by Amanda Dykes
But they’d traded away boyhood when a war across the ocean came crashing into their worlds. Their games had turned into strategies, maps drawn in dirt. Their island stopped being the stage of their adventures and became home to their grief the day the war became personal—the day it had taken their father’s life. Alastair Campbell MacGregor Bliss, who had wanted nothing more in this life than to leave a legacy of courage and faith for his family, had done just that to his dying breath.
Tonight, Robert would honor that. He is there for the fire and the dares, yes, but it will be different this time. Robert’s pulse pounds harder thinking of it—he won’t leave the island tonight without their two futures certain.
Cresting the high ridge, Robert breaks into Rogue’s Clearing, plants his boots in the hard dirt, and studies his brother. Roy sits on a rock across the fire, bent over his knees as flame-cast shadows chisel over his creased forehead. He rubs his hand across his eyebrows, just like Dad used to do when some great worry had descended. It’s no wonder, after all the hours he’d spent with Dad in the boat shop, that Roy was the mirror image of the man.
“Hey,” Robert says. Shaking off the old envy that used to eat at him whenever he thought about those two, he steps into the orange light.
Roy sits bolt-upright, smile too quick on his face. “’Bout time!” A crack of sparks flies from the fire.
A scratch of static registers, followed by strains of a big-band orchestra and Frank Sinatra singing “Stardust.” A sound so out of place out here in the September air, Robert jerks his head to find its source—a hand-crank Victrola, balanced on a rock with its cone tilting like a curious dog.
“What in the world?”
“Oh.” Roy looks sheepish. “Jenny was here with me yesterday. She brought it.” Roy strides over, pulling a hand from denim pants marked by stray bits of sawdust. He moves to halt the spinning record.
“Leave it,” Robert says.
As Roy cranks the Victrola, Robert thinks of the girl who brought it. It’s just like her. The island has always belonged as much to Jenny as to them, though it is Bliss land by rights. She’d tromped across these rocks with them over the years, lighting up their rustic misadventures with her magic. So natural a part of this place that for most of Robert’s life, he’d thought of her about as much as he thought of breathing. But one day, he’d taken her hand to help her up from the clamming beach—a gesture as ordinary as the day was long—and something broke wide open inside him. Her freckles sported a smudge of dirt, blue eyes alight as dark hair fell over her face and brushed the bottom of her jaw. She pushed her lips to the side and puffed, blowing her bangs back in that funny way of hers. She smiled, and his chest hurt. She looked straight into him and just settled right in his soul. He’d known in that instant he’d do anything for Jenny Thomas, give anything if she could be Jenny Bliss one day.
Trouble was, they’d been thirteen back then. Little more than kids. By the time the years ticked by enough that he could say something to her, he wanted just the right words. And while he’d formed the words and switched and pulled them around in his mind, searching for just the right shape, Roy woke up to what Robert already knew—the girl next door was more than just the girl who once played pirates with them—and Roy beat him to telling her so. Roy and Jenny had been goners ever since. And Robert had found a sudden need to be at sea every chance he could.
Jenny liked to say Roy looked just like a young Gregory Peck. She’d never once said that to Robert. Didn’t matter that they were identical. Maybe because Roy was the one with “those dimples,” as she liked to say. But probably, more likely, because at day’s end Roy smelled like clean-carved pine and Robert smelled like lobster bait and sea water. Girls didn’t say things like that to guys like him.
“So . . .” Roy pushes his open flannel coat back to stuff his hands in his pants pockets. Natural and easy, as if the incident of the letter had not happened just hours before. “We going to do this, or what?” Roy socks Robert on the shoulder with a half grin and starts to gather rocks over by the precipice, where the island drops away into the sea. They’ll need nine apiece: one for each of their eighteen years.
The idea of tossing rocks into an ocean and inventing dares to go along with each one—ridiculous tasks they’ll each have to complete before the year is up—suddenly doesn’t seem right. Not tonight.
Robert studies his brother. He’s never seen him quite like this—like the eternal optimist everyone knows him to be is wrestling hard with some swift current carrying him away.
Roy pastes on a grin. “Come on,” he says, palming the rock into Robert’s hand. “You go first.”
Robert turns the gray stone, still warm from Roy’s grip. “Can we talk?”
Roy’s jaw twitches. “Later.”
What is going on with him? It’s like this tradition—this fragment of their boyhood—is some sort of lifeline.
When Robert still doesn’t throw his rock into the waves rushing far below, Roy pulls his own arm back. “Fine. I’ll go first.”
Maybe it’s the tradition of it, a sense of duty. These are the things Roy is made of. It’s his way, his half of their namesake: Rob Roy, the folk hero rogue of their forefathers back in Scotland. Roy got all the hero, and Robert got all the rogue.
Roy’s arm freezes mid-swing. He clears his throat, drops his voice dramatically. “‘Far and near, through hill and vale—’”
Robert throws him a look. “Really?” The old Walter Scott poem grates.
Roy swings his arm wide in challenge. “Come on. They’re just words.”
“Yeah, but they rhyme.”
“So what?” Roy whacks him in the chest with the back of his hand. “Rhymes won’t kill you.” His eyes grow somber. And it doesn’t take much to figure out what he’s not saying. This might be the last chance they have to declare the words Dad carved into their imaginations with many a tale of Rob Roy’s daring.
“Fine.” Robert pulls in a breath and joins in with all the enthusiasm of a periodic-table recitation. “‘Far and near, through hill and vale . . . ’”
Roy jumps in, and his voice sounds so much like Dad’s, each word ignites as they speak into the dark.
“‘Are faces that attest the same, and kindle like a fire new stirr’d, at the sound of Rob Roy’s name.’”
Silence sifts through them.
Roy hurls the first rock into the dark, into Cauldron Cove below, where the waves are stirred by rocks into a constant roil. The rock splits the air, landing in a far-off splash. His reach is getting stronger.
“Normal people throw confetti at their birthday parties.” Robert looks warily at the rock in his hand.
“Ayuh,” Roy agrees, the Mainer word for yes as much a part of home as the salt air. “No confetti for the likes of us. Throw your rock.” He lets the implication hang and steps back to gesture Robert’s turn.
“So what’s the dare?”
Roy hooks his thumbs in his belt loops. “Dare you to actually put something in the offering plate at church this week. Something, meaning money, not snails.”
Robert smirks. “I’m not seven anymore.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
“Oh yeah?” Robert hurls his rock out. “Then I dare you to tip Mrs. Jenson’s cow.” Splash. They both know he’ll never do it.
“Dare you to fix the side of the barn you ran into.” Splash. Roy grins.
Then, a pause. As if the whole evening—maybe their whole lives—has been building up to this.
Robert summons every ounce of strength and sends his rock sailing far. A very distant splash. “I dare you not to go to war.”
And suddenly any illusion of that faraway boyhood burns off like sea smoke.
“What?” Roy turns, fixes a steely stare on Robert.
“You heard me.”
Roy shakes his head. “What are you even saying? You want me to . . .” He looks over his shoulder, drops his voice. “What? Dodge the draft?” A shadow crosses his face, as if R
obert’s plunged a knife straight into him. “You think I’m a coward?”
“No.” The word comes out quick. “I’m saying . . . don’t go.” He pulls in sharp air. “I’ll be you. I’ll go. They do that sometimes—let a guy go in his brother’s place. Or if they won’t . . .” He tries, and fails, to make his voice light. “We’re twins. We could always just . . . switch names. It worked in grade school.”
Roy gawks at Robert. “Do you even hear yourself? You know I couldn’t do that. Not after Dad—”
“Please.” Robert’s voice is low now with contained ferocity. “You have a wife.” The word wife comes out hard. The ache in him groans wider, but this is right and true.
To love Jenny means to give her a life with the man she’s chosen: Roy.
Roy’s jaw works. Robert pulls out the second punch. “You have a kid.”
Roy lifts his chin, points his gaze across the bay, a toss down from the home they grew up in, where a light at the end of Jenny’s dock glistens. Robert tenses—something’s off. Any mention of Jenny usually makes the man glow like a lighthouse. But tonight it’s the opposite. Something shuts down in his brother.
And when Roy speaks, there’s a husk to his voice, like a boat dragged over gravel. “You think other soldiers don’t have wives? Families? You think those loved ones aren’t the very people they’re willing to go to war to protect?”
Robert knows it too well. It was the reason Dad had enlisted, back when they still allowed men to enlist. And it was the very reason Robert had to try one more time. “Take care of them, son.” Dad had looked fifteen-year-old Robert in the eye, as if he were a full-grown man, and left him with those words. He wasn’t the oldest, but they both knew he was the one who had the fury of a nor’easter inside him, a fury he could use to fight.
Rocks clatter to the ground as Roy releases his grip on them. Shaking his head, he pushes past Robert, refusing to look at him as he shovels dirt onto the fire. A spiral of dust and smoke replaces the pillar of light.
Robert’s lungs burn as he buckets a pile of dirt on the last wayward sparks, ready to continue his argument. But Roy strides down the darkened path, down the island bluff, a man caught between logic and duty.
“Wait!” Robert pounds the ground after him. “Just listen. What am I going to do, just keep pulling lousy shellfish from the ocean? But you—” Roy won’t stop, just stomps around the dark bends of the path, making it nearly to the bottom of the hill.
Here, where the lapping of the waves is loud and steady above his own erratic heartbeat, Robert grabs his brother by the shoulder and spins him around. “You’re the one who can do things. Build boats. Help Mom.” His arguments are not adding up to enough, and he can see it on Roy’s face. He shoves a pointed finger at Jenny’s house. “You have a family.”
At this word, Roy hangs his head.
Robert’s chest heaves. Catching his breath, he whispers, “I’m going for you.”
Cold moonlight glances across Roy, and a gust kicks up from the water. There’s a strength in his stance, as if his feet are putting roots down into the very granite. Immovable. Somewhere in the distance a buoy bell tolls, and tolls again.
Robert locks his mouth closed around the string of arguments pounding their way out. Whatever torment is at work in his brother is doing its work. Roy’s breathing is stiff and fast.
“They need you here,” Robert says. He spits in his hand and thrusts it out to a brother who stares, swallows. He’s torn, Robert can see it. Maybe they’ve outgrown the old spit-handshake, but it means one thing still: an unbreakable promise. Though never before has it meant life or death.
Roy clenches his fist, raises it, and for a split second Robert breathes easier. He’s going to do it.
But then he sees Roy stand taller. Robert knows that look. That’s the Eagle Scout right there. The one who vowed on his honor to do his best unto God and his country.
And instead of opening up into a handshake, that fist pounds right into Roy’s other hand, and he shakes his head. “Remember the storm?”
Robert turns his head, looking away from his brother. They’d battened down for a thousand storms in their lifetime here, but he knows instantly which one Roy is talking about. When Dad had gone to town to fetch Mom home . . . and told the boys to stick together.
They had. But they hadn’t gone straight home. Robert had spotted the new rowboat Dad had just finished for Mr. Simmons, cut loose and drifting up shore near Gretel Point, where the bay opened up to the ocean. That boat represented four months of work, and to a ten-year-old, there was only one thing to do.
“That stupid boat,” Robert says. “I should have gotten us home, gotten you inside.”
Roy shakes his head. “That’s just it. All our lives, you’ve been the one to go out ahead, like you were born with a guardian badge or something, and you and Dad were always talking about looking out for me.”
“Well, I didn’t do a very good job of it that day,” Robert says. He can almost still feel the rain pelting their faces, the wind blowing so fierce it pummeled their jackets out behind them like capes. He can still remember how he heard the gull, felt sorry for it crying out from somewhere far off, farther off with every step—and finally looking back and seeing no gull, but young Roy calling out “Help! Help!” with the moaning fall of a gull’s cry.
He’ll never forget the slickness of those stones as he flew over them, unheeding of the ankle twists and scratches until he got to Roy, who was hanging over a precipice, sea foaming below him like a ravenous beast. He’d slipped, and Robert hadn’t even noticed.
“You were strong,” he says to Roy. “Hanging on like that. How you managed to find a grip in that storm . . .”
Roy’s jaw twitches, and his gaze is far away. “I managed it because I knew you were coming,” he said. “You always came. You still do.”
Yes, he’d made it, but if he’d been doing his job, he’d never have let Roy out of his sight to begin with. As it was, they ended up with a shattered boat, a dislocated elbow for Robert, which ached to this day whenever a storm was brewing, and a nearly lost life.
If Robert hadn’t lain himself down on that cliff and pulled Roy up while his brother’s feet scrambled on the cliff side, they’d never have made it home to confess to Dad about the shattered boat. Nor would they have seen the desperate relief on Dad’s face, nor felt the strength of his embrace around them both.
Roy looks tortured by the memory, though everything had turned out. “I’ve always thought the view must be better from up there.”
“Up there?” Robert couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.
“Yeah. Looking down at someone like you did that day, knowing you’re saving them. Not looking up, knowing you’re the one causing trouble.”
“Shoot, Roy, you know that’s not how it was.”
“But it was. It is.” He pulls in a deep breath and claps Robert on the back. “My turn now, brother. You’re a good man,” he says. “Let me try to be one, too.”
And then he leaves.
Under a high moon, so high it must be well past midnight, he shoves his boat off into those waves. Unspoken dares forgotten in a pile of rocks at the top of the hill, unseen futures before him as he crosses some threshold in the dark.
Robert’s feet crunch in determination across the small beach, as if his body hasn’t yet heard what his ears and heart have. His hands work mechanically to untie his boat, and he gets in. But there, facing the deserted island of their youth, he launches a prayer from the mess inside him, to the God who—if there was any justice about Him—would let Robert go to war and keep the good brother home.
three
CHICAGO
MAY 2001
Numbers swim in front of Ann Bliss, blurring on her computer screen to the cadence of her stomach rumbling. Lunch hour. After jotting a few quick notes on the latest buying trends of consumers in their twenties and thirties, Ann closes her notebook and navigates her way through the maze of elevators, lof
ty atrium, white-marbled corridor, and pillared entry of Chicago’s Calloway Building. Once outside, she slips into the big-chain coffee shop next door on the bottom story of a building that stretches up to approximately, by Ann’s estimation, twelve thousand stories.
Placing a hand on the glass door, she hesitates a moment, closes her eyes, and imagines herself bursting through the door of The Galley as a girl. An old ship’s bell would clang over her head, sunshine spilling happily on the dozens of mismatched chairs surrounding scattered tables, and red geranium sprigs would nod hello from a tin can on the corner table where she always met Bob. Little more than a transformed bait shop with whitewashed walls inside and out and a kitchen tacked on as an afterthought, The Galley was Ansel-by-the-Sea’s only year-round eatery. It served up three things well and without fail: views of the idyllic Maine harbor, piping hot stacks of pancakes baptized in local maple syrup, and stories as salty as the pier it sat on.
She is certain that, even after so many years, Bess would greet her with her customary “Glad you’re here,” her words arriving in the Down East Maine way, sounding as if they’d traveled through fresh air, touched with something of an old Hollywood accent, edges removed: Glad yoa heeah. Bess would wave Annie in with her spatula and flip a sizzling flapjack—Gretel cakes, she called them, named for the famed Gretel Point out at the tip of the harbor.
But Ann is not there, hasn’t been for two decades. She pushes through the café door and tells herself this is home now.
The mingled scents of plastic and pastries surround a sea of people in dark suits. They are braced in neat postures against hard chairs, scanning virtual copies of the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, or TIME magazine on their laptops. Their faces glow with the ghostly radiance of kilowatts.
Ann, in her navy pin-striped suit, places her order. The girl behind the counter slides a pseudo-fresh pastry into a corrugated sleeve and plunks a teabag into a paper cup. She calls Ann’s name with the enthusiasm of one calling roll at a tax seminar.