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store, Harry stood to take a breath. So overdue a paint was the building’s facade that the exposed planking was grey and cracked and warped. Above, the steep roof grumbled its reminder of repairs. He liked things ordered, but the winter weather had kept him from doing much about the building’s exterior.
    He mounted the steps. He fumbled in his greatcoat pocket for the key, but the door was already on its latch. Inside were soft movements. He peered in through the grime on the window to see his wife peering back, her treacle skin darker still in the store’s gloomy light.
    â€œYa, Caddie,” she said and pulled open the door. “I make food.”
    â€œDavid’s to be buried on the island.”
    â€œAh,” she said, nodding slowly, seemingly to herself.
    She stepped into the daylight. They stood for a long moment staring into each other’s eyes. Then her mouth fell, her cheeks took to quivering, and she walked two small steps to rest against him. He put his arms about her waist, thinking how her body always reminded him of a seal, the layer of fat and the elastic vigour beneath.
    â€œCaddie,” she wept into his chest. “My great brother is dead.”
    He found that he was stroking her hair, and was surprised by his tenderness. Over her shoulder the forest was a scant hundred yards away. He wanted to run away into the woods to hide. You’ll never know …
    â€œI have come to ask that I may take your daughter in marriage.” The day he’d gone to speak with George. Nervous like some junior tar sent up before the captain; but near feverish for her—black-eyed coquette always in his vision, whichever way he looked.
    She’d be on the jetty each morning when he lifted the door to his boat’s hold—wherein he slept—and emerged on deck. There’d be nothing but a blanket wrapped about her, her hair drawn tightly back so that she looked stern, yet girlish too. “Still here, Mr. White Man?” she’d say, or “Scratching balls and yawning, new day is dawning!” or “You dreaming ’bout me down in there, Mr. Caduwudduder?,” tapping on the hull as she said it. She never could speak his surname, even now she was married to him. And she did plague his thoughts each night, as he lay alone in the hammock, if yet his dreams were always darker.
    He’d walk the shore and she’d be always nearby when he turned about, until the people took to sniggering, and Charley piped up one day, “Best see to her, or people say you a white man have no cock.”
    He would have made advances, but that he’d already met her father.
    â€œWhat have you in the hold?” George Hunt glared down from the jetty, his frame looming like a grizzly’s in silhouette against the bright sky. It was a few days after Harry had first arrived. “More liquor for those already lost?” He was right, of course. The hold was loaded with cases and kegs of New Westminster whisky. It was his third trip up the coast, though he’d not come this far north before.
    â€œI trade what I am able,” Harry said.
    â€œMy family’s traders also,” said Hunt. Harry said he did not seek to impose himself upon the man’s market; that he was grateful for the help afforded him by the people of the village; that he’d take receipt of his fuel when it should arrive, and be on his way.
    â€œSee that’s all you take,” said Hunt, and stamped away along the jetty toward the shore. Harry’d not risk the wrath of such a man by dallying with his daughter, maddening though she was to the balance of his mind.
    When his gasoline arrived, however, he found the days passed and still he did not leave. He’d stop by the trading store. They would make pretense of discussing the price of various produce, the state of the clouds that day and what it might mean, the passing of a steamer visible out on the ocean. She was shy