“No,” said Hawley’s father. “Just the government.”
Hawley lifted the receiver and put it on his lap. With his better hand he cranked the generator and started punching in numbers. The line was full of static but it seemed to be working. Hawley waited for the connection. Below his ribs, standing out in the middle of all the duct tape and bandages, was the mark Lily had made when she threw the rock at him yesterday. A tiny blue spot. He pressed his finger against the bruise and held it there but he couldn’t feel a thing.
“Where are you? Are you hurt?” Lily wasn’t yelling but she sounded like she had been yelling for a long time, the edge of each word torn and ragged. Hawley was so glad to hear her voice that he didn’t say anything. He just leaned his face against the receiver. The plastic smelled like it had been dipped in oil, as if it could catch fire at any moment.
“I’m all right.”
“You were supposed to call. But you didn’t call.”
“I’m all right, I said.”
Lily sneezed. She sneezed and sneezed and sneezed.
“Listen,” said Hawley. “I want you to pack a bag and drive to Anchorage and get a room near the airport. I want you to wait for me there.” The line was breaking up already, his wife’s voice thinning out to a crackling line. “Lily,” he said. “Lily.”
“I’m here,” she said.
“We’re here,” said Hawley’s father.
Through the cloud of dust before them Eyak Lake came into view, and beyond that Hawley could see the outskirts of Cordova. The Jeep shifted gears as the gravel road turned into pavement, the wheels catching for a moment and then gliding over the suddenly smooth surface. Instead of sucking up rocks, the hole in the car floor now seemed intent on expelling them. Hawley watched as one stone after another left the safety of the wheel well and was lost to the road below. And then Hawley found himself drawn toward the hole, his legs gone heavy, his body sliding out of the seat. His father was saying something. Hawley tried to listen but he knew it wouldn’t do much good.
“Tell her you’re coming home,” said his father. “Tell her you love her.”
Hawley clung to the receiver that held his wife’s voice. He thought of all the things his child would never know about him. Future memories shot through with blank spaces. He took a breath and felt the plastic catch and plug the opening in his back. His lungs filled. The air tasted of pepper and blood.
“Lily,” he said. “I’m happy. I’m happy it’s a girl.”
Fireworks
TRY AS SHE MIGHT, LOO could not get the thought of Marshall Hicks off her skin. Each morning she woke and stretched her arms over her head and imagined his hands threaded in hers. She remembered the small white scars on his knuckles, the bump of the finger she had broken. She closed her eyes, and for a moment she could still feel the weight of him, the hovering of his mouth, his fingers pulling her hair. She could hear his voice, the whisper of a groan under his breath. She did this over and over in her mind until the entire length of her body was shaking. And then she heard her father in the hallway, and she waited one moment longer, and then she opened her eyes and got out of the bed.
Hawley knocked on the door.
“Time to go.”
Loo got dressed, then went downstairs and gathered the buckets and wire baskets and spade and rake from the garage. Her father filled a cooler with ice. On the porch they pulled on their boots, Hawley his waders and Loo a pair of old rubber Wellingtons. They walked quietly through the woods to the open shoreline. The tide was all the way out, the beach wet and rippled from the waves and covered with tiny air holes.
Hawley put down the buckets. Then he walked out onto the hard-packed sand and jumped in the air. He landed hard with both feet, and small sprouts of water squirted up all around him like fountains. He turned to Loo, a look of expectation on his face, but she pretended not to notice. She picked up her spade and started digging. She could barely stand to look at him.
It had been a week since Mabel Ridge’s phone call and she was still processing her grandmother’s words. At night, after Hawley had gone to bed, she perused the scrapbook of her mother’s death, looking for answers. Trying to find some link. Loo had added more to the pages, pasting in a few things of her own that she’d researched at the library and photocopied. A map of Wisconsin, a sketch of hiking trails at the state forest nearby, addresses of the closest houses and details about the lake—the length of its shoreline, its maximum depth, the size of its watershed, its longitude and latitude. The different species of fish and their eating habits. None of these facts convinced her of what her grandmother had said. All they did was make her feel more lonely.
Hawley dug into the sand beside her. “Are you going to the Labor Day fireworks tonight?”
“I don’t think so,” said Loo.
“We could watch them together. Bring a picnic out to the beach.”
There was a piece of seaweed caught in her father’s beard. She stared at the tiny bit of green.
Your mother never would have drowned in a lake.
Hawley pressed his boot down on the back of the rake. “You used to be so scared of fireworks, especially the finale. You’d hide under the bearskin.”
“I don’t remember that.”
But she did remember. The smell of the animal’s hide. Holding on to the claws for comfort. The feeling of each explosion deep inside her chest, as if her heart were about to burst open.
“You know,” Hawley said as he dumped sand into the wire basket, “it’s all right if you’d rather go with that boy.”
Loo turned away and coughed so that he would not see her face. Her father always seemed to know what she was thinking. Lately, he’d started eating his meals at the Sawtooth whenever Loo was there. Even when he was asleep she could feel his presence. It was like there was a string tied between them. Sometimes it went loose and then, like this, the line would snap tight again.
“We broke up.”
Hawley put down the rake, picked up the basket and began to sift, shaking it back and forth, revealing a cluster of small white cherrystone clams, each one the size of a silver dollar.
“So that’s why you’ve been sulking.” Hawley walked the basket into the ocean, until the water was up to his knees. Then he bent down and rinsed the clams off. He opened the cooler and began transferring the shells.
“His father’s causing a lot of trouble in town.”
“Stepfather,” Loo said.
“Either way. It’s not going to end well.”
“That’s not Marshall’s fault.”
“No,” said Hawley, “but it’s his family. And he’s stuck with them. Just like you’re stuck with me.”
—
WHEN THEY GOT back to the house there was a large cardboard box on the porch. Hawley put down the cooler and went up the stairs. He checked the label. He took his knife out of his pocket and handed it to Loo.