“Wait for it.” Lily flipped the page of her notebook. She drew feathers and wings. “I always wake up too soon,” she said.
Too soon for what, Hawley wanted to ask, but he already felt like a fool for being jealous of the baby who had brought these vivid dreams, along with everything else that was upsetting their lives: the visits to the doctor, the boxes of diapers, the tiny clothes, the stretch marks on Lily’s skin. He still remembered that day in March when she got home from the doctor’s office. Hawley had been eating scrambled eggs in the kitchen when she told him the news. He’d held her, but the only thought he’d had was that his eggs were getting cold.
“There,” said Lily. “Did you feel that?”
Something rumbled beneath Hawley’s fingers. Like a clam tunneling deeply through tightly packed sand. He shook his head. “I must have missed it.”
Eventually the midnight sun turned into a true morning, and as soon as it did, Hawley closed his eyes and started to fall asleep. As he drifted, he was aware of his wife getting up and getting dressed, pulling up her maternity pants, sliding her breasts into a bra meant for nursing. When she tried to wake him, he turned over and groaned.
Lily shook the car keys. “It’s the ultrasound,” she said.
“Do I have to go?”
Her hand fell and began stroking her stomach, as if she were working out a muscle that had just been pulled. “I guess not.”
She turned away from him and walked out of the room, and he could hear her in the kitchen, washing the dishes. Then he heard her gather her things and get in the car and leave. As soon as she did, he opened his eyes and picked up her notebook from the bed. The birds had necks like swans, twisted at odd angles, their beaks drawn to sharp points, their talons spread wide.
Since she got pregnant Lily’s mind had been full of monsters, and yet she never seemed bothered by her dreams—the three-headed dogs, the bulls with red eyes, the packs of man-eating horses. She drew them in her notebook and then they were gone from her life. But each time Hawley snuck a look at those pages, he felt like he was reading his future.
I’ll tell her the truth, he thought. As soon as she gets home.
—
HAWLEY SAID HE was going hunting. He told her that he’d be gone overnight, maybe longer. Lily tugged on her braid and didn’t say a word in return. She went into the kitchen and packed him a lunch with sandwiches and sodas and a thermos of coffee. While she did this Hawley got his duffel and went through his stash in the basement. He took the Colt and his father’s long gun and a SIG Sauer pistol. Then he packed bullets. Hornady InterLocks, A-Square Dead-Toughs and Winchester Silvertips. When he came back upstairs Lily was sitting on the front steps, the lunch bag resting on her knees.
“You’re not happy,” she said.
“I’m happy,” said Hawley.
Lily grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him close. He bent his head and inhaled the scent of her. For a moment he considered staying. She slid her hands into the back pockets of his jeans, squeezed his ass and then let go. She handed him his coat.
“Promise that you’ll call me tonight.”
“I promise.”
“You mean it?”
“I said I will.”
Lily watched Hawley as he loaded a sleeping bag, his mess kit, the food and his ammunition inside the cab of the truck. Then she picked up a rock and threw it at him. Hawley ducked but the rock still hit him hard—right in the soft spot underneath his ribs. He pulled up his shirt and touched the mark she’d made, bright red and smarting.
“You better be happy when you get back,” Lily said. And then she went inside and closed the door.
—
WHEN HE GOT to Anchorage Hawley walked into the bank and was led by the manager down to the locked rooms where the safe-deposit boxes were. The drop was there waiting for him. It was a small aluminum suitcase, with a handle and wheels. He zipped the sides open and looked at the money. The bills smelled of fresh ink and all the excitement of his old life. For a moment he thought of taking the case, going home for Lily and heading to Mexico. Then he remembered the pilot and his girlfriend, and he closed the lid, locked the handle and wheeled the suitcase out of the bank.
At Whittier he took the ferry to Cordova. By then it was early evening, but the sun was still bright. The boat was full of oil rig workers, drinking and playing cards. Hawley sat at a booth and opened up the lunch bag Lily had packed for him. Inside were two cans of ginger ale, a roast beef sandwich on white bread, a ham-and-cheese sandwich on marbled rye, some pickles wrapped in tinfoil and a note that said: It’s a girl.
The paper had been torn from Lily’s dream book and was folded in two, so that It’s was on one side of the crease and a girl was on the other. Hawley opened and closed the note several times, as if the content might change if he did this enough, but the handwriting remained solid, an indelible mark. He put the sandwiches and the pickles and the ginger ale back into the bag. Then he went to the canteen and ordered a beer. The ferry pitched into the wake of a crossing tanker, and all around him men held on to their seats and groaned.
It was the first alcohol he’d had in more than a year. Lily had never asked him to stop but it didn’t feel right to drink without her. Now whenever they walked past a bar, she’d say, “I just added another year to your life.” And for a long time the thought of all those extra years with Lily, stacked up in some vault of the future, had been enough to make him keep walking.
By the time they’d arrived in Cordova Hawley had nursed his way through four beers and half a bottle of whiskey he’d traded with one of the oil riggers for Lily’s pickles. He bought a coffee from the canteen before it closed and then made his way unsteadily down the stairs and waited in his truck for the deck hands to wave off the cars. Once he was over the ramp he drove straight through town and got on the Copper River Highway. After he passed Eyak Lake and the military base, the paved road turned into gravel and wove through a swampy forest, lined with spruce and hemlock. His truck swerved back and forth, kicking up dust. It was close to nine o’clock at night but still looked like the middle of the afternoon.