There was a crack! A gush as the storm raged in, the wind rearranging everything. Furniture scraped overhead. Rain raced down the stairs, a little waterfall. Slicking the ceiling, it showered down, streaking the wallpaper.
I threw Sonny’s boots at him, grabbed his hand.
As a small tide leapt towards us, the kitchen window buckled, rain and glass slanting in. A rising, glittering spectacle, the floor was a pool of diamonds for a suspended moment. Then water burst through the plaster above the sink; the hiss sounded like a bus braking. There wasn’t time to grab anything as we fled to the front door. The case with Hugh’s sax rocked near the foot of the stairs, already warping. The water was past our shins, the jamb swollen. As we yanked at the door things swung in a drunken do-si-do, the house coming unglued like a cereal box.
Oreo yipped and splashed as the door caved inwards. The smell was like seaweed and the spines of starfish left to rot in tidal pools. Somehow we got out, with the dog thrashing behind us in the dark. I don’t remember flying off the step or treading water, only the pulse-stopping cold and Sonny screaming, “Here boy here boy come come come.”
Sonny’s hand clenched mine as we pushed, half swimming, choking, towards the tower. The dog paddled in mad circles around us, his eyes rolling. It took everything to fight the current nudging us towards the cove, Sonny’s limbs like ropes entangled with mine. An image flashed through me of the boats anchored off the spit that summer day, the divers sliding under the waves. As Sonny pushed free of me, I imagined, fleetingly, debris at the bottom. Secret, scary things, dumped mines and mustard gas? Creatures, wreckage. An orange buoy floated by, and a stick that looked like a table leg.
As the white of the tower loomed closer, closer, my limbs were weightless, dead, as if all sense had leaked away.
Sonny made it first, the dog clawing to get in. Somehow Sonny braced the door against the flood and lashing gusts, Oreo scrabbling ahead as my feet touched concrete and I pulled myself inside.
The generator chugged and roared, and the dog balked, whinging. Then he shook himself, shook and shook. He was a shivering mess of dripping fur.
There was a scratch on Sonny’s hand, another on his cheek. As I wiped the blood away, the dog gave another shake. The sea had slid past the threshold, swirling around the footings. Oreo bent to lick at it. Water lapped over his paws and the toes of our boots. The sound was like a pack of animals drinking. Oreo thrashed as Sonny lifted him and tried wrestling him up the first set of steps. Our feet were ice blocks on the metal rungs. Somehow I managed to grab the dog in my arms, bracing his forelegs, and boost him to the first landing. I felt Sonny at my heels as we scrambled the rest of the way up, borne by invisible hands into the lantern. Light swamped us, its brilliance pushing back the ruckus below, and derailing the wind.
Sonny licked blood from his hand. His lips looked purple, and a puddle spread under his feet as he grabbed for the radio, the VHF. I barely remember wrenching the mic from him and fumbling with knobs. At first all we got was a hiss, then, like life from another cosmos, a voice leapt out.
“No no no,” Sonny kept yelling—it was a struggle to hear anything over the racket—“we need channel sixteen.” As he pushed my hand from the controls, the same voice blared in and out. Something about the Mounties, the Coast Guard.
“Major interdiction, 0200 zulu. Four, four, thirty-seven north. Six, three, twenty-five west—”
“Channel 1O. Shit!” Sonny’s teeth were knocking. “Must be the navy.” He tweaked the knob. Had Hugh shown him how to work the thing?
Broken by static, the voice filtered back. “Operation Search and De-stroy.” It sounded like laughter. Then nothing. As I gazed out, a crack of lightning whipped the rocky shingle of Hangman’s Beach, jagged and white as the surf. It lit the top of a big tree by the marsh and in its flash the pine was a masthead. I thought of Saint Elmo in Hugh’s book, how such a flash on a ship signalled the saint’s protection.
Fighting tears, Sonny twiddled the dial, his fingers blue.
Without warning, a woman’s garbled voice burbled, “Coast Guard, go ahead, over.”
“Mayday! Mayday!” Sonny shrieked.
“Help!” I yelled behind him, the lightning branded into my eyes.
The voice, maddeningly calm, didn’t waver. “Go ahead with your coordinates, over.”
Oreo’s bark had shrunk to a whimper; perhaps he’d seen the lightning too and was listening for thunder, each hair an antenna. Sonny eyed me desperately, shaking his head. My limbs, coming to, throbbed under the soaking weight of my clothes. Despite all that wet, my hands still reeked of gas. The smell brought back Family Day: the reek of fuel inside the chopper.
Elmo, I wanted to cry. Seizing the mic, I formed the words, “Thrumcap Light.” Forcing calm. “We’re flooded.” It sounded surreal, deadpan, even as I watched for another flash. Gaping down at the house, I saw the roof hanging like a blanket, like a sheet of melting ice about to slide off. In the same instant the wind lifted one corner, then hurled it towards the cove, and I let out a shriek.
“Stand by one,” the voice ordered flatly, then, “Steady. Give us five; we’re sending a chopper, over.”
“Over,” Sonny stammered behind me, watching the roof. It was riding the waves now, a rippling, sequined float, its shingles like scales. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying, his face almost angelic, lit by the beam. He was shivering, grinding his teeth. Pressed together, kindling our shared warmth, we stared down at the house. The walls staggered and swayed. A hollow stump without limbs, it danced, uncertain, shy, as the tide tore at it. Water poured from the bottom windows like flames, and Oreo’s whinging picked up. Just above the treetops, beyond where the lightning had flashed, the first traces of dawn smudged the sky. The shapes of things swung in the current. A chair, a bed frame, part of the stove. I thought once more of Elmo—his real name Erasmus, the name his mother would’ve used?—and whatever faith he’d died for. I thought of the fuzzy red doll in Reenie’s apartment.
“What time is it?” Sonny shook me, and I remembered things like days and hours. As he leaned into me, his jacket was a soggy hide. His voice far away, wispy. “High tide’s at six.”
“The dog,” I said in a blur, peering down through the hatch. Oreo gazed up, his ragged ears cocked, ridiculous. As if in a dream, I slid down and managed to scoop him up. He growled and writhed, his teeth grazing me as I heaved him up that last flight. Passing through the opening he snapped at Sonny. The smell of wet dog was everywhere, the only thing that seemed real as I squatted beside the door to the ledge and pulled it open. The smell blew away as I crawled outside. Wind ripped at the railing, dissolving my senses. The memory of another smell, the bunker’s fetid dankness, rushed in instead. That, and the thought of Sonny squatting there in the dark. Yet the streaks in the sky brightened. I could see the top of the breakwater now, a path of stepping stones. Numb, I crawled back into the lantern, and we counted them, one for each hour we seemed to wait.
“How come they’re taking so long?” Sonny kept moaning. At one point he knelt and peered into the mercury. Like Narcissus, I thought before snapping to, almost but not quite thawed.
“Don’t!” I heard myself yell.
For once he listened. The wind had stopped screeching; suddenly it was a moaning whistle. Beyond the tips of the boulders the harbour rolled and seemed to flatten slightly. Oreo lay down and licked himself, strummed his banjo, as Hugh would’ve said. Sonny flopped down and buried his face in his fur. For a single, rushing instant, I allowed myself one thought of Hugh—beautiful Hugh: his hands and eyes. Even as it fled, replaced, pushed, by another—the lilt and slur of his voice—there was a slow, watery squeal as the walls of the house buckled and folded.
Watching boards and shingles swim away, we might have missed the chopper’s approach. Sonny spotted it first, a teensy dragonfly against the pink sky. Crawling out onto the platform, I pulled myself up to the railing and, stretching my arms out like a tree, started waving. I thought of us queued up on Family Day, Charlie, Sonny and I; the mirage of solid, level ground, tarmac. The dark shape whirred closer, then, dipping its nose, bore in. It wasn’t anything like a dragonfly. Cheery as a candy cane, its fuselage red and white, it descended, hovering. Freezing me in its hurricane, its roar stopped everything. I barely saw the helmeted rescuer and his basket, didn’t hear Sonny’s shouts as he crawled out behind me and was plucked and winched to safety.
The downdraft was like the weight of the ocean. It drummed out everything as I was hoisted into the net. I couldn’t open my eyes. All I felt were thick arms around me, legs too, perhaps, and the swaying, slow release of being lifted. Like a fly being pulled into a web, though Sonny bragged afterwards that he’d felt like Spider-Man.
Suddenly my knees hit metal and I was shoved inside, into the rattling, roaring belly of the bird, and I opened my eyes to see Sonny wrapped in blankets. I glimpsed the top of the rescuer’s helmet before he disappeared again.
“My dog my dog my dog,” I think Sonny was shouting, his voice wobbly and almost inaudible.
One of the pilots yelled, “We don’t have all day, bud.”
The chopper lurched. There was a shout, and a tangle of fur appeared through yellow mesh and was tossed in, and before Sonny or I could move, Oreo spilled towards us, the whites of his eyes showing, his jaws snapping. Next, the rescuer was unhooking himself.
“We’re gonna land at the base,” the flight mechanic might’ve hollered, stuffing blankets around me. “Havin’ a nice day?” I think he shouted, as if they did this all the time. Old hat, saving women and kids from calamities. “That old place was bound to go anytime,” he yelled some more, handing us earplugs. I read his lips: “Frigging death trap, middle of a neap tide. You guys out there picnicking, or what?”
As we lurched and climbed, I caught one last glimpse of the view below, through the glass between the pilots’ heads. A wave pushed a raft of shingles. One of the men turned, and I saw a patch of the island. It looked stepped on, as if the trees had been flattened by giant feet.
The man mouthed something to Sonny. “Been in one of these birds before?” it looked like.
“Yup,” Sonny mouthed back, his arms around Oreo’s neck.
The dog was scrambling to sit, his claws scrabbling. The rescuer shook his head, as if all this was mildly entertaining, then he fiddled with equipment, ignoring us. It seemed odd, even amid the chaos, that no one asked why we were alone out there, or if there was anyone else. They’d have known of the lightkeeper; should’ve wondered where he was. My stomach rolled and once more I remembered Family Day, the taste of hot dogs, and that sensation of being carried like a kitten, the scruff of its neck between the mother’s teeth. But my fear had been left on the spit, washing behind. There was no time to dwell on it as we skimmed over the water, already closing in on the refinery. Seconds later we hovered in a whirlwind, then, almost too soon, began descending.
Part of me could’ve stayed up there forever and simply vanished into the ozone, anything to avoid re-entry. But before I knew it we were landing, with the blare of rotors and that typhoon force gale like a field of windmills going full tilt. Sonny strained against his monkey tail, hanging onto the dog.
“We’ll file a report,” the pilot yelled once we’d touched down. Pulling the plugs from my ears, I felt the weight of gravity, yet I was giddy, too, as if the storm had robbed me of oxygen. My eyes felt singed, my ears blocked as if with snow. As if separated from my body, I jumped down after Sonny onto the tarmac. He half-crouched, gripping Oreo by the tail. The runway glistened like plastic wrap as the sky opened. There were things strewn around, pylons scattered as if somebody’d thrown them, and strips of siding. In my giddiness I was Mary Poppins, except empty-handed, sodden. An umbrella, a carpet bag would’ve grounded me, armed me; anything better than the nothingness I carried now.
A memory of Hugh’s smile scraped my heart. The air felt damp, the wind carrying the faintest hint of warmth, and thoughts played of how I might’ve worked things differently. How I might’ve packed our belongings, mine and Sonny’s, and simply left one morning—the last day of summer, perhaps, or the first day of school.
“Some freakin’ weather, what? Don’t think anyone expected that,” somebody shouted out. “Hadda be a Type Three, what I saw. ‘Magine, a bust in the middle of that. Better them than us.”
“Out Cow Bay, you mean?” one of the crew was saying, as they strode alongside us. “A tonne of coke. In gym bags, if you believe it. Jesus Christ!”
Someone let out a laugh. They’d already distanced themselves; you could hear it. Mission accomplished; now on to the next.
“Self-cleaning oven, cats like that. Guess they nailed a woman, too, eh?”
“No shit. No accounting, eh?”
Removing his headgear, the pilot remembered us. “You two okay? Someone’ll be along to check you out, make sure nothing’s busted. Oh, and they’ll need some kind of statement.” Sonny had split away; already he was marching towards the hangar, a greenish blur in the distance. He’d let go of Oreo and the dog bounced beside him, sniffing out the wind. How great, how much easier, really, to be a canine: at home anywhere and even when chained, free.
“Off limits, bud!” somebody yelled, but Sonny ignored him.
I wanted to ignore the guy, too, trailing behind, flopping along in my boots. My feet hurt; the smell of gas still clung to my fingers as if it’d permeated the skin, a smell that conjured other scents, salt and the perfume of bodies, even blossoms.
“If someone c-could call us a cab,” I muttered, the most dignified thing that would come to me. I imagined getting in, telling the driver, “Just drive.”
There was a Sea King parked on the tarmac, idle but positioned for take off. Pushing ahead, Sonny stopped to gaze at it. Oreo nipped at his hands—his poor hands, almost frozen. Catching up, I caught them in mine and started rubbing them. A crew was coming towards us, men in coveralls and Kevlar vests, carrying helmets and headsets. Four of them. They were talking and laughing; the shortest one kept shaking his head and muttering. The man next to him gave him a cuff and as he looked up, he stopped.
At that instant, perhaps a plane passed over; his features clouded. His hair looked longer. It couldn’t be, I thought. But it was him. It was Charlie, and even at that distance I felt myself shrivel. I expected him to turn and disappear back into the hangar, or pretend not to see me, simply act like I was someone else, a complete stranger, and keep going towards the chopper. But he didn’t. As he came closer, his helmet was tucked against him. He was staring at the ground, saying something to his buddies. His buddies had stopped talking. When he glanced up he raised his hand, a stiff, somber salute. His face was pale, his expression confounded. I wanted to turn and run.
Oreo crouched, wagging his tail and baring his teeth. Before I could stop him, Sonny raced towards his father. Charlie bent down and so did Sonny, that crazy animal leaping and pawing at them. The dog must’ve sensed something; maybe he wanted to protect Sonny. Pushing Oreo off, the two of them straightened up. Father and son. Sonny came up past Charlie’s chin. As they moved towards me, Charlie’s face was a poster of grief and astonishment, stodgy disbelief.
I shut my eyes and stood there on the tarmac, that endless, firm stretch of concrete. Letting the wind fill my ears, I waited, certain that Charlie would keep going. I waited for him to fire an insult, throw a flare. Instead, the air around us seemed to soften. I could hear Oreo’s panting, Sonny’s breathing. I blinked and there was Charlie’s face not far from mine. It looked rough where he’d missed a spot shaving, creased in all the same old places.
“Jesus Jesus Jesus,” he kept saying under his breath. The smell of fuel and soot and faulty wiring seeping around me.
Charlie’s buddies stayed silent. Then one of them started clapping, another groaning.
“That’s one wicked bug you’ve got, Jackson. I’d say you’re grounded.”
“Get the hell outta here, before you pass it on.”
“Too sick to fly, corporal. Don’t you have a maintenance sched at home to follow?”
“Here we go. Operation Underwear.”
“Operation G. I. O.”
“G. I. Joe?” Sonny piped up. He was hanging off my arm now, trying to pull me closer, the three of us doing a two-step with the dog.
“Get off it, bud.” Charlie’s voice was low, wary. Despite its pallor, his face had an odd sheen.
“Operation Get It On, Jackson. Or off—whatever.”
As Sonny pushed and pulled at me—this child, grown so much taller—for a second I felt dull and three-footed as the twenty-year-old I’d been once, drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup. But the feeling passed as I gripped Sonny’s arm, holding back. Suddenly I thought of my mother, of all people—what I remembered of her anyway—and how she’d started to cry when I’d held out those pieces of my hair.
“It’s okay.” Charlie kept nudging Sonny. But then he did a strange thing, a very strange thing for him, and unwelcome. Stepping closer, he put his finger to my cheek, drawing it along my jaw to the pulse below my ear. Letting it linger, he shook his head. His sigh was like blowing sand. Then his hand dropped to Sonny’s shoulder. He kept shaking his head, the shadows under his eyes battle grey.
I made myself look into those eyes; my own were stinging. “I don’t believe … you’ll never believe ...”
He shrugged, the same shrug as when something had gone missing in the basement. He held up his hand. “Save it, okay? There’ll be time for talk, I guess.” His voice changed, but it was still sardonic: “I mean, what’re the chances, eh? God damn.” There was a deadly pause, and the weight of his arm brushed my shoulder as I backed away.
“Shit happens, Willa. Doesn’t it. Shit happens all the time. Maybe now we’re both used to it?”
Flushing, he pushed his helmet down on Sonny’s head, snorting at how it almost fit.
***
It wasn’t that we considered giving things another try. There are no second chances when you fall the way I had; there could never be a second with someone like Charlie. But what he offered was a little reprieve, when he didn’t have to, somewhere to stay till I figured things out. Only because of Sonny. It lasted a few weeks, not quite a month: a silent truce. A ceasefire? Amnesty.
We’d been back on Avenger a couple of weeks when the call came one afternoon. I was there sorting stuff, things Sonny had outgrown, things we’d need. I almost missed the phone, rummaging downstairs for boxes. Not that I didn’t hear it; the house was dead quiet. It always was now, as if waiting for us to leave. I tiptoed around, hardly playing the radio, even when Charlie was at work. Nothing was really mine anymore. I was a guest, a phantom boarder.
I felt a little out of breath, picking up the phone.
There was silence at the other end, and I knew right then I should’ve let it ring. The silence was full of echoes and the sound of breathing, as if the person was calling from a bus station, or an aquarium. When Hugh finally spoke, his words were a slap.
“I knew you’d go back.”
He must’ve felt my urge to hang up. “Wait,” he said, and for a second his voice was a hook, my heart an open loop.
“Where are you?” I heard myself ask.
A long, windy pause. I swear you could hear his thoughts ticking. Missing, then slowly, slowly engaging.
“Remand,” he said. “You don’t want to know, Tess.” Then: “Couldn’t we talk?”
I held out the receiver—held it as if it were toxic—and waited. Hang up, the voice inside me pleaded. Instead, I put the phone back to my ear, listened to him breathe.
“Are you okay?” It came out a squeak. Pathetic, really.
Oh, to have shut my ears, and found myself somewhere, anywhere, else.
At the edge of my brain, the word posting lapped, and I visualized Charlie coming home, boxes everywhere, cardboard wardrobes plugging the hall.
Hugh coughed and didn’t answer.
“Have you seen a…I mean, there’re tests they can do, right? Remember?” An echo of Reenie’s voice crept in: You believe that crap? My own was tiny, quavering. “Blood tests,” it murmured. “You really should get it checked out. Even if—”
Hugh laughed, and it was full of bitterness. “Right.” His voice deepened, as if he were speaking through a funnel. “Matter of fact, Tessie, they’ve done ’em. All that shit about vapour and whatnot? You were right. Thought I’d come out clean as a fuckin’ whistle.” Another laugh echoed over the line. “Now I’m thinking, okay, there’s my defence.”
It was just like Sonny plea-bargaining to stay up late.
I pictured my Hugh guzzling tea, complaining of being tired and thirsty, staggering on the stairs. Suddenly I felt exhausted—that tiredness when all you want to do is lie down and sleep like Rip Van Winkle.
“I should’ve listened, Tess.” He sniffed. “It’s just like, I dunno…imagine, coming out with, ‘The girlfriend says I’m bein’ poisoned.’” The way he spoke reminded me of Wayne. There was a beep and I felt like a party-liner listening in. All I wanted was to put down the receiver. He must’ve known, because he started talking faster, as if running out of minutes.
He was rambling, and even as I listened for Sonny coming in from school, something he said caught my ear.
“You have to believe me, Tess. I wouldn’t lie to you. You know that, don’t you? It was Reenie, Reenie who did it. She shoved her. Swear to Christ, that’s what happened. Wayne saw her, too. I know what you’re thinking…”
My fingers melded to the phone. I just stood there as his words bumped and skidded together. There was nothing I could do to stem them.
“The two of ’em,” he kept insisting, his voice a murmur. “Her and Julie. Got into it one night, all right? Reenie tore a strip off her, you know,” he paused, as if losing steam. “Because of Wayne, right? They were outside. By the breakwater. The bunch of us, we were—it was icy, you know, and—” His voice eddied, clinging to dead air, before slipping beneath the surface.
As I set down the phone and moved from it, it was as if he could see me. Drifting to the kitchen, I turned on the radio, the sound a jumpy rattle, the easy listening station that Charlie favoured. I tuned it to one that played loud, shredding rock.
Something good, something blotto, to sort and pack to.
They were playing that U2 song, “Where the Streets Have No Name.”
When the last of Sonny’s Legos were boxed and ready to give away to any kid who wanted them, I went back to the phone. It only took a second to get the number. The hardest part was dialling. Like looping the rope of a noose over a branch.
Just one kiss, one last kiss…
“Tell me what you know,” the detective’s voice was earnest, gruff but pleasant.
It primed me for another call I had to make, one I’d put off even longer.
“Willa?” Sharla—Dad’s wife—sounded incredulous, thrown for a loop actually, but sweet. She ran from the phone yelling, “Howard, Howard!”
“No, no, no, you’ll stay here,” my father insisted. “How much is the flight?”
“It’ll be a short visit, just until I—”
“No way. We’ve waited this long to see you guys, you’re not getting off that easy.”
“Dad? Listen—it’s only going to be Sonny and me. Charlie and I, well...”
Oddly enough, music got me through those last couple of weeks, once I lost my phobia about playing the radio. It passed the time, right to the end; that and cleaning. You can’t stay idle once you’ve got a plan. Something good to clean to: that’s the thing.
The roll of paper towel was just opened, the cleanser blue as the sea in its spray bottle. I was all dressed up, already in my coat—overdressed, like Heidi, the Swiss girl who wore everything she owned climbing the mountain to her grandpa’s place. My father had read me the story not long after the funeral. “It’s a girl’s story,” my brother had complained, uninterested.
I wanted to be ready, not wasting a second once Sonny got home.
Charlie was working; I’d planned it this way. Our suitcases, mine and Sonny’s, were parked by the door, along with some boxes.
Grabbing the Windex, I went out to the living room to watch for Sonny. With any luck, the cab wouldn’t be far behind. The tickets were in my pocket; I’d checked three times to make sure.
If I were Reenie, I’d have smoked two packs by now.
I started on the picture window, spraying cleanser and watching it run. Charlie would need things clear, whether or not he’d appreciate it. As I rubbed and wiped, my arm moved in an arc like one big windshield wiper, and I couldn’t help thinking of that song, “The Wheels on the Bus,” that Sonny had liked as a toddler.
When was the last time my dad had seen him? Sonny had been six, maybe, or just turned seven.
A herd of kids waddled up the street. Little kids in rain suits, sausage legs whisking together as they waded through the slush by the curb. A mother came up behind them pushing a stroller, and I almost waved, thinking it was Sandi, or whatever her name had been. But it was somebody else, someone new.
As she inched past, moving like a snail in that little tide of bodies, I started cleaning again, polishing, really, looking out in time to see Sonny throwing a snowball, just as the cab came creeping up.
Somewhere in the house, Oreo barked, then leapt at the door to greet him.
“You too, bud,” I said, my hand trembling as I put him on his lead.
“Got everything, Sonny?” And he nodded, even as I dug one last time for our tickets, and the slip of paper with that Calgary address.