Kingfisher

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  4

  Carrie, wakened early the next morning by a cacophony of crows saluting the sun, listened, before she opened her eyes, to the quality of silence within the walls. The old farmhouse, with its plain pastel paint, its ancient linoleum, and flaking sills, had its own familiar language of creaks and rattles. It seemed strangely still that morning, as though it, too, listened. No random snores, no running water, no comments from floorboards or door hinges. No Merle, she thought, and opened her eyes.

  She was used to that. Her father was a random occurrence, like most of the weather around Chimera Bay. A squall, some sunshine, hail, a rainbow, one followed another in a perpetual guessing game. Merle might be asleep in his bed when she woke; he might be just coming through the door to fall into bed. He might be on a log, or up a tree, or sitting in the truck having a beer for breakfast with one of the nameless forest-dwellers who carried everything they owned in a leaf-and-lawn bag. More surprising, he might be getting out of the truck with a bag of groceries. Sometimes, he was simply nowhere at all, where he’d been since the Friday Nite before.

  Carrie showered and dressed for work, then wandered outside, chewing on a piece of toast. There was no Merle on the horizon. The noisy choir of crows had disappeared as well, leaving the landscape to a single moon-white egret, standing motionless in six inches of silvery flow. Beside the stream, and staring as raptly at some flowering skunk cabbage, was Zed Cluny in his pajamas.

  He raised his head and saw her as she started toward him. He had moved into Proffit Slough the previous year, renting a tiny cabin that stood on a knoll above the stream. Carrie had found him chatting amiably with Merle one morning; the fact that Merle was sitting on Zed’s cabin roof at the time didn’t seem to bother either one of them. Carrie went over to claim her father and got a pleasing eyeful of Zed. He and Carrie had worn a trail through the grasses between them, much like the rest of the wildlife in the slough.

  He watched her from the other side of the narrow stream that was a vein in the vast tracery of water constantly pushed and pulled, rising and lowering in the tidal flow. He had a sweet face that hadn’t yet hardened into itself, straight white-gold hair that he trimmed into a lank bowl on his head, dark caramel eyes that had grown patient, far-sighted with his meanderings through the world.

  “I just saw a baby salmon go by,” he told her. “I think. Smelt?”

  “Smolt. You working this morning?”

  “In a couple of hours. Thought I’d get my camera, try for a shot. What are you doing up so early?”

  He had so many odd jobs, Carrie couldn’t keep track of his schedule: afternoon at the Food Co-op, driving an elderly woman around on her errands a couple of times a week, morning lifeguard duty at the city pool, night shifts at the ancient Pharaoh Theater. Years of swimming had given him a broad pair of shoulders and muscular legs which, at the moment, were hidden by flannel penguins waddling all over them.

  “The crows woke me up,” she answered. “Then I couldn’t go back to sleep; the house was too quiet. My father finally stopped chanting, and now he’s vanished.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah. I heard some of that, last night when I got home after the midnight show. What was he—”

  “Haven’t a clue. He never tells me anything. Or he does, but he never makes sense. He’s probably asleep under a tree.”

  “Maybe he’s got a girlfriend.”

  “My dad?” she said, surprised at the notion. “I suppose maybe. But it’s hard to imagine who.”

  “That’s because he’s your dad.”

  Somehow, at the thought, they were both moving toward the weathered plank Zed had laid across the stream. He reached it first, balancing easily on his bare feet. Carrie was there at the bridge’s end to gather armfuls of frayed flannel, muscle, warm skin, to inhale the familiar scents of dreams and soap and sweat on the penguin pajamas.

  “Come inside?” his lips said against her hair.

  “I told Ella I’d come in early to help her hull strawberries and bake shortcakes.” Reluctantly, she peeled herself away from him. “I should go,” she told his eyes, which were heavy, full of her now instead of salmon and skunk cabbage.

  “Tonight?” he said. “Wait. What’s today?”

  “Saturday. I’ll be home late.”

  “So will I—nine to two again at the theater. Wait for me here when you get off work? If tomorrow’s Sunday, I won’t have anything until noon, when I drive Mrs. Pettigrew to church and walk the Hound of the Baskervilles until she gets out. What about breakfast at the beach? Coffee and hard-boiled eggs, and I smoked some tuna—”

  “Yes,” she said, laughing. “Yes. I want it now.” Her feet backed another step, moving against the tide, it felt. “See you tonight.”

  She realized much later, as the dinner crowd shifted from the grill to the bar, that it would be one of those nights. Knight nights, she called them: the slow, informal gathering through the evening of the men closest to Hal Fisher. Ian Steward, Jarvis Day, Curt and Gabe Sloan, Josh Ward, Father Kirk from St. Benedict, and Reverend Gusset from Trinity Lutheran, Hal’s brother Tye, and Merle made up the steadfast, reliable core of the group. Others, less familiar, wandered in from the mountain towns, or from the wilds along the rivers and lakes, the farthest reaches of the sloughs. Carrie couldn’t name all of the knights, but she recognized them by the fierce, mute loyalty and respect she saw in their eyes as one by one they went to greet Hal first, and only then, turned to the bar and the stalwart Tye behind it. They even occupied the single round table at the place, overflowing around it, chairs pulled up two or three deep, always Hal with Merle at one side of him, and the vacant chair on his other where no one ever sat.

  Of course, Carrie had asked Ella about that. Ella’s lips had thinned until they vanished; she couldn’t have pushed a word past them if she had wanted to. She just shook her head and disappeared so far into a pot after a scorched spot that Carrie thought she would fall into it.

  She had asked Gabe Sloan, Curt’s tall, golden-haired son, who with his father held the restaurant doors open for the Fish Fry procession. But he didn’t know the why of the empty chair beside Hal Fisher either.

  “My dad says it’s all connected,” he had told her. “Hal Fisher getting hurt, the hotel failing, Lilith Fisher going to live in the tower suite, the quarrel between them, even the Friday Nite Fry—it’s all part of the same story. But the ones who know the story won’t talk about it, and those who don’t won’t ask for fear of causing pain.”

  Merle knew, Carrie guessed. But he only said, when she asked him, “It’s like an evil spell cast over the place. When the right person comes through the door and asks, the spell will be broken. That’s what I know.”

  It wasn’t all he knew, she thought grumpily. But it was all he would say.

  The knights of the forests, the mudflats, and the waters were still sitting around the table when she finally finished late that evening, cleaning the kitchen and setting up for Sunday brunch. The men leaned back precariously into one another on their chair legs; they balanced scuffed boots on knees, and held their drinks as they talked, winding down now, a rumble of male voices tweaking the thread of some endless story, eliciting a deep roll of laughter that tapered slowly into silence as the men reminisced, privately, dreamily, until it seemed they must have come to the end of the evening, then someone else spoke, plucked a thread, and the thunder reverberated through the circle again. A middle-aged couple sat in the shadowy edges of the room talking quietly; another nonknight sat at the bar, staring into his drink and ignoring the group. But no Merle. His chair was oddly empty that night.

  Carrie sank wearily onto a raddled velveteen couch left over from the gilded age and parked now against the wall near the restaurant doors. Tye gave her a smile and poured her the cold, dark, molasses-edged beer she liked. In the sprawling circle of men, she saw Gabe’s sleek, trimmed head turn. He got up a moment later, too
k the beer from Tye, and brought it to Carrie.

  “Here you are,” he said, handing it to her, and sat, while his eyes went back to the company he had left. “How’d it go tonight?”

  “Thanks,” she said, yawning. “I had to do some serving; Marjorie missed lunch. I made thirty-six dollars in tips. That’s going into the creel.”

  He grunted, shifting as though a broken spring under the ancient velveteen had bit him. He didn’t like the idea of the creel full of Carrie’s escape money any more than Carrie liked the idea of accidentally falling in love with him and spending the rest of her life in Chimera Bay. So they kept their distance from one another, though Carrie sensed sometimes that he was simply waiting for her to come to her senses and realize where she belonged.

  She added, to take his mind off the creel, “Ella rolled cheese biscuits for dinner. So I took the dough scraps, wrapped them around chopped green apple and boiled shrimp with some grated ginger and a spritz of lemon juice, and baked them.”

  “Weird.”

  “They all got eaten. Did my dad come in tonight?”

  “I’m not sure. I got here late. You can ask; they’re almost done.”

  “How can you tell? What do you talk about?”

  He shrugged. “What comes up,” he said finally, “out of the deep.”

  She looked at him silently; his eyes, back on the group now, were intent and burning with the mystery that Hal Fisher carried around with him. “Fish stories,” she said, and his eyes came back to her, earnest, unsmiling.

  “Sort of. Not exactly, but in a way.”

  She swallowed more beer, added restively, tired of hints, riddles without answers, “If you see my father, will you tell him I’m looking for him? I’m going home. It’s been a long day.”

  “Sure,” Gabe said, his attention on her now that she was going to leave him. He rose as she did, watched her silently as she took the glass to the bar. She waved to him, and he nodded, still not moving; she felt his gaze until she closed the screen door behind her and stepped into the parking lot.

  A shadow shifted beside the pickup as she crossed to the driver’s side. She stopped, more startled than frightened; nothing much ever happened in Chimera Bay. The shadow stepped forward, let the light from the streetlamp fall on its face.

  She didn’t recognize him, but he knew her.

  “Carrie. I’m Todd Stillwater.”

  He was, she thought incredulously, the most beautiful man she had ever seen. If a Greek statue of an athlete had landed in the Kingfisher parking lot, alive, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, he would have looked just like this, complete with the wonderful straight nose, the mobile, curling lips, the wide-set, guileless eyes. Even his voice was perfect, deeper and more tempered than she would have expected from his youthful, open expression.

  She was staring, she realized, frozen and mute. She opened her mouth; a bat squeaked out, by the sound of it.

  He smiled a little, reassuringly, though the charming little frown, like the most careful chip of the sculptor’s chisel between his brows, remained.

  “I startled you. I’m sorry. I usually don’t skulk around scaring people in parking lots. I just drove over on the off chance you’d still be here. I closed earlier this evening.”

  He paused, waiting. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she managed. “I’m Carrie Teague.”

  “My wife Sage dropped into this place a couple of times recently. She likes the way you cook. Your ideas. We wondered if you’d like to come and work for me.” She opened her mouth again; nothing came out this time. He added, “I run my own kitchen; Sage helps me. She also bartends, sets tables, serves, cleans up after—”

  “Oh,” Carrie breathed, enlightened. “You want me to set tables.”

  “No. Sage doesn’t mind doing all that. But it’s too much for her to have kitchen duties as well. So I’ve been looking for someone else to cook with me. I’m asking you. If you can bear to leave this place. I can pay you very, very well.” He smiled again. “I think you’d be worth it.”

  She felt something break loose in her chest or her brain, float slowly aloft like a hot-air balloon ascending from earth into warm, endless blue. “I don’t—” She pulled in a breath dizzily. “I don’t know what to say. Except thank you. I could never afford to eat in your restaurant. But I’ve heard your cooking is—well, unlike anything else around here. Magical. I think that’s the word I heard when I started paying attention. My experiments—my little bites—they’re just for fun. Mostly I fry fish. Make clam chowder. French fries for lunch and garlic mashed for dinner.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, waiting patiently, she realized, while she dithered, tried to talk him out of what he wanted. Why, she wondered, didn’t she just say okay, then shut up and dream how fat that creel would get and how fast?

  Then she saw Ella’s face, tight with anger at the thought of Stillwater, her spatula pressing down on a spitting round of burger until it seared.

  As though he read her mind, he said swiftly, “Think about it. I can be patient. You know where to find me.”

  He gave her another sweet smile, opened a big, graceful hand in farewell.

  A door opened, slapped shut behind her; she jumped.

  “Carrie!” her father called sharply. She turned, her own hand still raised. Merle stepped out from behind the scaffolding, scanned the parking lot, looking as though he were scenting it, tense and watchful, like some four-legged beast with its hackles raised.

  “What?” she wondered bewilderedly. Now what? Nobody ever explained anything, so how exactly was she to know? She glanced behind her; Stillwater had already gone. “Where have you been?” she asked Merle, but he didn’t explain that either.

  “Who was that?” he demanded.

  “You sound exactly like someone’s father,” she said irritably.

  “Well, I am.”

  “Well, now is not the time. And never mind who that was. It’s my business.”

  “I know,” he said grimly.

  “You know what? Who that was, or that it’s my business?” She threw up both hands, scattering questions everywhere into the night. “You want me to make decisions without giving me anything! I might as well go work for him—it’s got to be less mysterious than this falling-down place. Rituals with letters, rituals with cauldrons, a bloody gaff, a missing knife, everyone in a time warp, looking back at the past, wishing for the good old days, hinting of portents, speaking in riddles, knowing things but never saying, never explaining—and you’re mad at me for just thinking of going to work for Stillwater. How did you even know he was out here?”

  He was silent, looking at her, and still, so still that for a moment he seemed to fade into the night, become one of those half-invisible things, both seen and unseen, so familiar that no one ever bothers to look, to recognize, until it’s too late.

  Then he did vanish. A wolf sat in the place where he had stood, its muzzle lifted and open in a long wild cry. Carrie, stunned motionless, heard in its fierce energy, its plaintiveness, the only answer that Merle could find to give her before the wolf ran off into the dark.

  She was still trembling, her hands still icy, when she stopped the truck beside Zed’s cabin. She couldn’t move except to wipe away the stray tears that told her she wasn’t entirely a solid lump of ice. A solitary thought surfaced now and then from what seemed the completely functionless tangle of her brain. Why am I surprised? was one of them. Another came eventually, when she saw Zed’s car lights turn onto the slough road: How long ago were there wolves around Chimera Bay?

  After another silence, she heard her door open, felt Zed’s hands tug at her.

  “Hey. It’s me. Carrie. What’s wrong? Why didn’t you wait inside? You’re so cold . . .”

  He took her inside, wrapped her in a blanket, and gave her something hot in a cup to thaw her fingers. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking
. Finally, he took her shoes off and pulled her into bed under the covers, where he could wrap himself around her.

  “What happened? Carrie? Do you want me to call 911? Is it your dad? Did something happen to him?”

  She drew a long breath, finally feeling bits of her—a lung, a nostril, an earlobe—begin to come back to life.

  “No,” she whispered. “And yes. Either I’m going crazy, or my father turned into a wolf in front of me.”

  She felt his chest rise as he sucked breath. “No. Merle’s a werewolf?”

  That had not occurred to her; she thought about it.

  “No. I don’t think so. It wasn’t like that. It was more like— We were arguing in the Kingfisher parking lot—and he needed—he needed a different way to get me to understand what he was saying. Or not saying.”

  “Wow.” He pulled up, leaning on an elbow, gazing down at her. “That is so cool.”

  She felt her face melt, remember how to smile. “So. No 911.”

  “Where’d he learn to do that? What is he?”

  “I don’t know.” Both eyes heated at once; the candles he had lit blurred and swam. “Another unanswered question.” The tears broke; she wiped at them, smiling again. “I hope he doesn’t run around Chimera Bay like that and get himself shot. I should have known. I should have known by now not to be surprised at anything he would do. He talks to crows. He talks to the moon. Sometimes he makes me wonder exactly how long he’s lived in this world. He says things—things that seem to go so far back that I don’t understand how he can know them.”

  “It’s so amazingly bizarre. Like the life cycle of a salmon.”

  “What?”

  “That old, that strange. Or like sharks that never seem to sleep. Orcas. The leviathans of the deep that take your hook and don’t let go until you’re the one struggling on the end of the line, and they’ve changed the way you look at the world.”

  A shiver ran over her, gossamer and cold as a ghostly finger.