Men and Dogs

Hannah Legare is in trouble. Despite marrying a wonderful man, she struggles to stay faithful to him. Despite setting up a hugely successful business venture, she can't quite focus on its growing financial difficulties. Despite knowing that her husband has finally decided he can no longer stay in their marriage, she believes that by climbing up his balcony, fuelled by one cocktail too many, she can somehow persuade him to take her back. One three-storey fall later, Hannah Legare is on her way back to reluctantly recuperate in her childhood home, Charleston: a town full of memories, and the town where she last saw her father. On a warm April evening in 1985, Buzz Legare - notoriously charming general practitioner and family man - went on a routine fishing trip in the mouth of the Charleston harbor. Two days later, his boat was found drifting, holding nothing but his fishing pole and his waiting labrador retriever. Now it is 2008, and the family Buzz left behind is still reeling from his disappearance. His son, Palmer, a veterinary surgeon, has crafted a seemingly perfect life for himself. But although he has a loving partner and a fabulous, envied home, Palmer feels frustratingly numb to it all. Buzz's wife, the (well) re-married Daisy, despite having much to say about her childrens'lives, is almost pathological about keeping her own feelings under lock and key, and then there is Hannah, whose return to Charleston and whose attempts to solve the mysteries of the past stir up a hornets' nest of secrets and emotion.

Men & Dogs

Girls in Trucks

Men & Dogs

Katie Crouch

First published in Great Britain 2010
Copyright © Katie Crouch

This electronic edition published 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The right of Katie Crouch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978-1-40880-840-5

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To Dad, who always hears me, especially when I’m out at sea.

I can’t look at everything hard enough.

—Thornton Wilder,
Our Town

Men and Dogs

1
Saturday

T
WO DAYS BEFORE Hannah’s father disappeared, he took her out in his boat.

It was an aluminum boat, flat and small with a pull-operated motor. Before they left, her father checked the gas and oil levels. Hannah held Tucker, the dog, on a leash.

Hannah was still small then. Eleven years old. Her hair was streaked with green from afternoons spent in the neighbor’s pool.

She wasn’t pretty. She had her father’s powerful features, and they were too large for her face. She wore a long T-shirt and red sneakers. Her bathing suit snaked up in bright lines around her neck. She wasn’t unhappy. She’s always been good at waiting.

There was no plan for the day. There never was.

The Legares were a family who navigated by the outlines of Buzz’s whims. The children had become excellent at collecting
information. It was a survival tactic. They eavesdropped, they spied. Hannah’s brother taught her how to open and reseal mail over a pot of steaming water.

That morning there had been a fight. Hannah listened to the dull murmurings of it through the bedroom wall, the voices spiking in volume, then falling flat to silence. Shortly after, Buzz stepped out into the hall.

I’ll take Hannah, he said.

His voice through the door.

Her mother’s laugh.

Take her to China if you want to, she heard her mother say. I don’t care.

Hannah sat up. It was time to go.

Hannah, now thirty-five, remembers some details perfectly clearly, as if they happened just a moment ago. They bounce in her head, meaningless shards of color and sound. When she is ordering coffee. When she is in line to get on a plane.

Other things she knows she should recall—large events and happenings—now somehow eradicated. Sometimes she squeezes her eyes shut and scrapes her mind, trying to get to them.

She still has this list. Items she and her father took on the boat trip, written in an eleven-year-old’s cursive on Hello
Kitty paper, carefully folded and stored.

When they were ready, Hannah untied the bowline and waited on the dock while her father pulled the cord. The engine sneezed,
rumbled slightly, and died.

Damn it, Buzz said.

He looked up at his daughter and smiled.

Don’t tell your mother.

She nodded. There were going to be many things she wouldn’t tell her mother.

The boat started. Buzz steered them away from the Boat Club and turned the engine knob all the way to the right. Hannah stared at the shrinking land.

Always nice to leave, isn’t it? her father said. Where should we go? China?

I don’t know.

China.

No!

We’ll send them a postcard.

No!

You’re right, no postcard.

Hannah . . .

Yeah?

How many bones are in the body?

Two hundred six.

Hannah’s father was a doctor, and she planned on being one, too.

How many cells?

One hundred trillion.

One hundred trillion, her father repeated, looking out at the water. He took a swallow of beer.

He was tall and, at forty-one, still lean from runs around the Battery. People remembered him as the high school track star.
Buzz Legare wasn’t staggeringly handsome, but he was disarming. People wanted to be near him. Men pointedly used his first and last name in conversation. Hannah noticed that waitresses lingered after taking an order, even when her mother was there.

Aren’t you going to crab? he asked. We brought all of these chicken necks.

Hannah sighed. She didn’t want to crab. She wanted to read about Kirk Cameron.

Pretty soon a day on the boat with your dad will be the last thing you want to do, he said. Pretty soon, it’ll all be about makeup and boys.

OK. I’ll crab.

Buzz turned on the radio. He always sang. He’d start out with a hum, and then would become overwhelmed with the desire to perform. He never knew the words. He didn’t care.

Wake me up before you LA-la

Go-go, Hannah said.

It was midday, and men, both black and white, were sitting out in the sun, legs spread, fishing poles in their hands. They stayed on separate docks, but their children spilled into the river together, floating side by side on Styrofoam boards. Some of them waved. Hannah waved back.

Suddenly, a scream cut through the sound of the motor. Hannah jerked her head toward the shore. On one of the docks, people were running and gathering around something lying flat.

Kevin! someone shouted.

A woman was crouching, shaking a boy’s shoulder.

Hannah’s father knocked about the boat like a large caught fish, swearing as spray lurched up behind with sick, slapping sounds. They slammed into the dock.