The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

by Hannah Tinti

  His father set down the cooler and the fishing rod he was carrying and pressed a set of fingers against Hawley’s neck. “Who shot you?”

  “A woman.” He couldn’t get any air. It felt like he was mouthing the words.

  “Isn’t that always the way.” The man was lifting Hawley’s shirt. “You packed the wound pretty good.”

  And then Hawley remembered. The women screaming at each other and tossing his guns, the Silverado peeling out of the parking lot. How he’d crawled back to his truck, found a towel and jammed it up inside of himself and even started to tape the mess to his side. But then he couldn’t breathe and got dizzy.

  “All right,” said his father. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

  As he waited Hawley looked at the fishing rod his father had been carrying. It wasn’t the old fifteen-foot Kilwell he’d always used. This rod was more delicate, only nine or ten feet. And it had a flywheel, not a spinning wheel. The line was the wrong weight, too. It got Hawley thinking that maybe this man wasn’t his father. But it had been more than fifteen years since Hawley had seen him, and he guessed a fellow could change what kind of fishing tackle he used. And then his father was back, carrying a first-aid kit, and Hawley decided it didn’t matter if the man was his father or not.

  “Was that towel clean?”

  Hawley nodded.

  “Let’s leave that part for now, then,” said his father. He was pulling rolls of bandages and heavy dressing out of a bright-orange box with a red cross on the lid. “I think the bullet might have punctured your lung. That’s why you’re having trouble breathing.” He used some scissors to cut up the back of Hawley’s shirt. He snipped a plastic bag in two, and then he rolled Hawley over, removed some of the packing, cleaned the exit wound, dried it with some bandages and started taping the plastic to his back. He taped three sides and left one side open. Hawley took another breath and suddenly his lungs caught and filled.

  “God,” he said.

  “Better?” his father asked.

  “Yes.” Hawley exhaled and felt the plastic flutter a little.

  “What’d she shoot you with?”

  “A Ruger.”

  “Ah,” Hawley’s father said. “I’ve been thinking about getting one of those.” He reached inside the kit and took out a jar of cayenne pepper. He unscrewed the top. “This is going to sting a little,” he said. And then he lifted the edge of the towel and poured the whole jar into Hawley’s wound. Right away he put the towel back on and pressed down hard. Hawley could feel the pepper burning through the hole inside him. He could taste it in his lungs. Every movement felt like a refrigerator thrown down on top of him.

  “Fuck,” Hawley said.

  “Nearly there,” said his father. He ripped a couple more bandages open and pressed them on top of the towel. Then he got some cold packs out of his cooler and placed them around Hawley’s midsection. “Hold this,” he said. And as Hawley did, he took some duct tape and wrapped it around everything a few times, looping over Hawley’s chest, keeping it tight.

  “Now you should last another forty minutes or so, until we get into town. Unless there’s internal hemorrhaging.”

  “I need some water,” said Hawley.

  “No water,” said his father. “You’ve lost too much blood. Come on, get under my arm, here. I’ve got to get you back to my car.”

  There were so many things Hawley wanted to ask him. But right now he could only lean on the old man and try not to throw up from the pain. His father smelled of chewing tobacco and the rubber of the wading boots and something else, underneath his breath—a faint hint of Ring Dings, the synthetic chocolate cakes wrapped in cellophane and sold in gas stations, which Hawley had secretly loved as a boy. On his eighth birthday, his father had surprised him with a plateful, eight matches stuck in for candles. He’d never forgotten it. The appearance of those individually sealed snack cakes had Hawley believing for at least a month that his father could read his mind.

  “My guns,” Hawley said, and gestured to the bushes. He hoped that was enough, and it seemed to be. Once his father managed to get him across the parking lot and leaned him against the Jeep parked there, he went back and poked through the bushes, and it took him only a minute to find Hawley’s shotgun and the Colt. He returned with both and admired the Colt for a moment and then he opened the back of the Jeep and locked the pieces inside the metal gun box that was bolted to the floor.

  “Not that I don’t trust you,” he said. “But I don’t.”

  Once he had Hawley settled into the passenger seat, he went through the first-aid kit again. Hawley could see now that the kit was actually a toolbox made of heavy-duty orange plastic. The red cross had been hand-painted on the cover, along with the words THESE THINGS WE DO THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE. Hawley’s father took out a sealed plastic bag full of lollipops. He unwrapped a pink one and gave it to Hawley. “It’s laced with fentanyl. Should help with the pain.”

  Hawley slid the lollipop into his mouth. It tasted like cherries.

  The car was an old Jeep Wrangler with a hole the size of a dinner plate in the floor. As they drove, Hawley watched the road passing beneath them. The shifting blur gave him a strange feeling, like time was speeding up and slowing down all at once. When they passed through a dense patch of gravel, stones would clatter against the metal undercarriage of the Jeep, and rocks would be tossed up through the hole and roll around in the well near Hawley’s feet.

  He could already feel the fentanyl going to work—the refrigerator slowly lifting from his chest. His body started to glow, as if he were falling into an illuminated pool of light, becoming warmer and brighter with each lick. Hawley pulled the lollipop out of his mouth.

  “Where’d you get this thing?” he asked.

  “I used to do air evacs during Vietnam. Those pops are great for gunshot wounds.”

  “I thought you were in the marines.”

  “Nope. Air force. Fifty-sixth Squadron.”

  “How come you never told me before?” said Hawley.

  “Son,” said his father, “I don’t even know you.”

  And Hawley supposed he was right. His father had died so young that Hawley never got the chance to know what kind of man he was. There were probably lots of secrets that had died with him. Things he’d never told anyone. But he’d been a good father. He’d taught Hawley how to fish and how to shuck oysters. And he had a quiet way of noticing things, like how much his son had wanted those Ring Dings, even without him saying a word.

  “You’ve been dead so long,” said Hawley. “I guess I forgot.”

  For a moment he thought his father might throw him out of the car. But the old man set his mouth and stared through the windshield instead. They drove over another patch of gravel, and a handful of rocks came up through the hole in the floor and hit Hawley in the legs.

  “Good thing I still fish,” his father said, “or I wouldn’t have found you.”

  When the lollipop was finished Hawley eased back into his seat, feeling dazed, as if he might float right through the hardtop of the Jeep.

  He’d been fifteen when his father died. What he remembered most was being scared—scared to be on his own, scared to talk to anyone. He ran away from social services and went back to their old house and broke a window and crawled through and packed a bag and took his father’s rifle and some ammunition. He started off with an idea of finding his mother but he ran out of money before he even got out of Texas. He thought of trying to sell the rifle but it was all he had left and so he used the gun to hold up a liquor store instead. Made $752. His very first job. All on his own.

  Now his father was back. It wasn’t something he’d ever thought to count on. The old man was leaning over the steering wheel, like the Jeep was a horse he could press to go faster. Hawley saw the way his father’s face had tightened up, and realized he’d probably said something wrong again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. And it felt like all the other times he’d said those words—for things
he both was and was not sorry for, for all the things he had not done.

  Hawley’s father didn’t answer him. But after they crossed over the next bridge he cleared his throat. “The woman who shot you, was she your wife?”

  “I’d never met her before.”

  “Then why’s she trying to kill you?”

  Hawley thought of the clepsydra, the glacier sliding into the river. His body was still glowing but his hands had started to shake, his teeth aching like they’d been drilled.

  “You don’t look so good.” Hawley’s father reached into the backseat, keeping the other hand on the wheel. The Jeep swayed and nearly veered off the road. He produced an old Mexican blanket covered in dog hair and threw it at Hawley. “I think you’re going into shock. Wrap yourself up. But don’t fall asleep.”

  The blanket itched. Hawley’s heart was beating like crazy. He wanted to pull off the ice packs, but whenever he touched the dressing, the cayenne pepper worked deeper inside his wound. He did his best to pull the blanket around himself. Every movement sent a wave tingling down his side—not pain, but an echo of pain, like he was hearing it from far away. He took a deep breath and then exhaled and felt the flutter of the plastic strip taped to his back.

  “You don’t have to tell me how this happened,” said his father, “but you’re going to have to tell me something.”

  “I’m married,” said Hawley.

  “You still love her?”

  “Sure.”

  “Think that woman will go after her?”

  Hawley realized he meant Steller. “No,” he said. “But someone else might.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth Hawley felt their truth sink into the very center of his bones, like a crack filling with ice water. No money, no goods—even if he found some way to make it square with King, they’d have to be careful. They’d have to run.

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “You better not die, then,” said his father.

  Up ahead was the same roadkill he’d driven past on his way out to the glacier. The eagle was still there tearing pieces out of the belly. Hovering nearby, waiting for the eagle to move off, were some seagulls and a couple of terns. As the Jeep drew closer, the birds dispersed and flew away screaming at one another. Then the Jeep rattled over the dead creature and Hawley caught a flash of fur through the hole in the bottom of the floor.

  It made Hawley think about traveling through the desert in Arizona, the girl driving—what was her name?—and the baby strapped next to him in the car seat. There’d been roadkill then, too. It had felt like he was driving past his own mangled body. And here he was, shot in the chest, bleeding out again. Only the landscape had changed. It was like he was skipping on some kind of record of his life. But he wasn’t the same man he had been out in the desert. Now there was somebody waiting on him and it mattered whether he died or not.

  It felt like three hundred years since Hawley had been swept into the river.

  “I need a phone,” he said.

  “There’s one under the seat,” said his father.

  Hawley leaned down, his side burning, his skin clammy with sweat. He felt a canvas strap and pulled out a satchel. Inside was a military field phone, rigged with a headset. “Does this thing work?”

  “Just crank the handle. The signal’s encrypted. I rigged it for WROL.”

  “What’s WROL?”

  “Without Rule of Law.”

  “You mean the end of the world?”

  “No,” said Hawley’s father. “Just the government.”

  Hawley lifted the receiver and put it on his lap. With his better hand he cranked the generator and started punching in numbers. The line was full of static but it seemed to be working. Hawley waited for the connection. Below his ribs, standing out in the middle of all the duct tape and bandages, was the mark Lily had made when she threw the rock at him yesterday. A tiny blue spot. He pressed his finger against the bruise and held it there but he couldn’t feel a thing.

  “Where are you? Are you hurt?” Lily wasn’t yelling but she sounded like she had been yelling for a long time, the edge of each word torn and ragged. Hawley was so glad to hear her voice that he didn’t say anything. He just leaned his face against the receiver. The plastic smelled like it had been dipped in oil, as if it could catch fire at any moment.

  “I’m all right.”

  “You were supposed to call. But you didn’t call.”

  “I’m all right, I said.”

  Lily sneezed. She sneezed and sneezed and sneezed.

  “Listen,” said Hawley. “I want you to pack a bag and drive to Anchorage and get a room near the airport. I want you to wait for me there.” The line was breaking up already, his wife’s voice thinning out to a crackling line. “Lily,” he said. “Lily.”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “We’re here,” said Hawley’s father.

  Through the cloud of dust before them Eyak Lake came into view, and beyond that Hawley could see the outskirts of Cordova. The Jeep shifted gears as the gravel road turned into pavement, the wheels catching for a moment and then gliding over the suddenly smooth surface. Instead of sucking up rocks, the hole in the car floor now seemed intent on expelling them. Hawley watched as one stone after another left the safety of the wheel well and was lost to the road below. And then Hawley found himself drawn toward the hole, his legs gone heavy, his body sliding out of the seat. His father was saying something. Hawley tried to listen but he knew it wouldn’t do much good.

  “Tell her you’re coming home,” said his father. “Tell her you love her.”

  Hawley clung to the receiver that held his wife’s voice. He thought of all the things his child would never know about him. Future memories shot through with blank spaces. He took a breath and felt the plastic catch and plug the opening in his back. His lungs filled. The air tasted of pepper and blood.

  “Lily,” he said. “I’m happy. I’m happy it’s a girl.”

  Fireworks

  TRY AS SHE MIGHT, LOO could not get the thought of Marshall Hicks off her skin. Each morning she woke and stretched her arms over her head and imagined his hands threaded in hers. She remembered the small white scars on his knuckles, the bump of the finger she had broken. She closed her eyes, and for a moment she could still feel the weight of him, the hovering of his mouth, his fingers pulling her hair. She could hear his voice, the whisper of a groan under his breath. She did this over and over in her mind until the entire length of her body was shaking. And then she heard her father in the hallway, and she waited one moment longer, and then she opened her eyes and got out of the bed.

  Hawley knocked on the door.

  “Time to go.”

  Loo got dressed, then went downstairs and gathered the buckets and wire baskets and spade and rake from the garage. Her father filled a cooler with ice. On the porch they pulled on their boots, Hawley his waders and Loo a pair of old rubber Wellingtons. They walked quietly through the woods to the open shoreline. The tide was all the way out, the beach wet and rippled from the waves and covered with tiny air holes.

  Hawley put down the buckets. Then he walked out onto the hard-packed sand and jumped in the air. He landed hard with both feet, and small sprouts of water squirted up all around him like fountains. He turned to Loo, a look of expectation on his face, but she pretended not to notice. She picked up her spade and started digging. She could barely stand to look at him.

  It had been a week since Mabel Ridge’s phone call and she was still processing her grandmother’s words. At night, after Hawley had gone to bed, she perused the scrapbook of her mother’s death, looking for answers. Trying to find some link. Loo had added more to the pages, pasting in a few things of her own that she’d researched at the library and photocopied. A map of Wisconsin, a sketch of hiking trails at the state forest nearby, addresses of the closest houses and details about the lake—the length of its shoreline, its maximum depth, the size of its watershed, its longitude and latitude. The different s
pecies of fish and their eating habits. None of these facts convinced her of what her grandmother had said. All they did was make her feel more lonely.

  Hawley dug into the sand beside her. “Are you going to the Labor Day fireworks tonight?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Loo.

  “We could watch them together. Bring a picnic out to the beach.”

  There was a piece of seaweed caught in her father’s beard. She stared at the tiny bit of green.

  Your mother never would have drowned in a lake.

  Hawley pressed his boot down on the back of the rake. “You used to be so scared of fireworks, especially the finale. You’d hide under the bearskin.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  But she did remember. The smell of the animal’s hide. Holding on to the claws for comfort. The feeling of each explosion deep inside her chest, as if her heart were about to burst open.

  “You know,” Hawley said as he dumped sand into the wire basket, “it’s all right if you’d rather go with that boy.”

  Loo turned away and coughed so that he would not see her face. Her father always seemed to know what she was thinking. Lately, he’d started eating his meals at the Sawtooth whenever Loo was there. Even when he was asleep she could feel his presence. It was like there was a string tied between them. Sometimes it went loose and then, like this, the line would snap tight again.

  “We broke up.”

  Hawley put down the rake, picked up the basket and began to sift, shaking it back and forth, revealing a cluster of small white cherrystone clams, each one the size of a silver dollar.

  “So that’s why you’ve been sulking.” Hawley walked the basket into the ocean, until the water was up to his knees. Then he bent down and rinsed the clams off. He opened the cooler and began transferring the shells.

  “His father’s causing a lot of trouble in town.”

  “Stepfather,” Loo said.

  “Either way. It’s not going to end well.”

  “That’s not Marshall’s fault.”

  “No,” said Hawley, “but it’s his family. And he’s stuck with them. Just like you’re stuck with me.”