HAWLEY WOKE UP in a shed full of goats, strangely warm. It was dark. Jove had him spread out on top of the rug, and was in the process of sterilizing a pair of gold sugar tongs over a kerosene lamp. Hawley could smell the blood.
There were four goats and they were all watching him, their heads between the slats of their pen, somber and still, their ears twitching back and forth, their strange eyes glittering in the amber light. Hawley shifted, and a thunderous ache threaded through his back and crushed his lungs.
“Would have been better if you’d stayed out,” said Jove.
“Where are we?” Hawley choked. He moved his hand and grabbed a fistful of hay.
“Not sure. But far away enough, for now.”
“I need a doctor.”
“I am a doctor—didn’t I tell you before?” Jove turned the tongs into the flame. “Certified.”
Hawley looked down at his shirt. He’d gotten it for his birthday last year. It was the first time he’d ever bought himself a present. He’d seen it in a store in Poughkeepsie, right after they’d had their first good take, and he hadn’t even tried it on, had just brought it up to the register and paid. He’d never felt so good. Hawley and Jove had gone out to dinner and ordered half the stuff on the menu and eaten it all, and then they went to the movies and sat through some half-baked comedy. They laughed pretty hard anyway, they were in such fine moods, and then they went to a bar and there was a pretty girl behind the counter and they tipped her heavily and she filled their drinks and even bought them a round, and then Hawley remembered his new shirt and he brought it to the bathroom and changed and it fit him just right and when he got back to the bar there was a candle stuck in a piece of pie waiting next to his glass and Jove and the girl sang “Happy Birthday.”
There wasn’t much left to the shirt now. The buttons had been torn loose in front and the sides were soaked through with blood. Jove ripped the seam to get at Hawley’s back.
“The bullet’s stuck in your ribs,” he said.
One of the goats started bleating softly, like its throat was sore. Hawley turned his face into the hay and thought of the girl from the bar. He’d had so much to drink that night he didn’t remember leaving. But he remembered her name: Laura. He’d gone back three more times but she wasn’t working and he’d been too embarrassed to ask anyone when she did.
It was her face he’d imagined on the porch of the great house. Her smile coming through those doors and crossing the room. Her hand reaching up and squeezing his arm, just as she had that night in the bar, when she leaned over and said, Nice shirt, and then asked Hawley what he’d wished for.
That’s what he tried to picture now, the two of them here together in the dark with nothing but the glow of the lamplight between them. Her fingers peeling away the cloth and wiping the blood, her breath across his back, her weight pressing hard against his skin, and not the terrible moment when he’d realized all the clocks were ticking.
“This is going to hurt,” said Jove. And then he slid the tongs inside him.
The Widows
THE FIRST WIDOW BROUGHT A cheesecake. But not just any cheesecake. This one was made from ricotta, the curds gathered and strained and aged by the widow herself in fat little molds. “It’s a family recipe. I make it only for special occasions.”
Loo stood in the doorway, wearing an old shirt of her father’s, her hair unbrushed, her feet bare. They had lived in Olympus for over a year, and no one had ever come to visit. Their porch was covered with buckets of rotting seaweed, the front hall littered with sand. The widow smiled as she handed over the heavy plate, then peered toward the back rooms with a searching glance that made it clear that the cheesecake was not for Loo.
The next widow delivered blueberries from her garden—too much for her to eat, she said, and the bushes kept producing. They didn’t stop, even though she was exhausted from picking all day, even though her fingers were turning purple. She could use some help, someone needed to come over with a ladder to reach the higher branches. Someone tall, she said. Someone strong.
Another widow arrived with two children, young boys whose hair was combed but whose faces revealed an inner misery, a misery that grew as they watched their mother pass a box of chocolates, along with a perfumed note tied with ribbon, into Loo’s hands.
Some were actual widows, their husbands lost at sea or struck down with heart attacks or smashed into trees while driving drunk, and when they knocked, they were the most apologetic, the most unsure of themselves. The rest were simply fishing widows, left at home while their men followed schools of cod or tuna out to the Bitter Banks, or made their way down the coast after swordfish, for weeks or months at a time. The women all brought food, but Loo thought they were the ones who looked hungry. Her father was caught once in the front yard as he was coming in from the beach, and the woman was so nervous and laughed so high and hard, backing him into a corner, that he started avoiding the house during the day.
A part of Loo felt guilty for closing the door in their faces, though she also hated it when the widows pushed their way inside, their eyes searching for clues while setting their baked goods on the kitchen table, right next to the watermark that Hawley had made over hundreds of nights, polishing his guns and drinking mugs of coffee. When they asked if they could use the bathroom, she didn’t even make an excuse. She just looked them in the face and said no.
In his brief, shining moment on the greasy pole, her father had wiped away the town’s ill will. The men of Olympus pulled him out of the harbor and carried him away on their shoulders, and the women of Olympus watched the water running down his scarred back and pressed their lips together.