Situated in the climatically fickle reaches of northern Lake Michigan, the island of St. James is subject to every type of bad weather one can imagine.

No season offers respite, but Winter is perhaps the most unrelenting. Snow gets dumped with such dramatic flourish that even the most prepared island residents often find themselves shut in for days at a time when storms roll through. The bitter cold does its part by building a veritable wall of ice around the island’s perimeter—huge, warping spires of lake water thrust forth by wind and tide, adding to a sense of deep and pervasive isolation. When Spring finally shows its face, rapid snowmelt mixes with bursts of torrential rain and produces what can only be described as a deluge of slick, thoroughly unavoidable mud.

Then Summer arrives, and rules cease to matter. Whatever predilections the Weather Gods air in other, more appropriate times of the year, they discard with gleeful abandon at the start of June. Blistering heat will give way to spells of frigid rain, followed by humidity so thick one might believe they’re trudging through soup—sometimes all in the same weekend. Hot to cold, cold to hot, and back again—nature experiencing a protracted schizophrenic episode. The best anyone can do is start each day with a few adjustable layers and pray they chose wisely.

But Mikey McNalley knew this much: if you ask any islander about weather, they’ll say “Oh, no matter. I take it in stride.”
They all find solace in the seasons’ predictability—Mikey included. Wood piles get stocked, snowmobiles refueled, galoshes placed by the door; it’s said there’s comfort in the familiar, even if the familiar is a pain in the ass. Mikey was inclined to agree.

It was after one particularly damp Summer weekend in early June that Mikey took to strolling along the shores of Sand Bay, on the island’s east side. Rain had passed through in the morning and a thick, muggy stillness hung in its wake. For Mikey, this was prime beach-strolling conditions, since storm winds off the lake often brought in all sorts of interesting treasures from the mainland. He once found an entire box of unopened Lay’s potato chips wedged between some driftwood, fully intact—manna from heaven, as far as he was concerned. One time, after a doozy of a thunderstorm knocked out his power and left him with nothing to do, he went to the beach and found a pair of perfectly good Cole Haan loafers half buried in the sand, still in their shoebox. He couldn’t believe his luck.

Those past treasures were front of mind as Mikey ambled along the shore, eyes glued to the ground. Who knew what he’d find this time, he wondered—he might even score something of real value, which he’d probably try to pawn off to Jack Rainey down at the island’s resale shop for a quick buck. Old Jack was an agreeable sell for such things.

He followed the gentle arc of the beach north, where it occluded into a ragged point full of scattered rocks and sedge grass. Water snakes could often be found sunning themselves there, eyeing the crayfish that darted between submerged boulders along the shore. And everywhere that wasn’t sand or grass lay the bleached-out husks of dead mussels. Mikey couldn’t even fathom how many there were. For whatever reason, they tended to clump at points like these, and they were sharp as all hell. Footwear was needed to walk on top of them, and in some places they piled a good two feet high.

To the layperson, the mussels were an annoyance; to Mikey and the other local folks who had seen their numbers increase year after year, they were Lake Michigan’s terrible undoing. Zebra mussels and their cousins, the deep-dwelling Quagga mussels, were an invasive scourge unleashed long ago by European ships jettisoning their ballast tanks in port cities like Chicago and Milwaukee, unaware that mussels had secretly hitched a ride inside. They spread like wildfire. Mikey remembered a news segment he saw where some scientists took a submersible to the deepest reaches of the lake and found nothing but mussels in every direction. The result was a problem that didn’t register for folks eyeing the lake for the first time. To them, the crystal-clear water surrounding St. James was a marvel. It wasn’t uncommon to overhear tourists in town gush about it, especially those who flew over from Charlevoix and got a birds-eye view on their way in. But what they didn’t know was that those mussels acted like one massive Brita filter, endlessly passing lake water across their membranes in search of nutrients. In moderation, such a service is welcome, but Lake Michigan is so full of mussels that its entire water volume is filtered every two weeks, leaving nary a morsel for the rest of its aquatic ecosystem. The result is something like a freshwater desert—water clear enough to see through but containing almost nothing to look at.

Mikey sighed and picked his way over the mussel piles. His sojourn had yet to yield any material results and the rain hadn’t decided if it was time to quit. Droplets flecked his forehead and dark clouds blanketed the horizon ominously. He’d have to turn back soon if he wanted to steer clear of another downpour, but he was compelled to crest the point and peer into the tiny inlet on the other side. He never knew exactly what state he’d find it in. Its shape constantly shifted with the lake level; some years the large erratics scattered about its interior were completely submerged. Other years he could skip across them clear to the other side without wetting his shoes.

The thought of skipping reminded him of his childhood. In the summers of his youth, Mikey’s father would take him and his brother Charlie to the inlet, where they’d stand atop the biggest boulders to try their hand at catching the carp that occasionally drifted into the shallows. His father swore that the best way to lure carp was with a can of creamed corn. Mikey was never sure if he was kidding. They hardly ever caught any carp, of course, but that was as much attributable to their lack of skill as it was the carp’s apparent indifference towards corn. Mikey could remember those outings with such clarity that it surprised him; the image of Charlie on his rock—always the biggest in the inlet—holding his fishing rod and beaming in the sunlight. It came to him clear as day, and struck him with a pang of melancholy.

The inlet after the morning’s storm was deep and clear, but Mikey didn’t see any carp. He turned and looked back at the way he came; the beach stretched quite a ways. He squinted and saw some people walking at about the midpoint, appearing as mere specks from where he stood. Despite his misgivings about the island’s weather, Mikey couldn’t deny that, in many ways, St. James was one of the prettiest places he’d ever seen. He watched as low, dark clouds cast their shadows over the lake, giving way to bursts of sunlight that painted the water an astonishing shade of blue. A breeze had picked up, and the remaining mugginess began to subside. Seagulls catching the updraft off the water squawked absently overhead.

Mikey took another look at the inlet and was about to turn for home when he stopped. Something glinted beneath the water, just a few feet into the surf. It was small; possibly a rock, he thought, but no—it was much too shiny. The surface of the inlet rippled in the breeze and obscured its form. It looked vaguely round. Mikey rolled up his pant legs and stepped gingerly into the water, which was characteristically frigid. He took a few awkward steps forward, careful to avoid the larger boulders in his way. Once on firm footing directly over the object, he brought his nose to the water and squinted. Yes, definitely round, and definitely not a rock. He plunged his arm down to try and grab it, but the water was deeper than it looked and the sleeve of his t-shirt was quickly drenched. He craned his neck back to avoid plunging his whole head under, grappling blindly for a few moments before he felt his fingers graze the object’s surface. Smooth, he noted. Likely metal. He reached further, letting the side of his head dip into the water, which did the trick. He was able to get his hand around the thing and pull it gently off the silty bottom. Mikey stood carefully and steadied himself. He held the item up against the light.

It was a pocket watch. Mikey realized had never actually seen a pocket watch up close before, but he was nonetheless surprised. This one seemed to be in remarkably good shape for being lodged in the mud of Lake Michigan for who knows how long. It was the color of polished steel, lightly speckled but perfectly smooth. Its face glinted brightly in the sunlight. The little adjustment knob at the top—the crown, Mikey thought, though he wasn’t sure if that was the right name—turned between his fingers without trouble. He spun its body in his hand and inspected the back, and saw an inscription etched cleanly into the metal casing:

For George,
the boy who missed the boat.
Love, Clara
August 11, 1922

1922! Mikey gaped. The watch was over a hundred years old, and yet it looked to be in mint condition. It must have been dropped in the lake recently, but who would drop a hundred-year old pocket watch at the beach—or bring one with them at all, for that matter? And why wouldn’t they have looked for it?
Mikey turned the watch in his hand. The outer casing was held together like a clamshell, secured by a spring-loaded latch. Not sure what to expect, he clicked the latch release. The casing opened, revealing the watch face inside. The backing was an off-white color, set against black roman numerals and three time hands; the second hand was a bright red. Mikey blinked in astonishment. The interior of the watch was impossibly clean, but that didn’t immediately register as his eyes were first drawn to the picture set inside the casing.

It was a portrait of a woman. She was smiling faintly beneath a dark cloche hat that hugged her head. A fringed shawl draped her shoulders. Her eyes were large and dark, and contrasted with the porcelain sheen of her skin.
Clara.
This must be her, Mikey thought. The picture was black and white, with a subtle sepia tint that felt to Mikey like an affirmation of its age. Otherwise, it was completely unblemished.

He was about to clamp the watch shut when he paused. The red second hand—had it moved? He looked closer. Yes, it had, but not only that. It was moving—starting and stopping with each second. Had it been doing that a few moments ago? Mikey didn’t think so. He held the watch up to his ear, and his eyes grew wide. There was no way.

The watch was ticking.