Christ.
She looked up suddenly. It was nearly sunset. Never get anywhere if she kept thinking like this. She smelled her singed hair and the burnt metal on her jacket. A shower. She thought about Roni and Roni’s kid: Ira. And Ira’s nanny: Gray.
She groaned and got out on the dock. It rocked—Lord how she hated things that rocked. She boarded and clambered inside the Hercules. Sara threw her mask into a chair and leaned against the hull, waiting to see in the gloom. Nobody here. You could tell an empty boat. Something in the way it moved.
There was a grubby note from her son Jack that he’d gone to Kendall’s for the night. Great. First a long drink, then shower. She coughed again. A photograph on the wall attracted her attention. It was Roni and her husband Gilbert on their wedding day. Sara opened the bottle and stared at the picture for a long minute. Gilbert was a little fat and wore glasses.
She upended the bottle and took a long drink, turned back to the photograph.
“I have better taste in men than you do, honey,” she said to Roni. “Look at that guy. I’ve seen better faces on kitchen doors.”
But mine stayed, her sister seemed to answer. He didn’t leave me pregnant with a son. Where is Mike now?
“God knows, Roni.” Sara drank some more from the bottle. “But when he touched you, you remembered it. Could you say the same?”
Roni didn’t answer.
Just as well. If Roni could still talk, the first thing Sara would have asked was: where did she dig Gray up?
“Sara?”
“I’m not here.” She stared at Roni. How come you look so miserably happy? You’re dead.
“It’s Sam.”
Sam?
“Sam!” She capped the bottle and looked out on deck. There he was, little and bald and bearded. “Damn you for a fish. Sam! I haven’t seen you all summer.”
Sam grinned at her. “Been out to George’s Bank, fishing. Just got in this morning. Came over to see how you were.”
“We’re fine.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him inside. “You’re just in time to save me from drinking alone.”
One eyebrow cocked at her. “A young woman like you drinking alone? Shameful. I’ll have to help. I’m civilized. I need a coffee cup to drink from.”
“Bless you.” She laughed.
They sat at the galley table, the bottle between them.
Sam nodded towards the dock. “Where is everybody? It’s all empty slips.”
Sara shrugged. “Looking for work, mostly. I was lucky to get a job in town. Most of them took off for Marblehead or Quincy—some new buildings, some dock work.” Sara was almost giddy with the drinks she’d had earlier and with seeing Sam. “It’s good to see you. I’ve been here mostly by myself this summer. Me and the kids.”
Again, the eyebrow. “Kids? Have you been naughty?”
She grinned at him. “Hardly.” Then she remembered and the smile left her. “It’s bad news, Sam. It happened while you were away. My sister and her husband—well, they got caught in one of the union riots on Maxwell Station.” Sara smiled faintly and shrugged. “Her kid and his—nanny, I guess—came to live with me.”
Sam took her hands. “Sara. I am so sorry.”
“Yeah.” She turned back into the galley. “It happens all the time, right? To other people.” Sara shook her head. “I still can’t believe it, you know? It’s been months but I keep expecting them to show up.” She lifted a hand and let it fall, helplessly. She shrugged and looked at him, gripped his hands hard. “But it’s good to see you, Sam.”
They shared the bottle.
Sam looked around. “Where are they?”
Sara scratched her hair. To hell with a shower. It was worth it to see Sam. She lit a cigarette from her previous one. Sam watched her without comment. “Jack’s over to Kendall’s staying the night. Ira’s out with Gray.”
“His nanny?”
She giggled. “Yeah. Nine feet tall and looks like a rhino with eight legs. My sister got Ira an alien nanny.”
“Jesus.”
He looked owl-like with the twilight reflecting off his big eyes.
“Jesus,” he said again. “It must have been crazy on Maxwell Station.”
“Crazy enough to kill them both.”
“Don’t talk that way.”
She took the bottle and killed the last of the rum. “You don’t know what it’s like. I—Roni was my sister. She went off and we didn’t talk much, but still—now, she’s gone off and got herself killed.”
Sam shrugged. “It was pretty bad there. I read they had something called rotlung—”
She ignored him. “So I get this stupid telex from the staff at Maxwell Station that Gilbert and Roni had died in the ‘disturbances.’ I had to claim their bodies. I had to sign for them like a goddamn parcel post. And for Ira. And for Gray. And then, the funeral.” Gray hulking over the mourners, always seeming to reproach her. Ira huddled against his legs, taking comfort. The tears started to fall down her face. “I’da sent him packing. But he’s in the will. Do you understand that? I have to keep him or I don’t get Roni and Gilbert’s estate.” She shrugged. “Not much, anyway. But it’s a little bit.”
Sam reached across the table and took her hand. She stopped as if struck. What am I talking about? She smiled at him, embarrassed, and shook her head. “I’m a little drunk, Sam.”
“Hush, Sara. It’s all right.”
She suddenly realized she was crying and wiped her face in her hands. “Jesus, Sam. I’m sorry.”
Sam sat in shadow now. She could only see the faint shine of his eyes. “It’s all right.”
They were silent a long minute, then Sara withdrew her hand. “Know anything about aliens, Sam?”
“Not a thing.”
She stood up and got them both glasses of soda. Enough drinking for a bit. Sam didn’t protest.
“Well,” she sipped the soda. The bubbles tickled her nose and she had to stop herself from sneezing. “Gray’s a spatien. I haven’t been able to find out much about them. They’re supposed to be great workers, but they don’t hang around much in this neck of the woods. Not enough work, I guess. All I know about Gray is that Roni and Gilbert found him somewhere out there, and now he’s theirs.”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it. There are lots of aliens in Boston, though. They’re all cleared and called safe, anyway. Gray must be cleared, too.”
“I suppose. I wish I knew more about him.”
Sam smiled at her. “Roni trusted him with her kid. That’s something.”
Sara nodded.
Sam opened his mouth to speak but they heard a heavy tread on the dock. In a moment, the Hercules shuddered as Gray stepped on board. He was carrying Ira, asleep. The cabin was so low he had to shift Ira up two sets of arms and walk in on the lower three sets to fit.
“He’s asleep,” Gray said quietly.
Sara nodded. The bottle was out and she felt in the wrong, as she always did in front of Gray. When Gray took Ira into the boys’ room she opened the port and tossed the bottle out into the water. It was stupid, but it made her feel better.
Gray came back out into the little galley. “Is there anything for me to do?” he said in a low voiced rumble.
“No,” she whispered. Why was she always whispering? “No,” she said more loudly. “Where you been all day?”
“We investigated a wreck near here.”
A wreck. “Christ. You were looking at the Hesperus? That thing’s twenty years old. It’s dangerous. I wouldn’t let my own kid go there. Nor Ira. You leave that thing alone. You hear me?”
“I hear you.” Gray nodded slowly and went back outside. They heard him make his way to the bow and lie down.
Sam and Sara looked at one another for a minute or more.
“Ah, I see,” said Sam. “Well, it’s not like it’s anything Jack didn’t do, too.”
“I know. But with the two of them out there—it’s scary. It’s been like that all summer.” Roni,
she thought. Poor Roni, though it was obscure to her why she felt sorry for Roni, whether it was because she was dead or because she had lived with Gray.
“Look,” began Sam. “My dock’s all filled with strangers. People from New York and Jersey. Let me come over here—you wouldn’t be so alone and I wouldn’t be surrounded by strangers.”
She looked at him. It was like the breath of home to her. “Sam, I would like that.”
“Good. I’ll be here tomorrow.” He stood up. “I have to go—got a new job tomorrow.”
She nodded sleepily to him, stood and followed him to the dock. She called good-bye to him.
When she turned around, the moon had risen. She saw Gray was dark and motionless against the silvered deck, the shrouds and lines like so much spider webbing. Sara passed by him and he did not stir.
* * *
Mama was sitting next to my bed when I woke up. She touched my forehead and that startled me awake. “Hi,” she said softly. “How are you feeling?”
“Lonely. I went out to the wreck because of that. Were you very worried?”
“Not too much. Gray was there.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my eyes. “Are you coming back soon?”
“I can’t come back. You know that.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
She smiled at me and didn’t answer. I smiled back a little bit. I couldn’t help it when she did that.
“I miss you.” I felt like I wanted to cry again.
“I miss you, too. Are you being a good boy like I told you? How is Gray?”
I wasn’t sure so I just shrugged. “You know how he is. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking.”
“What do you think he’s thinking?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged again. “I don’t think he likes Aunt Sara. She doesn’t like him.”
“Oh.” She looked thoughtful. “You be sure you take care of Gray.”
“Mama.” I grinned at her. “Gray takes care of me! You have to come back to take care of him.”
“I told you. I can’t. Will you take care of him?”
It didn’t seem like that was the way it would be, but I was willing. “Okay.”
Then, she was gone and Aunt Sara knocked at the door.
“Honey?” Aunt Sara opened the door and looked inside. “Were you talking to somebody?”
She coughed like Mama. For a moment, it was almost as if Mama had come back for good. But I smelled the cigarette smoke instead of the sweet swamp smell and knew it was just Aunt Sara coughing from that and not Mama coughing up like she did just before bed, back home. I didn’t want to talk to her right then. So I pretended I was asleep. I could see she watched me for a long time, then closed the door and went off to bed herself.
* * *
Jack came back early in the morning before she left. He was a quick boy, slick in his movements, getting by on a wink and a grin. He was easy about most things. Sara watched him as he came on the dock towards the Hercules, whistling. She couldn’t help grinning. Mike had been exactly the same way: wild Irish good looks, a quick grin. When he had touched her.…
She shook her head. Mike had left fourteen years ago.
“Hey, ma.”
“Hey, kid. How was Kendall?”
“Okay. Got any food around here?”
She nodded. “Gray still outside?”
“I didn’t check.” He rummaged around in a cupboard and brought out an apple. “When are we going to get rid of that creep?”
“Don’t talk about him that way.”
Jack stared at the ceiling and rolled his eyes. Sara laughed, looked at the clock. “Christ. I’ve got to get to work. You take care, now.”
Sara grabbed her welding helmet from the hook on the door and dashed down the dock. As she reached the dory, there was an eruption of water next to it. She stifled a scream and backed away.
Gray held onto the dock and looked up at her. “Sorry.”
“Christ on a stick.” She stepped into the dory. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Repairing the dock.”
“Christ on a stick!” She gunned the motor and shot away towards Boston.
The Citibank building was not even half done; there were another three hundred stories to go.
The wind howled through the steel I-beams like a wolf. She grinned as she walked over the girders to the corner where she had left her torch. Over them, the crane crouched spider-like. It served as crane, resting space and the building’s spine all at once. When the building’s frame was finished, the top of the crane—the cab, pulleys, and gears—would be dismantled and shipped to another site. The crane’s frame would remain forever part of the building. Her part of the job, welding the I-beams into place, would be finished in a month or so: the steel only went to the hundred and fiftieth floor. After that, it would be composites.
She liked being up here, building the bare bones of the building. People had been building and tearing down in Boston forever. Fitzpatrick, the union boss, was the seventh Fitzpatrick in the steelman’s union. Christ, she thought. What must that feel like? Your father, your grandfather, every Fitzpatrick stretching back towards the Civil War. Maybe further. It was like a long chain—God! She’d love that feeling, to be tied to a family like that, to have brothers and uncles and sisters—
“Hey, Sara!”
Sara was so startled she almost lost her balance, something that hadn’t happened to her in ten years. She turned and saw Sam walking across the girders towards her. “This is your new job?” she cried.
“You bet!”
“Great!”
He winked at her as he looped a safety line over the far corner. Sam held thumb and forefinger together and waved it to her, then pulled himself up over the top support beam.
Maybe her luck was changing. She leaned against a corner and looked down on Boston. It was a bright, sunny day. The light was broken and refracted and reflected by so many glass buildings it was hard to see exactly where the sun was. She liked the crazy quilt mirrors around her. Maybe Sam would like it, too.
Fitzpatrick shouted over to them and pointed down. Below them, the first I-beam of the shift was being brought up from the street. A few men with sledgehammers made ready to pound it in when it reached them. Sam moved away towards the crane team where he was working. She smiled after him and cranked up the torch.
* * *
Jack was in the kitchen when I got up. He grunted when I came out. I didn’t like him much. I guess he felt the same way. He reminded me of the supervisor’s kids back home. They always looked like they could get anything they wanted. They were always clean—or if they got dirty, it was something that washed off. Not like that gray gunk that made up the marsh around the station. It took alcohol to get that stuff off and then the smell made you sick. They stayed on the boardwalk. We stayed in the marsh. That was the way it was.
I only remember the Station. Gray tells me he and Papa and Mama were living on the Platform that orbits Maxwell Station until I was two or three, but we couldn’t get enough work. That was where the station crew found Gray. He and Mama hit it off from the first—Papa, too. I wouldn’t know: it was before I was born. The work went bust when I was born and a little while later we moved down on the station. My first memories are of the marsh.
Papa always said what a bad place it was. And it was, I guess. It was wet all the time, and there were slugs the size of your head that would take a bite out of you if you weren’t careful. The air was different, too. It seemed you could never get quite enough to breathe—though everybody said the air was just fine. One thing you can say about earth: the air is good.
But the place was good, too. You could get away from people in the marsh. You could fish and swim. It was quiet—here there’s always this kind of a rumble from the city.
Anyway, Jack didn’t say anything to me when I got up. He barely moved out of my way when I went out on deck to look for Gray. I wanted to tell him not to say anything about the wre
ck. Gray’s good, but he won’t keep a secret unless you tell him. He’s dumb that way.
He wasn’t on deck and I didn’t see him around the Hercules so I went back inside.
“Have you seen Gray anywhere?” I tried to be polite.
Jack didn’t say anything. He yanked open the refrigerator and pulled out some milk.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you. I’m not deaf.”
“Have you seen him?”
He looked at me. “I don’t know where the creep is.”
At home, I’d have gone for him right then. But, at home, nobody’s ever thought to call Gray a creep. I didn’t belong here. I never did. I never will.
He looked at me like I was a bug. “You’re a creep, too. Why don’t you leave? Huh? Asshole. I want my fucking life back. Leave us—we were okay until you got here.”
I wanted to cry. “Maybe I will,” I shouted and ran out of the boat, across the dock and into the marsh. After a while, I slowed down. Pretty soon, I didn’t want to cry so much.
It at least looked more like home here. I remembered the egg and I started to head over towards the wreck.
I was halfway there before I remembered my promise. I mean, I hadn’t said “I promise” to Gray, but it was still a promise. That was the thing: Gray knew what he meant when he asked me, and I knew what he meant when I answered.
I stopped in the middle of some soft ground and sat on a rock. I didn’t have any place to go. I felt kind of lost and miserable.
Pretty soon, Papa came and sat down beside me. I would have hugged him but I was afraid he’d disappear. He wasn’t as solid about being there as Mama.
“I think I’ll run off,” I said.
He sighed and leaned on his knees, pushed his glasses against his nose like he always did when he was thinking. He did the same thing that night Boss Skaldson said they were going to strike.
“You can’t leave your family,” he said..
“Family!” I picked up a stick and scratched the ground. “They don’t want me. I never saw them before this summer.”
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection Page 23