The Shore (28 page)

I can't know what would have happened. I know two things: I killed him, and I'm the only one that knows I killed him.

As I head north to Chincoteague I count the little villages, the way I used to out the school-bus window, but I don't let myself think again until I get to the stoplight at T's Corner. Straight on another twenty miles and I'll hit the northern causeway, leave the island—and it is an island, even though it's so big most people forget—and be in Salisbury, Maryland, in an hour and change. Instead I turn right, down a winding road through thick brush, which opens up unexpectedly into marsh, flat green marsh and glossy dark water, the horizon left and right hidden by spits of land, clumps of trees, with nothing ahead but a shimmering black lump floating on the seam between blue sky and blue bay.

The causeway bunny-hops from island to island across the marsh, then arcs out over the bay and the oyster beds to touch down on Chincoteague, and I can pretend that I'm just a tourist as I drive slowly through, giving way to entitled ducks and children dripping ice cream on themselves and screaming at each other. It's quieter than I remember it from before: a lot of the big houses stand empty, and all of the hotels have their “vacancy” signs lit, even though they should be jampacked at this time of year. I remember an obnoxious crush of tourists, family vans with Pennsylvania license plates pulled over on the side of the road out to the refuge, little kids screeching about how they can see Black Beauty when they're really pointing to one of the villagers' goats, the real ponies stepping gingerly, camouflaged by their splattery markings and half-invisible, through the marsh, sipping the salt from the tips of the sharp-bladed grass.

I see the road where Jacob Potter lives and pass it, keep down the main road for another five minutes until I get to the bridge to Assateague, which used to cross a small bay. It's silted up in the past fifteen years, so if I wanted to I could get out and walk across on the wet mud under the bridge.

The traffic barriers on the other side of the bridge are missing, the little booths where rangers would collect your entrance fee untenanted; the asphalt is splitting. There is no one else on the road as I drive slowly out, but I keep to the speed limit anyway, in case they're still ticketing people. The lighthouse, the woods, the marshy parts in the middle: Assateague Island itself is exactly how I remember it, but when I get out to the beach I see what's changed.

There are still a few pilings where the visitor's center used to be, but the changing stalls and the outdoor toilets have been completely wiped away. Ragged-edged hunks of what used to be the parking lot sit half-buried in the mud and dunes. The beach itself, the long stretch of sand down to the water, has constricted to a narrow band, steep down to the breaking waves. The park service hadn't been able to keep replacing the sand that the yearly hurricanes wiped away, so they'd abandoned it. No more tourist beach, no more tourists.

I park the car off the end of the road, step out of my shoes and tuck them just behind one of the front tires like I used to do when Ma brought me out here, and go down to the water's edge. Something inside my chest feels cool and lonely, but in a good way. The sand is soft and hard at once, and I bury my feet just above the waterline, then kick it all away and start walking.

I used to skip school sometimes as a kid, get there for breakfast and stay for homeroom, then slip out when I wasn't being
watched and hike down to the beach. Renee always got mad that I went without her, but she couldn't walk all the way there and all the way back in time to catch the bus. And I wanted to keep the ocean to myself, the whole Atlantic.

People used to live on Assateague, once. There had been a village, down below the lighthouse. I was jealous of them when I was a kid, being so close to the water all the time. I'm jealous again, now that I'm back here, and even though I want to go home to Seth in Georgia, to people that don't know me, another part of me is wondering if they'll let people settle here again, now that the National Park Service has pulled out. I think about making Seth move back here with me, building a little house hidden in the woods just off the road, being able to run down to the beach and skinny-dip whenever we want. The hurricanes wiped away the beach, but it would only take one really big one going at the right angle to give us back yards and yards of pure, clean sand.

I don't know how long I walk for, but when I get back to my car it's still before six. Seth texted while I was gone, asked if I'm getting along all right, and I text back that I'm doing OK but don't call him. I can't quite manage being relational right now.

Jacob Potter's house is small and neat, the house of a carpenter. The tiny lawn is thick and well kept, the window frames square and recently painted. I tell myself that this is the last house, the last stranger, and afterward I'll stop at the first place that looks good and eat whatever I want, find the motel Seth booked for me and take the longest hot shower, and figure out what happens next when I wake up. Even after this internal pep talk I sit
in the front seat of my car for far too long, looking at the house, daring myself to go up and knock. Maybe I'm afraid that he'll be more aggressive even than Tiny.

At the first knock someone inside shouts out, “Just a second!” I can hear him coming and I want to sprint away. I've decided to do just that when the door opens.

He's over six feet tall; when he looks down at me he freezes, like Renee used to do when she saw a spider. I think for a moment that he's going to start whimpering too, like she used to.

“Ellie?” is what he says instead. His nails are digging into the door frame.

“I'm her daughter,” I say. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.”

He's composing himself now, passes a hand over his eyes and puts on a smile, but a kind one, not like Tiny's. Deep in the chest and thick in the arms: he's not aged as well as he could have, but he's ruggedly good-looking, and I wonder if my mom thought so too.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” I answer. “I'm trying to find out some things about my parents. It sounds like you knew them.”

He lets me in, leads the way through a cluttered house to a shaded back porch, pulls out a chair for me and sits down opposite. The look he keeps giving me is strange, even though he's gotten his face under control.

“What can I do you for?”

I'm tired of polite fictions, of not being straight up from the get-go.

“You knew my mother, didn't you?”

“We worked together for a while, saw each other from time
to time in a social setting. She was a private person, I don't know if you can say that many people knew her.”

“You heard how they died? It was in the paper.”

“I heard,” he says. I'm grateful that he doesn't apologize, or tack anything on after that.

“I never got to know them as anything other than Mom and Dad. I don't know, really, where they came from, and I don't know who they were. But the thing that I wish I knew more, and I'm sorry but there's really no way to put this delicately, is whether or not Bo Gordy was my father. Well, he wasn't really any kind of ‘father' to anyone, what I mean is our DNA doesn't match. So I've been asking around after people that knew them then, just in case someone knows who my biological father might have been.”

If he looked startled in the doorway he looks positively sick now, crumpling in on himself and breathing in gulps through his mouth while trying to stay composed. He looks guilty as all hell, and I want to think that I know why.

He sits for a bit, sucking in air and not looking at me, thinking.

“I don't rightly know how to tell you what I need to tell you,” he says slowly.

“If you're going to tell me that you're my father, I don't want to cause you any trouble. I just want to know.”

“No, I wish I were telling you that. I also wish I didn't have to be sober for this, but that's how this all started.” He sits still for a minute.

“Have you ever done something, and in the moment it felt like the only thing that you could do, but you regretted it for forever afterward?”

“Everyone does,” I say.

“Not quite like this. I didn't do something, almost thirty years ago now, and I've regretted it. Which doesn't make it any better.”

I only nod. I don't know if I want to know what he's about to tell me.

“When I knew your mother, I was eighteen, nineteen years old. Chick, the guy we worked for, took me on as a carpenter's helper, more out of pity than anything, I think now. Payday was Fridays, and once we got our pay we used to sometimes play poker and drink bourbon together; your mom played too. It was just another one of those card nights. It had been a tougher day than usual, but you get those sometimes. Chick had already gone home, so it was just the four of us then—me, Tiny, Bo, and your ma—but it was just the four of us a lot. And I don't know what had been going on between your ma and Bo outside of work, but he was angry at her for something private. So when she ran out of money to bet, they made her bet her clothes.”

I feel sick already, but not quite as sick as Jacob Potter looks. He's talking quiet and slow, pausing at the ends of sentences or sometimes in the middle, so that I'm not sure if he's stopped altogether.

“I was drunk then. She didn't want to. I tried to say something, but they said it was all good fun.”

“How do you try and say something?” I ask.

“OK, then, I didn't say enough. I said whatever it was I said, it didn't change their minds. They made her bet her clothes. And when she'd run out of those,” he breathes, “she tried to leave. But they wouldn't let her.”

He stops there for a bit, but I don't tell him to go on.

“They did things to her, then. On the floor. I couldn't make them stop.”

“Did you try?”

“Yes,” he finally says, in not much more than a whisper.

“Did you really try, or did you just tell them to stop?” I can feel tears making my voice thick, but they won't come.

“I should have done more.”

“Did you touch her?”

He doesn't answer, just stares at the floor, face like a clenched fist.

“Did you touch my mother?”

“No.” When he says it his eyes close, tears bunching on the lashes.

I want to kill him. I want to punch him in his stupid face, scream at him that his crying isn't going to bring her back, isn't going to take her hurt away. But I sit still.

“When she found out she was pregnant,” he finally says, “Bo offered to marry her. I thought she was safe with him. If I hadn't been so ashamed, I would have asked her myself.”

“You ashamed?” There's iron in my voice, and he nods.

“I deserve that.” He swallows. “Yes, ashamed. For not doing more. I don't know what she did after that night. She might have been with someone else soon after, but I don't think she was that kind of woman.”

“So Tiny is my father.” It comes out flat with disgust.

“It appears so.”

“And you never touched her?” I ask.

“Never.” He has more conviction now, but I know from the
way his eyes slide off me when he says it that he's holding something back. I want to beat it out of him, I want to scream and shout and hurt him, punish him for what he didn't do. But I remember Cabel Bloxom.

It's getting dark now. The sky has turned to indigo, and the light is heavy. I want to cry, but I can't.

“I've never told anyone what happened. I've kept it to myself for far too long. But it shouldn't weigh you down, now that you know.”

“I won't let it,” I say, though I don't know yet if I'm lying.

“Can I get you something to drink?” he offers.

“I'm good, thanks.” I stand up slowly. “I've had a long day.”