learn from him whatever it was he wished to teach, to pass on.

He loved mysteries, we have a mystery. He loved life, we have an insight into life. And he’s intertwining

these things, weaving them together, as if we must unravel his insights of life to make sense of the clues

and solve the mystery. In his heart, perhaps the guy believed your spirit can live on through others. This

could be why, within the heart of the man who died in the storm, there is relevance. There is this box with

a stone and a key.

 36

There was another long pause after which Kate finally realized that Alex was done explaining his

theory. “Isn’t that a massive stretch? This link of yours between your assertion of what Mr. Mead held

dear in his heart to placing a real or theoretical stone and a key in the heart of a dead man?” she asked.

“Maybe. But speculation is all we have at the moment. We know there’s a tie between the insight

and the clue so it’s at least a starting point.”

“So,” she said, “this is what is meant by ‘handing onto others, the fruit of our contemplation.’”

“Why, yes. Well done, Kate. Now you’re with us.”

“How on earth do you guys get all that from a few sentences?”

“I don’t know,” said Alex. “Isn’t that what you get out of it?”

“Maybe. What you said sounds nice, Alex, but its also pretty freaky. I don’t know if I want you

to be right or wrong. Anyway, even with the insight, we’re still left with a clue that doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, I suppose we are,” said Alex and he rubbed his face. “For the moment.”

When Paul Goat left it was 6:30. He said no to the invitation to stay for dinner but that he would

be back in the morning around 10:00 for more outside work to prepare the cottage for winter. Too exited to

even think about dinner, Kate said, “Let’s walk up to Gold Rock Cliff, honey! See what we can see.”

“When should we eat?”

“Later. We can go out to eat tonight. Let’s go before it gets too dark. Paul said you could see the

Madeira from the surface on a bright day if the water was calm. Let’s go look real quick, okay?”

With the sun ebbing in the West, Alex and Kate emerged from the shadow of the cottage into a

pinkish orange glow that made everything look leaner and taller. The large clump of birch trees in the back

yard was a thicket of elongated sticks and their white bark took on an eerie phosphorescent glow. They

followed Paul Goat’s directions, found the meandering deer trail, and followed it to the southwest. The

trail quickly became covered with pine needles as the forest grew denser. Evergreens drew up tight to the

trail and Alex pushed aside the lowest branches and held them open for Kate, who was right on his heels, to

pass through. In addition to the pines, there were a few aspen at this stretch of the path. In a gentle breeze

from the lake, the remaining dead leaves clinging to the branches whispered to them a dry, parched

whisper, the brittle leaves tinkling against each other. They seemed to speak of November storms that were

coming and of the cold and snow that would follow. Alex thought that they must have whispered the same

things to Samuel Tudor and Jonathon Mead and before them perhaps Indians or voyageurs. Around a

bend, the ground elevated, their steps became shorter, their breath harder. Finally, they emerged into an

opening high over Lake Superior, they emerged on Gold Rock Cliff.

“This has to be it, right?” asked Kate.

“Yes, this is it.”

 37

The view of the lake, sky, and shoreline was stark and humbling. Far offshore, there were

gathering dark clouds and, on the lake, flecks of white rode the crests of larger waves. To the southwest,

perhaps half a mile away, was Split Rock Lighthouse perched on its cliff. The wind was strong and loud in

their ears and Alex and Kate walked with great care to the edge of Gold Rock and looked sixty-plus feet

straight down. With the sun setting in the hills behind them, the water there was in the shadows of the cliff,

and in the fading daylight, the surface was dark—nearly black. Alex could sense the Madeira hulking

below the surface but found it difficult to imagine the magnitude of the storm that crashed it into the face of

the cliff until it busted in two. And the vision of 10 scared, exhausted men, perhaps in this very spot,

furiously casting a rope to their mate in the dim, predawn light, drenched with water, cut and bruised and

broken, nearly blinded by driving snow, hearing the ill-fated man’s wind-muffled shouts, maybe catching a

last glimpse of him as the mast he clung to dropped into the gloom below was nearly surreal. Certainly, it

was not of the comforting world that Alex grew up in.

Kate squeezed Alex’s hand. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that must have been one hell of a storm.”

“Me too. I feel sorry for those men. For the one who didn’t make it. Let’s head back, Alex. It’s

getting dark. We don’t have a flashlight.”

“One more minute, honey.” Alex looked at the solitary gnarled, wind-swept old pine next to him

and wondered if it was here those many years ago. Scarcely taller than he, it bore only a few clumps of

needles. It would have been a pitiful excuse for a tree if it had not survived here, alone, on the unforgiving

precipice of Gold Rock. Thusly, it bore an appearance of a defiant pride not unlike that of a boxer. It’s

branches, arms; it’s tufts of needles, gloved hands; the seasons, rounds of a never-ending match. The little

tree had faced its adversity head on and still stood.

On their return, they talked about Jonathon Mead’s note and how they might go about finding a

man who was lost to the ages. If Paul Goat was right and the man’s body was retrieved, he was likely

buried somewhere back in Michigan or Illinois or wherever he was from. They decided that when they got

back to the cottage, Alex would use the cell phone to call his Dad. His Dad could get out his book on Lake

Superior shipwrecks and give them the scoop of exactly what happened with the Madeira and what happen

to the man who lost his life.

By the time they reached the cottage, it was cloaked in darkness. And for the first time, after he

had allowed the events of the day to completely sink in, Alex wondered if the collective sanity of Jonathon

Mead and Benjamin Horning was also cloaked in darkness. Perhaps they were attempting to awaken

ghosts that should best be left sleeping.

Kate was in the kitchen while Alex sat at the table with a pencil and a sheet of paper and dialed his

parents on the cell. “Hi Dad, how’s it going? . . . fantastic . . . not right on the lake but with the leaves

down we can see it through the trees very easily . . . uh huh . . . say, Dad, I’m on the cell . . . no. No

problem. Hey, the reason I’m calling—can you grab that Lake Superior shipwreck book of yours and look
 38

up a ship called the Madeira? . . . yes, that one . . . when you have it handy, give me a call back, okay? . . .

yep . . . sounds good, Dad. Bye.”

Alex hung up. “He’s checking. He’s going to call right back.”

“Good,” said Kate, joining Alex at the table. She looked worried. “Then if everything sounds

normal and it turns out this dead sailor was retrieved and is not, for some un-Godly reason, buried here, . . .

can we just put this thing to rest?” She was perched on the edge of a dining room chair and looked intently

at her husband. “I mean, it’s getting weird, honey. That Latin stuff spooks me; I don’t like to hear it. It

sounded evil when Paul Goat was saying it, like it was a chant to the devil or something. Don’t you find

the whole confusing mess about this cottage a bit unnerving? Not to mention that these guys were probably

no more than just a couple hermits who for nearly four decades—can you believe that, Alex? Four

decades!—got together to get drunk on brandy, write hieroglyphics in the sand and attempt to solve the

mysteries of the universe.

Kate shook her head and continued, “I like mysteries well enough but I don’t like strangers—dead

strangers—telling us to find the body of a man who drowned in Lake Superior a century ago so we can

move ahead like this is a twisted new version of Survivor. For cripes sake, Alex, this is you and me and

there are no cameras around and no commercial breaks. This could be dangerous. We’re deep in the

woods at a big, old cottage. Who knows, maybe all this stuff is part of a serial killer’s game—whoever’s

dumb enough to get sucked in, ends up in a dry suit and one air tank, handcuffed inside the Madeira.”

Alex was twirling the pencil between his fingers, thinking.

“You know?” asked Kate, pressing him.

“Yes, I know.”

“You mean too much to me, Alex. When your Dad calls back, if his book says that sailor was

taken away from here and given a proper burial, then lets put this to rest. We have five days left here.

Let’s just relax and enjoy them. I just want to vegetate. Deal?”

“What if he tells us something interesting, though? Something that jives with what Jon or Ben

wrote?”

“Then,” said Kate. “Then, its up to you . . . Deal?”

Alex smiled and took Kate’s hand. “Okay. Deal.”

The cell phone rang. They were expecting it but Kate jumped anyway.

Alex answered, “Hello? . . . Hi Dad . . . okay, yes, . . . yes, just read the part about when it sank.

All we want to know about is the accident itself and what happened to the guy who died.”

There was a long pause on Alex’s end as his Dad read the key bits of the accident. Kate watched

Alex jot down notes and nod his head and occasionally say “uh-huh” or “yes” or “okay.”

Finally, Alex set the pencil down and looked at his watch. Kate knew they were wrapping it up.

“Okay then, Dad . . . Well, not sure how to explain it; it’s quite a little story really. They have one

of those journal books here for guests to write in about their stay . . . Yes, like that. Well, Kate read an

entry that was about ten pages long. Written by a friend of the couple who used to own this place. He
 39

wrote that this is one of the oldest and largest remaining cottages in Minnesota . . . When? 1900, I think

(Kate nodded her agreement). Anyway, this guy wrote that when the Madeira sank—which is only about a

half mile from here—when it sank, all the survivors managed to find their way here and they huddled next

to the fireplace . . . Yes, yes, probably hypothermia . . . The guy also wrote that this place, its called

Stonebrook, has a lot of secrets or something.”

Kate corrected Alex.

“Yes, Dad, Kim just said that what is written is that this place has ‘history, stories, mysteries, and

puzzles,’ and today we found the first, ah, I guess it would be considered a mystery. There was this note

scribbled in Latin buried in a book of Monks. . . No. There’s a guy here that translated it for us. The note

is from the owner of this place and it says that we found his first clue. Now, here’s why we called you:

what he wrote was that we had to find the man who was buried in a great storm, the man who died on the

Madeira, to find a box. This would lead us to learn about something deeper and more substantial. Things

about the past and the future, I guess. There’s apparently supposed to be a key buried with this man . . . I

don’t think a real key. More like a metaphorical key, I suppose: the sort that unlocks history and life . . .

No, of course not . . . No, Dad, we have no plans of driving to Cleveland and digging up the man’s grave.”

After Alex said this, he sighed and Kate laughed and clapped her hands. She knew it meant that

they were done with the quest and she was relieved. She and Alex had a deal and they could now have an

ordinary, fast food type of vacation like normal people. Characters like Jon Mead and Ben Horning were

of the past, of the twentieth century, and as far as she was concerned, best left there. Whatever obscure

keys they had to offer would remain forever buried as layers of time settled upon them until they were too

deep to ever be found.

When Alex hung up, Kate walked to his chair and hugged him from behind. She kissed his neck

and said, “Honey, let’s go out to eat.”

The restaurant was on Sawtooth Road tucked on the lakeside slope of Wolf Ridge Mountain. Alex

didn’t see the entrance until Kate touched his arm and pointed to the small fish-shaped sign that read, The

Lake Effect Grill. It had started raining so Alex dropped Kate at the door, parked the car, then hustled

through large, splattering raindrops to join her in the entryway. Inside, small lamps in alcoves along the

walls cast faint, yellow pools of light and classical musical emanated from speakers that hung from the

ceiling. The aroma of garlic lingered and became stronger as the hostess led them through a corridor along

which hung old paintings and photographs of the area. The dining area was L shaped with stone ceilings

and walls. Each occupied table had a lit candle.

There were husbands with wives and boyfriends with girlfriends eating fresh caught fish and wild

rice or steak and potatoes or large plates of pasta. The couples were suspended on the fringes of their little
 40

pools of candlelight, only their faces wading in the shallows of it, peaking, so they could lean in and see

each other and speak in intimate, unheard voices.

Kate was grateful that the mysteries of the Madeira and Stonebrook were behind them so they

would not distractions—distractions for Alex—and a preoccupation for the rest of the week. As Dan

ordered a bottle of wine, she thought about what they could do instead; hike Oberg Mountain, have lunch at

the Koho Café. Walk the shoreline, hold hands. Alex could skip rocks while she sat on the rocks to watch

and count the skips. They could talk about having kids, about their future. On the path from the lake to the

cottage, Alex could help her up that tricky, steep part, and when she made it, he could grab her and hold her

tight. The evenings, they could spend inside at Stonebrook, in front of a fire, in bed.

Indeed, they did have a romantic evening at The Lake Effect. As the ate, they talked about their

wedding day and Kate giggled at the recollection of Alex slipping during their “first song” at the reception

dance with everyone watching and blowing bubbles. Throughout the night, his groomsmen and the ushers

had turned it into a new dance move; instead of ‘The Twist’ or ‘The Worm,’ they did, ‘The Alex,’ and

periodically fell awkwardly to the floor in the middle of songs.

After dinner, Alex dipped into their pool of candlelight and reached across the table, held Kate’s

hands and asked, “So, what was the most romantic moment of our honeymoon?”

She stared at him, wide-eyed, thinking. The three weeks in Europe had been a whirlwind dream of

castles and cathedrals, Bed & Breakfasts in quaint towns and hotels in cities like London and Amsterdam

and Prague. “I think it was that evening in Prague at the opera and walking the Charles Bridge.”

“Not the Shakespeare play? At The Globe in London?”

“No. Alex, it was The Two Noble Kinsmen,” she said in a whiney voice. That friendship versus

love theme and all that fighting and dyeing doesn’t appeal to me. Too tragic. I don’t know what men see

in Shakespeare.” Then, with a glint in her eye, Kate asked, “so, what was you’re most romantic moment?”

“Kingussie.”

“The Highlands?” Kate was surprised. “Why?”

“I don’t know exactly. It just felt right there. Comfortably romantic, if there is such a thing. Like

what an older couple might feel if—”

“Are you saying you think we’re old? That’s not romantic,” said Kate, then sipped her wine.

“Not at all. I mean, it was as if, standing next to that loch, Loch Gynack, all by ourselves with

nobody in sight and hills all around us, it was as if . . .” Alex grabbed his glass and twirled it gently,

looking for the right words.

“As if what?”

“It felt like we had been together for years and years, like we had all that accumulated love within

us, and yet we were young, we were newlyweds. Maybe it was the ruggedness of the area. The land

looked so old there and had so much character and depth and understanding; like an elderly couple who had

been together their whole life would have, I suppose. Silly, huh?”
 41

“No, beautiful. That’s beautiful. Do you think it’s because your great grandfather came from

Scotland? Maybe you felt him there, or his parents,” said Kate. Then smiling, she added, “In the back of

your mind, maybe you envisioned your ancestors standing in that very spot next to the loch as we did.

Maybe they made love in the glen behind the trees, too.”

“Kate, —”

“Well? Am I right?” Kate crossed her arms and smiled her knowing smile.

“Yes. Of course. You’re always right, honey.” Alex returned the smile and extended his glass.

“To comfortable romance and my wife always being right.”

Kate lifted her glass to his; Chink.

“I’ll drink to that. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Around 10:00, they pulled up to Stonebrook cottage. The rain had lessened as if it had grown

weary with itself and was ready to turn in for the night. The cold, tiny raindrops on the walk from the car

in the driveway to the front door were barely perceptible, as if the moisture suspended in mid-air, like

vapor, instead of falling.

Alex and Kate decided against starting a fire in the fireplace and instead decided to share the

warmth of touch, the warmth of the bed, and one more glass of wine. The perfect end to a perfect evening,

thought Kate. As Alex went to the kitchen for the wine and a small bowl of grapes, she braced herself

against a chill and vaguely wondered where the thermostat was. She strolled about looking at the walls and

pictures and antique furniture. At the dining room table, she scanned Alex’s notes from the conversation

with his father that was only hours ago and yet seemed so distant and foreign—like a chapter from a book

of someone else’s life: someone’s life of excitement and intrigue that was interesting but better, she

thought, left as the product of some writer’s imagination confined between book covers where it belonged.

A book you could close. With reality, you could try to shut it out but it was still there in the morning,

staring you in the face when you woke up.

Kate brushed her fingers over the paper and picked it up from a corner. She admired her

husband’s penmanship not for its neatness—it was an ungainly scrawl that even a doctor would ridicule—

but for the creativity and uniqueness of the individual it portrayed. The letters, although nearly

unrecognizable, looked as if they somehow floated over the paper; the slants and swirls were short and

uneven like strokes in an impressionistic painting. Her husband was perhaps the most right-brained, least

organized thinker she had ever known. On the other hand, he was amazingly adept at imagining, at

solving, at grasping the big picture in an instant. His preferences leaned toward lush harmonies and subtle

rhythms, in capturing the unusual in the usual. She herself was nearly the opposite. She relied on the

details—a “just the facts sort of ma’am,” as her Dad had always said—and diligently talked through them

in a logical manner to reach a logical conclusion. At times, then, she became frustrated with Alex and his
 42

inclination to jump ahead and grasp for answers because to her that wasn’t playing by the rules, that wasn’t

coloring inside the lines.

She focused on his jottings, at the details his Dad had relayed to him from the shipwreck book.

She remembered watching Alex on the phone listening to his Dad, laboring to get down every pertinent

detail. This time, the details were timeworn and gritty and colorful, they were right up his alley. Alex, she

knew, had wanted the strange things they were discovering to be real because they tapped his genius like

nothing else had ever done. This mystery of the mind was one that he sensed and felt and touched in his

own unique way.

She could make out words here and there: schooner-barge . . . grain, lumber, iron ore . . . Nov. 28,

1905 . . . 3:30 a.m—towline to Edenborn snapped . . . Madeira to cast anchor and ride out storm . . .

Anchors discovered intact on the bow . . . 5:30 a.m., Madeira strikes Gold Rock . . . 10-man crew; Fred

Benson—hero—jumps to 60-foot-high cliff, climbs to top, saves all mates but one! . . . Survivors suffer

from exposure . . . rescued two days later by tug Edna G. Edna G. recovers body of lost mate, remains

returned to Ohio.

This last notation, “remains returned to Ohio,” Alex had underlined, circled, and crossed out. He

had not portrayed it at the time but Kate now realized how frustrated he must have been that Jon Mead’s

clue turned out to be a dead-end, a scam. She also now understood that Alex felt taken, drawn in by the

slight of hand of a would-be magician who claimed things that he wanted to believe but were not true.

The wine already poured, Kate heard her husband open the refrigerator for the grapes. Then a

subtle uneasiness tickled her brain. She again scanned his notes, there was something wrong. She reread

everything. There it was. He had dictated from his Dad that there was a ten-man crew and one man went

down with the ship. Clearly then, one man made it to shore. Was that right?

Kate opened the journal to Benjamin’s entry and reread his recollection of the Madeira wreck:

. . . But the Madeira did not cast anchor. Instead she floundered. She was rolled

and tossed and drifted shoreward for two hours. Captain John Dissette had no idea

where they were. At 5:30 a.m., in the dim early light, there was a great crash that sent

shudders through the steel vessel. To the horror of the crewmen, The Madeira’s hull was

being pounded broadside against the base of Gold Rock Cliff! Seconds counted for

hours as the ship’s hull pounded broadside against the rocky cliff with the force and

sound of cannon shots, until it finally broke apart. The eleven-man crew would have

perished . . .

Eleven-man crew? Could that be? Or, was Benjamin wrong. She continued reading for she now

recalled a bit of related information:

After several days, when the toll was tallied, the Pittsburgh Steamship Company

had on its ledgers the loss of two men; one from the Madeira and one from the Edenborn.

This is also what historical record states . . . but ledgers and records can be dead wrong.
 43

Kate’s heart raced and she held a hand to her chest. What did that mean exactly? Was the

discrepancy of any consequence? Could it be attributed to a careless or intentional error of Benjamin’s or

even a typo made by the book’s editors? Or did it mean, as was most definitely implied by Ben Horning,

that history had the number of crewmen incorrect and the number of deaths incorrect. How many deaths,

then, Kim wondered. Could there really have been a second death on the Madeira—a death that was never

recorded?

Kate wondered how on earth the shipwreck book documented a ten men crew for the Madeira if it

had eleven. Then even though all was quiet, a voice seemed to come to her, the voice of Benjamin

Horning. A voice that reverberated through the great room as if it were an open channel. “Because, my

dear, historical record can be dead wrong. Because there were eleven men on the ship that night and not

only the first mate died. Your mystery here, my sweet child, is real.”

In her heart, Kate did not doubt that what they had started to uncover here was something special.

She also knew that when she told her husband of this tiniest of shreds of a discrepancy that he missed, he

would smack his forehead, upset with himself for not catching the disparity. He would get immersed again.

No more romantic nights, no lovemaking, no relaxation for relaxation’s sake. Perhaps, she thought, she

was worrying excessively but she wanted to worry excessively. It helped justify her fear that this mystery,

this quest, was dangerous. Because when she told Alex that there were perhaps eleven men on the boat and

perhaps, therefore, that more than one man was killed, he would dive into it with such zeal, he would not

look first to see how deep the water was. Maybe it would be deep and warm and lovely . . . maybe it would

be shallow, cold, and rocky.

Carrying the bowl of grapes and their wine, Alex caught Kate’s look of concern before she was

able to tuck it away. “What?” he said, “What is it?”

“Nothing, honey.” She decided that tonight was their night. Tonight would not be dictated by the

likes of dead men and shipwrecks. It would be her night to love her husband. Her time with him before he

went off to foreign lands to fight his mind battles. For, what would she do if he didn’t make it back?

Tomorrow morning she would show him his draft papers, give him a big kiss, and off he would go. The

one consolation was that she was going with him. A lover tucked in the knapsack of her soldier who was

trapped behind enemy lines. She could whisper in his ear—don’t open that door; there’s something behind

those bushes; get out of the cottage, the enemy is at hand! She could steer him clear of all the details that

he could not see. “Let’s go up to bed, okay?”

Kate took the bowl of grapes from Alex’s hand and ate one slowly, at first rolling it on her tongue

and then nibbling it. Upstairs her passion lit a fire, her love created a storm.
 44

Day 3 Tudor House

More to come.