by Hannah Tinti
She was well on her way to a full-size blanket by the time it was Principal Gunderson’s turn. He insisted on walking the greasy pole before the rest of his team, too anxious to delay and not wanting to share the glory if he succeeded. He made it past the first ridge, inch by inch, before moving slowly to his knees and pressing his face into the grease, wrapping his arms around the mast and convulsing forward a few feet in an awkward but loving embrace. Then one of his dimpled knees gave out and he was sent tumbling down with a splash.
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.
They’d pulled a few jobs together already, nothing too large, just enough to tide them over until they moved on to the next place. But Jove had ideas of buying a boat and taking it down the Hudson. He didn’t know how to sail but he’d grown up on that river and it was all he talked about now, the lighthouses set along the shore like streetlights, the currents so fast you didn’t need any wind. He was older than Hawley, close to twenty-five, with a thick mustache grown out to prove it and three years in prison already under his belt. Hawley wasn’t even seventeen then and still unsure of himself and so he let Jove make the decisions.
He should have known, though. He could feel a pinch in his ribs as soon as they walked up onto the grand stone porch, the one overlooking the lake that wrapped all the way around the front of the great house. It was almost as if the bullet were already lodged there in his back, but Hawley was too green and didn’t know how to trust his body yet—it was only something that carried him around—and so he just held up the blanket while Jove broke the window and eased his body through the frame and out of the cold.
The furniture in the main hall was covered with white sheets. The shapes were strange and made shadowy figures scattered around the fireplace. In each corner there was a clock. A grandfather with its long golden pendulum by the stairs. Other timepieces hanging on the walls, displaying numbers and phases of the moon. There was a table that ran the length of the room, big enough for more than thirty people to eat at together. Hanging above it all was a chandelier made from antlers, the horns tied together in the middle and reach
ing out like the roots of a tree.
It was the kind of place built for grand summer parties. Jove had been to one long before with a pal of his from prison, a boxer named King, who’d scored an invitation after taking a dive. It was how Jove knew about this great house tucked away in the mountains, and why he thought it might be empty now. He often talked about that wild night, mingling with rich people from the city and eating caviar and smoked salmon and drinking Champagne. Hawley had listened to the story, shivering in empty railcars and hitchhiking on the highway and swilling crap beer in motel rooms, until he nearly felt like he’d been at the party himself, clinking cocktail glasses with Frederick Nunn, the money launderer who owned the majestic palace with all those clocks. It was hard to believe they were standing in it now.
Jove pulled down a few of the white sheets and revealed some taxidermied ducks mounted in flight by a window seat, a portrait of Nunn with a heavy mustache over his lip like a finger, and, set above the mantelpiece, dangling over yet another antique clock, was the lumpy head of a female moose. Underneath the moose was a small brass plate listing where it had been found and the date it had been killed.
“I guess he bagged that one himself,” Jove said.
“Guess so,” said Hawley. He crouched down and touched the bearskin rug in front of the fireplace. He was surprised how slick the fur felt beneath his fingers. The bear’s glass eyes were hard and fixed, its mouth slightly open. The skin had been cut and glued around the snout, which was made of leather and wax and slightly twisted, as if someone had tried to pinch the nostrils closed.
The men took in the grandness of the room, their cold breath puffing out in clouds and disappearing into the rafters. Then Jove wiped his nose and pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen. The back rooms were cavernous, built for a team of servants, a stove with sixteen burners and racks of copper pots hanging from the ceiling, four sinks, a walk-in freezer, a butcher block the size of a bed, and rows and rows and rows of knives. In the pantry they found the place settings, and it was better than they’d thought—forks and spoons for a hundred people, and not just in silver but also plated in gold, an assortment of complicated utensils for every type of food—salads and snails and fish and steak and sherbet and soup and even butter.
He filled the bags they had brought. Then he found some pillowcases near the laundry room and filled those. There was a back door, and when Hawley stuck his head out he could see a fenced-off garden and beyond that, a path to the garage. He wondered what kind of cars might be inside, but he was too nervous to check. He dragged the bags of silverware back to the window where they’d started. Then he waited for Jove, who was upstairs rifling the bedrooms.
Hawley pulled the bearskin rug off the floor and wrapped it around his shoulders to keep off the cold. The underside was soft as suede. He tied the arms around his neck. Felt the tips of the claws sewn in. The head flopped on his shoulder. He touched the bear’s mouth. The teeth were real, canines yellowed and thick.
Hawley thought of the party Jove had described to him, and imagined the ice and snow melting and the grass beneath springing to life and the dry heat coming back to the floorboards like it was the middle of summer. The house would be full of guests, drinking and laughing, playing cards or listening to music maybe, their chairs pulled around the fire, the windows open and a warm breeze coming off the lake. There would be people outside on the porch, too, smoking and talking in the moonlight. Maybe some his own age. Maybe a girl.
Hawley pictured her there, leaning against one of the pillars like it belonged to her, wearing a silver dress and her hair fixed with a comb. And then the girl turned and caught him staring, and she was slipping through the doors and moving toward him with a low smile, his heart thumping as if he’d swallowed a bunch of birds, and then it grew louder and Hawley realized the sound wasn’t coming from inside him—it was the clock on the mantelpiece, on the other side of the room. The one beneath the moose head. It was ticking.
The clock hanging by the kitchen door was going, too, and so was the grandfather clock by the stairs. How did he not notice before? These machines needed to be wound each day. And someone had been winding them. Someone had the keys and was checking every hand in the house, keeping time moving forward through the winter so that not a minute was lost.
Hawley heard a thundering of footsteps overhead, and then Jove rushed down the stairs, the pockets of his coat bulging. “Time to go.” Jove grabbed one of the pillowcases, then turned the lock and threw open the door to the porch. Hawley could hear someone coming in the back entrance, then hurrying through the kitchen. He snatched up the remaining bags and followed Jove outside, the bearskin still tied around his shoulders, flapping out behind him like a cape.
It had started to snow again, the flakes coming down fast and sideways as the two men leapt over the railing and hurried away from the great house. Hawley heard a voice shouting behind them, and then came the blast, and a pain shot through his guts, in the same place he’d felt before they’d broken the window, which made him wonder for a moment even as he was sprinting across the lawn with all the adrenaline of a man being chased for his life, and then the hurt flew up and caught him by the throat and he dropped the bags and crashed into the trees at the edge of the forest.
—
HAWLEY WOKE UP in a shed full of goats, strangely warm. It was dark. Jove had him spread out on top of the rug, and was in the process of sterilizing a pair of gold sugar tongs over a kerosene lamp. Hawley could smell the blood.
There were four goats and they were all watching him, their heads between the slats of their pen, somber and still, their ears twitching back and forth, their strange eyes glittering in the amber light. Hawley shifted, and a thunderous ache threaded through his back and crushed his lungs.
“Would have been better if you’d stayed out,” said Jove.
“Where are we?” Hawley choked. He moved his hand and grabbed a fistful of hay.
“Not sure. But far away enough, for now.”
“I need a doctor.”
“I am a doctor—didn’t I tell you before?” Jove turned the tongs into the flame. “Certified.”
Hawley looked down at his shirt. He’d gotten it for his birthday last year. It was the first time he’d ever bought himself a present. He’d seen it in a store in Poughkeepsie, right after they’d had their first good take, and he hadn’t even tried it on, had just brought it up to the register and paid. He’d never felt so good. Hawley and Jove had gone out to dinner and ordered half the stuff on the menu and eaten it all, and then they went to the movies and sat through some half-baked comedy. They laughed pretty hard anyway, they were in such fine moods, and then they went to a bar and there was a pretty girl behind the counter and they tipped her heavily and she filled their drinks and even bought them a round, and then Hawley remembered his new shirt and he brought it to the bathroom and changed and it fit him just right and when he got back to the bar there was a candle stuck in a piece of pie waiting next to his glass and Jove and the girl sang “Happy Birthday.”
There wasn’t much left to the shirt now. The buttons had been torn loose in front and the sides were soaked through with blood. Jove ripped the seam to get at Hawley’s back.
“The bullet’s stuck in your ribs,” he said.
One of the goats started bleating softly, like its throat was sore. Hawley turned his face into the hay and thought of the girl from the bar. He’d had so much to drink that night he didn’t remember leaving. But he remembered her name: Laura. He’d gone back three more times but she wasn’t working and he’d been too embarrassed to ask anyone when she did.
It was her face he’d imagined on the porch of the great house. Her smile coming through those doors and crossing the room. Her hand reaching up and squeezing his arm, just as she had that night in the bar, when she leaned over and said, Nice shirt, and then asked Hawley what he’d wished for.
That’s what he tried to picture now, the two of them here together in the d
ark with nothing but the glow of the lamplight between them. Her fingers peeling away the cloth and wiping the blood, her breath across his back, her weight pressing hard against his skin, and not the terrible moment when he’d realized all the clocks were ticking.
“This is going to hurt,” said Jove. And then he slid the tongs inside him.
The Widows
THE FIRST WIDOW BROUGHT A cheesecake. But not just any cheesecake. This one was made from ricotta, the curds gathered and strained and aged by the widow herself in fat little molds. “It’s a family recipe. I make it only for special occasions.”
Loo stood in the doorway, wearing an old shirt of her father’s, her hair unbrushed, her feet bare. They had lived in Olympus for over a year, and no one had ever come to visit. Their porch was covered with buckets of rotting seaweed, the front hall littered with sand. The widow smiled as she handed over the heavy plate, then peered toward the back rooms with a searching glance that made it clear that the cheesecake was not for Loo.
The next widow delivered blueberries from her garden—too much for her to eat, she said, and the bushes kept producing. They didn’t stop, even though she was exhausted from picking all day, even though her fingers were turning purple. She could use some help, someone needed to come over with a ladder to reach the higher branches. Someone tall, she said. Someone strong.
Another widow arrived with two children, young boys whose hair was combed but whose faces revealed an inner misery, a misery that grew as they watched their mother pass a box of chocolates, along with a perfumed note tied with ribbon, into Loo’s hands.