“You shouldn’t,” he said. “Those words aren’t for you.”
The hull rose until it was suspended over their heads, and then the sailboat began to move in the air as if it were flying. Hawley left Loo’s side and went down to the dock. He helped Jove catch the boat and guide it into place. Dangling over the wharf the sailboat looked beautiful, fresh paint gleaming in the afternoon sun, the mast high and proud, and then the hull sank into the water, and the weighted keel disappeared.
The men hurried around, connecting the electric pumps. The wood needed to swell for a day or two. Until then, the sea soaked into the caulking and filled the bottom of the boat, so that the hull rested low against the dock. Jove tossed the hoses overboard. Hawley pulled the cord on the motor. The pumps started up, sucking in and spewing out.
Jove stood on the bow and waved to Loo. He dug into his rucksack and pulled out a bottle of Champagne. “Get your ass down here.”
Loo crossed the aluminum boat ramp, feeling light-headed. The tide was coming in. She could hear waves hitting the pilings down below. The boat bobbed against the floating dock, so full it looked like it was sinking.
“It’s bad luck if the bottle doesn’t break,” said Jove. He handed the Champagne to Loo. He pointed to a large brass cleat screwed down on the tip of the bow.
Loo swallowed hard. “Should I say something?” she asked.
“How about a prayer,” said Jove.
Loo tightened her grip on the neck of the bottle. The foil was starting to come loose.
“Bless this boat,” she said. It felt strange to say even that much. She’d never been in a church. She didn’t know the right words. She looked to Jove, who had pulled off his captain’s cap.
“Say something about new beginnings.”
“Okay,” said Loo.
“And no sharks. And no leaks. And no bad storms.”
“All right,” said Loo. “Yes. All those things, too.”
“No pirates. And no ex-wives, either.”
“Is there anything you do want?” Loo asked.
Jove shook his head. “This is the only thing I’ve ever wanted.”
A wave came in from an oil tanker. Loo bent her knees to keep her balance on the dock, the bottle heavy in her fist. It was as if she’d lost her sense of gravity and was spinning into empty space, circling away from Earth and past the other planets, to a distant, solitary orbit. Pluto. She was Pluto. Loo tried to remember the chart from the back of the Carl Sagan book. The numbers that told her how much she mattered. She could sense Hawley beside her. She looked only at his hands.
The sinking boat rose and fell.
“Somewhere,” Loo said, “something incredible is waiting to be known.”
They all stood quietly on the dock, listening to the sound of the pumps sucking and spitting. Loo lifted the bottle by the neck, so that it was over her shoulder.
“What’s the name again?”
“Pandora,” said Jove.
“What if the bottle doesn’t break?”
“Everything breaks if you hit it hard enough.”
Her father crouched down on the dock. He steadied the boat for the blow. Loo looked at the back of his head. For the first time in her life, it was Hawley she wanted to hurt. Smash the bottle against him instead of the boat. He’d built a shrine in their bathroom, mourned and worshipped the scraps of her mother’s memory, and all the while there was $450,000 hidden in their toilet, covered with blood, from the same criminal life that had taken Lily from them. Loo didn’t even want to know whose blood it was anymore. She’d uncovered enough secrets.
It was time to make her own choices. Create her own lies. Loo aimed at the metal cleat on the bow, the one meant for securing the anchor. And then she swung the bottle with all her might.
Bullet Number Ten
HAWLEY GOT AS FAR AS Denver, then took a prop plane over into Wyoming and landed in Sheridan. There were only eight seats on the plane and Hawley’s was right on the wing. He had to fold himself to fit. His knees jammed, his shoulder pressed against the aluminum shell as they banked steep over the Rocky Mountains. He watched the blades spinning and churning the air through the stained plastic of the window. The noise blocked everything, inside and out.
Once they landed, Hawley gathered his bag, which carried a change of clothes and the orange toolbox full of medical supplies he still had from the prepper in Alaska. He stole a car and then after one hundred miles he stole another. He found a pawnshop and picked up a .357 with a six-inch barrel. He drove to another pawnshop and got a decent shotgun and a rifle and ammunition for both. He stopped at a feed store in town and wandered the aisles with the cowboys and cattle ranchers and bought some basic camping gear, some Sterno and two blue tarps and some extra socks and a new pair of boots and some rolls of heavy plastic and tape and rope and trash bags and a fence clipper and a knife and a hammer and a metal file, and paid in cash.
He dumped the car and got a motel room and spent the afternoon taking the serial numbers off the guns. There was a baby crying in the room next door. Hawley had almost forgotten the sound. Twice in the middle of the night the cries woke him. The first time he got out of bed and stumbled into the wall, thinking he was heading into Loo’s room. The second time he stayed in the bed and stared at the slices of light across the ceiling from the blinds and scratched his beard until morning.
He’d stopped shaving and his beard had grown wild, spreading down his neck and setting out across his cheeks, as if it were determined to cross the bridge of his nose. It had taken twelve months to get this far, and each day the beard covered more of him. Here in Wyoming, Hawley had noticed, more than half the men had the same look.
At six Hawley lit some Sterno and cooked a can of beans on the bathroom counter. When the brown juice started bubbling he turned off the fan and doused the flames. He clicked on the TV and ate the beans sitting on the bed. When he was finished he rinsed out the can and threw it away and cleaned the spoon and put it back into his kit. He opened a pouch of tobacco and took out rolling papers. He never used to smoke but after Lily’s funeral, he’d found the tobacco she’d bought the night before she died. He’d rolled a cigarette, thinking of her hands and how they would move, and ever since then he’d kept it up, just to have the taste of her in his mouth. Hawley lit the paper. He breathed it in. He flicked the ash on the floor. When the fire reached his fingertips, he stubbed out the end, and then he took out his list.