The Body in the Kelp by Katherine Hall Page

you want us?”
    â€œAround live?”
    â€œFine. I’ll see you soon.”
    Faith hung up and raced upstairs before one of Benjamin’s missiles found the window as a target. Everything was on the floor, and Ben, having taken all his clothes off, was just climbing out of the crib. She carried him into the bathroom and sat him on the potty seat. Unpredictable in all things, he had virtually toilet trained himself. Just as she was culling information from all the experts and getting ready to start, he had announced, “No diapers,” and had scarcely looked back. It was big-boy underpants—BBUs, as Tom called them—from here on in.
    An hour later Faith was sipping a glass of wine and eating cold mussels and the remoulade sauce she had taught Pix how to make. She was enjoying herself. Samantha was reading to Ben, which she appeared to be able to do for hours on end without going crazy and/or speaking like Mr. Rogers.
    John Eggleston was regaling them with tales of the island during Prohibition, which he had heard mostly from his neighbor and good friend, Elwell Sanford.
    â€œOf course Elwell swears he himself wasn’t involved in any of this illegal activity, although his constant references to a ‘friend of mine’ leave me a mite skeptical. Maine was a rum runner’s dream, with this convoluted coastline—twenty—seven hundred miles of small coves, harbors, and inlets sandwiched into a four-hundred-mile loaf. And all the islands off shore. People tell me there are still cases buried on the Point, but I haven’t heard of anyone finding one recently. Elwell’s classic story, which I must admit I have heard up and down the coast, is about one of the Marshalls who was feuding with his neighbor. They were both selling hootch. One stormy night a revenuer came to Amos Marshall’s house, desperate for a drink, he said. Well, Amos looked at him. His slicker was weatherbeaten and he needed a shave, but his boots were brand-new ; so Amos sent him up the road saying he had taken the pledge himself, but his neighbor could oblige. The neighbor, unfortunately, wasn’t so observant.”

    Everyone laughed, and Pix said, “Maybe you have heard it elsewhere, but I’m sure it started here.”
    After the laughter died down, Elliot Frazier remarked, “Of course we have the modern-day version with the illegal drug traffic. You’re right about the coastline, John—it is virtually impossible to police it, and boats are landing the stuff all the time.”
    â€œWhen I first came to Sanpere in the late sixties, it had just started, or people had just become aware of it, and every newcomer to this island was thought to be either a drug peddler or an undercover agent. They certainly didn’t know what to make of me,” John said, laughing. “I used to fill in during the summer for a preacher over in Cherryfield, and when that got back to the island, they were even more confused.”
    â€œBut John,” Louise interrupted in her soft, faintly Southern voice, “you were doing so much good work with the teenagers here.” She turned to Faith. “There was, and is, a big problem with alcohol on the island, and some drugs. There is really nothing for these kids to do here. John was the one who started the community center.”
    A different kind of ministry, Faith thought. John Eggleston was certainly a compelling figure, and she could imagine he had quite an effect on kids once he got going. She liked his stories and certainly he was to be admired for whatever he’d done for Sanpere, yet there was still a suggestion of fire and brimstone lurking just behind the pupils of his eyes and the clarion surety of his voice made her uneasy. A man who thinks he is absolutely right in everything he says and does. She had the feeling that if you ever got in his way, he’d roll implacably over you. No turning the other cheek here. Maybe that