The Shell Collector

by Hugh Howey

  “I think your father is home,” I say when she emerges. “And we napped through lunch. Should we go up to the house?”

  She nods, looks out at the rain, then back to me. “Maybe we should just run for it,” she says.

  “Let’s do it.”

  We squeal and laugh all the way to the house, getting soaked. We arrive at the living room to find folded towels set out for us and one on the floor just inside the door. Ness appears while we’re drying our hair. “I’m going to my room to change,” Holly announces. “Let me know when lunch is ready.” She drops her towel in a heap and marches toward the north breezeway.

  “How about a hello?” Ness asks his daughter. “Maybe a hug?”

  Holly makes an exaggerated turn, like a jetliner banking through the clouds, and steers toward her dad. She gives him a perfunctory hug, rolling her eyes at me, and then pads off for her room.

  “I am so sorry,” Ness says. “Something came up, and I had no idea Holly would be—”

  “It’s okay,” I tell him.

  “—hate you had to babysit—”

  “It was fine. We had a good time. The rain probably messed up whatever you were going to show me anyway.”

  “Well, not really. It’s supposed to storm all day tomorrow as well, but it won’t affect us. In fact, we have a series of flights to take tonight.”

  He glances at his watch. I’ve noticed that he does this constantly. It’s a trait I’ve seen in a lot in the people I’ve interviewed over the years. For some, it’s because they live by appointments: you’re lucky to get fifteen minutes of their time. For others, it’s ambition: they’re in a race to get all they want accomplished. Ness is a playboy without a schedule, so he fits neither of these easy molds. Perhaps he’s a third type: the schoolboy wondering when class will get out and he’ll have his freedom again. Maybe he only does this around people like me, obligations he’d rather not have.

  “Where are we going?” I ask. Funny, I expected to travel someplace exotic when I first got here, and now I don’t want to leave.

  “It’s a surprise,” Ness says. “Besides, if I told you the name of the place or where it was, you still wouldn’t have a clue about our final destination.”

  “Will we be diving?”

  Ness cocks his head. “In a way. Now stop asking questions—”

  “I’m a reporter,” I remind him. “You stop picking up shells.”

  “I just might,” he says. And before I can press him on this, he’s telling me what to pack. “One change of clothes, toothbrush, toiletries, no makeup, no perfume, no mask or fins, no wetsuit, no bathing suit.”

  “That’s a list of what not to pack,” I say.

  “Comfortable clothes. Shorts. T-shirt. Nothing too warm.”

  I’m confused. Nothing warm, but no bathing suit?

  Again, he glances at his watch. “We’ll leave in half an hour.”

  “What about Holly?” I ask.

  “Monique will watch her until her mother picks her up. Speaking of which, I got an earful from Vicky about who was in my bed this morning when she got here.” He lifts an eyebrow in a Care to explain that? sorta way.

  “I wasn’t in your bed,” I say. “I was … I got drenched running up here after I found your note. I went in search of a towel, found your bathroom first—”

  “And my robe.”

  “And your robe, yes. My clothes are in the dryer. I was looking at pictures of Holly on your desk when your ex came in.”

  “What did you think of her?”

  “I’m sorry, what?” I try to transition from being defensive to having a chat about his ex-wife. “She was … nice, I guess. Of course, she seemed to think we were sleeping with each other. Hard to blame her, considering. Pretty embarrassing for me.”

  “Wow,” Ness says. “That must be awful, having people think something about you that isn’t true. I can’t imagine.”

  I start to ask him to elaborate, when I see him staring past my shoulder. I turn to find Holly standing at the end of the breezeway.

  “You guys aren’t in love with each other,” she says.

  “I’m a reporter,” I tell Holly. “I told you, I’m here to do a story on your father.”

  Her lip quivers. I can see the joy from earlier in the day drain from her face. Without a word, she turns and runs down the hall, and I hear Ness curse under his breath. I start to follow Holly to her room, but Ness tells me I’m better off leaving her alone.

  “She was bound to find out,” he says. “Don’t make it worse for her.”

  I have no idea what this means. And I don’t see Holly again as I gather my things down at the guest house—using an oversized rain jacket and umbrella this time. I bring my solitary bag up to the house, and Ness leads me to the front door.

  There’s a helicopter outside. The pilot tells Ness that we should go before the next squall hits. And maybe it’s the rain, maybe it’s not getting to shell that day, maybe it’s the lingering soreness from seeing Holly so upset at us, but the week has taken a turn. The joy is no longer on Ness’s face. And I remember what Victoria said about that smile being his shell, that he is not a happy man, and perhaps this is my first glimpse of the true Ness Wilde. Either way, the week threatens to become one of those bright, half-buried horse conchs that you reach for only to discover that the rest of the shell is missing, that there was nothing priceless about that find after all.

  27

  I’m glad I amended Ness’s packing list and brought a book. My phone doesn’t work for much of the helicopter ride, and then we land at a small airport and transfer to a private jet. Once we break above the rain clouds, I can tell by the setting sun to our right that we are flying south. Ness is pensive and quiet. I attribute this to conflicts with his ex or his daughter, but it also occurs to me that he left in a hurry that morning to tend to an emergency. Perhaps it’s something else entirely.

  Rebelling against my reporter DNA, I decide to let it go and to lose myself in the book I brought along. Treasure Island was losing me, felt more like a romp a young boy might like, so I picked out Moby Dick instead, which I vaguely remember not-reading in college and instead using online notes to squeak out a B or a C on some paper. Little did I know all those years of bullshitting my way through coursework would nicely prepare me for a career in journalism. As it turns out, it pays pretty well to make up entire stories on slivers of fact.

  I read for a few hours, and then the copilot comes back to serve us a meal. After the trays are taken away, I rejoin Ishmael on his whaling adventures, but I’m only half present in the book. My mind flits. The article I’ve written about Ness bends and sways like a tree in a shifting breeze. Somehow, two years of work now feels … unimportant. Trivial. I remind myself that vacation does this to priorities, and the past few days have been like a vacation. When I get back to New York—among the symphony of sirens and car alarms and shrieking subway rails—I will remember what’s important. That’s when the story will coalesce and take shape. It’ll be easier to update my piece about Ness when he’s not sitting across from me, staring at his laptop, scrolling but not typing, reading something with a frown. It’ll be easier when I’m not thinking about Holly, and the way she looked at me, both in joy that morning, and in anger the last time I’m likely to ever see her.

  Maybe it’s meeting Holly that’s made the article difficult to ponder. It’s easier to demonize a man than it is a father, especially one who begs for hugs and leaves lights burning even when she isn’t home to use them. Getting to know Ness as a person has been a mistake, rather than a boon for my piece. The issues I want to write about are larger than one man, larger than any of us; they concern the entire globe; they concern our environment, our politics, our collective choices. Tearing him down felt good before. Now it feels hollow. I imagine this is how Ahab might’ve felt if the book in my lap had turned out differently.

  I drift off in my seat thinking of white whales, of ghosts who haunt us, of the destructive forces in our
lives. I think how we are often that force, chasing what we should leave alone, what we should simply let go. But letting go is harder than destroying ourselves and those around us in a mad chase to feel … right with the world. Losing our child was this thing for Michael and me. We tried too hard to replace her. And when we couldn’t, there was nothing left to salvage. It was that white whale or nothing. There was no in-between where we might survive. Where we might not drown.

  Turbulence wakes me. I find a blanket tucked around my shoulders, my book set aside. Ness glances up from his laptop. The cabin lights are dim, his face cast in a pale glow from the screen.

  “Another couple of hours,” he says softly.

  “Where are we going?” I murmur.

  “Middle of nowhere,” Ness says. “The last place anyone thinks to look.”

  I try to fall back asleep, thinking on this and other puzzles. Half the time when I crack my eyes, Ness is staring at his screen. The other half of the time, he’s staring at me. The darkness, the shuddering of the plane, the cabin to ourselves, my sleepy brain, a morning spent with his daughter, his pensive mood, all swim around me. An old memory returns—a collection of disjointed memories—all the impossibly long nights spent awake at summer camp, confiding to strangers in whispers for hour upon hour, never wanting to sleep, and falling for other girls my age with reckless speed, promising each other we’d be best friends forever.

  “We had a daughter,” I say, out of nowhere. I leave my eyes closed. The darkness is a safe place.

  Ness says nothing.

  “She came premature, and they couldn’t save her.”

  I dab at my eyes with the blanket, and Ness’s seat squeaks as he adjusts himself. I feel his hand on my foot. A friendly gesture. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “It’s just that … I would love to have a daughter who hates me,” I say. And I find the courage to open my eyes. Tears stream down my neck. I wipe them away as quickly as they come. I’m trying to make him feel better, but I’m making us both feel worse.

  “It’s just a phase kids go through,” Ness says. “Everyone assures me she’ll grow out of it.”

  “You could wait for her to grow up, or you could meet her halfway,” I say.

  “I try.” Ness closes his laptop, leaving us to the dim emergency lights. “I only get her every other weekend, and her mom often schedules camps and sports to fill those up. I’ve watched her grow up from the bleachers.”

  “Does she take to strangers easily? Because she …”

  I don’t know how to say what it felt like for her to bond with me so quickly, that it was part flattering and part sad.

  “I saw the two of you napping in the guest house,” Ness says. “Does she do that sort of thing a lot? Maybe not that exactly, but she does like it when I’m seeing someone. And she’s always crushed when they don’t stick around.”

  “They,” I say.

  “People I’ve dated since my wife left me.”

  “They don’t stick around, or you don’t have them back?”

  Ness shrugs. “It’s complicated. What’s funny is that I think Holly just wants me to be happy. I think it’s selfless on her part, that she wants some fairy tale for me, not for her.”

  “Why does she think you’re not happy?” I ask.

  “You’re asking a lot of questions. Is this for your story?”

  I consider this for a beat. He’s asking me if this is on the record or off the record. Do I want to know but not be able to report what I find? Or would I rather wait and find out by other means and be able to write what I discover? It’s the riddle of the non-disclosure agreement all over again.

  “This is for me,” I finally say. Which feels dangerous. Like I just crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed—sliding from reporter to acquaintance. Maybe even friend. But I don’t see an oil magnate across from me right then; I don’t see the subject of any story. Just a man, a father, someone I’ve spent too much time around the past few days not to empathize with.

  “I’m not an easy person to live with,” Ness tells me. “I try. Man, I try. I don’t want to be like my father, but we are who we are.” He shrugs. “I can’t sit still. I have so much I want to do, and I don’t feel like I have time for it all. I have a hard time delegating, an even harder time trusting people. Here’s the thing: Vicky cheated on me. Another parent she met at a PTA meeting. And when she left, I gave her everything she asked for, custody, the houses she wanted, the money she demanded, because I figured the affair was my fault for not being there. My fault for being a bad father.”

  “Why do you think you’re a bad father?”

  “Because it runs in the family.” Ness turns toward the window, where the moon bounces off the top of the clouds and lets in the faintest of ethereal glows. He’s little more than a silhouette, but I see him wipe his cheek. “Even my grandfather, who was a good man through and through, wasn’t a great father to my dad. I didn’t tell you the full truth about that the other day. It’s not that he was abusive, just absent. I think the same propensity to feel overwhelmed with guilt allowed him to let someone else raise his kid. Or maybe, like me, he was scared he’d screw it all up.”

  “What is it you’re chasing?” I ask. “What’re you looking for?”

  “Redemption,” Ness says. And the answer comes so fast, that I know he has asked himself this very question countless times. “I want to leave behind a better world than the one I was given. And like I told you the other day, I was given a world in a lot of pieces.”

  “Your grandfather bought up shoreline and protected it to redeem himself. How will forging shells help anyone?”

  Even in the dark, I can see Ness stiffen. I hate myself for saying it. I’m more curious about him than the stupid shells in that moment, but the conversation hemmed us in like a lee shore in a storm.

  “Why does this no longer feel off the record?” Ness asks.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I lean forward and place a hand on his knee. “I really am. That wasn’t me being a reporter … just me being confused.”

  “No, that’s okay.” Ness straightens himself in his seat, puts his laptop aside. I lean back in my own seat. “Of course they aren’t real,” he says. “The problem with those shells is that they’re too perfect. Maybe that’s why Arlov had to have them around. I don’t know.”

  Before I can press him on this, Ness reminds me that we’re talking off the record. And then he flashes a mischievous smile brighter than the moon. “But if you want to get back on the record, I’ve got something you can print. A scoop just for you. Something I’ve never told another reporter.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “The story of my name.”

  I try to hide my disappointment. “I know it,” I say. I can’t remember where I heard it, somewhere in all the hundreds of interviews and articles I’ve read about him. “Your middle name is Robert. Your father thought it would be cute, since you were born around the time he tried to make the company more green. What I’d much rather hear about—”

  “No, the Wilderness thing? I don’t know who put that together, but it’s a coincidence. My grandfather on my mother’s side was named Robert. The real story is less interesting. Well, to most people, I imagine. But when my mother told me how I got my name, it led me on a trip where I discovered the single greatest thing she ever taught me about my father.”

  I wait. And damn him, he has me curious.

  “I was named after a monster,” Ness says.

  “You were not,” I say. “You mean the loch?”

  “Yes, precisely. Loch Ness. And my mom swears it’s the truth. The two of them spent their honeymoon on the Isle of Man, and they visited Scotland and the loch, and she said my father was taken with the lore of the place. But even more with the tourism. Have you ever been?”

  “No.”

  “I went. I wanted to find out what my father saw when he came up with this name. It seemed mysterious to me. It haunted me. All I had were a few hints from my mom
, where they went, some things he said. So I went there by myself hoping to find out where I came from. Where I really came from, you know? Not my name, really, but to get to know my dad. And it hit me on my third day there. A woman in a cafe recognized me. You know what she did?”

  “Ask for your autograph? Show you a shell from her collection?”

  “She spit on me,” Ness says.

  We fly along in silence.

  “Why?” I finally ask.

  “Oh, it wasn’t the first time it’s happened. It’s all the things you have planned for your story, I’m sure. My father rolling back the green initiatives when they ended up not being as profitable. All the oil exploration the company has done under my watch. Videos of flooded homes, of major cities underwater, the expense of the levees around New York, Miami, Boston. All the breakwalls going up around the world. Pick a reason.

  “What was important for me was the timing of this incident. There I was, trying to find myself on the shore of my namesake, obsessing over this question of what my father saw in his unborn son. You see, I spent those days around the loch pretending to be my father. I tried to see the town through his eyes, tried to imagine I had a new wife whom I knew to be pregnant, and a future child that I knew was going to be a boy. I thought of what the place had been like back then, what my father might’ve seen, the world I was going to be born into.

  “My father was taken with the lore of that place, but also the tourism. This was the hint I got from my mom. He told her that the people there hate what their community has become, but that they need it. They hate the signs everywhere, the glass boats on the water, the subs that take gawkers out on fruitless dives, the statues and the stuffed purple sea monster toys, but they can’t let go of it. They can’t stop. You see?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t.”

  “We’re the monsters,” Ness says. “The Wildes. My father was a monster. His father and his grandfather were monsters. And he knew I’d become one too—”