CHAPTER 27

Sam and Jenny Latta,

West Berlin, Germany, Saturday, May 25, 1957

An orchestra played “Les Fueilles mortes.” She smelled like flowers really did smell, of earth and sun and water with the barest sweet overlay. Her neck and shoulders were delicate, but when she leaned into him she was as heavy and warm as the world’s foundation. They felt eternal, moving through the dark and the music, floating here and there on the drafts of burning candles.

The music changed. She took his hand and led him to the balcony. The ruined city spread beneath them in pools of light as far as they could see. He pulled out his package of cigarettes and offered it to her.

“I have my own,” she said. She took one out and he lit it. She looked into his eyes over the flame.

“I won’t leave without you,” he said. “You know that.”

“I was never going to let you,” she answered.

The light from inside caught her hair and her eyes. He couldn’t read her expression. As she turned away from him, he caught her fragrance again.

“Are we forever?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer. Below them a car pulled up and stopped at the porte-cochere. The driver came around and opened the door for a woman. She was dressed to the ankles in black and sparkled as she walked. Before she entered the building she stopped to check her clutch and then looked up at them on the balcony, as if in some feral way she was aware of their beauty. She shook them off and went inside.

“Are you going to answer me?”

Her elbows were on the marble balustrade. She thumbed her hair behind her ear and smiled coolly to herself before she glanced at him. She held the smile. Her blue eyes were purpled by the night-time. She was perfectly contained.

“Do you know what makes me sad?” she asked. “Being at the beach and seeing a wave come in. It rolls and breaks, and then it slides back and it’s gone. It comes and goes so fast, and it’ll never happen just exactly like that ever again. It was unique, and it won’t come back. Ever again.” She finished her cigarette and flicked it over the railing. It sparked on the drive beneath them and winked out. “Then I think--I’m wrong. Years and years from now, someone else will look at them and be sad, someone who will never know that I was even here.”

Her bracelets glinted when she put her hand over his and turned it over to hold onto it. He was surprised by the vulnerability of her gesture.

Her voice softened. “The waves aren’t brief at all. I am.”

She looked back at the city. He thought he saw her brush away a tear, but the movement was so casual that he couldn’t be sure.

“I’m not going to be here forever,” she said, “so don’t ever ask me that again.”

He turned her to him and kissed her, and it had to be enough.

***

Present Day:

That evening, I stood on my front veranda as the night came. I hesitated, then flipped the switch to turn my dock light on. Molly’s house was on shore a mile and a half away from the island, across open water. As long as we had both lived on the lake, our dock lights were always left on, visible to each other in the dark. I’m home, and everything’s okay. I’m here. Tonight there was no light on her side.

I went in. The dog had settled willingly enough in the main room, and I looked in on him. He was asleep on the couch. His day had probably been nearly as long as mine. He worried me. The boxer had jumped easily from the boat to shore, or to the dock. She had flung herself where she needed to. If she missed, she had enjoyed the swim. She had been able to neatly jump to and from the high seat in my elderly Jeep. She had gone nearly everywhere with me. This dog was different.

Huge and awkward, he had been coaxed into my boat with great difficulty. Once underway, he cowered on the deck and lost his footing several times on the trip across the lake.

I figured getting him into and out of my truck was going to be a nightmare. I looked down at him and ruffled the long hair on his neck.

“Poor guy,” I said. “We’ll figure it out, I guess.”

I lay on my bed and thought about Molly, just a mile away. I didn’t suppose she was sleeping alone. Eventually, the windows began to fill up with gray light. I could hear a couple of crows fighting over their breakfast as I closed my eyes and slept.

***

May was creeping toward June beautifully. The morning air coming through the screen was cool, and I could smell the lake. I saw Blue in the clearing in front of the cabin. He was sitting quietly, head up, observing his new territory. It was a sheepdog thing. He needed to be at the top of a meadow, sitting still and observing a flock of sheep. Maybe I should get him some.

There was a five-gallon white plastic garbage pail in the corner by the sink, with a snap-on lid. I was slouched in my chair, watching the dog outside and thinking about getting more coffee when a slight movement from that corner caught my eye. I watched idly. In a minute, the movement happened again. It was the trash can. It rocked slightly, and shifted just a tiny bit on the floor. Something was inside the can.

I didn’t have a small animal problem inside the cabin, simply because there weren’t any animals on the island, except a couple of squirrels on the far side that appeared geriatric and stayed away from me. The land wasn’t big enough to support anything else.

Whatever had found its way into my trash must have gotten trapped when I put something in and snapped the lid closed. I had just about made up my mind to carry the whole thing outside to release whatever it was, when first one catch, and then the other, popped free with an audible click. I sat back in my chair. What I was seeing didn’t make sense. Nothing could release the catches from inside the can.

The lid tipped and slid off onto the floor. It rolled toward me and fell over. The container was nearly empty. It had a clean white plastic liner, and whatever was in the can was caught up in it. I heard it rustling around in the bottom. I stood up and took a step forward, when a dark-skinned hand appeared and grasped the edge of the can. I sat back down.

The black boy pulled himself out in a single fluid motion, emerging from the small plastic pail as though he were climbing out of a man-hole. He stood in my clean kitchen wearing twill overalls shortened to the knee, and a battered pair of men’s black shoes. They were too big for him, were laced tightly, and worn without socks.

I knew that this was Eli Tull, and I knew that he was dead. Whatever was left of his skeleton was moldering away under six feet of moist dirt in a Georgia graveyard, and it had been there for over sixty years. I was looking at something from the past. The problem was, he didn’t exist, but he was standing as large as life in the middle of my clean kitchen floor. Whatever he was, he wasn’t dead, not quite.

He stood and looked around the room, not making a sound. I felt his look settle on me. I kept my own gaze around his midsection as his appearance began to change, to grow and bloat. His clothes became filthy and the skin on his legs turned gray. He was covered with reddish dust. Against my will, my eyes were drawn upward to the horror of his face. His head seemed to have expanded to the size of a watermelon. His features were smashed, his jaw was broken and askew, and his eye sockets were swollen and empty. The smell of mud and rot filled the room, and I felt my gorge rise.

I held his eyeless gaze for long seconds, and then he was as suddenly just a small boy again. He smiled at me sweetly and went out through the screen door into the yard. I saw Blue on his feet, barking, but not at the boy. There was a yellow dog in the yard with him. The boy held his arms wide, and the dog leapt onto my porch. There appeared to be a joyous reunion, and then the two of them moved soundlessly out of sight.

I stood up to follow them. My legs felt arthritic as I hobbled outside. I was having trouble catching my breath. I could hear myself gasping, but I didn’t seem to be getting any air. Blue was standing at the far end of the porch, still barking toward the trees behind the cabin. I joined him and looked, but the path was empty. I hushed him and listened, but heard nothing moving through the trees.

“Eli!” I called. “Eli! What is it? What do you want?”

A bird chattered, and leaves rustled in the breeze far above me, but there was no other answer. The sunny summer day was suddenly icy cold. I was desperately afraid, not of the small boy, but of his reason for coming to find me on my island.

***

I pulled my jeep into the parking lot of Robertson’s Market. Molly’s purple truck was parked near the front door. I didn’t want to run into her.

Inside, the store was warm and smelled of the cedar logs it was built of. It was still early, and full of the quiet murmuring of staff getting ready for the onslaught of the day. In another hour the place would be busy, and by mid-morning there would be a crush of cottagers that wouldn’t abate until late at night.

I grabbed a plastic carry basket from a stack and waded in to find milk and dog food. The rest of my shopping was haphazard. I never used a list. The aisles were nearly empty.

I turned a corner to find Molly three feet away from me. She was examining green peppers with the absolute concentration she gave to nearly everything she did. Every time that I saw her was a revelation to me. Some unknown lost thing inside of me came back. Something broken was fitted back into place. I could have looked at her for the rest of the day, but given our last conversation I wondered if it would be better to turn the corner and leave her alone.

She looked up at me briefly and then back at the vegetable in her hand. She had seen me, and I had no choice but to approach her. She didn’t look up when she spoke.

“Hi, Mike.”

“Morning. Listen, Molly, I was an idiot. I’m sorry.”

She put peppers in her basket and moved on. I followed. Her voice was even and without expression. “I don’t think,” she said, “that this is the right time to talk about it. How’s Blue doing?”

“He’s going to be fine. There’s going to be some adjustment. He has a little trouble with getting into the boat, so I don’t think he’s going to be a dog that goes everywhere with me.”

“He’s a pain in the ass.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Look, Mike. It’s been pointed out to me that dumping a dog on you was pretty presumptuous of me. If you don’t want him, I’ll be glad to take him.”

“Pointed out by--let me guess, Joseph?”

She looked up and held my gaze. Her eyes showed nothing, no emotion at all, and the loss of her flooded me. She started to move away. “Bye, Mike.”

I stood helplessly in the aisle, holding my empty basket, for a long time after she was gone. I had never felt so lost.