The Wreck

by Landon Beach

  Gibson turned to Nate before heading out. “We wanted to invite you both over for dinner tonight, but it looks like tomorrow night might be better.”

  “I don’t think we have anything on tap for tomorrow,” said Nate, “I’ll check with Brooke when she gets up, and we’ll give you a call.”

  “Great,” said Gibson. He shook Nate’s hand and then left across the front lawn.

  Nate closed the door, stepped back into the living room, and lay back down on the couch. He closed his eyes and was soon out.

  26

  “I don’t get to wear my black dress tonight?” Jane said.

  Gibson was drying off from a shower. “Patience,” he said. “I don’t get to wear my favorite color either.” Gibson was a lover of black cashmere sweaters and almost always dressed in black twill and black cord while teaching.

  “She wasn’t up when you went over there?” Jane took his towel and watched as he walked past into the closet.

  “Still recovering,” he said grabbing a terry-cloth robe.

  “That’s a shame,” she said, “because I actually enjoyed her company last night.”

  “Willing to admit that I was right to give her a second chance?”

  “I’ll go so far as to say that I’m starting to see how it might work out with the three of us.” She walked to her sink and gargled some Scope, then took a brush through her hair. She was wearing only a pair of running shorts.

  Gibson watched her body, toned like a college cheerleader’s. “If Nate keeps busy, it will be even easier,” he said.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing about Brooke that you just want for yourself?”

  Had he slipped up? He was sure that he had not made it obvious. When they had added a female student to their sex life a few years back, he had gotten greedy and had had his own sessions with the girl. He had tried to keep the girl’s mouth shut by bribing her, but Jane had found out anyway. She had told him to never do anything like that again or else she’d throw him out. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I want nothing more than to share her between us.”

  His zest was for power, where Jane’s was needing to be desired. She had gone through a period in college, before she met him, when she thought she was a lesbian, and had experimented. She had ultimately decided that she preferred men, though she had told him that she was still attracted to women. She was the one who had first suggested a threesome.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Jane said.

  He admired her assertiveness and independence. She was like a drill sergeant when conducting her Yoga classes, and she was popular for it—the fitness club had to turn people away wanting to join her class because it filled up so fast. Health nut could not begin to describe her; she visited GNC more than the grocery store. She was also a dedicated mother to their children: she almost never missed an event, and a twelve year old boy and fourteen year old girl had a lot of events.

  “Where did you get that?” she asked, seeing him take a gold watch out of a felt-lined box and put it on.

  “From a jeweler in Ann Arbor before we left,” he said.

  “How much?” Jane asked.

  “Just under two thousand,” he said.

  “Jesus Christ!” she said. “You have a watch. Aren’t we supposed to be talking about large purchases?”

  “Will you relax?” he said. “I talked him down from three grand.”

  “I can’t believe this. Do you want to end up like the Sawyers?”

  “That will never happen.”

  “I—”

  “Listen.” He said. “We have some money in reserve to buy nice things. We like nice things.” He sat on the bed and pulled her down next to him. “Did I ever tell you about the bike I wanted when I was growing up?”

  Jane shook her head no.

  “It was a ten speed. My friends all had them, and I asked and asked why I couldn’t have one. My parents told me that they didn’t have enough money. So, I spent two summers wheeling around on a used one speed, my friends riding circles around me on their ten speeds. Then, my mom had her affair and left us. The summer after, my father and I were eating dinner—well, I was eating dinner, he was drinking his—and the doorbell rang. I opened it and there was a delivery man with a shiny ten speed. I couldn’t believe it: my mom had bought it for me. My father signed the paperwork and I took off on the bike, showing it off to all of my friends. I returned home just before dark and parked my bike in the garage. The next morning, I opened the garage door and it was gone.”

  “What happened to it?” Jane said.

  “After I had gone to bed, my father loaded it up in his truck and sold it to someone for booze money.”

  “Did you ever get it back?”

  Gibson leaned in for a hug and Jane kissed the top of his head. “No,” he said. They held each other for a minute, and then Gibson started to slide his hands underneath her shorts.

  ✽✽✽

  The rattling of pans woke Nate. The rain had stopped and the sky was lavender as he rose from the couch. He walked into the kitchen and saw Brooke in her robe putting a pot underneath the faucet.

  “Good morning,” Nate said.

  “Don’t start with me,” Brooke said.

  “I’m just kidding. It’s good to see you’re still alive.”

  “Barely. Could you get me a box of macaroni and cheese from the cupboard?”

  Nate grabbed a box and opened it for her.

  Brooke put the pot full of water on the stove. “I don’t feel right,” she said.

  “Maybe you won’t drink so much with them next time.”

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have if you had been there,” she said.

  “So, I’m the reason you’re hungover?”

  “We’ve missed two nights that were in the zone,” Brooke said, “and now we’re going to miss another because I’m in no shape to make love tonight.”

  “I’ll take the blame for the first night. I fell asleep on the damn desk in the garage,” Nate said. “But I’m not taking the blame for last night.”

  “Neither am I,” said Brooke. “You should have at least called or left a message from wherever you were.”

  He was starting to grind his teeth. Hold back. Don’t do it.

  “Don’t you have anything to say?” Brooke said with her hands on her hips.

  “I thought you could make out where I was from the message Lucille Hawthorne left on the machine. We have caller I.D. so if you needed me, you could have called her.”

  “That’s not the point.” Her voice was getting louder.

  “Well, what is the point then?” Nate said.

  “Oh, forget it!” Brooke said.

  “Fine,” Nate said.

  She took a deep breath, then hunched over. A hand shot up to her mouth, she gagged, and ran out of the room.

  Nate could hear her vomiting in the hallway bathroom. He shook his head and headed for the garage. Might as well prepare for tomorrow.

  27

  Nate entered the clearing to Lucille Hawthorne’s just before eight a.m. She was already on the porch and waved at him while he walked his bike up.

  “Good morning, Nate. I’m sorry I didn’t have the gate open for you this morning like I said I would. I got a bit of a late start, but I’m glad you brought your bike.”

  Nate smiled. “Guess what, Lucille, I forgot you were going to. Packed my bike in the Jeep last night.”

  “C’mon up and grab a cup of coffee while I bring breakfast out.”

  He stepped up and filled his mug, then added creamer from a small china cup, scooped in two teaspoons of sugar and stirred. The front door opened and Lucille came out with omelets, French toast with powdered sugar on top, and a plate loaded with bacon. She went inside one more time and came out with a pitcher of orange juice and a basketful of toast.

  “I appreciate the invite for breakfast this morning. This looks scrumptious.”

  “Such a polite man.”

  “Not always, I’m afraid,” he said.
>
  “None of us does the right thing always, Nate.” She bowed her head and said grace.

  “Has Abner told you about his nephew yet?” Lucille said.

  “He hasn’t,” Nate said. “Is there a reason he would have?”

  “He’s coming up in another couple of weeks,” Lucille said. “Sometimes Abner complains about him. Poor Henry, he was such a confused boy.” She took a drink of coffee. “Better now though, compared to when he first came out here.”

  “He stays with Hutch?”

  “Two weeks every summer. Henry’s father ran out on Abner’s sister when he was little, so she had to raise him alone. Fathers are important, and he didn’t have any direction growing up. In high school, he was having himself a fine old time with not-so-good-girls and probably not-so-safe-drugs and God knows what other mischief.”

  “How did Hutch turn him around?” Nate said.

  Lucille laughed to herself. “Finally, Abner’s sister had enough and sent him out here one summer. Abner tells it better than I do, but I’ll give you my version. The first night at Abner’s, Henry snuck out, got drunk, and came back with some thirty year old local. Abner heard them come in and after some choice words, the woman left. After she was gone, he took Henry and threw him off the dock. Well, Henry started sinking because he didn’t know how to swim. Can you imagine that? A high schooler who can’t swim?”

  “Abner jumped in after him and pulled him over to the dock. Henry ended up getting sick because he’d had too much to drink. The next morning, Abner woke him up and made him run five miles. Then he took Henry out on the boat and made him work all day. After a few weeks he came around. He’s been coming back every summer since.”

  “I’ve had a few kids like Henry in school,” Nate said.

  “Must be sad to see.”

  “You want to be able to reach every kid you teach. But you know that you’ll never be able to, so you make contracts with yourself.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I might say something along the lines of: if I can just help this one kid then my job is worth it.”

  “And is it?”

  “In some ways. But it’s never enough. I guess that’s one of the reasons I keep coming back year after year, even though the ones that I didn’t reach get older and farther away from me,” Nate said.

  “I think it’s like that with anything in life,” Lucille said. “You can’t control everything, and sometimes you can’t control anything.”

  “I don’t know if I could have handled him coming out here year after year like Hutch does,” Nate said.

  “I think Abner sees a lot of himself in Henry,” Lucille said.

  “You think so?” Nate said.

  “Abner was a terror to his mother and father while growing up. Barely passed high school and was headed for an early departure from life, when one day he left home and enlisted in the Coast Guard.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “He and I have grown to trust each other over the years. I tell him things. He tells me things. He’d be upset if he knew I was telling you all this, but the truth is I think he’s takin’ a liking to you. He does his best to mentor Henry every summer, and, sure, he dives with Tyee and talks to Mickey when he’s over at the hardware store, but he’s alone most of the year. You’re the only one he’s ever used my phone to call except his daughter, Henry, and Henry’s mother. And if you ask me, Henry acts as a substitute for Abner’s daughter.”

  “Hutch doesn’t see his daughter much?” Nate asked.

  “They had a nasty fight over the phone a year ago, and she still resents her childhood of him not being around and how her mother died.”

  “Is that what still eats at him?” Nate said.

  “So, you’ve seen some of his temper I take it?”

  “But I deserved it.”

  Lucille nodded. “When he enlisted in the Coast Guard, Abner was five feet six. When he came back home from his first duty station he had grown eight inches and his parents didn’t even recognize him. Shortly after, he met Sherry and they got married. A year after that, Sherry had a complicated pregnancy that meant they would only be able to have the one child. Melanie was born at a time when the armed services did not make many special accommodations for weddings, childbirths, or deaths in the family. The old adage, ‘if the military wanted you to have a family, then they would have issued you one,’ held true. Abner was on a deployment in the Caribbean and wasn’t allowed to come home for the birth of Melanie. As he advanced in rank—he eventually became a Chief Warrant Officer—the time spent away from his family increased over the years. He was never home, and Sherry basically raised Melanie alone. But he loved them both, and Sherry stayed loyal. He missed a lot of things that most parents and kids take for granted: birthdays, holidays, school plays, sporting events, and on and on. Abner did make Melanie’s wedding, but it was like giving away a daughter he didn’t know as well as he wanted to. He took it hard and has still not warmed up to Melanie’s husband—felt that the young man took his little girl away. Before his last deployment they bought the lot here in Hampstead. Sherry lived in my upstairs bedroom while their house was being built. Abner would visit about once a month as his unit prepared for deployment. I enjoyed the company as my husband had passed away and my kids were all grown up. The house was Abner’s present to her. He had promised that after that final deployment he was retiring and that they were going to make up for all the lost time together. They were going to play with their grandkids, travel, and most importantly, finally have a place to call home. In Abner’s thirty-year career, they had moved nineteen times. Sherry would never have to move again.”

  “What happened?” Nate said.

  Lucille set her coffee cup down on the cream-colored saucer and stared past Nate into the woods that led to Hutch’s, as if a screen had appeared and a projector was playing her answer on it.

  28

  “The house got finished just as Abner left on deployment. Sherry moved out of my spare room, but we would still have coffee every morning. After a while, however, she started coming over less. We had never made morning coffee on my porch an official date, so I didn’t give it much thought. I figured she was busy getting the house together, and Melanie had come to visit a few times. Towards the end of Abner’s deployment, I drove up to their place because I hadn’t seen Sherry in close to a month—there used to be a driveway but Abner tore it up after Sherry died. Sherry looked so thin and sick. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that she had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She had always been a heavy smoker. I asked if Abner knew and she said that he was due back in a week and wanted to tell him then. I urged her to tell him immediately, but she insisted she didn’t want to worry him. Four months after Abner got home, she died.”

  Nate refilled his mug as Lucille ate more of her breakfast. Birds chirped in the woods next to the porch and the sun was at the top of the tree line casting narrow shadows onto the dirt. Nate eased back in the wicker chair, mulling over what had been said.

  Lucille set her fork down and looked into Nate’s eyes. “He’s dealt with a lot of pain, but there’s some that he’s never dealt with—and may never deal with. It turns up now and again as anger towards the Coast Guard and sometimes he takes it out on other people. I used to worry a lot about him, but he’s lightened up in the past few years. If you had found that coin five years ago, you could have forgotten about coming out here.”

  “He asked me yesterday when the last time was that I cared about something,” Nate said.

  “For him to ask you that tells me that what you and he are doing means something to him. All he could talk about over coffee this morning was getting to the bottom of the coin that you found. It’s given him something to focus on, which takes away the pain.”

  Nate nodded.

  “We fried some fish here for dinner last night and I turned on the porch lights while we read. He brought over a book that Tyee had gotten for him and I was settled in
to another one of my Agatha Christies. Around eleven I left him out here reading when I headed to bed. I got up this morning to have coffee at five-thirty, and he was still out here scribbling notes on a pad of paper.”

  “Did he say anything to you about what he had found?” Nate said.

  “If and when he’s ready to tell me, he will.”

  They finished their breakfast and Nate rose to leave.

  Lucille had moved to her rocking chair with a full cup of coffee. “When do I get to meet Mrs. Martin?” she said while beginning to rock.

  “Soon, hopefully,” Nate said.

  “You boys be careful out on that water today,” Lucille said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nate said.

  As he went down the steps and peddled across the clearing to the dirt trail, he wondered how many times she had said that to her husband before he had gone fishing.

  ✽✽✽

  It was a quarter before nine when Nate set foot on Hutch’s dock. The RHIB was tied up in its usual place on the right-hand side. Before descending the stairs from the deck, Nate had seen Queen out on the water, but heading back in. He walked to the end of the dock where a cooler sat. On top was a piece of paper held down by a rock. Nate lifted the rock; the note said help yourself, be back soon. He opened the cooler. It was filled with beer, pop, and sandwiches in Ziploc bags. He first grabbed a pop and then put it back, choosing beer instead. Beer at nine in the morning. He laughed: just like his father.

  He closed the cooler and sat down on top of it. The temperature was already nearing eighty so he removed his shirt and unzipped the duffel bag he had brought with him. Inside were his mask, fins, snorkel, dive knife, a towel, and a change of clothes. He placed the shirt inside and zipped up the bag, leaving him in his bathing suit and booties.

  The beer was almost too cold, but refreshing. The lake water was clear and Nate could see a small school of fish swimming a few feet under the surface. He watched as the school angled under the dock and out of sight.