The dog stretched, warm as a hot water bottle. Letting Sonny sleep, I crept to the bathroom. From the window everything looked black, glossy, the tips of boulders like heads floating in darkness. Trying the light—nothing—I peed loudly. There was a clanging as I turned on the tap. The toilet wouldn’t flush.
Downstairs, there was no sign at all that Hugh had been back. There was kindling in the porch and some split wood, though the stack had gotten low. I scrounged up enough for a fire as the dog whimpered by his dish. I tried the phone: nothing. Stupidly I tried the radio. Useless.
The glow from the open burner lit the gloom as I fed in bits and pieces, watching them burn. A stick for every kiss; one for every secret, every story. A penny for your thoughts, Hugh had said once. The fire became a pool, a fountain. Smothering, it dwindled, and I looked for paper. Sheet music, a little stack of it under some cheat books. Balling some up, I stuffed it in and the flames leapt, wavering in the draft.
The storm had got worse, throwing rain at the windows. The house moaned like someone sick in bed, the wind a death rattle. Water beaded the sill, a shiny caulking. There was a pounding, of boulders knocking together. The noise was almost deafening. The only place scarier would’ve been out at sea. I imagined the bell buoys breaking from their moorings and rocking to the bottom. The darkness all around a billowing, ripping blanket.
When the sheet music was gone, I went into the bedroom. The closet door wouldn’t open at first, as if the frame had shifted. The box was still there, but empty. Not a scrap or scribbled note. But as I flipped it over, starting to rip the cardboard into pieces, something slipped from a bottom flap. It was the photograph of Wayne and the lost girl, the shadow like a stain on the spread between them.
Piece by piece I fed the cardboard into the fire. Turning the photograph over, I laid it on top of the fridge. If there’d been one of Hugh—his face, I mean—I would have burned it. In my heart of hearts, yes, I would’ve. Probably.
The shadow was evidence enough. If not for Sonny, I’d have taped the photo to the fridge. A lifesaver, Wayne. Hugh’s voice flooded back, and a movie-like image of sinking ships flared. It was easier than picturing him, as the cardboard burned to black and darkness swelled again.
There was the generator, of course, sitting out there in the base of the tower. But the gasoline was in the tool shed. I stuck my feet into the nearest boots and bundled up. Seawater licked the steps, covering the bottom one as I ventured out, slipping on the ice underneath it. The rain was like a washer’s spin cycle, gusting in wild, spitting rounds. Both boots filled, and I thought crazily of something Hugh had said about lining his boots with bread bags as a kid; Sonny had just stared. The yard was a lake, the sea boiling over the rocks. Foam swirled like the head on dark beer, a brew dotted with floating bits of trees and wharf. The wind shoved me like a skate bug, a mayfly. The shed tilted as if afloat. It seemed to move as I grasped the latch. The wind ripped the door away. Objects bobbed out, scraps of firewood, a tennis ball, a piece of Styrofoam buoy. Sonny’s bike was submerged past the chain.
There was a squeaking, timbers rubbing rock. I lugged the jerry can from the shelf; it was reassuringly heavy. I waded towards the tower, then, remembering the lamp in the porch, looped back to get it. The water had risen almost to the top of the steps. Against all odds there was kerosene, and I ducked into the kitchen. Matches.
Sonny was kneeling in the hallway, his hands buried in Oreo’s ruff. A keening rose from the dog’s throat. Sonny pulled his hands away and clamped them over his ears to shut out the roar. He was still in his coat, and he was shivering.
“The water’s come up,” I said as calmly as I could. Sonny pressed his hands tighter, shaking his head. “Sweetie. The tide’s awfully high, but it’ll turn, right?” My voice was a straight black line. “Go on upstairs, darling. I’ll be right back.”
The wind was like a squall of sirens now, a fleet of emergency vehicles.
“Mom?” His lips moved. I could barely hear him.
There was a grinding noise, and something seemed to buck.
“Sonny, listen.” It was like forcing my voice through a sieve. “Go on up now, okay?”
As he stomped upstairs the embers settled in the stove; foolishly, I considered dousing them. A finger of water slid from the baseboard and a little trail seeped in from the porch. I struck outside again, gripping the lamp in one hand and the gas in the other, for ballast.
The tower loomed out there like a pillar of ice. The torrent shoved at my knees and I clenched my belly, bearing down, planting each foot, step by step, the ten or twelve yards to the light. The door wasn’t locked; maybe Hugh’s haphazardness was a mercy. Water slicked the cement, spreading towards the generator on its dolly, less than a foot off the floor. Lighting the lamp, I swung it up onto the windowsill. My fingers were frozen sticks uncapping the gas tank, lifting the can. A funnel would’ve helped; half the gas sluiced over the engine. But I replaced the cap and groped for the cord, gave it a yank, then another, harder, and another, getting nothing but a splutter.
Just outside, waves slapped the concrete. Straightening up, bracing my foot, I gave one final yank, as Charlie had done with the lawn mower. Like a miracle, the thing burped and roared to life. The noise bent my eardrums, driving back the shrieking and pounding. Creeping around, palms pressed to the sweating walls, I opened the panel, hesitating over two thick switches. Closing my eyes, my pulse drumming my ears, I flipped the right-hand one.
Who knows what I expected. An explosion? A landslide, the sea cascading?
There was a whirr, a sputtering buzz, and the hatch overhead filled with brilliance. Seizing the lamp, I started back to the house. The flashing beam lit the yard and what was left of the breakwater. Before my eyes the tool shed rocked, swaying like a buoy. Then it toppled, pieces swirling away as it drifted beyond the house.
Somehow I made it back to the porch. Inside, water lapped at my ankles, moving over the floorboards. I emptied my boots, shoved an old coat against the threshold. A trickle followed me into the kitchen, a snail crossing the linoleum. My brain spun, trying to pinpoint high tide. Unlike Hugh, I’d never paid that much attention. Dropping the jerry can, I re-lit the lamp and set it on the table. A ghost of warmth still came from the stove.
“Sonny?”
I could hear him bumping around upstairs, surely the best place to be? The light from the tower bloomed and waned, painting the windowpanes that oily, sea serpent green. The smell of gas clung to my fingers; how long till the generator would need refilling? The can was almost empty.
“Sonny!” I shouted again. “The tide, when’s it turn?”
The trickle from the porch pooled in a dip in the floor. Another snaked from the cupboard below the hotplate and met it, then branched towards the puddle by the window.
Fire, heat, I thought crazily, tearing the cover off Hugh’s book—the one on navigation—and pushing it into the stove. An acrid stink filled the room.
Suddenly the walls seemed to waffle and breathe. The pool widened, then a tiny spring seemed to well between the floorboards. I was thinking of the fishermen, the older fellow’s last words, what he’d said about radioing.
The thought flashed of the house drifting like Noah’s ark, only with the three of us: Sonny, Oreo, and me.
“Sonny!” I yelled up. “Get your knapsack. Grab your stuff.” The puddle slanted and gently spread towards me.
“Sonny! Quick! Sweetie? Leave your gear—”
His footsteps on the stairs. Down he came like a robot, the dog at his heels, his pack over his shoulder and a ratty-looking gym bag in one hand. It bulged like a python that had just eaten. As he set it down, the hallway seemed to tilt.
“My pitchures,” he said, glancing upwards. Wrinkling his nose. “What’s that hum?”
“Nothing, it just Hugh’s book—”
“My Punishers!” he yelled, starting b
ack up.
But then the floor moved, I swear, and the water slid back. Another smell rushed in: the heavy, fishy smell of salt and rotting wood. Suddenly the house seemed to sweat, beads of wetness springing from corners and edges. They shone in the greenish light. We watched, mesmerized, like the crew in a leaky submarine, one that had popped its rivets, bursting at the seams. Then a rip shoved us to the stairs. A grinding racket, like the lid being torn off a box, and a train rushing in.
28
ANCHORAGE
There was a crack! A gush as the storm raged in, the wind rearranging everything. Furniture scraped overhead. Rain raced down the stairs, a little waterfall. Slicking the ceiling, it showered down, streaking the wallpaper.
I threw Sonny’s boots at him, grabbed his hand.
As a small tide leapt towards us, the kitchen window buckled, rain and glass slanting in. A rising, glittering spectacle, the floor was a pool of diamonds for a suspended moment. Then water burst through the plaster above the sink; the hiss sounded like a bus braking. There wasn’t time to grab anything as we fled to the front door. The case with Hugh’s sax rocked near the foot of the stairs, already warping. The water was past our shins, the jamb swollen. As we yanked at the door things swung in a drunken do-si-do, the house coming unglued like a cereal box.
Oreo yipped and splashed as the door caved inwards. The smell was like seaweed and the spines of starfish left to rot in tidal pools. Somehow we got out, with the dog thrashing behind us in the dark. I don’t remember flying off the step or treading water, only the pulse-stopping cold and Sonny screaming, “Here boy here boy come come come.”
Sonny’s hand clenched mine as we pushed, half swimming, choking, towards the tower. The dog paddled in mad circles around us, his eyes rolling. It took everything to fight the current nudging us towards the cove, Sonny’s limbs like ropes entangled with mine. An image flashed through me of the boats anchored off the spit that summer day, the divers sliding under the waves. As Sonny pushed free of me, I imagined, fleetingly, debris at the bottom. Secret, scary things, dumped mines and mustard gas? Creatures, wreckage. An orange buoy floated by, and a stick that looked like a table leg.
As the white of the tower loomed closer, closer, my limbs were weightless, dead, as if all sense had leaked away.
Sonny made it first, the dog clawing to get in. Somehow Sonny braced the door against the flood and lashing gusts, Oreo scrabbling ahead as my feet touched concrete and I pulled myself inside.
The generator chugged and roared, and the dog balked, whinging. Then he shook himself, shook and shook. He was a shivering mess of dripping fur.
There was a scratch on Sonny’s hand, another on his cheek. As I wiped the blood away, the dog gave another shake. The sea had slid past the threshold, swirling around the footings. Oreo bent to lick at it. Water lapped over his paws and the toes of our boots. The sound was like a pack of animals drinking. Oreo thrashed as Sonny lifted him and tried wrestling him up the first set of steps. Our feet were ice blocks on the metal rungs. Somehow I managed to grab the dog in my arms, bracing his forelegs, and boost him to the first landing. I felt Sonny at my heels as we scrambled the rest of the way up, borne by invisible hands into the lantern. Light swamped us, its brilliance pushing back the ruckus below, and derailing the wind.
Sonny licked blood from his hand. His lips looked purple, and a puddle spread under his feet as he grabbed for the radio, the VHF. I barely remember wrenching the mic from him and fumbling with knobs. At first all we got was a hiss, then, like life from another cosmos, a voice leapt out.
“No no no,” Sonny kept yelling—it was a struggle to hear anything over the racket—“we need channel sixteen.” As he pushed my hand from the controls, the same voice blared in and out. Something about the Mounties, the Coast Guard.
“Major interdiction, 0200 zulu. Four, four, thirty-seven north. Six, three, twenty-five west—”
“Channel 1O. Shit!” Sonny’s teeth were knocking. “Must be the navy.” He tweaked the knob. Had Hugh shown him how to work the thing?
Broken by static, the voice filtered back. “Operation Search and De-stroy.” It sounded like laughter. Then nothing. As I gazed out, a crack of lightning whipped the rocky shingle of Hangman’s Beach, jagged and white as the surf. It lit the top of a big tree by the marsh and in its flash the pine was a masthead. I thought of Saint Elmo in Hugh’s book, how such a flash on a ship signalled the saint’s protection.
Fighting tears, Sonny twiddled the dial, his fingers blue.
Without warning, a woman’s garbled voice burbled, “Coast Guard, go ahead, over.”
“Mayday! Mayday!” Sonny shrieked.
“Help!” I yelled behind him, the lightning branded into my eyes.
The voice, maddeningly calm, didn’t waver. “Go ahead with your coordinates, over.”
Oreo’s bark had shrunk to a whimper; perhaps he’d seen the lightning too and was listening for thunder, each hair an antenna. Sonny eyed me desperately, shaking his head. My limbs, coming to, throbbed under the soaking weight of my clothes. Despite all that wet, my hands still reeked of gas. The smell brought back Family Day: the reek of fuel inside the chopper.
Elmo, I wanted to cry. Seizing the mic, I formed the words, “Thrumcap Light.” Forcing calm. “We’re flooded.” It sounded surreal, deadpan, even as I watched for another flash. Gaping down at the house, I saw the roof hanging like a blanket, like a sheet of melting ice about to slide off. In the same instant the wind lifted one corner, then hurled it towards the cove, and I let out a shriek.
“Stand by one,” the voice ordered flatly, then, “Steady. Give us five; we’re sending a chopper, over.”
“Over,” Sonny stammered behind me, watching the roof. It was riding the waves now, a rippling, sequined float, its shingles like scales. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying, his face almost angelic, lit by the beam. He was shivering, grinding his teeth. Pressed together, kindling our shared warmth, we stared down at the house. The walls staggered and swayed. A hollow stump without limbs, it danced, uncertain, shy, as the tide tore at it. Water poured from the bottom windows like flames, and Oreo’s whinging picked up. Just above the treetops, beyond where the lightning had flashed, the first traces of dawn smudged the sky. The shapes of things swung in the current. A chair, a bed frame, part of the stove. I thought once more of Elmo—his real name Erasmus, the name his mother would’ve used?—and whatever faith he’d died for. I thought of the fuzzy red doll in Reenie’s apartment.
“What time is it?” Sonny shook me, and I remembered things like days and hours. As he leaned into me, his jacket was a soggy hide. His voice far away, wispy. “High tide’s at six.”
“The dog,” I said in a blur, peering down through the hatch. Oreo gazed up, his ragged ears cocked, ridiculous. As if in a dream, I slid down and managed to scoop him up. He growled and writhed, his teeth grazing me as I heaved him up that last flight. Passing through the opening he snapped at Sonny. The smell of wet dog was everywhere, the only thing that seemed real as I squatted beside the door to the ledge and pulled it open. The smell blew away as I crawled outside. Wind ripped at the railing, dissolving my senses. The memory of another smell, the bunker’s fetid dankness, rushed in instead. That, and the thought of Sonny squatting there in the dark. Yet the streaks in the sky brightened. I could see the top of the breakwater now, a path of stepping stones. Numb, I crawled back into the lantern, and we counted them, one for each hour we seemed to wait.
“How come they’re taking so long?” Sonny kept moaning. At one point he knelt and peered into the mercury. Like Narcissus, I thought before snapping to, almost but not quite thawed.
“Don’t!” I heard myself yell.
For once he listened. The wind had stopped screeching; suddenly it was a moaning whistle. Beyond the tips of the boulders the harbour rolled and seemed to flatten slightly. Oreo lay down and licked himself, stru
mmed his banjo, as Hugh would’ve said. Sonny flopped down and buried his face in his fur. For a single, rushing instant, I allowed myself one thought of Hugh—beautiful Hugh: his hands and eyes. Even as it fled, replaced, pushed, by another—the lilt and slur of his voice—there was a slow, watery squeal as the walls of the house buckled and folded.
Watching boards and shingles swim away, we might have missed the chopper’s approach. Sonny spotted it first, a teensy dragonfly against the pink sky. Crawling out onto the platform, I pulled myself up to the railing and, stretching my arms out like a tree, started waving. I thought of us queued up on Family Day, Charlie, Sonny and I; the mirage of solid, level ground, tarmac. The dark shape whirred closer, then, dipping its nose, bore in. It wasn’t anything like a dragonfly. Cheery as a candy cane, its fuselage red and white, it descended, hovering. Freezing me in its hurricane, its roar stopped everything. I barely saw the helmeted rescuer and his basket, didn’t hear Sonny’s shouts as he crawled out behind me and was plucked and winched to safety.
The downdraft was like the weight of the ocean. It drummed out everything as I was hoisted into the net. I couldn’t open my eyes. All I felt were thick arms around me, legs too, perhaps, and the swaying, slow release of being lifted. Like a fly being pulled into a web, though Sonny bragged afterwards that he’d felt like Spider-Man.
Suddenly my knees hit metal and I was shoved inside, into the rattling, roaring belly of the bird, and I opened my eyes to see Sonny wrapped in blankets. I glimpsed the top of the rescuer’s helmet before he disappeared again.
“My dog my dog my dog,” I think Sonny was shouting, his voice wobbly and almost inaudible.
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