Up Through the Water

by Darcey Steinke

  Neal, his head still resting on the open window frame, tied a red bandanna around his neck. He pulled a joint like a piece of scrap paper from the glove compartment.

  The waitress yawned and leaned back against the windshield. “People have no right to say the things they do to one another,” she said.

  Eddie searched for a smooth flat rock and finally found a thin black one. He looked up to the red moon. No Giants. The water lapped silver. No Mermaids. Just Neal singing an old Stones song with the radio and the waitress getting high on the hood of the car. Eddie walked to the water's edge, slung back his arm, and spun the rock. It jumped one, two, three times, touched the dark water under the moon, and then fell easily, obviously straight down to the bottom of the sea.

  In the kitchen Emily sat at the table drinking a rum and coke, the ice cubes clinking like tiny bells. Her face ached, the clotted cuts looked like speckled jam, and black and blues edged up through her skin. The red hole of her cigarette moved up to her mouth, then down to rest on the lip of the clamshell ashtray. The second hand moved like a lazy fluorescent fish on the clock's glowing face. Emily stared again at the refrigerator until it swayed, lost matter, and finally disappeared. She concentrated on the stove, sink, cabinets—willed each gone. Last was the table. It blurred, twitched, vanished. She emptied her glass, eyes falling to the twisted sheets on the bed and then up to the moon.

  Each time it was full, she strained her eyes to recognize the crater shapes and letters that were etched on its rocky surface. She always felt, if she could see them, they might be decipherable symbols that would tell her things. She looked into her palm, the lines deepening and ridging, maybe the answers could be read there, but there was no secret in the crosshatch marks and deltaed lines of her hands.

  She heard tires on the shell street. Eddie's raspy voice saying good-byes to people from work. He came in the door and carelessly threw open the refrigerator. She turned her face away, a profile against the sharp light, stood, and walked the two steps to him. Bending over into the icebox, she fingered the sliced ham and reached for mustard.

  “I'll make you something,” she said, her hand to her mouth to hide her sliced lip.

  “What did John Berry do to you?” Eddie asked.

  “I fell,” Emily said, her boozy words muted.

  “I'll kill him,” he said through his teeth. “That son—”

  Emily put her hand over his mouth. Eddie closed his eyes and breathed in as though he was inhaling the sweetest air of his life. She fingered the pocket of his T-shirt. The refrigerator door smacked shut like a wet kiss. He reached out for her, his fingers like a baby's. He placed a hand at the small of her back and held his cheek to hers as if slow-dancing.

  TWO

  JOHN BERRY

  John Berry lifted his hand in mock offering of a cracker and the gulls swooped down. He kept his fist clenched—searching for the biggest, dirtiest one, the loudest cawer. He sung his other arm up and aimed the pellet gun, and in a seemingly simultaneous thud the steel ball left the gun and lodged in the gull's feathered breast. Blood specks blew on John Berry's arm and face, and the gull fell quickly into the moving soundside water.

  It had been six days since the bottle incident. After it, he had shot gulls farther out in the marsh. He'd get ten, one every half hour, and lay the loose birds in the pattern of a cross. But the afternoon light had made it too easy, and sometimes other gulls flew in patterns at his temples.

  He got on a motorcycle parked at the side of the road. The bike was State property, but at the ferry workers’ disposal. He pushed hard on the gas; a few sparks scattered as the metal scratched the gravel and he zoomed up the road.

  He might decide to do the stunt, but there was no telling until right before—till the tires were rolling on the wood planks and he saw himself flying like some fish, out over the water, then splashing into the sea. The guys had been doing it all summer: driving nearly to the edge of the dock, then turning off the engine, letting the bike fall sideways. The momentum shot them into the air and then down into the water.

  John Berry thought he'd do it tonight just for the heck of it, for practice. The power in the bike came into the palms of his hands and up through the bottoms of his feet. He pressed hard on the gas, and leaned into the curve.

  Today, like every other, he had worked the ferry securing car tires with wood blocks. It had been hot. He drank shots in the men's bathroom, thinking every crossing tourist knew. There was a vague glow ahead where the docks were. He remembered that year he'd been at college, how he'd come down this road, hands tight on the wheel, his eyes seeing already past everything, right into his parents’ cottage and the shells everywhere, the thousands of shells he'd collected since boyhood. They were lined up by size, on the windowsills, on shelves, door frames, his desk, and the most unique were in a big box under his bed, each one wrapped in cotton. Not long after that, he had left again to start a shipping business up in Norfolk with a friend who knew the financial side and had an in on the waterfront. But he'd been unable to tell the hired men what to do. They would sit playing cards and drinking coffee and he would join them. His partner bought him out, gave him a check, and sent him back down this road.

  The ferry job seemed perfect. Nearly all the times over, he felt at least a small amount of the initial thrill of going back home, and then, on the way back to the mainland, the simple freedom of being released onto water. It was a connecting kind of job; you hadn't settled for the island, but you weren't off either—you saw more life than most, even if it was in the faces of people crossing. And always you were moving back and forth on the same little bit of sea.

  Emily lit up the different corners of his brain. Since Christmas, things had not been right. He was always nagging her not to do laundry in the tub—her bare feet kneading like wine makers'—but off the island at a Laundromat. And he'd seen her eyes drift over the men at the bar. When he dragged the plastic garbage bags to the end of the driveway, he heard the bourbon bottles clink. Sometimes she would stare, tip her head toward the nearest window, and listen as if to check on the sea. She always told him that swimming was the only time she was really happy. He'd figured out that winter what she really wanted was to stay in the water. The way she behaved on land—her languid movements and how she could never be held to a promise—was just a compromise.

  A few days ago, he'd picked his way through the scrappy grass and sand stickers and walked down to watch her swim. He'd gone half a mile when he'd spotted her beyond the wake. Her hair was darkened by the water and her face rose every few strokes. Because it was raining, he'd carried a sweatshirt, half hoping she'd come out chilled and he could put it on her shoulders.

  That was how it always was—her way out there, doing something, and him just walking along. What made him lonely had been her daily distance, the same space he'd once found alluring. The lovers, those fucks, had just made it worse. He knew now that if he hadn't been so angry already, Neal's allusion to her men wouldn't have led to him throwing the bottle. He remembered how the bottle's neck felt snug in his palm. He'd seen it smash and heard splinters belt his car like hard rain. He'd done that because he wanted her attention. John Berry leaned forward into the wind. He realized he would do nearly anything to get her back.

  He'd taken her kid, Eddie, out on the road a couple of times. It was awkward, his arms stretched around John Berry's hips and stomach. The kid would whisper in his ear, tickle it as a woman might. He never knew what to say back, and the few times he tried, his words were lost in the wind anyway. Emily encouraged him to do things with her son. The day before he'd found out about Emily, he and Eddie had spiked a watermelon, pouring vodka in gulps out of the bottle. “A Fourth of July tradition,” he'd said. “Before long this whole thing will be like one big soaked green olive in the bottom of a martini.” The kid had smiled, stepped back, and said something about Emily, still with his father, making martinis, walking around in this special housecoat with a fake fur collar. Eddie was all right.
It wasn't that he didn't like him, just that he imagined his own kid, his child with Emily, would be different.

  The motorcycle cruised through the long line of numbered ferry spaces, 100 to 99, 98, like counting yourself to sleep. Emily's big four-post bed came into his mind. 75, 74. The white lines and yellow numbers were like frames of movie film: She was waking him because she couldn't sleep: You don't care whether I sleep well or not she was saying, the curtains blowing. Her tan leg was hanging out of the covers. He had comforted her as best he could, 42, 41, 40, and the way her face caught every new shade of color in the dawn and how everything had happened so slowly and quietly, 30, 29, 28. The dock, not far ahead, was a takeoff ramp to the night sky, 20, 19, 18. He saw the telephone booth fly by and thought of dialing Emily, letting it ring all night, the sound as constant as the sea in her ears. 10, 9, 8. He revved the bike's engine and stood up a little as his tires bumped onto the boards.

  * * *

  The ferry tugged out of the dock. John Berry woke with a start, one of those falling mini-dreams, toppling over and down huge cement stairs. His mouth was dry as a flannel shirt, his clothes damp, and he didn't remember getting from the water to his cot in the engine room.

  “Can't live on booze,” Tom's voice said from behind. “I brought you some biscuits.” He sat down on the metal bench soldered to the wall. John Berry sat up and opened the bag. “You got to get back,” Tom said. “You can't stay on the water all summer.”

  John Berry rubbed his beard, cocked one green eye, and put a biscuit into his mouth. “I have a plan to get her back,” he said, looking down at his boots.

  Tom walked to the door and shook his head. “We're almost to Pelican. Get up here and unload.”

  In the men's room, John Berry washed his face, dried it with paper towels, wet his hand, and patted down the wild cowlicks rising like seedlings all over his head.

  There was a process crudely called the Trollop Express, in which ferry men, mostly the married ones, had agreed to call the few eligible island men and let them know if any attractive, lonely-looking women were on the winter ferries. The day Emily had traveled over for the first time John Berry heard Tom say that he was calling her in to the boys to get his twenty bucks. John Berry had watched as Emily leaned her stomach against the black rail. She had on a long, ratty, down coat that fell below the hem of her dress. Her legs were bare and on her feet she'd had blue suede clogs. The wind had forced goose bumps all over her ankles and up her calves. She'd held her frenzied hair from her eyes.

  “Buddy,” John Berry had yelled over the fall of wind. “I'll give you the twenty if you don't—” and he had dialed a phone in the air.

  John Berry left the bathroom. The last car struggled onto the deck. He walked through the long alley of car doors. Tourists crowded to the right side to see tiny Pelican Island. The fleshy chins of the birds swaggled. John Berry's eyes blurred as he saw girls in the water, wading waist level—six of them blurring to four and then two. Girls with opaque faces like transparent fish and hair cut close to their heads. They all went under with a flick and glint of metallic toes.

  “Aren't they something?” John Berry said to Tom, who stood looking over the water with him.

  “The birds?” Tom said.

  John Berry bent farther over the chain link fence. He wanted to hear their whispers bubbling up from the water. One swam near the boat, moved in arcs and ovals, and motioned with a shimmy of her shoulders. The boat approached the big island. Tom said, “Why don't you come back with me to Hatteras?”

  John Berry turned and Tom's hand slipped from his back. He thought of the beads Emily hung in the bathroom on nails above the porcelain tub. How sometimes she'd wear a string of jade, round green beads nudging her nipples, swinging, reaching all the way down to the fine hairs of her lower stomach. He held a hand up to block the sun; it glinted off the hood of every car, making each a blinding flash—he saw Emily in every back seat kissing a stranger.

  THREE

  PONIES

  Eddie drank some Coke, put on his headset, and listened t to his Walkman. Paolo's was the only bar on Ocracoke and because they served food too, pizza and subs, they let underage kids like him hang around. It was a cedar building on stilts just like the cottages on the soundside of the island. Eddie sat at a table near the windows in back. It was his day off and for a while he'd stayed in bed reading a mystery book his father had sent him from home. The hero killed people, but Eddie liked it that the guy always felt bad for a couple of days after. He watched the clock over the bar, waiting for Lila.

  Rain hit the roof. Eddie flipped through some postcards, and chose one with ponies running on the front to send to his father. Whenever he heard the door creak or the rain shift against the side of the building, he lifted his head from writing. He couldn't remember seeing Lila last year. Islanders usually stayed away from summer help, even from transplanted year-around residents like his mother. The island girls had always seemed a strange mix, awkward in their oversized boyish clothing and also cocky, having a physical ease that marked them instantly as locals.

  Maybe Lila had stood him up. He had trouble making friends in the summers. The island boys were busy with family businesses and the tourist ones always left in a week or two. He picked up a quarter to play another video. The beer man came in wearing a plastic poncho. He wiped rain from his face with two fingers. Eddie turned, not wanting the bartender to know that he was anxious. The door opened again and Lila stepped in. She shook her black umbrella with the bent metal rib and headed for his table. “This stupid rain,” she said.

  “I thought you might not come,” Eddie said, half standing, bumping the table with his hip.

  “No reason not to,” Lila laughed.

  She sat down and stretched her legs under the table and onto the chair across from her. She had on wrinkled painter's pants and a rose blouse, snug around the shoulders. Her face was broad with large eyes and a birthmark shaped like a kidney bean on one cheek. She looked pretty in an odd way.

  The silence seemed too long and he fiddled with his cassette case. “You don't remember me from last year, do you?” Lila said, cracking her pink gum.

  He didn't know what to tell her. He could remember her, though only vaguely—one of the thin shy girls who hung around the docks at night.

  “I saw you once doing push-ups on the beach. Your nose in the sand.”

  “For wrestling.” Eddie tried to laugh. He knew how his face contorted when he exercised. “You said you'd show me the ponies.”

  “I might,” Lila said. “After the rain stops and it gets dark.”

  The bartender put down sodas and Eddie heard his fizz. “Can you ride them?” he said.

  “If you know how,” she said, twisting her hair around her finger.

  “So you've done it?”

  “Sure,” Lila said. “At first it seems scary. I've gotten thrown a few times. It's weird; you feel like you're flying, then you smack on the ground. Everything's quiet till the ponies gather around and laugh.”

  “I think I could ride them,” Eddie said. Lila smiled but seemed to ignore him. He'd never seen a girl like her. The high school girls he knew in Tennessee were always combing their hair and giggling over the basketball players. Lila could talk regular and there was something kind of fierce about her.

  “Last summer I could fit in my father's crab trap,” Lila said. “They used to call me chicken because I was so bony.”

  “No way,” Eddie said, slightly embarrassed.

  “This spring I put all my old toys, dolls, puzzles, that kind of stuff, in a box, taped it up, and wrote childhood on every side. Clever, huh? It's up in my closet next to my globe.”

  It seemed a funny thing to admit, Eddie thought, and he watched her stir her Coke with her fingers. He didn't know what to say. “Is the island on that thing?”

  “At first I thought it was a little dot like a speck of pepper,” Lila said, shaking her head. “But it's not even on there.” He thought of the isla
nd, the Victorian sea captains’ cottages around the inlet and the sea oats that curtained the beach. She leaned her face closer to his. “When I was a kid,” she said, “I used to wonder where hell was on globes.”

  “That's funny,” Eddie said. He liked the way her throat trilled when she laughed. She smiled and brought her cheek down close to her shoulder and rubbed it slowly against her shirt. Eddie had a feeling he was watching something private.

  The small arcade was separated from the dining room by a half wall and was darker than the rest of the bar. The pinball machine played “Pop Goes the Weasel” in tiny notes, its light concentrated like a camp fire.

  There was something about the big blonde dressed like a soldier on the glass back that he liked. She looked similar to the girls in the X-rated comics he'd seen back home and she reminded him of his friends there. The woman was barely clothed, with one leg straddled over her motorcycle. There were rats in uniform around her feet, all grinning so their spiked teeth showed.

  Eddie put quarters in the thin slot and the numbers, set inside the woman's chest, cleared to zeros. The silver ball shot down past the motorcycle men with raised clubs. He flipped the ball up and it pinged on a rat with a handgun and then to an army nurse in a short dress. He caught the ball, balanced it on a flipper, and asked if she wanted to take over.

  Lila moved her body in back of his, reached her arms around, and pressed down on his fingers resting on the knobs. She flipped the ball back and Eddie ducked under her arms. He leaned against the side of the lighted scoreboard, watching as her eyes narrowed on the game. She pressed right up against the edge. “This machine's been here for ten years. I remember my father telling me those rats were rabbits.” Eddie saw her move her neck like a swan bending to water. She missed and the silver ball slid past the flippers and down into the machine's inner organs.