Memory Be Green

NANNY died in this room a week ago tonight. It is finished now. Kilty, Nanny’s daughter, lies at my feet — a little gray dog with a black muzzle. She lies on a plaid blanket, and her soft paws, stretched towards the glowing fire, are somehow touching. There is something eternally young, something woodsy, not quite dog, about Kilt — a fairy something. There is nothing of Nanny in her, and I am glad.

The snow is falling thickly now, and the wind howls in the chimney.

Some day — perhaps — I wall write the story of Nanny’s life. She was unique. Now as we sit by the fire, Kilt and I, I see it in fragments. A moment, an episode, here and there. Ten years our lives were interwoven — our independent lives, for Nanny was no part of me. She was a personality. Now I linger lovingly on last summer —Nanny’s last summer.

I

Night was falling as we drew near the island. It lay low and dark, bound by a narrow ribbon of sand. Now the water was bronze, and red, and gold. Gulls followed us; they rose and dipped, rose and dipped, in shafts of sunset light, and they made a great din in their hunger and greed. The gulls, the steady throb of engines, the slap of water on the side of the boat, the sound of running children on the deck — these but accented the wide stillness. As we came in closer we could pick up different things in the half light — the ribs of an old boat lying on its side, black on the white sand, and the steep banks of Dionis.

Now we are passing the long breakwater; round the point, the whistle blows. The engines slow — we are in the harbor — there are the dark wet wharves, the huddled sheds and boathouses, the working boats and pleasure boats, and the village topped by the gilded clock tower. The Cairns are rousing themselves now. Kilty comes out from the nest of blankets where she and Nanny have been lying tight together, cozy and warm. She stretches and yawns and a shiver of excitement ripples down her back; and Banny, the untraveled, creeps out from under the bunk where he has been hiding these four hours. Only Nanny is poised. She knows that she will be carried, like a princess, through the hurly-burly. The others will have to propel themselves through mountains of luggage and the big feet of pushing men. The boat bumps into the wharf. I leash the dogs and gather the blankets together.

After supper we walk up Crooked Lane. The dogs zigzag across the road. They hurry from bush to bush smelling out the secrets of this land. Three rumps, three tails wagging together. How good is the rough and rutted road, the clear cold air! We are here. We have arrived. The summer stretches before us. Across the dark fields the village lights twinkle. A dog barks in the distance. The vast firmament encompasses us and there is peace all about us. Beloved world of sea and sky and all the weathers!

Early the next morning I sit up in bed and look over the fields in front of our house. They go to the village edge, perhaps a half mile away. The big elms in Main Street are over there, and beyond them and above them the clock tower. The sound of the bells comes across the fields every hour. I can see the great blue arch of the heavens, and we are caught up in the song of the wind.

Later we walk through the fields — fields of daisies, buttercups, and clover, of long sweet grasses and rough heather. In a little hollow we come upon a pond, its borders thick with iris. I sit in the long grass and the dogs rush up and down the shallow banks. The frogs leap for them, and they raise their voices in agonized delight. Kilty is fishing for water fleas, delicately, nervously, touching the water with one paw. She paces up and down licking the corners of her mouth, tremors of nervous ecstasy rippling down her back. Only Nanny ventures into the cold water and pokes about in the green things, muddy water coming up to her little round belly. Then a new tantalizing scent diverts them and the long grass closes over them, and sometimes I can only see Nanny’s tail beating with the zest of life.

There is the song of birds in the air — a surprise, for I have never marked them before on the island. Only the gulls, and in the fall the water fowl swimming in the ponds. This is a quite new bit of country for us and we think it fine. It is sheltered from the wind in the hollow; the birds sing, the insects buzz, the light breeze ripples the grass. Only Nanny shatters the stillness with her shrill coloratura — and the blackbirds scold. They follow us home, making a great clatter. They must have their nests in the grass.

Behind our house green meadows roll into the western sky, slashed by irisedged watercourses. A herd of little island cows are pastured there, and it looks like good eating. A group of gaunt trees raise their spare branches against the sky, and farther away a patch of stunted pine woods.

On our own ground, fence-enclosed, the grass grows tall and weedy, and in one corner, screened from the wind and the afternoon sun by coarse bushes, it is pleasant to lie in a deck chair with a book. Not that I read much. I sit and watch the dogs. Mint grows wild and thick in the long grass, and Kilty and Banny lie in it, like lumps, beside me, while Nanny follows her own independent interests, in and out of the hedge — intent, maybe, on a bug, or digging deep in the earth after an elusive scent.

White she was; and her tail would be going all the time.

Around the island it’s all beach, with never a rock or pebble. On the north side the water is mostly smooth, or just a bit choppy, and there we go to swim on a sunny morning. Boats are going in and out of the harbor or just bobbing about idly, all kinds of boats. Little ones with colored sails — the Rainbow Fleet, they call them. A sloop, maybe, gleaming white in the sun, come for the races. Or a long black yacht slipping by fast and quiet. And snub-nosed trawlers and cargo boats. Once in a long time, most rare, a schooner, with yard on yard of canvas billowing before the wind.

There is always something to see from the north shore on a summer morning. Across the bay lies Coatue, and afar off the long sandy bar leading to the Great Point Light. Around noon the boat comes—the boat that brings food, papers, and letters, and sometimes friends. You can see it a long way off — first it is just a bit of smoke in the sky. It comes from the Vineyard and the Cape, and romance is in it. The people on the decks wave as they go by. All is happiness and contentment. The sun is good, and so is the warm sand; the water clear — there is nothing of dirt in it.

The south shore, the east shore, are best in the afternoon. Load up with dogs, tea basket, and all the rest of it, and off across the moors in flower. There it lies, the immense ocean. Three thousand miles straight to Spain, so they say, with nothing between.

It is nice to sit propped against a good back rest, heels dug into the clean sand and hollows under you to fit the form, and a long afternoon ahead of you. The beach stretches away on both sides; there is no one in sight, not even the sign of a house — nothing but the sea rolling in, and the sky and the long line of the shore with gulls swooping overhead and sandpipers hopping on their thin little legs by the foamy water edge. As it was in the beginning — that’s how it is. Way down the beach there is a congregation of gulls; they look so tall — like penguins, or little men — there in the distance.

There is no sound but the wind and the sea rolling in, and the drag of it going out again. The sound of it and the sight of it are mournful to Banny. It disgusts him through and through, and he sits on the top of the bank, a little lump of a dog, collapsed in the middle, back to the sea and eye fixed on his car — car of his idolatry, car that takes him to the village where the other fellers ar, and there’s a good pavement under your feet, and always something going on.

Kilty stays by me, half-open, dreamy eyes on the tea basket. And Nanny, puddin’-pie Nanny, goes off to find herself a nice shore dinner — seaweed and a bit of old dried fish, topped off with crisp seashell. Then she joins the sandpipers, and the waves curl round her feet, but she doesn’t seem to notice them at all, so intent is she on those jumping sand fleas. She jumps too, four legs stiff as stiff, and pounces on them — and gobbles them up. She will be busy for hours and never look at us.

I like to face the east and think of it off there, beyond Spain. In my mind’s eye I see those burnt lands where Abraham kept his sheep and that garden where Adam walked with God in the cool of the evening. There was the dawn of the world, there the beginning of things; and I would look upon Ararat and walk in those ways and talk with wise men who do not hurry and have no brief cases. And I would look on Greece, all shining white with marble, and about it the wine-red sea. The sea is wine-red here, at Madaket, at sunset time. Only Egypt I would hurry by, I hate it so — its big dark tombs and its cats, its priests and dark mysteries.

Now put the kettle on. Kilty sits up. Pretty face she has, and a sweet tooth. And Nanny comes to join us and sits on her rump in a way that speaks of satisfaction.

When the clouds are evening pink, or fog comes off the sea, we gather everything up and go home.

There are garden flowers on the table and hot biscuits; mackerel with a salty tang, and vegetables fresh from the Dutchman’s stall. Night falls, and the dogs lie on their sides sleeping.

II

All is cheer and bustle at market time in the village. Hard to find a place to leave the car. Then it’s walk up and down the main street, back and forth across the cobbles, in and out of the little red brick shops with arms full of bundles. The sun is bright, and all the street is glowing with the warm red of the brick. Under the old elms are benches, and on them the islanders pass the time of day in gossip, and the offislanders read their letters and rest, their cobble-calloused feet. Two black cooks, plump and jolly, debate the excellencies of the glistening fish piled high on a horse-drawn cart; and young black hired girls, arm in arm, in giddy colors, — lips red and shiny hair, — strut up and down, giggling. The blind man, tin cup before him, plays a brisk tune on his accordion. Island children have their flowers out in baskets and Mason jars, good strong flowers with strong smells and short stems, ten cents the bunch — healthy wind-blown children raising flowers for a bit of extra. They sit swinging their legs and poking each other.

Up by the corner store the yaller dogs will be frisking in and out of the legs of the passers-by, getting a pat or a curse. Banny strains at them in love and hate. He makes himself all stiff, and I have to drag him by. Never mind — there will be other dogs by Rogers’s store. The food looks wonderful — big loaves of bread, warm and smelling wonderful, too, in the salty air, pies, and brownies for Kilty and me. The Greek has his fruit and vegetables spread out — red and black berries, pale melons, golden peaches; and dark rich eggplant, and all the squashes, and the greens. In Clark’s window it’s deep blue glass — or red — with andirons and bright door knockers and today a duck decoy, marsh-evoking, set out on the red brick pavement. In Cady’s are rum-and-butter balls and biscuits come from England. In ‘Downyflake’ the coffeepot is on and there are mountains of fat doughnuts, and over all hangs a richly painted sign. It says: —

We go back to the car past the Atheneum — a fine building with big columns and the paint peeling off. Within is a rich aroma of old books. It is bound in my mind with the stories of Willa Cather, for it was there I found them. Now stop at Miss Stevens’s little shop for writing paper. It’s a little shop for this and that — strings and wax, stickers and playing cards, books and postcards. Dark and restful, after the blazing sun.

Home we go, over the cobbles, under the elms, with the stately houses on both sides. When we draw up we hear Nanny vocalizing — piercing, and I couldn’t say it was melodious, but grateful to the heart. A very vocal dog, and a great range of sound comes out of her informed with meaning — not just a senseless yapping. When we open the door she will be trying to stand on her head and trying to wag her rump off at the same time with joy and enthusiasm at our home-coming. She will have a happy nip for both of us. Kilty will be there behind her, wagging fit to burst, too; but then, she does it for everyone — all the strangers in the city streets, maybe a sour-faced dowager, or some old bum.

Often I take them to the village in the evening. It is easier so, what with great cars bearing down on us in the lane with their blinding lights, and the dogs all spread out, the fields a temptation on either side. The countryside rings with ‘Here, Kilty! Here, Banny! Come on, Nanny!’ — or sometimes the fog will be so thick I cannot see them ten feet away. So we go where there are sidewalks and lamplight. Even so it isn’t easy, with Banny tacking from side to side crazy with the smell of dogs, and Nanny lagging miles behind. Slow as molasses — unless there is something to chase. Then can she fly! Like a hobbyhorse, with a lot of up and down, but getting ahead just the same. Kilty keeps at my heels, light on her toes, looking up at me all the time, and anxious to please. Kilty twinkletoes.

The houses on Main Street have great dignity and nothing in disrepair. All beautiful and just so, with clean curtains in the windows and the brass about the doors polished bright. We turn off the Main Street and loiter in little lanes and crooked back streets. The houses are smaller there, with a little garden and a tree or two, but it is the same — all built to stand the great winds, all the lines and spaces right, all neat and well ordered. You have to see it to believe it.

Or sometimes we putter on the wharves. It is dark there, with rats in the crumbly places, for the dogs’ delight. The water is black and still. It laps against the piers and the boats tied up there. (Fishing boats and coal barges, and tied up beside them a shiny houseboat brightly lit, and dinner being served in the saloon.) All about are shadowy buildings, and between them see the long line of shore curving away to Monomoy. The harbor is full of boats, at rest there, and their riding lights make golden splotches on the water. Sound of oarlocks and soft splashes, and laughter across the water.

III

When we came, the island was dabbled all over with the gold of Scotch broom. Great clumps of it bordered the winding road to Madaket. Then were the long evenings, and I would drive to Madaket, three dogs in the back. That’s how we would start. Soon a ball of gray would come flying over the top of the seat and Kilty would be sitting beside me, proudly. A great leaper, Kilty. She will stand stock-still and then without fuss or warning rise three feet in the air.

Peace lay on the land, and on the burnished waters of the ponds to right and left. The reeds and rushes stood up, straight and still as sentinels. An owl would fly out of the bushes. There, on the left, is Mr. Fisher’s shooting box. In it are duck decoys; they have a stiff charm and feel good to the hands. And, near by, the little hidden ‘forest’ he once took us through; lush and moist, with dark green growing things — ferns and fronds, and velvet moss so soft, and overhead tangled branches shutting out the sky. Strange, these hidden forests growing out of the barren moors, and a cause of pride to the islanders. The dogs are amazed by them. It’s one thing, and then one step and it’s another thing! Exotic as a tropical jungle.

Beyond, a stretch of wild heath and scrubby pine woods — from the road to the sea. Deer are there, plenty of them. The natives say that in the beginning the deer swam from the mainland. That is amazing, even did they rest on the vineyard. One night three does leapt through the beam of my headlights.

Now to the right of us are the clustered houses at Madaket. They are mostly the summer homes of Nantucket folk, and they lie quietly together on a cove. Plain, stubby, sturdy boats are anchored there, and some will be lying on their sides on the white sand — for painting or caulking. A long sand bar, grasstufted, stretches off towards the islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget. On the other side of the bar the ocean rollers break on the shore. The sky is on fire.

We walk on the deep sandy roads of the long bar, with the waters of the sea and cove on either hand. Not fast — slowly, for Nanny, who must be forever poking in the coarse dune grasses. She gives each blade close attention, as though through a microscope. The sun is gone now, and the wind is strong and cold. I put on a big coat and pile blankets on the dogs for the ride home.

Broom and iris, buttercup and clover, give way before the onslaught of the roses — roses red, roses white; roses pink and roses yellow; roses climbing over doors, windows, and roofs; roses running along white fences; wild roses in the fields and by the road edge. Their fragrance overtops the salty air. Little gray houses at ‘Sconset buried under roses. Little lanes, picture-book houses huddled together, wrapped in fog.

Soon after the roses were in bloom I got a sickness, and it kept me in the house until the fall. Days in my room; three windows open on the flowery fields and the sky, three dogs for company — sometimes.

During the weeks of drought, when the dust lay thick on the road and every passing car flung it into the house, when the sun shone steadily and set a ball of fire each night, when flies settled and clung, and the wind seemed permanently stilled — then it was an exasperation. But there was much that was nice in those days.

In the early morning the first sound is a low and cautious whinny from Kilt. Oh, the chase, the chase, in the golden dewy morning! Then the thump, thump of Nanny coming down the slippery stairs, steep for her short legs. Lying in my warm bed, I can see her in my mind’s eye, taut with enthusiasm and caution nicely blended. Now she has got to the three bad steps on the curve, and stops before each to eye the distance carefully and get a good stance for the take-off; eight straight steps now as fast as she can go, and a yelp at the bottom. I get up and open the door, and off they dash to plunge into mysterious thickets — acres of thickets, impenetrable to humans. God knows what trails they follow, what kills they make! There will be short, sharp barks — signals to each other, no doubt; silence; now, farther away, they ‘give tongue.’

Banny will be back soon. A guest, — a summer visitor, — he never learns to hunt. He is bored by country ways. A boulevardier and flâneur, a lover of the market place, he will lie in the dust of the road plotting to get to the village.

Amanda brings my breakfast — coffee and toast, and aromatic bacon. Now is the best time of the day — enjoying coffee and a cigarette; enjoying the morning weather in the morning stillness. Sometimes fog lies thick over the island, and then the mournful voice of the foghorn off Brant’s Point fills the world. Fog makes mysterious most ordinary things. I remember how once on the moors a pack of beagle hounds, out with the whips for morning exercise, loomed up in ghostly silence; and in ghostly silence vanished again. My dogs stood quiet and scarcely breathed. It might have been a dream, it was so swift and still.

There comes a time when the most beautiful things are rain-bearing clouds driven before the wind. One drop on the roof — then two, three, — now many. Fast they come, and hard. The wind has caught on now, and the grasses go over before it. The bush at the corner there is whipping against the window. Two drowned dogs are coming down the lane, and now it is a great business drying them off and wrapping them up in thick blankets to steam.

It’s summertime, and soon this will pass over us. An hour after the rain stops, the wind will have dried the face of the earth. We shall have to wait until September for the really great storms.

On a gentle morning, when a light breeze blows from the north, lovely music will come from the little house in the fields across the way. I can listen to the songs that were made when Germany was a fair and smiling place. Then Goethe spoke with Eckermann; then Hänsel and Gretel went adventuring in fairy woods; and all the folk were singing, of love and grief; of die Allmacht, and lesser things — Nussbaum and Lindenbaum, Nachtigal and Schöne Müllerin.

When the sun is high and hot in the heavens, the dogs will go in there for a long drink and a rest on the cool painted floor.

Nanny loved a bit of music, especially a gay little tune with a good lilt to it. Her tail would thump the floor in appreciation, and there would be a smile on her face.

IV

Days in my room; with the clouds in the sky and the pageant of flowers in the fields, to vary them; and books for the long hours when I am alone. I read some terrifying books — of ‘deserts on the march’ and homeless people wandering the highroads of our West. Books that spread the world out for you to see, and the manner of men who have walked across the face of it. Now a new race, the Airmen, battle with the mighty elements in the sky. They look on desolate places no mortal eyes have seen before — vast areas of dead land where no grain or green thing grows. Books that follow the ancient caravan routes, through deserts where the hermits dwelt; where Lawrence toiled and thirsted, creating his strange saga; where now the Anzacs camp. Books that tell of that great brotherhood of Muslims reaching from sea to sea; of intrepid Jesuits journeying through the northern wilderness; of saints and schoolmen in a younger, fresher world — and of Chinese sages.

The days are colder now. Stars are very bright in the enormous sky, and northern lights are magic. Goldenrod is king. The wind sings again, and the birds gather for their southern flight. There will be a good fire in the grate now, and Nanny toasting her old bones by the glowing coals and thumping her tail if there is laughter in the room.

So interested in everything she was, and sympathetic. She would even wag with pleasure when other dogs were made much of.

Then, in October, the storm comes. It comes at night — the wind in gusts at first; blow after blow against the shingled house, with a shriek and a dying moan. Then shrieks and howls without a fall. It comes through under the doors, through the cracks of the windows; it rushes through the house; and the rain beats a mad tattoo. The noise of it is appalling.

Three days and nights the wind sweeps over us, pounding us, shaking us. It comes across the sea, across the moors, with nothing to stop it. We have no neighbors, no car comes down the lane — we are alone with the wind under a dark and dirty sky.

In Main Street the wind is sweeping the leaves from the old elms. They lie glistening on the wet cobbles, and rivers of water run in the gutters. Down by the harbor the waves break over the breakwater, and the boats anchored there plunge up and down, and turn about, like crazy things. Red storm signals on the weather tower stand out against the lowering sky. It is steamy warm in ‘ Downyflake ‘ and the people there are warm and friendly, the way they will be at such times. No boat comes from the mainland or leaves the island.

At Madaket you can scarcely stand against the wind, and the rain runs down inside your collar. Foam is everywhere on the waters, as far as eye can see.

V

The sun was rising over Wauwinet as we rounded the breakwater. A clear and golden day, with a snappy breeze and a nip in the air. The sun drew sparkles from the moving water, and it was blue and gold all about us. The sun shone on the gilded clock tower. Gulls followed us; they rose and dipped, rose and dipped, in shafts of golden light. The island lay so quietly on the sea. It lay low — modestly concealing its riches.

Banny is hiding under the bunk; a shiver of excitement ripples down Kilty’s back. She sits bolt upright, and her eyes follow every move I make. And Nanny, in her beautiful green and white collar, all brushed and neat for traveling, Nanny lies on her blanket and licks her paws with decision. So secure and in herself! She was always that way — busy and intent, yet aware of everything — and never out of a job.

Now the island is only a black line far away on the horizon — beloved world of sea and sky and all the weathers. Now thoughts are turned toward pleasant winter things — friends; and Madame Lehmann singing; and walks around the reservoir.

It is dark. The snow is getting deep. It is white and cold out there — and the wind howls in the chimney. Kilt and I sit and dream by the fire, of the lovely places we have seen together, the good times we have had together — and of niddlety-noddlety Nanny.

Kilty gets up and stretches herself, slowly and luxuriously. Then she sits up all alert, ears perky, head cocked on one side. Ah — a step on the stair. That would be tea — and a biscuit too, maybe.

Here’s to you, Nanny! Happy hunting.