The first thing Hannah said to the dog: “I don’t know if there’s enough room for you on this island. I’m already here.”

She’d come to the quarry to see what the afternoon’s high tide had brought. This was the first time it had delivered a dog. The quarry acted as a weir, yet in addition to trapping herring it collected all the driftwood, cut buoys, and floating debris carried in the currents around Ten Acre No Nine Island. Dead gulls, the occasional prop-slashed seal, the carcass of a basking shark had all washed in before, but never a breathing dog. She’d examined him for minutes before concluding he was alive, before telling him there might not be enough room. The dog did not wake. He lay on his back on a granite ledge in the quarry. His four paws hung from the sky as if on hooks. The second thing she said to him: “You’re a fat one.” Still he did not wake. There were bits of feather glued to his gums, seaweed looped around his tail. Blue mussel sand crested on the waves in his fur. There was no way to know as yet whether he was a biting dog or a licking dog. A nice brown leather collar, but no tags. His breathing caught on his own starched tongue. The feathers he’d used for gills were drying out. The tide had left him on the ledge and had now dropped a couple of feet or more, so that the next step down in the quarry was visible.

The quarry, a little more than an acre cut from the center of the island, was shaped like an amphitheater whose stage was a pool of seawater. The slab steps were irregular, some only a foot high, while others required a ladder or a circuitous route that reminded her of an Escher print to reach their bases. At times it was seventy-five feet from the crest of the quarry to the surface of the water and at times it was eighty-five feet, depending upon the state of the tide, which rose or fell ten feet every six hours. Below the dog, the granite was carbuncled by barnacles. Lower, moss and seaweed clung to the sheer surfaces, and far below, where there was always water even at the low, lay a rich field of urchins and cold-water starfish and mussels. The pink granite, like that quarried in most of the islands off Stonington, Maine, had gone to government offices and churches in Boston and New York, to the Brooklyn Bridge, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grant’s Tomb, Sing Sing. The afternoon sun broke off the upper walls in flat sheets of light. All shadows were angular, every cut sharp and square, but the mouth of the quarry, where the water flowed in and out, was a ragged tear of splintered stone and boulders. Her great-uncle had a part in this, working with a case of dynamite during a storm, enlarging the entrance so his narrow lobster boat could slip inside, making a safe sea harbor.

While she waited for the dog to stir, she fished a short plank with faded remains of blue paint from the water, then a bit of twisted root, a small Styrofoam net buoy, and a red cap with “Seavey’s Lobster Co-op” stitched in yellow. She could carry these things up the steps and ladders with her, but the dog was a different matter. She’d have to use the derrick and boom. When bulkier objects floated in, a log or wooden box or enough driftwood to bundle together, she would use her great-uncle’s lift. The derrick itself was iron, left by the quarrymen, and the boom an old mast. Although she’d seen him use it several times when she was young, it had taken her weeks to get the hang of operating it when she came back to the island alone six years ago. The winch on the lift was powered by an old V-8 Ford engine that lived under a tin roof on the rim of the quarry. It sounded like Armageddon when started, as the muffler and much of the exhaust manifold had long since rusted away, and every fire of each spark plug collected in the huge funnel of the quarry and was from there sent forth across the waters like repeated dynamite blasts. She’d received complaints about the noise from Crotch Island, whose quarry was in operation once again, and from Stonington, whose citizens were reminded of her great-uncle’s illegal explosions. She knew the sound of the engine might worry the dog, so she first let the cable and the carrying trap freewheel off the winch down into the quarry. The idea was to get him into the basket, an old wire lobster trap, about two feet by four, before she started the engine. She climbed back down into the quarry and swung the trap around to the ledge below the dog. The dog’s eyes were now open, although he still lay on his back, unmoving. She watched him watch her push the trap against the stone beneath him. The third thing she said to the dog: “Good dog.” He responded with a brush of his tail across the granite and a groan. He rolled over slowly, turned his head toward her, and vomited salt water. Bending over, she pushed the stiff fur of his back and slowly slid his body over the rim of the rock shelf. His legs dropped in the trap first and supported him enough so that his fall into the bottom of the cage was more of a crumple. He put his snout on his forelegs, too weak to lick the vomit from his jowls. She tied a pair of straps over the top of the cage, looping one through the dog’s collar. After climbing back out of the quarry, she brought the cable up taut with a hand crank, then hit the starter button for the winch engine. The engine came to life like a bear from a cave. She shifted the winch into gear. The dog was trying to rise up out of the trap but was restrained by the straps. As the cable wound round the drum, the dog rose higher, suspended in the hollow quarry, sunlight catching him fully now. He was surrounded by the reflection of light off flecks of mica and facets of quartz embedded in the granite face. As the dog cleared the rim, his forepaws patting the floor of the basket, she shut down the engine. Tugging on the long boom with a line, she brought the dog over soft ground, moss and spruce needles and dark shade. The trap settled on the earth and she unfastened his collar. He stepped out, walked unsteadily to the nearest tree, and raised his leg.

“So,” she said to him, “life starts over again, eh?”

From Pocketful of Names. Copyright 2005 by Joe Coomer. All rights reserved.