Loo pulled her towel closer and padded across the living room, leaving a trail of footprints behind on the hardwood. She closed and locked the door to the bathroom. It had been open long enough for all the steam to leave. The mirror was clear again. She stared into her own face.
Outside in the yard, she knew that Hawley was cutting open the codfish. He was sliding the knife underneath their ribs, just as Captain Titus had done to the whale on the beach. Her father was clearing out the intestines and stomach and liver—gray and pink all mixed and spilling onto the grass. Next he would cut off the head of the fish and then he’d start scraping the scales. The seagulls always came and carried away the insides, but the scales would remain, flickering on the driveway, tiny chips of iridescent bone, until they began to rot and smell and Loo washed them away with the hose.
The bath had cooled but Loo climbed back in. She stayed there, shivering and thinking until the tips of her fingers became raised and swollen. Then she slid underneath the water and opened her eyes. Her mother’s shampoo and conditioner peered down at her from the ledge, two worn-out sentinels. Loo focused on the bottles, the shapes distant and blurred. She started counting.
As she counted, she pictured her mother at the bottom of the lake, the flesh lifting off her bones. It would be peaceful there, and dark, and quiet, with all the weight of the water above. There would be no room for air—only pressure, pushing through her ears and up into her nose, squeezing her lungs and then ironing them flat. Loo held herself down for another minute, feeling more alive than ever, pressing hard against the porcelain, until she heard Hawley’s fist pounding on the door, and her spine bucked, and she broke the surface, sputtering, choking, gasping—drawing the deepest part of the water back with her and turning it out onto the bathroom floor.
Bullet Number Six
THE WHITE NIGHTS IN ALASKA began in late spring. Each day grew longer, until the sun set for only five hours, then four, then three, leaving the sky a troubling, otherworldly gray. As the days stretched and lengthened, Hawley found he could not sleep. Nothing seemed to help—warm milk, hot baths, pills, even the blackout shades Lily had bought. He tossed and turned, and then he paced the house, and then he put on his boots and went for a walk.
The roads were unnaturally silent and deserted. Hawley considered walking to Cook Inlet but instead he went past the elementary school and along Old Sterling Highway. It was their first summer in Anchor Point, and for the most part, they liked it. The beaches reminded Lily of Olympus, and Hawley fished and gathered oysters, which he hadn’t done since his father was alive. Living in Alaska they didn’t need much, and Hawley had been able to stretch out the last of his money, but now the safe-deposit box was nearly empty and they had a baby on the way.
Hawley’s father had a set of rules for living in the wilderness. It was all about the number three. A man could go three minutes without air. Three hours without shelter. Three days without water. Three weeks without food. And three months without seeing another person before he’d start to go crazy. Hawley had gone longer than that, once or twice before he met Lily, hiding out in the woods after a job, and he still remembered the shock of returning to town, sitting in a diner drinking coffee while folks chattered around him. Maybe he had gone a little off, being alone that much. It always took a few days before he was able to speak to anyone properly. And even longer to shake what haunted him in the woods—that the world had been emptied of everyone and left him behind in that emptiness. It was the same feeling he got walking the streets during midnight sun.
Eventually he came to the bridge that crossed Anchor River. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, watching the current and his own breath cloud the air, thinking about his call with Jove the day before. Hawley had reached out looking for a job, and Jove knew of one in Cordova. The trick was it was working for Ed King.
The original hire had been a bush pilot, but the pilot had skimmed off the payment he was supposed to deliver, and King had him taken down one fine morning while the pilot’s girlfriend was making pancakes. The girlfriend was killed, too. Hawley had read about the murder in the papers. It was a real mess, the breakfast burning on the stove and the girl collapsed in front of the refrigerator, her blood mixed up with the milk. But it was also lucky because now another man was needed, and that other man was Hawley.
“This can’t get screwed up again,” said Jove. “I need someone I can trust.”
“King won’t want me anywhere near this.” Hawley could still picture the old boxer running after Lily’s truck, pie smeared across his suit.
“He told me to find someone who could handle it,” said Jove. “We just won’t tell him that it’s you.”
The plan was a simple exchange, cash for carry. Hawley would be gone for only a few days. He hadn’t told Lily yet. He didn’t want her to worry. He hadn’t worked anything like this since before they got married. But he was feeling restless, and they needed the money. At least this is what he told himself as he turned away from the river. And what he said when he told Jove he’d take the job.
Their front door didn’t make a sound as he slipped back inside the cabin. He took off his boots, hung up his coat and went to the bedroom. Lily was still sleeping, her black hair piled on the pillow, the comforter pulled up under her rounded stomach. The perpetual daylight did not bother her. Ever since they’d found out she was pregnant, she’d developed a knack for falling asleep anywhere, day or night, in a car or on a couch or even when they were eating, dropping her head onto one of her arms and quietly disappearing for a few minutes, her mouth open.
Hawley sat on the end of their bed. He smoothed her hair and kissed the back of her neck. Lily opened her eyes, rubbed her face and began to pick the crust off her lips with the edge of her fingernail. She was a drooler.
“Get my notebook,” she said.
Hawley opened the closet and rummaged around until he found Lily’s purse. Inside were her wallet and keys, a package of tissues, some shells from the beach and a small black notebook, with an elastic strap across the cover and a small pen that fit inside. He grabbed the notebook and brought it back to the bed. Lily yawned as she took it from him, then opened the pages and began to draw. In the old days she used to roll a cigarette when she woke up but she’d quit as soon as she’d found out about the baby. Without the nicotine she was irritable, especially in the mornings. She’d started a dream journal to keep her mind off lighting up.
“What was it this time?” he asked.
“A flock of birds. There were so many of them I couldn’t see the sky.”
She took his hand and put it on her swollen stomach. Recently, the baby had started to move. Whenever Hawley felt the fluttering deep inside his wife, it made him want to get in his car and drive.
“I think it’s asleep.”