Strand tried next, grinning with fear, the metal in his jaw drawn even tighter than usual. He’d sipped too much beer and missed the pole entirely, catching his foot before spinning over the edge of the wharf and crashing into the ocean. But he gave a wave when he broke the surface, and stayed with Gunderson, treading water, as was the tradition, until all the members of the team were through.
Fisk turned to Hawley, and then, like a soul bravely facing his doom, he leaned in, whispered something and shook the hand of his teammate. Loo’s father looked surprised. They nodded at each other. Then Fisk straightened his Hong Kong baseball cap, made the sign of the cross, took a few steps back and ran full out, screaming at the top of his lungs, trying for a foot-first slide. He made it farther than any of the rest, leaving a trail behind in the grease with his hip, but he lost control and careened over the edge, toes splayed, still screaming, until his body splashed into the water below.
And then it was Hawley’s turn. The crowd went quiet as he stood at the end of the pier and untied his boots, peeled off his socks, then began to unbutton his work shirt. Down below, Gunderson, Strand and Fisk bobbed in the waves. Now that Loo’s father was following through with his promise, a feeling of genuine camaraderie seemed to wash over the men, and they lifted their arms out of the water and clapped, then watched as Hawley’s shirt fell.
Across his body were rounded scars—bullet holes, healed over. One hole in his back, a second through his chest, a third near his stomach, a fourth in his left shoulder, another through his left foot. The scars were dark and puckered in places, as if the bullets that had entered Samuel Hawley had eaten their way through his flesh. A breeze came and the flag at the end of the pole fluttered and the town stared while Hawley crouched and rolled his pant legs, revealing two more scarred holes—one in each leg.
There was a collective breath, and then the crowd began to murmur. The only person who did not respond was his daughter, still piling rocks by the shore. The marks on her father’s body had always been there. He did not show them off to Loo but he did not hide them, either. They reminded her of the craters on the moon that she studied at night with her telescope. Circles made from comets and asteroids that slammed into the cold, hard rock because it had no protective atmosphere to burn them up. Like those craters, Hawley’s scars were signs of previous damage that had impacted his life long before she was born. And like the moon, Hawley was always circling between Loo and the rest of the universe. Reflecting light at times, but only in slivers. And then, every thirty days or so, becoming the fullest and brightest object in the sky, as he did now, when he finished rolling his jeans, stood at the edge of the pier, raked his fingers through his beard, stepped onto the greasy pole and started to dance.
At least it looked like dancing. His feet moved so fast it was hard to keep track, knees bobbing up and down and arms flapping to the side. He moved sideways down the pole, as if he were log-rolling, grease splattering out from the soles of his feet. A few times his heel went too far and he fell back and the crowd cried out and then his other ankle swung around and he caught himself and started again with the flapping. He made it past the first notch and then where Gunderson fell and then he reached the last of Fisk’s trail. When he moved beyond it he hit a glob of grease, his giant frame contorting in the air, until he caught himself once more, feet flying furiously in a jig, and the town of Olympus roared.
A ball of yarn dropped off of Mabel Ridge’s lap as she lifted her crochet hook, unraveling a thin line of red that sped down toward the edge of the water, where Loo was still watching, her pants wet up to the knees. The boats blew their horns and the girl covered her ears. She took a step and then another into the ocean, her eyes never leaving her father.
The flag bounced at the tip of the mast to the beat of Hawley’s dancing. He was two lengths away, then one, the wood thinning as he neared the end. His chest and face were splattered with black grease, his body silhouetted by the sun, a man against the elements, a whirligig gone wrong. The prize was right in front of him now, and as he stretched out his hand, he put everything behind it—every part of himself that had been built to keep on living.
And then suddenly it was over. The lunge threw him off balance and he flipped backward, so that for a brief shining moment he was upside down, his feet still madly pedaling the air, and then the full weight of Samuel Hawley crashed down on the tip of the greasy pole, snapping the end of the mast in two, shooting splinters across the harbor, bringing the entire town to their feet, and sending a jumble of wood and grease and man exploding into the sea—followed by a tiny red flag, fluttering slowly past the pandemonium and into the open, waiting, grateful arms of Principal Gunderson.
Bullet Number One
THE JOB IN NEW BRETON was supposed to be an easy take. The place was closed for the winter, one of those great houses in the mountains, where magnates brought their summer guests from the city to sit on Adirondack chairs and listen to the loons calling to one another at night and feel like they were a part of nature. In January there was no one for miles, and the lake froze so deep you could drive a truck over it, and there was all that silver unprotected in the pantry, wrapped in velvet so it wouldn’t tarnish, and also some jewelry, and maybe a painting or two, and clocks, clocks everywhere—for it was said the fellow who owned the property would get nervous when he didn’t know the time. There was supposed to be a clock in every room, and there were a lot of rooms, nearly fifty or more. Who knew what else they might find, if they were lucky.
Hawley was working with a partner named Jove. They’d met on the railroad outside of Missouri. Hawley had been on the run from social services and not much more than a kid at the time, alone and scared, his stomach and his luck empty, stumbling alongside a freight train in the dark. He would never forget how Jove’s hand had suddenly appeared from above, thrown out and open, and how he’d clung to those fingers and held on as they lifted him into the boxcar.