We Live in Water

by Jess Walter

He was surprised that he’d spoken. “Nothing,” he said. But he finished the thought: A hole opened up and he had to know what was inside it. So he picked and picked until the hole was huge, and then everything sort of . . . fell in, him, his wife, his kid, and this fragile life they’d built at the edge of the hole. And that’s why he was here, because he’d begun wondering if maybe his father hadn’t fallen in the same hole—

  Chop rolled over the surface of the lake.

  Michael looked down the shoreline, at nodding docks, at ski boats rising and falling against log pilings. “It’s nice up here,” he said.

  “It’s quiet,” she said, as if that was the same thing.

  They went back in the house through the basement and were starting up the stairs when something caught Michael’s eye in a room just off the stairs. He pushed open the door to a small bedroom. An empty fish tank ran the length of one wall, a big aquarium eight feet long, like a coffin. The water had been drained and all that was in the tank was a wire brush, a pump, some fake seaweed and a little ceramic turtle. Michael stood at the door a moment and then stepped into the room, empty except for a bed, a dresser, and this wall-length fish tank. He reached up and put his hand against the cold glass.

  “This was my room when I was a kid,” Ellie said, looking around.

  “There were lights,” Michael said quietly, his hand against the glass.

  “In the tank? Yeah.”

  “Blue lights,” he said.

  “My dad put the tank in before I was born. He loved fish.” She laughed. “I always thought the lights made the fish look like ghosts, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him how much this tank scared me. You must have had one, too.”

  A fading current seemed to connect Michael to the glass, a dying memory, dissolving in the very moment he remembered it, like a dream he woke to, trying to recount in the morning as it faded (fish gliding in the blue . . . ).

  Then it was gone, whatever it had been—daydream, memory, trick of the mind—and Michael Pierce let his hand fall from the glass. He remembered Tracy saying in her message that Megan had left some books on a shelf, and at that moment all he wanted to do was go home and run his hand over the spines of those little books.

  “No,” he said to Ellie. “I didn’t have one of these.”

  They went back upstairs. Tim Flett was working the remote control, running through channels on the television. He didn’t look up.

  Michael put his card on the little end table next to the old man. “If you happen to remember anything more about my father.”

  “I said. He put out on a boat in Seattle.”

  “No, I’m just saying . . . if you remember anything else—”

  Tim Flett’s eyes shot from the TV to Michael to the window. “I told you,” he said sharply. “He put out on a goddamn boat!”

  “Dad!” Ellie scolded. And then to Michael: “I’m sorry. He’s tired.”

  “It’s okay,” Michael said. He followed the old man’s eyes to the window, and beyond that, the dark, still lake. Whole worlds exist beneath the surface. And maybe you can’t see down there, Michael thought, but there’s a part of you that knows.

  1958

  THEY RODE silently toward Flett’s house. Bannen drove his Caddy, alone in the front seat. Oren sat in back, trying not to breathe too deeply. Sitting on either side of him were Rutledge and the other man, Baker, whom he barely knew.

  The road to Flett’s cabin was barely more than tire tracks in the trees. They came to the house, lights on, casting white tips on the surface of the lake.

  Oren had run into the three men on his way back to the roadhouse, stepping out of the trees with his hands up, pleading with them, explaining that his kid was in the car. Bannen told him that Flett had already taken his kid back to the lake house, and it came to Oren that he could’ve just stayed in the woods. They hit him around a little more and then dragged him back to the car.

  Baker and Rutledge pulled Oren out of the car by the arms. His head hung to his chest.

  Flett came out of the house, looking concerned. He wouldn’t meet Oren’s eyes.

  “Where’s Michael?” Oren asked.

  “Downstairs,” Flett said, without looking at him. “He’s fine.”

  “Look. I need you to take him home, Tim,” Oren said. “Take him to Katie’s. Will you do that for me?”

  “Oren,” Flett began.

  “Come on. I don’t want him to see this.”

  Flett considered the request. He pulled Bannen over to the edge of the house, beneath the porch light, and turned so that his back was to Oren. He spoke quickly, gesturing with his hands. Bannen just seemed to listen.

  “I know I got a beating coming,” Oren said quietly to Rutlege and Baker, who held his arms. “But don’t let him kill me. Okay? I mean . . . if it starts to look bad—”

  But he didn’t finish and they didn’t say anything. Oren took a deep breath and it felt like another kick in his side. “Christ. Do you sharpen them boots, Rutledge?”

  “Sorry, Oren,” he said.

  Bannen and Flett came back. “You got two minutes with the kid,” Bannen said.

  Oren, with Baker and Rutledge still on his arms, followed Flett into the house and down the stairs, into the bedroom on the right. And there was the boy, staring into Flett’s giant aquarium, tropical fish swimming around in the blue light, a big square-headed whiskered thing probing the glass, and a skinny one with streaks of gold and a flitty little yellow one that darted in among the phony rocks. Michael was so close his nose almost touched the glass and his face was as blue as the fish, as he watched them swim the way he watched traffic out the window of Oren’s apartment, the way he looked at Oren in the car, the way he looked out at the world. And that’s when Oren understood.

  Do we live in water?

  He watched the fish come to the end of its blue world, invisible and impassible, turn, go around and turn again as he sensed another wall and another and on and on. It didn’t even look like water in there, so clear and blue. And the goddamn fish just swam in its circles, as if he believed that, one of these times, the glass wouldn’t be there and he would just sail off, into the open.

  Oren put his hand on the kid’s shoulder.

  Michael turned.

  “We ain’t like fish, Michael,” Oren said. “You can do whatever you want.”

  The kid looked back at the tank.

  Oren turned to Flett. His throat felt tight. “Will you take Katie a note?”

  Flett nodded and handed him a betting slip and a pen. Oren concentrated on the note. He wrote carefully. He signed his name, and then thought of one more thing to say. “I’ll come back when I can.” It gave him a kind of courage. He finished the note and handed it to Flett, who wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Listen,” Oren said to Flett, “if this goes bad, I got a boat in Seattle.”

  “Oren,” Flett said. “If there was anything I could . . .”

  “No. Listen to me,” Oren said, his voice cracking. “I’m goin’ on a boat. Anyone asks. I got a boat in Seattle. Okay?”

  Finally, Flett nodded.

  They moved back up the stairs, Flett and the boy first, and him and Baker and Rutledge behind. If he was going to run again, this was probably his best bet. But Oren knew he needed to see the boy get in that car first.

  Bannen was smoking. God he wanted that cigarette. But Bannen just dropped it when Oren came out. Flett opened the passenger door to the Chevy and the boy climbed in. He looked out the window at Oren, gave a little wave. Oren’s chin quivered but he felt brave again, as if Bannen couldn’t touch him. Oren waved back, the guys standing close to him, but not holding his arms, trying to make it seem casual.

  He watched Flett’s car back up, turn and head down the road. The hands gripped Oren’s arms again and Bannen went to the trunk of his car. When the big man returned with a bat, Oren’s head fell to his chest. He strained then, but he knew.

  Rutledge and Baker tightened their grip and Oren’s feet
scratched at the dirt driveway. He could just see dawn start to break on the foothills above the lake but Bannen wasn’t likely to wait. The first swing took him in the lower back and folded him. Oren lost whatever breath he’d had and felt something give in his hip. The hands let go of him and he dropped to the ground, pawing for his breath. He closed his eyes and tried to find something to look at in his mind. He came back to that morning on the carrier, the blue sky and the ocean, and where they met, that endless line. Everything that isn’t sky and water lives for a moment in that little gray band. Above and below it, the blue stretches forever.

  Thief

  IT’S GOT TO BE the girl.

  Wayne opens her door and hall light spills over the bedroom floor, across her sleeping face. She’s fourteen. Sits all day in headphones, glares out at the world. Wears her jeans too tight. Pretends to walk to the bus stop and gets in that knucklehead’s Nova. Tapes album covers all over walls—like this jackass guitar player with curly hair above her bed: FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE! On the pillow, her hair looks like Frampton’s—a ratty halo. She spends thirty minutes on it every morning, runs up half the power bill on the goddamn blow dryer. Wayne looks at the other albums on the wall. What the hell is a blue oyster cult? She’s probably smoking pot.

  But a thief?

  Asleep she looks like she’s never had a bad thought in her life.

  She was the first, when Wayne was still in the navy. Closed her tiny red hand around his pinky and Wayne thought: What the hell have I done? That tightness in his chest. He was nineteen. Only five years older than she is now. Last summer someone stole a few of his Pall Malls, and although he never caught her with the smokes, she was his prime suspect then, too.

  Wayne eases the door closed, steps down the hall to the boys’ room. Little and Middle, nine and eleven, splayed on twin beds like they were dropped fifty feet. The Little one could be it out of temperament alone. He’s a hoarder, a brooder. Dark eyes like his mother. Looks up from his Legos like you interrupted church. Kid didn’t say a word until he was four and then it was a full sentence: “I want more applesauce now.” Acts like he’s never had an entire meal. Pockets food during dinner, squirrels Halloween candy in dresser drawers, carries acorns around in his mouth. By personality, it could be the Little one. He’s got that want thing in his eyes. The want Wayne sometimes gets.

  On the top bunk, the Middle one mutters in his sleep. Milkman’s kid, Wayne always joked, not just because he’s blond, but because he’s so different from Wayne. He hates to say it about his own kid, but the Middle one’s a pussy. Falls down and gets hurt, wrecks his bike and cries and pisses his pants (at eleven?), plays chess and always has his head in a book and can’t seem to keep his goddamn finger out of his nose. “Hey,” he told the boy one time, “when you finally get whatever’s up there, let me know. I want to see it.” The kid just stared at him. The Middle one could be it just because Wayne has no idea what goes on in that head of his. He’s an alien.

  “Wayne?”

  Karen stands behind him in the hallway, white nightie, dark eyes squinting.

  “Hey baby.”

  “It’s two in the morning.”

  “Yeah, Ken and I had a couple after work.”

  “Come to bed.”

  “Did I ever tell you about our trip to Yellowstone when I was a kid? We stayed in these cabins at this Indian camp, least that’s what they called it. There was a creek to pan for gold and a field of arrowheads. My sister told me the gold and arrowheads were fake, that the people who ran the roadside deal planted them for us to find.” Wayne smiles at the memory. “My dad had to park on a hill every night to compression-start that old Ford of his. Imagine. My cranky old man driving around flat eastern Montana looking for a hill to park on.” But he can’t remember why he brought it up.

  “Just come to bed.”

  Wayne sighs and looks back at the boys. He’d have to go long odds on the Middle kid, six-to-one, out of ineptness alone, two-to-one on the Little boy, because of his sneaky personality. Even money on the Girl . . . just because.

  In the bedroom, Karen turns her tapered back to him, the straps of her nightgown just above the waterline of covers. Wayne takes his change out of his pockets. Two quarters, a dime, four pennies.

  Okay. Here we go. Every night after work, after the tavern, he drops his change in the Vacation Fund on their closet floor. The Vacation Fund is a gallon glass jar, a replica of an old rotgut whiskey jar, dark brown glass, wide at the bottom, narrow as a fifty-cent piece at the neck, with a glass finger-handle at the very top. When the jar is full, the family has enough money to take a vacation. Just like Wayne’s dad used to do it. Takes two years to fill the jar, two years to save enough for a summer car trip.

  When Wayne noticed that someone was stealing from the Vacation Fund, he started leaving traps. He’d tilt the jar till the change ran uphill, then come home and find the sea of coins flat. Or he’d turn the handle to six o’clock, come home and find the handle at four-thirty, the jar moved off its indentation in the carpet. He even marked quarters, left them on top, and sure enough, the marked quarters disappeared.

  Wayne gets down to eye level. The handle’s turned to eight o’clock.

  “I’ll be goddamned!” He hoists the heavy jar and holds it up to the light. Two days this week; the thief is getting brash.

  “Please, Wayne,” Karen says from the bed. “You’re imagining the whole thing.”

  “I’m imagining at least four bucks missing?”

  “Four dollars? From a jar of two hundred?”

  “It ain’t the money, Karen. This is our vacation. You want one of your kids stealing from their own goddamn family? You want your kids to do this? To be like this?”

  “Come to bed.”

  Wayne’s hands are shaking. One of his kids. Christ.

  “NO WAY,” Ken says.

  “Then who? Karen?”

  “No. Course not.”

  “You think some cat burglar’s breaking into my house to steal a few quarters at a time?”

  “No. But your kids? Your kids are good fucking kids, Wayne.”

  His kids are good kids. Get A’s. Polite. Not shitheads. Wayne presses his arms against the worn padding of the bar.

  The door behind them opens and it’s that Donna, tart secretary from the Union Hall. She walks the length of the bar, sings hi to everyone. Then she and Ken go through the whole thing of pretending they’re not screwing. “It’s the Ken and Wayne show. What are you fellas up to?”

  “Hey Donna,” Ken says. “How you been?” Like he didn’t poke her in his car just last night.

  It’s only his second beer but Wayne wants out of there. His watch says 11:50. Someone has put goddamn Anne Murray on the jukebox. Pool balls clatter. Wayne bangs his glass on the bar. “Well. I should—”

  “Nah, stay, man,” Ken says, half-assed. Wayne doesn’t blame Ken. After a night on the pot-line, breathing that slag steam, who wouldn’t want a knock at Donna? Wayne likes to think that if she ever came at him, he’d say no—she ain’t half as good-looking as Karen—but part of him thinks he couldn’t say no. Shit. Sometimes he hates people.

  “Yeah, stay for one more, Wayne,” Donna says, less half-assed than Ken did. She puts a hand on his arm.

  But tomorrow’s Friday and Wayne’s got one last swing on the pot-line before a three-day and then he rotates to a week of day shifts. He puts his coat on. “Nah, I’m goin’ home. Gotta catch me a thief.”

  “A what?” Donna twirls her wedding ring.

  Ken says, “One of Wayne’s kids is stealing from his vacation fund.”

  “Where you going?” Donna asks.

  “Kelowna,” Wayne says. “B.C. That Fred Flintstone Land.” And then he thinks of something—the thief started after Wayne picked that place. He thinks of the girl again. What fourteen-year-old wants to see Fred Flintstone Land?

  Donna reaches for the beer Ken bought her. She’s got on a tight silky dress with a red bow tied above her waist. “I
hate kids,” she says. “Especially mine.”

  THE MIDDLE one’s finger is up to the first knuckle. His other hand holds his fork like a pencil.

  “What do you think is up there?” Wayne asks. “A Three Musketeers?”

  “Huh?” Middle kid always looks at him like he’s just talked French.

  “Don’t do that at the table.”

  “Oh.” The finger comes out of his nose like a sword from a scabbard. He straightens his glasses.

  The Little boy smiles at his older brother’s plight.

  The Girl is a hundred miles away, herding stewed tomatoes.

  “You ain’t leaving the table until those tomatoes are gone.”

  “They’re gross.”

  Karen tells how the Little one passed the Presidential Fitness.

  “All except the pull-ups,” he says, and shrugs. “Nobody could do the pull-ups so Mr. McAdam said to not worry about pull-ups.”

  Wayne looks at the Middle kid. He never passes the Presidential Fitness. Big crisis every year.

  “I was in the sick room,” he says. “I almost puked in science.”

  “Well, maybe next year,” Wayne says.

  The Middle one pushes his glasses up on his nose. He smiles wearily at his dad, as if to say, Doubtful.

  “Can I go to Terry’s after dinner?” the Girl asks, and she adds, “To do homework?”

  “You bringing those tomatoes with you?”

  The Girl slops a bite in her mouth.

  Wayne stares at a bite of pork chop on his fork, at its perfect rind of pan-fried fat. “I’ve been thinking. About our vacation.”

  The kids all chew. Karen rolls her eyes and goes to get more rolls out of the oven.

  “British Columbia still good with everyone?” He looks from kid to kid to kid. Before they can answer, he says, “Because it’s not just Kelowna, you know. They got hot springs up there, and glacial lakes. And, uh, mountain goats.”

  The Little one pouts. “Wait. We’re not going to Flintstone Land anymore?”

  “No. Yeah. We’re still going. I just mean we can go other places too.”