Hope is in prayer, the good Ham woman said
when she died from pox. Old Doc Comstock
boarded up his shop and took the summer
on Smith Island. 1917, same year as the War,
but we didn’t pay pox no mind. Hams
lived beyond the Narrows. A tottering shack
of four stories for watching for wrecks,
a large salvage operation, with steam winches,
a furnace, and small lighthouse contraption
for foggy days and black nights. You can’t see it
from Narrows proper, tucked and lost it is
beyond the channel, around the northern neck.
Old Ham had taken a sick steamtramp within
its broad and warm kitchen. Narrows men
and women have been to Ham’s nest before,
often, in storm and in times of harsh winters.
We knew his compassion for gold, and treasure
from generations past. We knew his measure
and to a man were not surprised to find
that he had invited his own death. While the doc
proctored the summer on Smith Isle, we watched
rubbish from Ham float down to us, enough stock
to know that the whole of the family operation
was sick and dead, or dying, or just blossoming
into fever. We knew it. Doc had come here to retire
not expire on an early ticket of doom. We counted
the days till the last could be no more, and took
four men, set the timber afire, watched smoke
snarl and tangle up the sky. If they took any gold
the looters do not brag. They speak nothing of it.
No more doctors do the Narrows keep or hide.
