THE TEARS HAD BEEN TEARS OF JOY AND RELIEF.
In that eventual phone conversation, Archer’s father reported that Buster’s fall had been serious but far from fatal. If the remaining tests came back clear, he’d be able to bring Buster home in the morning. Exhausted and utterly relieved, Archer had dropped into an easy chair in the living room to wait.
Some time later, during a dreamless gray sleep, Archer heard someone calling his name.
“Archer, Archer!” It was Kaylie. She squealed and bounced at the living room window. “They’re here!”
Archer bounded out of the recliner and raced for the door. He was outside in a flash, barefoot in the snow, but he didn’t care.
His father was in the driveway, already walking around to the backseat door of their dented-up SUV. He opened the door.
“Buster!” Archer shouted.
“Dude, not so loud, ’kay?” Buster said. He wore dark sunglasses that somehow fit his beachy personality perfectly. “No loud noises or bright lights, Doc said.”
Kaylie half ran, half skidded past Archer and hugged Buster.
“Yo, careful, Sis,” Buster said, but he returned the embrace with gusto. Archer and his father joined in. They stood in the cold for what seemed like hours, but Archer didn’t feel cold at all. A half hour later, Archer and his family sat at the kitchen table and hovered over mugs of hot chocolate and a box of muffins.
“Surfing down the stairs?” Archer said. “Buster, what were you thinking?”
“Easy, bro,” Buster replied. “I’m concussed, remember?” He gave a snarky laugh.
“A concussion is no laughing matter,” Kaylie said, looking somehow profound and absurd at the same time. “It is a traumatic brain injury that alters the way your mind functions.”
“Well, it’s not like I think straight anyway,” Buster said.
Archer and Kaylie couldn’t help but laugh too, but not Archer’s father. He managed a weak crooked smile. It was all he could manage, Archer knew, since his mother’s death eight years ago.
“The doctors say Buster has to stay out of school for a couple of days,” Archer’s father said.
Buster held up a peace sign and said, “Rock on!”
“And, once he’s back in school,” his father explained, “he won’t be able to do gym for a while, either.”
Archer watched the steam from his mug for a thoughtful moment. “So . . . can you tell me about what happened? Do you remember?”
“It’s kind of a blur, but I had this killer dream, y’know?”
Archer sat up straighter. “Like a nightmare?”
“Nah, nah. It was a cool dream. I was in Australia at the Big Wave Championships, you know, at the Tombstones in Gnaraloo?”
Archer shrugged. “Never heard of it.”
“Aww, it’s such a cool place. I’ve seen it on the Surfing Channel, but this dream, it was like I was really there. I could feel things, y’know? The sand, my smooth board, the spray—it was so real.”
Archer nodded. “I know a thing or two about dreams that feel real.”
“So, anyway, I saw this swell rise up, and I was like, ‘Dude, I am SO catching you!’ I paddled like crazy and got up on the board, but . . . ah . . .”
“But what?” Kaylie asked, her eyes big as saucers.
Buster shook his head. “So the Tombstones are known for epic waves, right? But this thing, it rose up like Godzilla, and I was up there on my board, like way up there.”
Archer asked, “Then what happened?”
“The wave curled, and I rode it but . . .” He frowned and rubbed his temples. “All I remember is it was like the wave took me toward shore and was heading for this rocky cliff. I felt like I was falling. I heard a bang, like a gunshot. Then I woke up in the ambulance.”
Archer’s dad took the family out for a late breakfast to celebrate Buster’s return from the hospital, but Buster lacked his usual appetite. What he did eat, he threw up an hour later at home. After his father cleaned up the mess, he disappeared to the basement. Archer helped Buster get into some new clothing and then took him to the living room couch, his new bed. No stairs for Buster for a while.
“No more stair-surfing, okay?” Archer said, easing a chair over next to the couch.
“Nah, broham,” Buster said, his words garbled. A second later, he was sound asleep.
Archer watched his little brother rest. He listened to Kaylie in the next room as she narrated an adventure starring Patches the Super Scarecrow Doll. Then Archer’s eyes wandered over the long shelf above the sleeper sofa to all the framed family photographs, and his gaze lingered one photo in particular: their last family portrait. There was his mother, just a few months into her treatment, and a little gaunt but still beautiful: a kind and playful glint in her big brown eyes. Her hand rested lightly on her husband’s shoulder. He held Kaylie in his arms. Gosh, Archer thought, when was she ever that little?
Archer thought Buster’s lopsided grin in the picture looked kind of cheesy. Then again, so did his own smile. If memory served, he’d shoved an Oreo into his mouth just before the photographer took the shot. Archer thought he could detect a little bulge in his cheek. Figures, Archer thought.
But again and again, Archer kept returning to the image of his father. How content he’d been in that photograph. Holding his pride-and-joy daughter and his wife’s hand on his shoulder—so happy. But not for long. His mother died just over a year later. They’d never taken another family portrait, and his dad had never really recovered.
It didn’t surprise Archer to see his father surface from the basement only to have a cigarette out on the porch. That was all he did lately: hibernate in the basement and take smoke breaks. Archer wasn’t sure what his dad did in the basement. There was a computer down there and, sometimes, he’d play online card games, like bridge or hearts. But lately, he’d been spending multiple hours down there. So what was he doing?
Archer wasn’t about to investigate. He hated the basement for the memories it represented. It was the site of the scariest event of Archer’s life.
Archer blinked. This is not what I need to be thinking about right now. But the memory jolted into his consciousness vividly, especially the sounds. The sounds were the worst.
It had been right after the funeral. Archer had gone down to the basement, the side where his father kept a woodshop. Archer wanted to look at the wishing wells. In honor of his wife’s love of the family well in the backyard, Archer’s father had put his considerable skills to work, crafting all manner of replica display wells. Not working wells, of course, these were ornamental, decorative—the kind people put in their yards to give their property a little character, a little homey charm. All variations on the design of the family well—round, knobby turret, tall hooded canopy with shingles, a spool, a length of rope, a bucket, and a crank handle—they were so lovingly crafted, so intricate and beautiful, that word got out and he ended up making a tidy profit selling half a dozen of them. But not the ones his mother liked best. He never sold those.
Archer had gone down to the basement just to be among those wells that night. He didn’t understand death. He didn’t understand how a live person could be there one day and gone the next. He didn’t understand any of the psychological pain of such a loss. All he knew then was to be near the wells made him feel near to his mom. He’d only been down there for a few minutes when he heard heavy footsteps on the basement stair.
The door to the work side creaked open, and Archer’s father stood there. He’d worn a mask, expressions ranging from slack-jawed anguish to eyebrow-bunching fury to unblinking, fixed-eye, faraway numbness. “Archer, go on upstairs,” was all he’d said.
Archer backed away from the wells and edged out of his father’s way. The man had never been considered a big man, but he seemed somehow swollen. Fists bunched, forearms bulging, he strode toward the wells and, without looking back at Archer, exploded.
CRACK! With both hands joined in a single giant fist, he came down on the roof of a well, and the support beams snapped. The second blow crushed it with a series of sharp snaps and crackles that sent Archer reeling onto his backside.
”No, Dad,” he whimpered.
But Archer’s father went at the next well with a violent, clumsy backhand, knocking it onto the ground. He lifted a foot and stomped on the well as if it was the most wretched, hated thing he’d ever seen. CRACK!
One by one, he obliterated the loving works of his own hands. And Archer watched it all. His eyes blurred with tears, he’d muttered, “Why, Dad, why?”
His father had said nothing, but left the work in ruins. In the years that had passed since, Archer had looked in on the room a few times. The wreckage of all the wells was still there. His father never even cleaned up.
Archer blinked. No, as curious as he was about his father spending so much time downstairs, Archer wasn’t about to go down there now. The sounds of grief and viciously cracking wood haunted the basement. Archer didn’t have the heart to face them.