Bad Things (3 page)

ence on the deck.

“I thought he was with you.”

“Working?”

“I mean, indoors.”

He turns and looks back through wide-open doors into the living

room. Though there is evidence of his four-year-old son’s passing—

toys and books spread across the fl oor as if in the wake of a tiny hur-

ricane—the boy is not visible.

The man goes back inside the house and walks through it. Not

quickly yet, but purposefully. His son is not in his room, or the

kitchen, or the den. Nor is he hunkered down in the stretch of corri-

B A D T H I N G S 3

dor near the main entrance on the other side of the house, a nonspace

that the boy has colonized and where he is sometimes to be found

frowning in concentration over a self-imposed task of evident fascina-

tion but no clear purpose.

The man returns through the house and out onto the deck, and

by now he’s moving a little more quickly.

His wife is standing, the baby in her arms.

“Isn’t he there?”

The man doesn’t answer, judging his speed will answer the ques-

tion. It does, and she turns to scan her eyes around the lawns, and

into the woods. He meanwhile heads around to the far right extent

of the deck. No sign of the boy from up there. He walks back to the

other end and patters down the cedar steps.

“When did you last see him?”

“I don’t know,” she says, looking fl ustered. He realizes briefl y

how tired she is. The baby, Scott’s little brother, is still not sleeping

through the night, and will only accept small hours’ comfort from his

mother. “About half an hour ago?” she decides. “Before I came out.

He was in, you know, that place where he sits.”

He nods quickly, calls Scott’s name again, glances back again to-

ward the house. His son still does not emerge onto the balcony. His

wife does not seem overly concerned, and the man is not sure why he

does
feel anxious. Scott is a self-contained child, happy to entertain himself for long periods, to sit reading or playing or drawing without requiring an adult within earshot. He occasionally goes for walks

around the house, too—though he keeps to the paths and doesn’t

stray deeper into the woods. He is a good child, occasionally boister-

ous, but mindful of rules.

So where is he?

Leaving his wife irresolute in the middle of the lawn, the man

heads around the side of the house and trots down the nearest of the

ornamental walkways that lead into the woods and toward the re-

mains of the old cabin there, noticing the path could do with a sweep.

4 Michael Marshall

He peers into the trees, calls out. He cannot see his son, and the call

again receives no answer. Only when he turns back toward the house

does he fi nally spot him.

Scott is standing fi fty yards away, down at the lake.

Though the family is not the boating kind, the house came with a

small structure for storing watercraft. Next to this emerges a wooden

jetty that protrudes sixty feet out into Murdo Pond, to where the wa-

ter runs very deep. His son is standing at the end of this.

Right at the very end.

The man shouts his wife’s name and starts to run. She sees where he

is headed and starts to walk jerkily in the same direction, confused, as

her view of the jetty is obscured by a copse of trees that stand out dark

against water that is glinting white in the late afternoon sun.

When she fi nally sees her son, she screams, but still Scott doesn’t

react.

The man doesn’t understand why she screams. Their boy is a

strong swimmer. They would hardly live so close by a large body of

water otherwise, even though the lake always feels far too cold for rec-

reational swimming, even in summer. But he doesn’t understand why

he is sprinting, either, leaving the path and cutting straight through

the trees, pushing through undergrowth heedless of the scratches,

shouting his son’s name.

Apart from the sounds he and his wife are making, the world

seems utterly silent and heavy and still, as if it has become an inani-

mate stage for this moment, as if the leaves on the trees, the lapping of

the lake’s waters, the progress of worms within the earth, has halted.

When he reaches the jetty the man stops running. He doesn’t want to

startle the boy.

“Scott,” he says, trying to keep his voice level.

B A D T H I N G S 5

There is no response. The boy stands with his feet neatly together,

his arms by his sides. His head is lowered slightly, chin pointing down

toward his chest, as if he is studying something in or just above the

surface of the water, thirty feet beyond the end of the jetty.

The man takes a step onto the wooden surface.

His wife arrives, the baby now mewling in her arms, and he holds

his hand up to forestall another shout from her.

“Scott, sweetie,” she says instead, with commendable evenness.

“What are you doing?”

The man is starting to relax, a little. Their son’s whereabouts are

now known, after all. Even if he fell, he can swim. But other parts of

the man’s soul, held closer to his core, are twisted up and clamping

tighter with each second that passes. Why is Scott not responding?

Why is he just standing there?

The low panic the man feels has little to do with questions even

such as these, however. It is merely present, in his guts, as if that soft

breeze followed him down off the deck and through the woods, and

has now grabbed his stomach like a fi st, squeezing harder and harder.

He thinks he can smell something now, too, as if a bubble of gas has

come up to the surface of the water, releasing something dark and

rich and sweet. He takes another step down the jetty.

“Scott,” he says, fi rmly. “It’s okay if you want to look in the lake.

But take a step back, yeah?”

The man is relieved when his son does just that.

The boy takes a pace backward, and fi nally turns. He does this

in several small steps, as if confused to fi nd himself where he is, and

taking ostensive care.

There is something wrong with the boy’s face.

It takes his father a moment to realize that it’s not physical, rather

that the expression on it is one he has never seen there before. A kind

of confusion, of utter dislocation. “Scott—what’s wrong?”

The boy’s face clears, and he looks up at his father.

“
Daddy?”
he says, as if very surprised. “Why . . .”

6 Michael Marshall

“Yes, of course it’s Daddy,” the man says. He starts to walk slowly

toward Scott, the hairs raising on the back of his neck, though the

temperature around the lake seems to have jumped twenty degrees.

“Look, I don’t know what—”

But then the boy’s mouth slowly opens, as he stares past or through

his father, back toward the end of the jetty, at the woods. The look

is so direct that his mother turns to glance back that way, too, not

knowing what to expect.

“No,” the boy says
. “No.”

The fi rst time he says it quietly. The second time is far louder.

His expression changes again, too, in a way both parents will remem-

ber for the rest of their lives, turning in a moment from a face they

know better than their own to a mask of dismay and heartbreak that

is horrifying to see on a child.

“What’s . . .”

And then he shouts, “Run, Daddy. Run!”

The man starts to run toward him. He can hear his wife running,

too. But the boy topples sideways before they can get to him, falling

awkwardly over the deck and fl ipping with slow grace down into the

water.

The man is on the jetty in the last of the afternoon light. He stands

with his child in his arms.

The police are there. A young one, and an older one, soon fol-

lowed by many more. Four hours later the coroner will tell the police,

and then the parents, that it was not the fall into the water, nor to the

deck, nor even anything before that, which did it.

The boy just died.

P A R T 1

It would be convenient if one could redesign the past, change a few

things here and there, like certain acts of outrageous stupidity, but if

one could do that, the past would always be in motion.

Richard Brautigan,

An Unfortunate Woman

C H A P T E R 1

Ted came and found me a little after seven. I was behind the bar,

assisting with a backlog of beer orders for the patrons out on deck

while they waited to be seated. The Pelican’s seasonal drinks station

is tiny, an area in front of an opening in the wall through to the

outside, and Mazy and I were moving around it with the grace of

two old farts trying to reverse mobile homes into the same parking

space. There’s barely room for one, let alone two, but though Mazy

is cute and cool and has as many piercings and tattoos as any young

person could wish for, she’s a little slow when it comes to grinding

out margaritas and cold Budweisers and Diet Cokes, extra ice, no

lime. I don’t know what it is about the ocean, and sand, but it makes

people want margaritas. Even in Oregon, in September.

“Can’t get hold of the little asshole,” Ted muttered. His face was

red and hot, and thinning gray hair was sticking to his pate, though

the air-conditioning was working just fi ne. “You mind?”

“No problem,” I said.

I fi nished the order I was on and then headed through the main

area of the restaurant, where old John Prine songs played quietly in