5 January 2302 – Spectacle Island
Waves crash and an old mirelurk dies. Her claws fall into the sand. The security guard opens his eyes. The realization sets in before the gun reaches his hand. Waves crash and a radstorm brews. The people run for shelter aghast. The security guard opens his eyes, the realization anew, belongs now to his busy day.
I can feel it, this history on the lazy sea sands, isolated from the Commonwealth. A protected island with no danger but the occasional mirelurk blasted with a sonic pulse, causing it to scurry back to the sea, or worse for that mirelurk, explode into a thousand pieces.
Pic 1-Bedhead Inn
I walk around the porch at the Bedhead Inn run by the widow Jeanine Smith-Bedhead. She tells me the history of the island from the first records she found in the Boston Public Library through the Great War until after the time Nate Howard supposedly single-handedly killed a Mirelurk Queen and her brood and fought off a raiding pirate gang after forming a settlement for the Minutemen in 2288. She speaks as though she has made this speech a thousand times, never once redoubling her position but presenting fact after fact.
The earliest known inhabitation of the island, a “drumlin” as she calls it—making me wonder why there is no Drumlin Diner on the island—was as a processing plant for dead horses. Later, the island became a trash dump and remained that way through the American Civil War, and way past two World Wars. In the 1990s, Boston started to repurpose the island, cleaning it of its landfill status and creating a city park and tourist trap. Later, in 2048, a billionaire named Cleveland O’Sullivan purchased the island from the city and intended it to be a private island, which it remained until the bombs fell in 2077.
Pic 2-Pre-War Spectacle Island, unknown date
Mrs. Smith-Bedhead also told me of what had happened on the island since 2288, with the Minutemen sometimes using the island as a secure location. A former Minuteman, Old Louis Gunnerson, operates the guard station. The automated turrets, the sonic pulse system, and some old bells all alert him to anything approaching the island. The Spectacle Island Ferry leaves the Boston Harbor docks at 7:10 AM sharp each day and arrives at promptly 7:45 at Spectacle Island. It leaves the island again at 10:10 AM, arriving at the Harbor at 10:45. The second round trip occurs in the afternoon, with a 1:10 PM departure from the Harbor to the Island, and the final trip at 4:10 from the Island to the Harbor. My departure is at 4:10 today.
Pic 3-Harbor-Island Ferry
Mrs. Smith-Bedhead walks me to the sitting room in the Bedhead Inn. She tells me more about the mansion. “It was a shell of a mansion, really,” she says. The Minutemen with help from some of Nate Howard’s building expertise rebuilt the mansion over the course of several years, with the mansion finally completed in 2294. The sitting room is the place where one of Mrs. Smith-Bedhead’s employees serves me breakfast. As expected, it is heavy in Commonwealth sea creature and vegetation with the specialty of Cram-Mirelurk Egg Omelette. I am served a “pick me up” to drink, a strong concoction of boiled silt beans and rum.
The mansion has been decorated with all the beauty Mrs. Smith-Bedhead can muster. In the sitting room, she sits on the couch near the fireplace while I sit at a nook in the corner, looking out to the ocean. She has blue wallpaper “made by my Nannybots” and scrapped paintings and posters donning the wall in the room. There is an old TV that stays on because she loves the “white noise” it puts out. “Reminds me of my husband,” she says. “Rest in power,” she follows, mentioning the same phrase every time she mentions him, which is often in our conversation.
Pic 4-Bedhead Inn sitting room
Following breakfast, I decide I will walk the island one more time. It is not a big island, and I should be able to complete my trek before it is time for boarding the Harbor-Island Ferry in the afternoon. Mrs. Smith-Bedhead allows me to store my belongings near the Bedhead Inn’s front door. I have to check out early since several visiting families are expected to occupy the room by lunchtime. I bid Mrs. Smith-Bedhead adieu and head out to the island, walking past the guard station where Old Louis is napping and onto the Cleveland O’Sullivan Memorial Walking Trail. In the middle of the trail, I see the expanding baseball field and the local farms of vegetation. There is a processing plant nearby with the tell-tale odors of rotting mirelurk carcasses.
As I walk, the everlasting sound of waves crashing remains. I look back towards Boston across the Harbor and feel the sense of rushing and danger that sometimes prevails. Just like my trip to Walden Pond a few months ago, I bask in the peace Spectacle Island brings away from the revelry of Downtown Boston. Life here is simple, slow, melodic. I do not get away from Diamond City much these days, but when I do, places like Spectacle Island seem to be the serenest of places.
Pic 5-The Harbor
The waves crash, and I walk in peace, stepping in tune to each one. Old Louis probably still naps in the guard station. The boys of the diamond probably trot through the field, feeling the morning breeze blowing through their hair. And I think, if the CBO had a team here, I would make it a point to visit more often. For now, the Strength of the Greater Boston Rookie League and the Reapers of the Boston Youth Development League will have to do.
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