I tried to convince myself that I’d imagined the shadow, or the sounds. I tried not to think of the fish boy.
After five minutes, I still hadn’t heard or seen a thing. I went into the hallway. From my mother’s room came Aunt Sel’s wheezy half-snore.
The kitchen light shined too bright for my night-accustomed eyes. I went to the back door. And yes, it was unlocked. Because I’m an idiot.
I turned the lock, and couldn’t stop myself from looking through the door’s little window.
Then I saw it, sitting on the wicker table on the back porch.
I opened the door a few inches. Nothing moved outside. I opened the door more fully, and stepped out. On the table was my book, The 20th Anniversary Treasury Edition of Newton & Leeb. A piece of paper rested on top. In blocky handwriting, someone had written:
SHE’S STILL ALIVE. LOOK FOR ALBATROSS.
8
“God save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?” — “With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross.”
Let’s say this strange guy comes up to you in the recess yard. He points to his windowless van and says, Hey kid, I really need to find a home for my Labrador puppy, do you want it? And oh yeah, the puppy comes with a new Xbox and a crate of giant-size Snicker bars. All you have to do is hop in the van to get them.
If you’re five years old, or an idiot, this is the greatest moment in your life.
My first instinct after reading the note was to look for someone to punch. But the woods outside the porch window were dark, and my book thief was nowhere to be seen. I crumpled the note and jammed it into my pocket.
She’s still alive. It was the one thing I wanted most in the world. The thing I needed to believe. But that need was exactly what made me sure that I was being jerked around.
I could have thrown the note away, if it wasn’t for that second sentence. Look for albatross. What the hell did that mean?
I know I must have slept that night, because I woke with a start. I’d forgotten something, something important, and I needed to find it.
I was in my bed. My phone said it was 4:45 a.m.
As I came awake, I felt cheated. No rest and no dreams, just a fast drop through the trapdoor to morning. How could I sleep and not dream of my mother? I felt her in me, echoing like a doubled heartbeat.
She’s still alive.
I remembered then what I’d forgotten. I pulled on my leg, then jeans and a hoodie, and on my way out of the house I peeked into my mother’s bedroom. My aunt, in silk men’s pajamas, lay sprawled across the bed, one arm thrown over her eyes. Aunt Sel, of course, even slept dramatically.
I walked outside into the cold. For a short while I was the only person in the world: the sky black above but purpling to the east; the silent trees beside me; the empty road under my feet snaking down through the mist to the water.
As I walked the sun shouldered its way through the fog. The bay was shaped like a crocodile’s mouth, with teeth of jagged outcroppings. Near the base of the jaw, wooden and sheet-metal buildings clustered near the water. Warehouses, maybe, or fish processing plants. A few had boat doors that opened to the bay.
The dock itself looked like the bones of a creature that had died in the crocodile’s mouth. Weathered poles stuck up out of the water, the walkways and berths long since rotted away. One pier remained, jutting over the water. Clinging to its tip was a colorless wooden shack. A dozen boats—outboards, fishing boats, a handful of sailboats—were tied up along the pier. Three lobster boats were loading up. Men in baggy pants tossed down metal lobster traps to other men on the decks. They shouted to each other as they stacked the traps, the fog muffling their voices.
Birds wheeled in the air above the boats, keening. They looked and sounded like the seagulls back home. If any of them were albatrosses I wouldn’t know—I had no idea what one looked like.
Our pickup was parked in a corner of the gravel lot. It looked lonely with no equipment in the bed of it, like a dog with its chin on the floor. I hoped Edgar and Howard and the other buoys were still out there, still taking sonar pictures, still broadcasting. When Mom came back she’d be anxious to see the data.
I walked over to the truck, tried the door, but it was locked. I cupped my hands against the window. The keys weren’t in the ignition—a place Mom had been known to leave them—so I figured she’d brought them with her on the boat. No matter. I went to the rear right fender and felt around until I found the magnetic case. The key was still inside. I’d never told Mom about the spare, because then she’d use it: If you give an AMP a key, she’s sure to lose it.
I unlocked the door and climbed in. The cab still smelled like the onion rings we’d eaten somewhere in Pennsylvania. I only had my learner’s permit, but I figured I could risk driving the truck back to the house. Then I noticed the crumpled green paper on the floorboard. I remembered the note Mom had found on the hood of the truck.
I picked it up, then smoothed it out. In spidery black cursive, it said, “Stay out of the water.”
I stared at it. A note from the neighbors, she’d called it.
The windows of the truck were rolled up, and the parking lot was empty. I felt okay about screaming a few curse words, in a couple different languages.
I thought of Mom yelling into the phone the morning she disappeared. That, that … Viking! The charter captain’s name was Erik Hallgrimsson. Had he left the note? Or was everyone in town trying to get us to leave?
Hallgrimsson was probably out on that pier. All I had to do was go out and find him.
* * *
The pier.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of the ocean—that wasn’t it at all. I hated it. I wouldn’t swim in it or boat across it, and I didn’t even like to fly over it. Walking out over it, on some rickety platform that looked like it would fall apart at the first big wave … ugh.
But there were questions I needed answers to.
I was relieved that the boards felt solid beneath my feet. I avoided looking out at the water and kept my eyes on the sign above the shack’s door: BAIT SHOP. When I reached the shack, I stood with my back against the wall, hands jammed in my pockets.
No one paid me any attention. I watched the men work, and when I thought they weren’t looking I studied their faces, wondering, Is he the one?
A slate board was nailed to the bait shop wall. The boats’ names were written in chalk. Each boat had been assigned a numbered slip. I wondered which one was the ship Mom had gone out on that first day. The Bonny? The Paste Pot?
Then I saw the next two names on the list. Huginn and Muninn. Huginn was crossed out.
Huginn and Muninn were the ravens that belonged to Odin, king of the Norse gods. Huginn’s name meant “thought.” Muninn meant “memory.” Good names for boats if you read a lot of Thor comics—or if you were a Viking.
The men still on the pier climbed down ladders to the boats, and my time was running out. I stepped toward one of the men heading for the Muninn. He was tall, with thick arms, and blond hair that hung to his shoulders. A black band was fastened around one bicep, and then I knew for sure.
“Erik Hallgrimsson?” I said. “I’d like to talk.”
The man looked up at me. “Sorry kid, no work.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I wanted to know—”
“Try back tomorrow.”
The man started down the ladder, and I strode forward. “I want to know why you bailed out on my mother.”
The long-haired man paused. Then he said to the man in the boat, “Just a second, Gus.” He climbed back onto the pier, put his hands on his hips. He towered over me.
“You her boy?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
Something changed in his face. He glanced at the entrance of the shack, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “I’m sorry, kid.” His voice was quieter. “It’s tough to lose a parent.”
“I haven’t l
ost her,” I said. “I’m not wearing a black band.”
He glanced at his arm as if he’d forgotten he was wearing it. “No. Right. This is for the man who went down.”
“Hal Jonsson. He was in the Huninn, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well. At least he kept his word.”
He squinted at me.
“I was in the room when you called my mom,” I said. “I want to know why you took her out one day, then canceled the next.”
“It’s business, kid.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I had pots to haul. I couldn’t afford to take her out again.”
“Then you shouldn’t have agreed to take her out in the first place.”
“You’re right about that, kid.” He turned back toward the ladder.
“Hey!” I grabbed his arm. I’d been looking for someone to punch since my mother went missing, and he seemed like he could take one pretty well.
Then he looked back at me, one eyebrow raised. I realized that the bicep under my hand had, evidently, been carved out of marble. It made my hand cold.
I dropped my hand.
“I wouldn’t hang out on the docks,” he said. “A kid could get hurt out here.” He didn’t say it like a threat. Then he said, “I’m sorry about your mom. I hope they find her.”
* * *
I drove the truck back to the rental. When I went inside, I was surprised to find Aunt Sel awake, staring at various pieces of the coffeemaker that were laid out on the counter like organs in an autopsy. “I thought you’d gone to school,” she said.
“I found the truck. It was down by the dock.”
“Could you do something with this? I have a terrible headache.”
While I made the coffee she sat in the armchair and rubbed her eyes. “You know, it’s fine with me if you never go back. High school is a complete waste of time. The girls have no sense of style, and the boys—don’t get me started on the boys.”
“I don’t care how I dress,” I said.
“Clearly. You’re like Tom Wolfe, possessed by a single fashion idea. But while he chose an ice cream suit, you’ve settled on … the hoodie.”
“I like being comfortable.”
“You sound like your father. He went through school looking like an indigent. You can get away with that if you’re a genius. Not me, though. My only gifts were clear skin and a dirty mind.”
“You’re oversharing,” I said.
“Your father loved school. Believed in it. Just like your mother. She’s so relentlessly serious about it. ‘My boy never misses a day of school,’ blah etcetera blah. She has high hopes for you, you know. Ivy League, top-of-the-class hopes.”
“I know what you’re doing,” I said.
She opened her eyes. “What? You think I want you to go to school? Then who would entertain me? This place is stultifying. True, if there’s any news, they can tell you in school just as easily as here, but how much better to spend your time with your most beloved relative? I can teach you how to make a decent Bloody Mary.”
“You’re not a very good aunt.”
“Pardon me, but I’m fantastic. The best aunts aren’t substitute parents, they’re coconspirators.”
I poured her a cup and brought it to her. “I was thinking of going back to school anyway,” I said.
“Re-a-lly,” she said. She’d loaded the word with half a dozen extra vowels.
“Really.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You seem different. Did something happen this morning?”
She’s still alive, I thought.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said. “I don’t want to be late.”
* * *
I arrived at school just as the students were being let out of Voluntary. I could feel eyes on me as we climbed the stairs. Of course no one was whispering. But fingers were moving.
I took my seat in Cryptobiology. Flora, the Goth girl in the red lipstick, and Garfield the bat-eared boy said nothing as we wired up our dead toad. But halfway through class I noticed that Flora was giving me a pitying look, and I realized I’d been staring into space.
“Sorry to hear about your mother,” Flora said quietly.
“Yeah,” Garfield said.
Lydia, sitting a row ahead, glanced back; then she turned away without speaking.
Someone behind us squealed. Everyone in the class turned. On one of the tables, a frog had started to smoke, and the limbs were twitching spasmodically. Dr. Herbert rushed over, clapping his hands. “It’s alive!” he cried.
Just as he reached the table, the frog’s rear legs jerked in unison, and it leaped off the table. The wire leads snapped free, and the thing fell to the floor with a fwap! We gathered around it. The animal was still smoking, but it was inert again.
I was thinking of poor Michigan J. Frog, from the cartoon.
Hello ma baby,
Hello ma honey,
Hello ma ragtime gal.
Send me a kiss by wire,
Baby my heart’s on fire.
“Everyone set your transformers to this voltage!” Dr. Herbert said. “We’re doing science!”
After class I walked a few paces behind Lydia and followed her into the stone basement that held the pool. Just as we reached the locker rooms she turned and said, “You’re looking at me.”
“I’m looking at your hands.”
The other students passed by us and went inside.
“We’re not talking about you,” she said.
“Liar.”
“Not all the time.”
“That’s more like it,” I said. “What are they saying?”
“We’re surprised you’re here at all. We all thought you’d have left town by now.”
“My mom’s missing, not dead. I’m not leaving without her.”
“Oh, Harrison,” she said. “People around here go missing all the time. There’s no use waiting for them to come back.”
“All the time? What do you mean, all the time?”
She looked exhausted. “Never mind.”
“Wait,” I said. “I’m looking for something. An albatross.”
She’d been turning away from me, and now she froze. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just…” I didn’t want to tell her about the note. Or try to explain the Fish Boy. “Someone said something about that bird.”
“Go to class, Harrison,” she said. “And then go back to where you came from.”
* * *
Coach Shug came out of the water, shook his head as if clearing his ears, and then lifted his goggles to his forehead. He spotted me in the stone bleachers and lumbered forward. His skin was so white I wondered if he ever left this cave.
“You’re back,” he said. “And still not dressed.”
Or undressed, I thought. “I told you, I can’t because—”
“Note,” Coach said.
Oh no. All I had was the useless love note from Nurse Mandi. “She wasn’t feeling well,” I said. “What she gave me I can’t really—”
“Note.”
I took a breath, then reached into the pouch of my hoodie. I handed him the piece of paper. “She didn’t really address my, uh, medical issue.”
He unfolded the paper and blinked at it. His wet fingers spotted it gray.
“I can try again if … Coach?”
His face had turned bright red. He was flushed from neck to ears.
“Coach?”
He looked down at me, his eyes shining with something other than pool water. “She gave this to you?”
I nodded.
He folded the note, then walked along the pool and entered one of dark archways cut into the bleachers.
The students began to filter out of the locker rooms and took their place by the side of the pool. No one asked me where the coach was. When he didn’t appear after several minutes, they silently lined up and began to take their laps.
I sat
there, my butt getting colder and colder on the stone bench, and still the coach didn’t return. No one was looking at me. Enough of this. There was someone I needed to talk to.
I walked back up to the ground floor. My first day at the school, after I’d fled the cafeteria, I’d found the library by accident. The corridors still all looked the same to me, but after wandering more or less at random, I found the library doors again. They were shut this time, and at first I thought they were locked, but a hard pull got one to open.
Once again the place seemed to be empty of people. There was no one at the front desk, but I couldn’t just call out for help—library rules were baked into my DNA. I walked up and down the stacks, past the ancient books, the faint lettering on their spines calling weakly like the voices of elderly hospital patients.
At the end of one of the rows, the room opened up to a space with several wide oak tables. It was very dim, and Professor Freytag leaned over one of the tables, gazing down at a map unrolled to cover most of the table. One hand was tucked behind his back, and the other gripped the side of his head, pulling at his white hair.
“Hello?” I said, keeping my voice low.
He didn’t seem to hear me. I walked closer and said, “Professor?”
He whirled to face me. “Look what they’ve done!” he cried. His eyes were wild.
I held up my hands. “I don’t know if you remember me—”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life. Hah!” He shook his head as if clearing it. “My apologies for shouting. I’m not used to … visitors. You frightened me.”
“Sorry about that.”
“‘Startled’ is perhaps the better word. There’s no reason for me to be frightened, is there? Forget I ever said the word.” He turned back to the map. “I get so frustrated sometimes. People come to the library and leave things lying about. Not even refiling them correctly. Just look at this.”
It was a nautical map, showing a jagged coastline, and swirls of blue lines to indicate the sea depths. “Is this Dunnsmouth?” I asked.
“Right over here,” the librarian said, and waved his hand at the coast. On paper Dunnsmouth bay looked even more like a crocodile mouth.
Harrison Squared Page 8