Loo got the binoculars from the cabin. She climbed onto the bow, turned left, then right, but it was like looking into nothingness—two black circles of glass. The only thing of any consequence in any direction were the stars.
She had never seen so many. The dome of sky spread out unencumbered and uninterrupted by landscape, by trees or mountains or houses. The heavens fell down like a bell jar, meeting the edge of the earth, a stunning multitude of galaxies and satellites and distant suns so bright she could not find the North Star among them. Even the planets were lost in the hazy spread of the Milky Way. Loo wished she had her star map, with its diagrams and spinning circles, but it was packed in her suitcase, left behind at Mabel Ridge’s house. For years she had carried the planisphere with her from place to place, studied its contours in motel rooms and hotel rooms, in diners and libraries, in the back of classrooms and her father’s truck, under the bearskin rug and in the bathtub and finally on the roof of her own home. Tracing the patterns of constellations. Memorizing their names. Finding comfort in the way that infinite space could be fixed and charted.
Loo closed her eyes. It was not that different from having them open. The heavens were still there, beneath her eyelids. Tiny sparks. She could smell the salt. She could feel the boat rocking. She listened to the waves and her father’s shallow breath and slid her hands across her face. The map was inside of her. She knew these stars. They had been drawn across her own body.
When Loo opened her eyes and looked through her fingers, the darkness seemed brighter. Clearer. She watched the froth of the sailboat’s wake disappearing, then lifted her chin and searched through the radiants for the first constellation she had ever learned: Ursa Major. The Great Bear’s back branched off from the four stars shaping its body, pointing the way toward the more hidden Ursa Minor. The Little Bear resembled the Great Bear the way a child resembles her parent. A smaller configuration of the same parts. A mirror image with the contents slightly shifted but containing something more powerful than size or strength at the end of its tail, a faithful constant, a guiding principle: the North Star.
Now that Polaris was in her sights, Loo felt her heart calm to a single purpose. Like the moment in Dogtown when she discovered those giant, unmovable, erratic rocks. The stars were signposts, just like the words carved in the stones, and she could find her way by moving from one to the other, just as she’d traveled through the woods from TRUTH to COURAGE to NEVER TRY NEVER WIN.
Loo raised her fist and held it toward the horizon. Starting at zero, she began to count, using her own body as the compass. Ten degrees for each fit of her knuckles into the sky. The North Star set at ninety. They were around forty-three degrees north. And they needed to head west. Loo pushed the tiller hard alee, putting Ursa Minor firmly on the starboard side of the boat.
The sails luffed and filled with wind. On the bench beside her, Hawley shifted.
“I know where we are,” she said. “At least, I think I do.” The world had suddenly come into focus, and now all of the constellations were making themselves known to her. Perseus and Pegasus. Cetus and Hercules.
She could not see her father’s face, only his chest rising and falling. Every moment that he did not speak made her more anxious. She pointed overhead. “That star is Vega, I think. It has a blue color, and it’s one of the brightest, next to Polaris. It’s part of Lyra, the harp that belonged to Orpheus. He played it to convince Hades to release his wife from the underworld. Are you listening? Dad?”
“I know that story,” said Hawley. “He shouldn’t have looked back.”
She hadn’t taken off the bulletproof vest. Underneath her clothes were damp, her skin covered with goosebumps. Her body was bruised and her ribs hurt whenever she took a breath. The impact of the bullets had been absorbed directly into her body. She could still feel the vibration deep inside her bones, the energy of the blast that forced her over the edge of the boat, the wind knocked out of her lungs. She was so scared she couldn’t feel the cold and then she did and she was surrounded by white water. Not knowing which way was up or down. Then her father’s life jacket had lifted her back to the surface. And with her first gasp of air, she’d felt the opposite of dead. She’d felt real and full of power, the same way she’d felt staggering out of the ocean and breaking Marshall’s finger—as if all her fear had been nailed shut tight inside a barrel.
“Your mother,” Hawley said. His breath was ragged.
“Tell me something about her,” Loo said. “Something I don’t know.”
Hawley tugged at his beard. “Well,” he said. “One time, she shot me.”
“What? Where?”
“Here.” Hawley pointed to the back of his leg. “It was a perfect shot. But on normal days she couldn’t hit a target. I had to scare her to get her to focus. Like when you first started.”
“Some trick.”
“It worked,” said Hawley. “We wouldn’t be here now if it didn’t.”
She adjusted the tiller. Pulled the ropes. “I should check on Jove.”
“Loo.” Hawley spoke softly. He reached out and took her hand. “Jove’s dead. He’s been dead for the last twenty minutes.”
Loo pulled away. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t want to scare you.”
She got to her knees. She felt Jove’s wrist and pressed her fingers to his neck. It was like touching the slabs of meat in the walk-in freezer at the Sawtooth. A solidity beneath the skin. Jove had lost his hat and his hair was in tangles. Loo patted it down, then covered his scarred face with the blanket. She got back into the captain’s seat.
“Do you need a drink?”
“No.”
“Well, I do,” said Hawley.
She found the bottle, raised it to his lips. Watched him swallow. Hawley coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. There was blood on his lips.
“We should say something,” she said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A blessing. Like at the christening.”
“It won’t help him now.”
“Not for Jove,” said Loo. “For us.”
Hawley dug inside his pocket. “I don’t know any prayers.”
Loo thought of Jove’s sleeping bag, the pattern of ducks on the inside and the hole that leaked feathers all over their house. For weeks after he’d left, she’d found tiny clusters of down in the corners of the porch, woven into the fabric of their rug, even in the cupboards, between the plates and the coffee cups. That same sleeping bag was in the hold now. She had crawled on top of it when she slid the barrel of the shotgun out the window, and a cloud of white fluff had ripped loose from the seam.
“Help me with this,” said Hawley.
Loo took the tobacco pouch from him. She peeled off one of the rolling papers, tucked in a pinch of thick, sweet-smelling leaves. She licked the ends of the paper, spooling the cigarette together, twisting the ends.
“We can talk about him,” said Hawley. “And share what we remember. Then after we die maybe other folks will talk about him, too. Or they won’t, and no one will remember him. And his story will end there.”