It was after school on a warm June afternoon, and Ben Palsson was on his way to School House Beach. The public entrance to the beach cut through the Island cemetery, and graves from other centuries along with those from the recent past were on either side. It was a pretty cemetery, carefully maintained, surrounded by trees, and within the sound of the waves of Lake Michigan. The place held no fear for elevenyear- old Ben, who, if he had thought about death much at all, had the comfortable assurance that it was a very long way off, if ever.

Ben almost always went for a ramble before heading home from school. These days his pattern had shifted a bit, in order to go first to visit the rescued goat living in Nancy Iverssen's barn. It was Ben who had found the animal while it was living in the wild, befriended it, and saved it from drowning when it had fallen through the ice. These experiences had formed a deep bond of affection in Ben's young heart.

But, now that spring had finally come to the Island, the warm weather was so enticing that even his love of animals in general — and of this animal in particular — could not keep him from his walk. The visit today had been brief.

Ben's habit of rambling in the woods and fields of the Island was also the way he coped with problems. Like his father, his mother, and many of his Island neighbors, he took solace in nature, and although he might not have been able to express his feelings with any precision, he knew that he always felt better out on the trails he knew so well. There had been an unpleasant encounter with a classmate at school that day, and Ben needed to sort through the tangle of anger and embarrassment he felt, or at least, to forget that it had happened. It was difficult to have problems with another student when the school was so excruciatingly small.

It didn't take long for the sounds of the waves, of the birds, and the scent of June air to cleanse his spirit. Ben was a keen observer of animals, and he stopped to look for the woodpecker he heard somewhere nearby. He liked to challenge himself to see how many different kinds of birds he could hear, and as he listened, he counted five, including one he did not recognize. He made a mental note to remember it and to ask his friend, Jim, the ranger.

Starting along the driveway again, heading toward the beach, Ben was looking forward eagerly to the vast expanse of summer vacation stretching before him, when he would have all the time in the world. Only one more day. Then he would be free.

He leaped to try to touch the low-hanging branches of a hundred-year-old beech tree along the way. It was getting closer, but he still couldn't quite make it. Maybe in that far away time at the end of summer.

* * *

One balmy, early summer evening, the Town Board of Washington Island was having its usual monthly meeting.

"I ran on a promise not to raise taxes! I cannot go along with this plan."

"But we really need new parking spaces at the beach. Last time I was there in season, cars were parked all along the road. It's a hazard."

"Three cars along the road do not constitute a hazard."

"Well, you know," added someone else, "when Mel Karnen had his stroke, those cars he hit along the side of the road saved his life."

"That was a fluke. You can't sit there and tell me that people's lives will be saved by not paving the beach parking lot."

"Why do you always have to twist my words? I never said that."

As the arguments went on, a small childlike tune was playing over and over in Fiona's head: "totally meaningless drivel, totally meaningless drivel." She instinctively liked the rhythm of it, with the two three-syllable words at the beginning, and the smoother-sounding two-syllable word at the end. Its rhythm reminded her of a cart rolling along a bumpy sidewalk. It played in her head in minor thirds, like a child's taunt.

"This is ridiculous. Adding three more spaces won't break the budget."

"Have you looked at the cost of paving these days? And it's not as if there's any extra money lying around ..."

Fiona was unaware that a vague drifting smile had come over her face as she sat fiddling mindlessly with her pen. Her yellow legal pad was covered with doodles: storm clouds, lightning bolts, flying cattle, and a rather loopy and bedraggled daisy. Fiona hated meetings.

Unfortunately, as the newly-elected town chairman of Washington Island, meetings were the one thing she had in abundance these days.

"Fiona? What do you think?"

This question, which she had dreaded, now burst through her awareness. She took a moment to look at the faces around the table, all watching her with varying degrees of patience and condescension. By and large, her fellow members of the town board did not expect much from this newcomer — from Chicago, of all places — and even though most of them had voted for her, it had been more a case of voting against her opponent — the almost universally detested Stella DesRosiers — than an endorsement of Fiona's knowledge or experience. They were united, at least, in their conviction that she had neither. Lately, Fiona herself was increasingly convinced that they were right.

She took a deep breath and changed her smile to one of rueful deference. Her chin was down as she raised her eyes and looked directly at each individual around the table, reading them one by one.

No matter what her fellow Islanders might think, Fiona was no fool. She was fully aware that the triviality of the issue was inversely proportional to the rancor it could stir in the hearts of Islanders. Though she had discovered this insight into human behavior on the Island, it is a universal truth of small town life.

She smiled again to assuage them. "Of course, we will need to consider it in the context of our budget cuts, but these are the kinds of decisions that our constituents like to be part of." She saw a few heads nodding thoughtfully. "I think we should handle this exactly as it has been handled in the past. We will invite public comment and allow the voters to have their say. No one appreciates changes in tradition, and there's no good reason to upset everyone about this by being highhanded." She did not add that she found the entire topic utterly trivial. She paused, watching as her words sank in, and then finished with a fillip:

"As Lars Olufsen likes to say, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'"

This folksy allusion to Fiona's beloved predecessor was greeted with solemn nods around the table. During his decades of leadership, Lars had used a steady hand and good sense to herd this particular group of the Island's notoriously unruly cats.

"I agree," said Mary Woldt, who was prone to agreeing with whatever had been said last. There were murmurs of assent as heads nodded around the table.

Fiona sighed inwardly. Another example of committee work in action. One decisive voice could almost always determine the matter, but only after hours of wandering conversation. Totally meaningless drivel, sang the child's voice in her head.

"Well, that's enough for today, then," she said briskly. She started to rise. "Thank you, everyone."

"But what about the fire department question?" asked Tom Sumner. Fiona stopped, as did everyone else around the table. The fire chief had been raising serious concerns about their cuts to his budget, but, ears to ground, the elected officials were...