The Right Thing

The wreckage from the crash was spread on both sides of the hairpin turn and the explosion had blown chunks of the pickup truck into the bay. The flames were visible from The Point, twelve miles away. Oh, Lord, Nana said wearily, another one's gone.

The factory whistle was blowing at regular intervals and the bells from both churches were ringing. All over the island, fishermen and their wives were roused from sleep. The men headed for the site of the accident and the women began gathering to put together their baskets of food, blankets, coffee, medicines. Nana called Marlene at the switchboard. It's Rennie, Marlene told her, Reckon he never knew what hit him. My grandmother's shoulders sagged and she sank into a chair, still holding the receiver. She had known him and his family all their lives, had been raised with his mother and had been with her the night Rennie had been born. It comes full circle, she told me with tears in her eyes, and there's never enough time in between.

We packed the car and drove to the other end of the island. The fire was still burning on the mainland, smoke and fire reaching toward the sky while a bucket brigade fought it stubbornly. The boats were already out, the men in their yellow slickers grimly searching the dark water from one end of the passage to the other. They recovered most of the truck but it was morning before Rennie's body was found on a rocky ledge near the lighthouse. Dawn came and he was brought back to the breakwater, covered and borne gently on a fishing boat, just as the sun came up. My grandmother stood with her arms around his mother, someone had wrapped a blanket around both their shoulders, and both were dry eyed. Everyone there had been through this many times before and they knew that there was practical work to be done before they could grieve.

We had no doctor, no funeral parlor, no hospital, no firefighters. Islanders tended to their own for everything but death and Rennie would be taken to the mainland and the brought back for the funeral. The service would be held and he would be buried in the small cemetery by the churchyard. And the day after that, island life would resume normally except each day, a different crew would take Rennie's boat out for him and and leave their own behind. The day's catch would be divided between the crew and Rennie's family for as long as it needed to be.

We look out for our own, Nana said, because it's the right thing to do.