{"id":3451,"date":"2024-05-09T18:24:19","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T18:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/?page_id=3451"},"modified":"2024-05-09T18:24:19","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T18:24:19","slug":"inside-the-shell-by-ian-woollen","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/inside-the-shell-by-ian-woollen\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Inside the Shell&#8221; by Ian Woollen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">     Ed\u2019s birthday was looming in August, along with his annual vacation. Where should he go? Maybe one of those European packages promoted by his college alumni association. Aiming for something different this year, Ed had collected a stack of travel brochures and cruise offers. \u201cHow about Hawaii\u2026 if it isn\u2019t still on fire.\u201d He poured another two fingers of Scotch. \u201cHow about a distillery tour in Scotland?\u201d Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, all in a week. \n     \u201cOr maybe not,\u201d Ed said. \u201cI\u2019d buy a souvenir kilt and wear it to work and the boss would give me shit.\u201d Ed spoke aloud to the void of his bedroom. It was an early-onset feature of his late father\u2019s dementia. \u201cI\u2019m only turning fifty-six, please, no.\u201d\n     Occasionally, the void spoke back, as it did with his dad too. \u201cGo to Maine. You\u2019ll regret it otherwise.\u201d\n     \u201cOkay, fine,\u201d Ed said, \u201csort of wanted to feel like I had a choice.\u201d\n     He shrugged and reached for the phone. Press one for this, press two for that, press three to speak to a space alien. He booked a plane ticket to Bangor and made a reservation with Rosey\u2019s taxi service for a ride down to the ferry. Somehow, Rosey was still in business, despite zero online presence. Just hearing her voice was a boost, along with her long exhale of cigarette smoke.\n     \u201cSure thing, Eddy. I\u2019ll come fetch you myself,\u201d she said, \u201cnext Monday afternoon.\u201d\n     \u201cYou want me to email the flight info?\u201d \n     \u201cHell, no. It\u2019s written here on my pad.\u201d\n     Face it. Maine had him by the short hairs. Ed couldn\u2019t not go this summer. What was he thinking? What would his parents say? Never mind that they\u2019d been dead for ten years, buried in the cottage\u2019s backyard cemetery, beyond the stone wall. The island was a place where people died, but did not disappear. They loitered on benches and at the wharf and gossiped. \u201cEddy put on a few pounds over the winter, looks like.\u201d   \n     He packed a few items in his carry-on roller. He didn\u2019t need much because the dresser drawers in the cottage were full of familiar, moth-eaten clothes that had been retired as \u2018island casual\u2019. The old man\u2019s tattered cardigans, for example. Ed also enjoyed being reunited with a pair of lobster-claw suspenders.\n     Opting for a bus to the airport, he showed up two hours early. The lines moved along and the boarding process happened and the flights took off on schedule and went smoothly enough, except for the turbulence. Ed hated turbulence. As a career insurance guy, first as a fraud inspector and now a manager for corporate agriculture accounts, he depended on stability.  \n     In Boston, he had to switch terminals. Ed hoisted his bag, hoofed it to the gate, and made the connection. From twenty-thousand feet, he peered down at the coast, looking for his iconic cliffs and the fishing village nestled in the harbor, but the ocean was blurry with fog. Lacking a car ferry from the mainland, the island remained difficult to access. The only public transport was a twice-daily mailboat.  \n     In Bangor, Ed spotted Rosey outside the cordon line for arrivals, holding up a piece of cardboard with his name on it. \u201cRosey, how long have we been doing this? You don\u2019t need a sign. Did you think I wouldn\u2019t recognize you?\u201d \n     \u201cI changed my hair color,\u201d she said, turning left and right, so he could take in her profile. Streaks of bright pink and turquoise. \u201cAll the kids are doing it, so I decided, what the heck.\u201d\n     \u201cIt\u2019s a good look for you,\u201d Ed said.\n     \u201cWe\u2019d better shove off, to stay ahead of the rain,\u201d Rosey said.\n     She reached for his bag and he jerked it away and they did their little dance and Rosey carried the bag to the trunk of her Subaru. Pedal to the metal, occasionally slowing for the curves amid a gusty squall, she crossed the causeway and made the wharf with minutes to spare. Ed tipped her fifty bucks.\n     \u201cDon\u2019t spend it all in one place.\u201d\n     She said, \u201cHoney, anymore, we only have one place.\u201d\n     The harbor was thick-o-fog invisible, which didn\u2019t stop the sounds and smells from vortexing Ed back to a previous century, when he\u2019d arrive on the dock after three days in the backseat of his mom\u2019s station wagon, wearing shorts and knee socks.  \n     Ed carefully pulled his bag down the slick, rattling gangway. On the mailboat, graybeard Captain Carl greeted him with a fist bump and said, \u201cWelcome aboard, Eddy. Now the fun can begin.\u201d Captain Carl and Ed interacted briefly, twice a summer, when Ed came over and when he went off island, yet they considered themselves close. \n     \u201cI wish,\u201d Ed said. \n     \u201cWhatsamatter, cowboy?\u201d\n     \u201cThe wet weather, for one.\u201d\n     \u201cHey, it only rained twice this spring. The first time for nineteen days, and the second time for twenty-four,\u201d Captain Carl said.\n     Ed said, \u201cAt least with the rain and fog, you don\u2019t have to live up to the day.\u201d\n     That was the problem, he realized, living up to the day. The island required it. Because the place was so picture-book beautiful, summer residents had to \u2018oooh\u2019 and \u2018ahhh\u2019, hike, swim, and fish for squid off the town dock and make the most of every moment. All a ruse, Ed realized, and every year he fell for it. \n     Typical scenario: with his faith in humanity restored, like a delicate, shining soap bubble, Ed waved to every passerby on the dirt road and played his dad\u2019s squeezebox at the square dances and drank fizzy cocktails with his neighbor, Gloria, out in the cemetery beside his parents\u2019 gravestones and thanked them for the gift of life. \n     Then, boom, so predictable. Shortly after returning to Indianapolis on Labor Day, something shitty happened at work, or he witnessed horrific events on the evening news, and it punctured his bubble and made him feel like a chump. \u201cI need a thicker skin,\u201d Ed said, to the void of the musty cottage in Deep Cove. \n     The place welcomed him, as usual, with the skittering of mice in the walls, and the mellifluous trill of a wood thrush in the forest, and the steady gurgle of the creek. \u201cI am done setting myself up for disappointment. I\u2019m going to hunker down in my shell and do crossword puzzles for three weeks.\u201d \n    The void said, \u201cGood luck with that.\u201d\n     Ed said, \u201cCrosswords are supposed to keep my brain healthy.\u201d\n     The void said, \u201cOnly for so long.\u201d\n     Ed said, \u201cGive me a break. I\u2019m on vacation.\u201d \n     He heard a knock at the door. His neighbor, Gloria, pushed her way in. A former schoolteacher (like Ed\u2019s mom), Gloria, summered in the cabin by the trailhead to the cliffs. \u201cYoo-hoo, darling.\u201d She handed him a bouquet of fresh-cut daisies. It was their ritual. Ed reached for one of his mother\u2019s vases, arranged the flowers just so, fluffed the pillows on the couch, and offered Gloria a drink. \n     \u201cHow\u2019s the birthday boy?\u2019 she said.\n      Ed immediately went off-script. \u201cDon\u2019t remind me,\u201d he said.\n     \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d\n     \u201cI\u2019m sick of these mice. Do you have any traps?\u201d\n     \u201cAre you trying to get a rise out of me?\u201d Gloria asked. In retirement, she volunteered as an animal rescue person, caring for injured fawns and seagulls. Her oft-stated position on mice and carpenter ants was, \u201cit\u2019s their island too\u201d.\n     \u201cThe birthday boy had a rough winter,\u201d Ed said. \u201cI had to deny claims from two of my biggest clients. Crop failure claims, because of the drought.\u201d\n     \u201cBut you made it back! You\u2019re here, safe and sound, behind the Blueberry Curtain,\u201d Gloria said. \u201cYou can rest and restore and eat pancakes for dinner.\u201d\n     \u201cWhat if I\u2019m just over it?\u201d Ed said.\n     \u201cOver what?\u201d\n     \u201cThe island. It\u2019s a hassle to get here and it\u2019s a hassle to exist here. Something is always breaking. My Jeep has a flat tire and there\u2019s a leak under the sink.\u201d\n     Gloria recoiled from this blasphemy. She didn\u2019t even finish her drink. \u201cI\u2019m headed to the pond for a swim. We\u2019ll talk later, when you\u2019ve had a chance to unpack and are feeling better.\u201d\n     Ed slept for a week. That was normal. The salt air caused it. Underneath his thickening skin, Ed felt murky with memories. Random stuff. Faint noises floated up from the shore, kids racing on the sand, their squeals and yells reminding him of the neighbors playing outside his bedroom window in fourth grade, while inside, he recovered from scarlet fever. \u201cIs that what\u2019s happening here?\u201d Ed wondered, \u201cAm I recovering from a virus or something? What\u2019s a five-letter word for \u2018cogitate\u2019?\u201d \n     Other stuff surfaced. A tearful visit to the principal\u2019s office, after being busted with a pocketknife in the cafeteria. This was during his mother\u2019s pomegranate phase. She had packed the knife in his lunch sack, to cut open the hard skin of the fruit. \u201cMom, I know you didn\u2019t mean to get me in trouble. We all make mistakes. What\u2019s a five-letter word for \u2018rejuvenation\u2019?\u201d\n     Eventually, he needed to go into town for some groceries. An attempt to inflate the Jeep\u2019s flat tire failed. Ed was not as handy as his dad. He borrowed a bike pump from Gloria and was able to successfully inflate the tires on his blue Schwinn, the one with baskets. Halfway into town, on the switchback near the end of the pond, Gloria pulled over in her pick-up.\n     \u201cWant a lift? We can toss your bike in the back.\u201d\n     \u201cNo thanks, Glo,\u201d Ed said, smiling and catching his breath. \u201cI\u2019m actually having fun. It\u2019s been a while since I rode this bike.\u201d\n     Gloria nodded. \u201cSure, of course.\u201d Her smile shifted. \u201cBy the way, speaking of things we haven\u2019t done in a while, I walked out around Eastern Head yesterday, all the way around to Shark Point. Do you remember the crumbling bait shack over there?\u201d\n    \u201cThe bait shack is still standing?\u201d Ed said. \u201cIt\u2019s all conservancy land now.\u201d \n     \u201cMore like <em>leaning<\/em>,\u201d Gloria said, \u201cand somebody is squatting in it. A guy wearing a Red Sox cap, backwards. I don\u2019t like it when kids wear baseball caps backwards. That\u2019s a gang thing, right?\u201d\n     \u201cNo, dear,\u201d Ed said, \u201cit\u2019s just something people do these days, like Rosey tinting her hair pink.\u201d \n      \u201cDo you think we should inform Captain Carl?\u201d\n     \u201cWhy would we do that?\u201d\n     \u201cBecause he\u2019s the town constable, and what\u2019s more, I saw the guy trying to bury a kayak underneath some leaves. Odd, hunh?\u201d\n     \u201cCould be, but first, let me mosey on over there to check out the situation,\u201d Ed said.\n     His reasoning was that the town constable position was purely ceremonial. No town constable on the island had been required to do anything in the way of law enforcement for decades. The laws of the mainland only vaguely applied. Nobody registered their car, which had to be barged over, and no vehicle had plates. Captain Carl was capable and knew his way around boats, but Ed just couldn\u2019t see him making an arrest.\n     When Ed returned home with his groceries, Captain Carl was waiting for him on the porch. \u201cI ran into Gloria up to town, and she spilled the beans.\u201d \n     \u201cShe never was one to sit on a piece of news,\u201d Ed said.\n     \u201cIt\u2019s good that she told me because, as it happens, I had a call from the sheriff on the mainland yesterday,\u201d Carl said.\n     \u201cAbout what?\u201d Ed said.\n     \u201cA general alert to all the island communities, about a capsized sailboat washed ashore near Camden. No sign of passengers or the skipper. The boat is registered to a guy from Boston. Sheriff says it could be a case of someone trying to fake his death and collect on the insurance money.\u201d\n     \u201cCap, would you like something to drink?\u201d Ed asked.\n     \u201cYessirree, please,\u201d Carl said.\n     The way Captain Carl sucked down his beverage seemed to confirm that he was feeling unsure about his next step. \u201cShould I fetch my handcuffs?\u201d \n     \u201cDo you have a pair?\u201d\n     \u201cStowed somewhere in my barn,\u201d Carl said. \u201cTruth of the matter, I haven\u2019t really had much in the way of training for this kind of thing.\u201d\n     \u201cTell you what,\u201d Ed said, \u201cI\u2019ll hike over and scope it out. I used to work in fraud inspection for fire claims.\u201d\n     \u201cSure, if you think it would help,\u201d Captain Carl said. \u201cI\u2019ll wait for you here.\u201d \n     It was a forty-minute hike across marsh, scrub, and up and around a rock promontory. Ed pushed through swaths of cattails and pearly everlasting. He could feel his blood pressure rising. His steady, off-duty demeanor gave way to a nervous, check-engine intensity. More and more, he was feeling angry, pissed at the sailboat guy for invading and besmirching the pristine innocence of the island, and pissed at himself for ever having thought he was over it.  \n     The void said, \u201cYou just need to get over <em>yourself<\/em>.\u201d\n     Ed said, \u201cShut up. I\u2019ve got work to do.\u201d\n     As he approached the crumbling bait shack, originally on an open bluff above the shore, and now surrounded by a thick grove of spruce, Ed began to whistle. He whistled a simple melody to signal peaceful intentions, one of the tunes from Saturday\u2019s square dance. I did not want to spook the guy; just let him know he had some company.\n     The backwards Red Sox cap was sitting on a stump by the front door, whittling a stick with a pocketknife. Sunglasses hanging from a chain on his neck. He appeared to be in his early thirties, hipster whiskers, slightly disoriented, probably in shock. He stared up blankly at his visitor. Ed had seen that look before. Desperation forces otherwise rational people into foolish schemes that rarely happen as planned.\n    \u201cAhoy there,\u201d Ed said.\n     The guy nodded but did not respond. Ed glanced around and spotted the kayak half-buried in leaves. \u201cWhat brings you to our fair island? Ed asked.\n     Again, the guy did not respond. Ed quelled an urge to slap him across the face. Understandable but also unprofessional. \u201cOr maybe this is not where you intended to land,\u201d Ed said. He turned toward the water and pointed across the channel. \u201cMaybe you were aiming for Little Crab Island, because it\u2019s uninhabited and you could lie low there for a week until being officially declared missing or dead, and then somebody posing as next-of-kin could file a claim.\u201d\n     The guy slowly reached up and tugged at the brim of his baseball cap. He pulled it around to cover his eyes and mumbled, \u201cThings kind of got away from me.\u201d\n     \u201cWhat things?\u201d\n     \u201cIt has nothing to do with an insurance scam.\u201d\n     \u201cMaybe or maybe not. What happened?\u201d\n     \u201cIt\u2019s embarrassing to admit,\u201d he said. \u201cA wedding. I was supposed to get married next week, and I just couldn\u2019t go through with it.\u201d\n     Ed did a quizzical head cock. \u201cSo, you decided to capsize your boat and fake your death?\u201d\n     \u201cApparently, yeah. Bad move.\u201d \n    Ed swallowed and stifled a sneer. Talk about worlds colliding. The sad irony of the situation hit him like a fever spike. Long ago and far away in Indiana, Ed had done something similar, not quite so extreme (not Ed\u2019s style), but similar enough to evoke sympathy for this jerk.  \n     Ed coughed, cleared his throat, and said, \u201cLook, as you might expect, there\u2019s an all-points bulletin out. I\u2019m here as the advance man for our island constable, sitting on my front porch back in the cove, waiting for my return. He\u2019s about forty-five minutes away, a bit more if I walk slowly. So\u2026 that would give you about an hour of lead-time to get in your kayak and paddle for Little Crab. When I get back to my cottage, I\u2019ll inform the constable that I hiked out here and found nobody in residence.\u201d \n     \u201cWhy would you do that for me?\u201d the guy asked, peering up directly at Ed.\n     \u201cI\u2019m not doing it for you,\u201d Ed said. \u201cI\u2019m doing it to protect and preserve some semblance of the status quo. We don\u2019t need any headlines here. We don\u2019t need any case reports. If Captain Carl had to hike this trail and drag you off the island in the mailboat, with the entire town ogling from the wharf, it would be all anyone would talk about for years.\u201d\n     On his way back to the cottage, to give the guy more of a chance, Ed stopped once or twice to explore the storm beaches and poke around amid the flotsam and jetsam, washed-up buoys and lobster traps and sea glass. He picked up loose chunks of quartz and examined the crystals. He picked up whelks and periwinkles from the tide pools and examined their intricate, swirled shells.\nRemembering a trick Gloria boasted of using with her third-grade science class, Ed held up a periwinkle shell close to his lips and began humming. He hummed and glanced down, and hummed and glanced down at the glistening shell, and finally, the miracle of miracles, a tiny, pink gob of amphibious animal slowly beginning to emerge.\n\n                                                                                                           *                                         \n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Ian Woollen<\/strong> lives to write in Bloomington, Indiana. His recent short fiction has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Five South, and Westchester Review. A new novel, SISTER CITY, is out from Coffeetown Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ed\u2019s birthday was looming in August, along with his annual vacation. Where should he go? Maybe one of those European packages promoted by his college alumni association. Aiming for something different this year, Ed had collected a stack of travel brochures and cruise offers. \u201cHow about Hawaii\u2026 if it isn\u2019t still on fire.\u201d He poured &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/inside-the-shell-by-ian-woollen\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8220;Inside the Shell&#8221; by Ian Woollen&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2310,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3451","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2310"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}