by Hannah Tinti
What about Marshall? Loo wanted to ask, as Gunderson spoke about the cauliflower soup he had prepared especially for that night, the curried tofu and broiled pineapple for dessert.
“Mary never even got to taste it. The soup, I mean. We’d only had wine and kale chips when the police called,” said Principal Gunderson. “I can’t believe someone tried to kill her because of that petition. Though the threat on her life has made her very popular in environmental circles. Even her ex-husband called.”
“The guy from Whale Heroes?”
“That’s him,” said Principal Gunderson, and then he took a few more bites of his breakfast, chewing hard and slowly, as if he were imagining the ex-husband between his teeth. “He called ship-to-shore. He wanted to congratulate her.”
“What happened? After the cops came?”
“She couldn’t stop laughing,” said Principal Gunderson, “and I laughed, too. It all seemed so ridiculous. But even after she calmed down, she said she’d never stop fighting. It’s very admirable.”
“I don’t think your brothers would agree,” said Agnes.
Principal Gunderson looked worried. He took another bite of his breakfast. “Her son was home at the time. The police were taking his statement when I dropped Mary off. I put the dinner I’d made into Tupperware and left it with them. But I haven’t heard anything yet,” he said. “About how the soup was, I mean.”
“Did they find out who did it?” Loo asked.
Principal Gunderson gave a timid smile. “I believe the police don’t have any official suspects yet.”
“Whoever it is,” said Loo, “they’re going to regret it.”
“Oh, well, yes, of course, my dear.” Gunderson let out a soft belch and then began guzzling his coffee, as if he had suddenly remembered Loo’s rock-in-a-sock.
After the lunch rush Loo ducked into the walk-in cooler, the one place at the Sawtooth where they could sneak moments of privacy. She wrapped her arms tightly around her middle and stared at the rows of vegetables. Her breath clouded in front of her face, and that was all she could concentrate on: the frozen air coming and going from her own mouth.
It had been ten days since Jove launched his boat and sailed away from Olympus. She’d thought she’d be relieved when he left but she’d grown fond of him, the way he commandeered their kitchen, cooking giant meals, holding a spoon out for Loo to try. He’d made their home seem boisterous, and made her father behave more like a regular person. Now the house was quiet again and Hawley and Loo were avoiding each other. When they did cross paths, in the kitchen or outside the bathroom, her father looked at her like a beaten dog—nervous and twitching—and it took all she had not to kick him.
She signed up for as many extra shifts as the Sawtooth would give her. She worked and saved money and she wore her mother’s gloves and she tried to curb the anger inside of her and she waited for the sanctuary petition to pass, to prove that she was not like her father. That she was a person who could save things. Now her plan had nearly gotten Marshall killed.
Agnes opened the door to the freezer and stuck her head in. “You all right?” She pushed her pregnant stomach forward through the plastic curtain. “I can’t have you getting sick, not with Mary out, too.”
“Just give me a minute,” said Loo.
“Feels good in here,” said Agnes. She shut the door. “I wish I could smoke a cigarette.”
All around them was the smell of cold meat. The giant fridge hummed.
“He broke up with you, didn’t he?” said Agnes. “I can always tell. You’ve got that look, like you’re driving with a broken windshield.”
“Can you cover for me this afternoon?”
“Oh, honey,” said Agnes. “No.”
“What?”
“Don’t go over there. You don’t want to be that girl. Believe me.”
“I just want to see if he’s okay.”
“No, you don’t.” Agnes rubbed the side of her belly. “Besides, half the people out there think your father did this, even if no one’s saying so yet.”
“Why would he want to hurt Marshall?”
“He already beat up that boy at the police station. And Mary’s always showing off those stitches in her head. The fishermen might hate those hippies, but your father’s the only one who’s ever hurt them.”
Loo thought of the bruises on Marshall’s back from where Hawley had thrown him into the wall. Mary Titus pounding their front door with her tiny fists.
“I don’t feel so good.”
Agnes found a lunch bag and rolled it open, then held out some saltines from her pocket. Loo pressed her face into the bag, which smelled lightly of onions. She breathed in and out, inflating the paper, while Agnes patted her back. Under the fluorescent light, Loo could see wrinkles across the woman’s forehead that weren’t there at the start of the summer. She was the same age Loo’s mother would have been, if she’d lived.
“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with you. Maybe he was just trying to scare them off the petition. He’s thick as thieves with Strand and Fisk, and I wouldn’t put it past those two.”
Loo dropped the bag on the floor. She didn’t know what to do. She crumbled the crackers in her fist. “This is so stupid.”
“Oh!” Agnes said, as if she’d suddenly thought of some answer. She grabbed Loo’s hand and squeezed it, and Loo nearly cried. She felt so lost and so grateful. Agnes pressed Loo’s palm against her stomach. There was nothing at first. And then Loo felt a struggling movement. A tight, desperate twisting of flesh.
“Feel that?” Agnes said. “He’s kicking.”
—
FOR ALL THE times she had watched and waited for Marshall in the Firebird, Loo had never been inside his house. But she had imagined what it might be like, and he had told her a few details, like the Greenpeace poster his mother kept on the wall in their kitchen, and the misshapen plates and mugs from when she’d taken pottery classes. The house seemed quaint from a distance but up close was run-down, from the peeling paint to the secondhand furniture.
“You,” said Mary Titus. She was wearing an orange terry-cloth bathrobe and her hair was wet. She gave Loo a look that must have been close to the one Loo had given her years ago, when she’d first knocked with her petition and bottle of wine. Now Loo was the one standing on the porch, hoping to be let in. And Mary Titus was the one deciding whether or not to slam the door.
“Is Marshall home?” Loo asked.
“My son has nothing to say to you.”
“Please. I just need a minute.”
The widow scanned Loo up and down, as if she knew what the girl had really come for. “The police are here, so don’t get any ideas.” She pointed to a black sedan parked on the sidewalk in front of the house. Two men, both wearing sunglasses, were sitting inside drinking coffee. When they saw Mary Titus pointing, one of them waved.
Loo tried everything she could to stay polite and smiling. “Principal Gunderson wants to know if you liked his soup.”
“What?” said Mary Titus. Instantly her hand went to her hair, patting it in place.
My God, Loo thought, these men do it to all of us.
“Mom.” Marshall was at the top of the staircase, wearing a shirt printed with an image of a whale’s tail. Loo could feel her heart thrumming in her chest. They hadn’t spoken in more than a month but at the sight of him her body flicked on, like a switch. Marshall gave half a grin. She could not tell what he was thinking. She could not tell if he wanted her there or not.
“The camera crew is going to be here in an hour,” said Mary Titus.
“I know,” said Marshall. “Why don’t you finish getting ready?” He came down the staircase and stood between Loo and his mother.
“For me,” he said.
Mary Titus looked at her son. “For you,” she said. “For you I’ll do anything.”
The widow put her hand on Marshall’s shoulder. The easy intimacy between them made Loo uncomfortable, and also filled her with longin
g.
“Leave the door open. I want those officers to keep an eye on things.”
“Okay,” said Marshall.
Loo watched Mary Titus begin to mount the stairs, her hand gripping the banister like it was a lifeline. She paused at the top and turned. In her orange robe, with her face flushed and shining, she looked triumphant.
“You can tell your father he missed.”
Then she went into her bedroom and shut the door.
Marshall pulled at the neck of his whale shirt. He would not meet Loo’s eyes. “I’ve got something for you,” he said. “Can you wait here a minute?”
“Sure,” said Loo.
She stayed on the threshold, afraid to step outside, and afraid to step inside, too, glancing back at the black sedan. The men did not seem very vigilant. One of them was working a crossword puzzle, and the other appeared to be asleep. She looked for the bullet in the door. Underneath the street numbers was a single hole, the edges dug out, the shrapnel gone.
Her finger was deep in the hollow when Marshall came down the stairs. He was carrying a brown paper bag with the top folded, just like the one Loo had been holding over her face in the walk-in freezer. He gestured for her to come inside and then he shut the door, nodding at the men in the sedan before turning the lock.
“It’s good to see you,” he said.
Loo’s skin started to sweat. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
They stood in front of the door. She wasn’t sure if she should touch him or not.
“What’s with the T-shirt?”
“My stepfather gave me that spot on Whale Heroes,” said Marshall. “I guess my life finally got exciting enough for television.”
“So that’s the camera crew?”
“They want to film me and my mom saying goodbye. Then I’ll be on the ship this afternoon. My stepfather says he’s going to stay at the Banks until NOAA agrees to the sanctuary. He’s got a whole crew of scientists coming in to collect data.”
“When will you be back?” Loo asked.
“I don’t know. Whenever the show gets canceled, I guess. Listen,” he said, “about the petition.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Nobody knows it was me.”
Marshall shook his head. He put the paper bag down on the coffee table. “My mom never gets enough signatures for any of her petitions to get to ballot. Those names we faked—no one was ever going to see them. They were just to replace the ones I’d lost. I didn’t think you’d write out five thousand signatures. I didn’t think you’d turn it in. I don’t know what you were thinking.”
She was not thinking, Loo wanted to say. She had only wanted to be with him again. Even now, she wanted him to lay her on top of his Salvation Army couch, peel off her jeans and kiss her thighs. But Marshall just hooked his fingers together behind his neck and pulled. None of this was going as Loo had expected. She’d never wanted to put anyone in danger. She’d meant the petition to be a gift.
“I thought you’d be happy.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth Loo felt how pathetic they were, and how sad and desperate she was, staying up all those nights, finding the names and copying out the addresses. With her colored pens she had fooled everyone. She had even fooled herself.
“My mom’s happy. You don’t even know how much,” said Marshall. “But I feel like an asshole, because none of it is real. I had to tell her that I’d turned the petition in as a surprise for her. She thinks that I changed all those people’s minds. But eventually someone’s going to check those signatures, and the whole thing is going to be thrown out.”
Marshall picked up the bag he’d set down earlier on the coffee table. He reached in and took out a hand towel and unwrapped it. Inside was the gun Loo had given him. The Beretta with the slide lock. He handed it to her like a baby, supporting its head. The metal grip felt cold in her hands.
“You should keep this,” she said. “In case the shooters come back.”
“They’re not coming back,” said Marshall. “And if the gun is here my mom might find it.”
Loo flipped the safety on the Beretta. She flipped it back and forth, on and off.
“Did the police take the slug?”
Marshall nodded. “They found the casing, too.”
“Then they can match it,” said Loo. “Track the gun. Find out who really did this.”
Again he would not meet her eyes. “Publicity is the only thing that works. That’s the one thing my stepfather’s right about. Now, even if the petition tanks, there will still be a chance for this to go through with NOAA.”
“You shot up your own house?”
“I emptied one round,” said Marshall. “And after all those years of people slamming doors in our faces, everyone’s calling us heroes.”
“You can’t lie about this,” said Loo.
“But I should lie about the signatures?”
“This is different. It’s my dad’s gun.”
“Your father didn’t do anything. He’s not going to get into trouble.” Marshall twisted the towel he’d used to hide the Beretta, then threw it on the couch. “But if the sanctuary doesn’t happen, my mom—I don’t think she could take it.”
Loo thought of the bloody money in the back of the toilet. She touched Marshall’s arm. “Tell them it was an accident.”
“It wasn’t.” Marshall picked up the brown bag from the table. He put it in her hands. “It’s my fault this happened. I’m the one who lost the signatures, so I’m the one who had to fix it. And I’m going to keep fixing it until it’s done.”
The bag was still heavy, even without the gun inside. Loo reached in and pulled out a jar of homemade maple syrup, the golden color shining like amber through the glass.
“Look,” he said. “I just want things to be okay between us.”
“Okay,” said Loo. “Okay.” As if saying it twice would make a difference. But it was definitely not okay. It took everything she had to not break all of his fingers. She slid the gun back into the bag, next to the jar of syrup, and walked out of house and past the policemen, clutching the paper sack tightly in her hands, like a secret, like a dead heart.
Bullet Number Eleven
HAWLEY SHOT HIMSELF WHILE CLEANING his Colt in the motel room he was renting. He’d had too much to drink and the trigger got caught and the chambered bullet he’d forgotten to take out went straight through his left foot. Once he was through cursing and yelling, he pulled off his boot, peeled down the sock and there it was—a clean hole right in the skin between his ankle and toes, coming through the other side between the ball of his foot and heel, the skin torn and ragged by the exit, blood pouring out onto the floor. The bullet had made its way past the rubber sole of his work boot and jammed into the crumbling tile, right next to the mini-fridge.
Hawley howled as he stood and tried to put weight on it, then punched the wall and hobbled into the bathroom to inspect the damage. He sat on the edge of the tub and turned on the water. He yanked down a towel from the rack and wrapped it around his foot and ripped the ends and tied it tight. Then he opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out the orange toolbox and started rummaging. He’d been adding more to the prepper’s WROL kit over the past few years, trying to be ready for the worst, which just seemed to keep coming. He was out of morphine and fentanyl lollipops, so he cracked a bottle of Percocet. He started cleaning and disinfecting and dressing the wound. Then he climbed into the empty bathtub, his bad leg propped up on the ledge.
The blood from his foot was leaking through the bandages and clouding the bath. All he could think of was how stupid he was. He leaned back. He could feel the tile and concrete, hard against his neck. He reached down and grabbed the bottle of painkillers off the floor. He took another Percocet and waited for the pills to start working, imagining them sliding down his esophagus and into his stomach, the juices breaking them to a powder, and then into a liquid and then the very elements of chemistry, dissolving into his bloodstream, spreading out through
his veins to the ends of his toes. Once the pain started lifting, once he was numbed enough to the world, he’d move. But not until then.
It had been over three and a half years since Lily had died. Hawley had finished his errands, hit every name on the list but King. Thanks to Jove, the old boxer was locked away for good, a double sentence for the murder of the bush pilot and his girlfriend. The world seemed safe enough for now, safe enough to sleep again, and Hawley slept so much that his dreams had started moving to the forefront of his life. He dreamt about the weeds at the bottom of the lake, he dreamt about a car with hinges that could fold down into a suitcase and he dreamt about Lily, crawling into his bed, burying her face in his neck and wrapping her legs around his waist. Little by little, the world he passed into when he closed his eyes became more real than the one outside his door. He woke up wanting only to return to that other, vivid place, the hours between seeming dead and pointless. When he did leave his room, things felt off; everyday actions became more and more alien. At the grocery store the cashiers and the people in the aisles buying food and the folks in the parking lot parking their cars and the ones he drove past on the street all seemed to be staring at him, like they knew he didn’t belong.
The only times he felt like himself were back in his room locked up and dreaming, or sitting in his car outside Mabel Ridge’s house, with half a dozen loaded guns beside him and another batch in the trunk, just in case. For the past six weeks he’d been living in a motel on the back shore and coming out to Dogtown as often as he could. He’d visited with his daughter once or twice, helped her blow candles off a birthday cake at Chuck E. Cheese, taken her to the beach and the zoo. But most of the time he just stayed parked in his car outside, keeping watch from dusk until morning. Sometimes Mabel forgot to pull down the shades, and he could see Loo walking around inside. Those were the best nights. He’d watch his daughter float from room to room, eating dinner, sitting at the table, her face flickering for hours in the dim blue light of the television. On the nights the shades were down he could still see bits of glow around the edges, and occasionally a shadow passing by. It was enough to know Loo was there, only five hundred feet and one wall between them.