The Season of Open Water (18 page)

Luce

They have been making good money. All through the spring and the summer, they have made good money, doing their jobs for Honey Lyons, and then the other things, the occasional picking off, the stealing. They have been careful, not too greedy. They have picked their jobs well. They have not been caught.

That night on the last weekend of July is a free night—a Saturday night. There is no job to do, no liquor to run or pirate, scavenge, or unload. When it is still light, the sky that steep thick blue, they go to the Portuguese diner up by the Narrows for sandwiches, and then to the Castle Theater downtown to see the new Laurel and Hardy.

They sneak in a bottle of whiskey and drink it off in swigs, passing it back and forth across the empty seat between them. They sit through the movie, cracking up, laughing, hooting at the uprooted trees, the smashed windows and busted doors, the pair of crazy twins, one skinny, one fat, falling prey to disaster after disaster. They holler when the piano is rolled out and hacked up. They slide down in their seats, doubled over, laughing and drinking, and by the time the last match is thrown into the leaking tank of gasoline, they are both tight and the bottle is empty, rolling around on the floor under their seats.

They step outside into the warm clear night. The moon is full. They trip down the block, looking for Luce's car on the buckled side streets, trying to remember where they had parked it. When they do finally find it and slide in, Luce starts up the engine and gives Johnny a choice of where they will go next—a dance, a fight, a game of cards? What'll it be? And when Johnny can't choose, can't make up his mind, which is so much like him, Luce announces that they will hit all three—first, the fight, to get them gunned up, and then the dance. But they get to the dance, and the band is no good, and there are no good-looking girls, so they don't stay. At the card game, Luce wins big at a five-card draw, and they pick up another bottle of whiskey, climb back into the car, and they drive and drink, passing the bottle back and forth, the darkness howling with the speed through the open windows.

“Let's swing by the cove,” Johnny suggests.

“Forget it,” Luce answers.

“You still seeing that girl?”

“That girl is nothing.”

The stars are sharp and glittering, fine and smart as diamonds poked out through the thin black sky. They are laughing and it is good. They talk about the money they have already made and boast about the money they will make. They drive fast down the roads through Dartmouth. A rum hook on the floor behind them rattles from side to side as they slide around the curves, and Luce tells Johnny Clyde to reach back and throw that thing on the seat. They speed into the village at the Head. It is after midnight and the town is quiet. They pass the gas pumps and fishtail around the corner onto Drift Road, heading south. The car gathers speed. The road heaves and falls underneath them, the black night skimming by. They pass Widow Kirby's house, and the road twists and begins to rise. They drive faster. At the top of the hill, Luce slams his foot down on the gas, the pedal to the floor. They tear past the orchard, past the farm, toward the S curve at the bottom. Luce takes the curve hard, he takes it fast, too fast, the tires spin out into the soft shoulder of dirt, and they are running off the road toward a stone wall. He jerks the wheel left to swerve back, but the tie rod snaps, and the car plows head-on into the wall. There is the sound of metal folding, glass shattering. Stones explode. Luce's head snaps forward, striking the wheel, then snaps back hard against the seat, his knee jammed up against the steering column, and there is glass everywhere—in their hair, down their shirts, on their pants, the light crinkling sound of glass raining down like hail. The front end of the car is smashed, stones busted through the radiator, puncturing it, a cloud of steam rises over the hood, through the open space where the windshield had been. Luce looks through it. He tries to see through it, the fog softening. They are at the edge of a shallow ditch, one wheel sunk, the front hood mangled. One headlight points straight ahead into the field on the other side of the ditch, the other headlight cocked at a wild angle up into the trees. Luce can feel a warm crawl down the side of his face. He realizes his head has been cut. He wipes at it with his hand. There is blood on his fingers, wet and sticky.

“Shit, Johnny, we got to get out of here,” he says. He thinks he says this. It is his voice, but distant and small and vague. He is not sure the words have made it out of his mouth aloud. He reaches to turn the key. His knee aches, a sharp stab, but he stretches his leg against the pain and pumps the gas. The pedal is cold and he realizes he has lost his shoe. His foot is soaked and he has turned the key. He is turning the key and nothing has happened. The engine is dead, and the bottle of whiskey has busted open on the floor, and his foot is soaked in it. The reek of the whiskey and the stink of the radiator steam fill the car. Luce turns in his seat toward Johnny. Rough bits of glass fall down the back of his shirt, glass crunching on the seat underneath him.

“Johnny,” he says, his voice louder now, maybe too loud. His ears are ringing. “You alright?”

Johnny grunts, a low strained sound.

Luce blinks. What the hell was he seeing? Nothing. No, there is nothing. Only Johnny's hands clasped together on his lap. They are smooth and white as bone in the queer light.

“My neck's sore as hell, Luce,” Johnny murmurs.

“I know, I know. We got to get out of here.” Luce yanks at the handle of the door. Jammed. He pushes his shoulder against it, then slams harder into it, but it won't give. He remembers the rum hook—he can use it to pry the door open—and he turns and reaches behind him. He sees it then: the metal rod straight and thin and black, it seems to float in the dark space behind the passenger seat, the claws of the rum hook are caught in the upholstery and the butt end of it is dug into the base of Johnny's skull.

“Christ,” he whispers.

Johnny grunts again.

Luce looks at him, then looks away, straight ahead out the open space of the windshield. The earth is tipped, the sky, the edge of the road, the ditch, all of it tipped, and the field extends out ahead of them, stark and luminous, washed over by one headlight and the moon.

Johnny reaches out and touches the sleeve of Luce's coat. His fingers are cold, and once more, Luce pushes his shoulder hard against the door, throwing all of his weight into it, and the thing gives. It swings open, creaking, twisted on its hinges.

“You can't leave me here, Luce,” Johnny says. His voice is quiet. His grip on Luce's sleeve is tight and hard.

“I can't move you, Johnny. I'm going to get someone.”

“Get who?”

“Someone. Some help. I'll be back.”

“You can't leave me. We got to get out of here, the two of us together. We got to get the cases out of the trunk. What if they come by? What if Lyons comes by? We got to get those cases out, get 'em to the pesthouse.”

Luce sits back in his seat. He leaves the door swinging open. Johnny is still gripping his arm, and the grip is a vise.

“There's no cases in the trunk, Johnny,” Luce says.

“I can smell it. I can smell whiskey.”

“The bottle broke. That's all.”

“Don't mess with me. I put those cases in there myself.”

“There are no cases in the trunk.”

“He's gonna find them, Luce. He's gonna find us and he's gonna know we've been around behind his back. He's gonna know what we've been doing. I heard him talking a few days back to my dad, asking around where I've been, asking if I might be doing something else, some other work. He smells it, Luce. He's onto us. And if he comes by tonight, if he drives by—”

“Shut up,” Luce says.

But Johnny blazes on, talking gibberish, there is sweat pouring down his face. Luce looks over his shoulder at the rum hook. At the point where it enters Johnny's neck a thick dark rim of blood has begun to soak onto the seat.

“He's going to kill us,” Johnny says. “We're going to be dead when he finds out.”

“He's not going to find out.”

“He will. You watch. Just my luck, he'll come around now, find those cases we took off him. He'll find the truck, the boat, he'll find it all.” And he goes on, and Luce just sits there, half listening, Johnny's voice smashing around like pieces of busted tin, smacking up against the roof of the car, shrill, then low again, a whisper. Luce can smell the blood now, his own blood. He can taste it on his mouth. It makes his stomach turn.

“You got to shut up, Johnny, you can't keep talking on like this.”

But Johnny doesn't listen or doesn't hear him. He just goes on about Honey Lyons catching them and the cases in the trunk, and Luce realizes that someone will come. At some point, some late night driver or a cop will pass by and stop for them, and Johnny will be sitting there on the passenger seat, with the butt end of a rum hook through the back of his head, babbling up a storm, and that will be no good. Then they will be caught—Johnny, if he makes it at all. Luce tries to think it through, how to get them out of this, how to get himself out of this. He tries to think through the haze of steam and the smells, the soft and beautiful night now turned so wrecked, everything that he has worked for, everything that he has wanted, on the verge of being thrown.

He can feel a restless tremor in his hands, the strength of his hands, and he imagines it. It is unthinkable, but he imagines it as if it were happening, as if he were moving across the seat, reaching over, and he can feel Johnny's throat in his hands. He is kneeling on the seat, and it is happening, he is kneeling over Johnny, his knees ground into bits of glass, and he is straddling him, Johnny's throat in his hands, the words twisting off, not talking anything now, he can feel the sensation of blood pushing under his hands, blood pounding as his fingers squeeze, digging in to meet the bone.

The thought is awful, the possibility of it, the necessity of it so awful that it takes him a moment to realize the car is silent. There is no sound except the occasional snap of the engine as the block cools and the soft wind outside working through the trees. He turns to look. Johnny is asleep, or more than asleep. There is no sound off him, no breath. His eyes are open. Luce gets out of the car, glass rattling off him as he stands. He starts walking south down Drift Road. He calls the police from the Poor Farm. His voice is shaking. He does not have to pretend. They come. They look over the junked car and the scene and Johnny Clyde, and Luce overhears one of them say to another in a low voice that wasn't it damn lucky for that poor boy to have been so drunk. He wouldn't have felt a thing. Later, when it was all settled and done and a towing truck had come for the car, Luce got a fellow to give him a ride down to the Point Wharf. From there, he walked across the bridge down John Reed Road. It was three in the morning, still dark.

Just past the old dump, he cuts onto the dirt path and takes the deer run across the marsh to the pool at the end of Crooked Creek.

He takes the small boat up the river. He throws anchor in the shallows off the flats below Indian Hill. He can't quite bring himself to leave the boat and walk up to the house. So he sleeps on the floor, drifting on the still water. The moon rocks the sky.

He wakes after sunrise, sore as hell. His entire body aches. He washes himself in the river. He strips to his underclothes and wades in up to his waist, his feet sink into the mud. He flushes the grit from a cut on his shoulder, peels back the piece of loose skin, and holds the wound open. He can see the slight tint of blood as it washes clean.

Farther down, the sandy beach gives way to the cattails. Ahead of him, a snapping turtle slips off a rock, and he can see its small hooked eyes above the surface, black glittering stones. It watches him, then sinks down and disappears.

He swims out into the deeper water of the channel. The surface is smooth, but the current runs strong underneath, and he dives toward the bottom, his hands outstretched, weblike in front of him, the ends of his hair green in the clear underwater light. He hangs there, his body suspended above the ridged sand floor, holding his breath, the sound of the river in his ears. He tucks his knees under him, looks up, and he can see the surface, the sky behind it, white and brilliant, back-lit by the sun, and for a moment, it is as if he is looking through to heaven. He pushes off toward it, his body through the clear cool water, the river rushing over his open eyes. He breaks through and swims back in toward the shore. He is sick in the shallows. He sits down afterward, gasping, his body weak, his head light. The marsh grass is thick and green, and the luster of it, the richness of it, softens him, the beauty of the world so simple and, for the moment, so forgiving.

Cora

The house is empty. Her father—gone up the road to Lincoln Park for a smoke and a talk with Rui. Bridge—gone on her bicycle midafternoon, to wherever it is she goes. Gone more and more often these days.

Cora is up in the bedroom when she hears voices outside in the yard. She comes downstairs into the kitchen. They are arguing—her son, Luce, and Honey Lyons. She hears the crinkle of ice in a glass, the strike of a match, the smell of tobacco paper burning. They are arguing about a cut, money, a go-through man, someone got not enough, someone else too much.

“I don't want that job, Lyons,” Cora hears Luce say.

Late sunlight spiked with shade. A wash of yellow dusk. Through the open window, she can smell the swift sharp reek of pine. The sky has grown taut, a fragile skin with soft dark ribs. New weather pulling in.

She sits down in a chair with some mending, a few socks to be darned, a skirt hem unraveled, a shirtsleeve hopelessly torn. Patching a tear in the elbow of her father's coat, she pricks her finger by mistake. She sets the sewing down in her lap and holds up her hand to the light. She watches the blood squeeze out. One drop. She lets it congeal. A small red bug crouched on her fingertip.

When Owen Wales stopped by the other day to pick up some linens, she had asked him to stay and have a lemonade with her outside on the porch, and he had accepted so quickly, so eagerly, that it astonished her, it made her think he might have been waiting weeks for her to ask, and they had sat together on the porch in the shade and talked about this and that, goings-on around town, the clambake coming up at the Grange. She asked him once if he had heard talk about her son. She worried about him and the kind of trouble he might be knotted up in. And Owen Wales had looked at her, his eyes somber, and asked, wasn't working for Honey Lyons trouble enough? She had nodded. She did not answer. He had apologized for saying it. No, she said. I do know that.

Outside, the voices seize up, sharp. Silence. Then Honey Lyons says in an even voice, “I don't feel so good, you know, when I think about what happened to the kid. Freakish thing. Funny, too, I'd just had myself a good talk with him a week or so back.”

And it is not what he says, which is what it is, but how his voice turns up at the end. He leaves a question, which might be an implication or a bluff or a threat, and it floats through the silence, loaded and cruel. Cora can feel her son. She can feel his sudden confusion.

“He was my friend,” Luce mumbles. Through the window, Cora can see him looking down, his head bent. He spits in the dirt, then rubs it in with the toe of his boot.

“Well, take care of yourself then, Luce Weld,” Lyons says. “Don't go turning down too many jobs. Someone might get to thinking you don't need the money.”

Lyons crosses by the window. She hears the car door close, the engine started up, the crush of the tires over the marl.

Luce comes inside. He nods at her, opens the cabinet, and takes out a box of crackers. He unwraps a block of cheese, pares down an edge, sits at the table, and looks out into the yard, chewing slowly.

There are windows in her hands. Points in the hollow of the flesh where the lines cross that itch to open. When she unfolds her palms a certain way and turns them to the world, she can take in sounds, currents, temperature, light. She can take in the smell of the blossom off the apple tree. She can take in the intent under words. She can feel things that are not said. Now in the kitchen, she opens her hands slowly toward her son—a slight and unobtrusive gesture. She knows he will not notice. His mind is rattled, distracted, his face turned away, its sullen stubborn beauty, and through the windows in her palms, she can hear the grit between his thoughts. She can feel he is afraid.

She wants to tell him what she knows will be no use. He is her child, has always been her dearest child, her only son, and even now that she can feel the doom around him, she loves him still. So much. She will always love him.

She says his name and he looks up and she can see his fear. It has set wildfires inside him. She tries to hold his eyes in one place, but they are elusive, untenable, like sand.

“Are you hungry?” she asks gently.

He swallows hard, nods.

She fixes him a plate of food. Cornbread and a cut of ham. She watches his fingers with the knife moving back and forth between them, the long teeth of the fork with bits of flesh and meal.

When he has finished, she clears his place and puts the fork and plate in the sink.

“Are you tired?” she asks.

He nods.

“Go upstairs to your old bed and have a sleep.”

He looks at her then, his eyes full, tears on the brink of them, and although he will not say it, he cannot say it, she can see that he is grateful. He tells her to wake him at nine, and she listens as his feet take the stairs, and then there is silence. All through the house, silence.

She finishes her mending, then goes outside. She sweeps down the hen yard, shoos the chickens into their shed and bolts them in. She mops the kitchen floor and sorts out her wash for the following day. She draws the curtains in the front room that face the road.

It is a beautiful night. A perfect swimming night. But she will not go down to the river. She will stay in the house with her son asleep in a room above her. There is a rightness in the house that she feels when he is in it.

She dims the light, sits in the kitchen, and unpins her hair. She runs the brush through. She peels the strands off the horse-bristles, winds them around her finger, and puts them in the shoe box that she keeps in a cupboard under the stairs. For ten years, she has saved her hair, these strands given up off the root. She has marked the color changing, the lightening from brown toward silver, as if with age it gains some value.

She waits until the clock strikes nine times, and when the striking is done, she waits a few minutes more. Then she wakes Luce, and he leaves. When the house is empty again, she walks with her aloneness through the rooms. She unpacks the blackest spaces, the closets, the corners, the long and untouched shadows under a bed, a bureau, a chair.

The darkness bleeds together. One shape is equal to the next. The design of the world, every hierarchy in it, leveled.

After ten, and still her father is not home yet. He does not see well in the night. It is unlike him to be gone so long past dark.