Of Song and Water (10 page)

He believes that his investment will yield a significant return. He predicts revenue, success, and expansion. Everything at Halyard & Mast stands ready. But it won't work, he knows, without patience, without the capacity to hold firmly and wait.

He sits on the floor of his office rearranging the contents of his strongbox. He counts out his monthly allowance and sets it aside. Now and then, he enjoys a brief surplus of cash when a marina or a boatbuilder makes a purchase, but otherwise he uses only what he needs. “I can buy the necessary time,” he whispers to himself. “I can make the store pay off.”

He reaches up to close the safe, but the door slips and slams shut like a metal jaw. He sucks in a quick breath, checks the fingers on both hands. That could've been painful, he thinks.

He spins the dial and secures the trapdoor.

HE WAITS outside of time.

He hears leather boots on the wet bricks of the alley. The air is bitter cold, a night without moon or snow. He knows that patience can defeat almost anything. The cold is bad but no worse than in the trenches. The flashes of light on the horizon were no sunrise, no promise of warmth. There was nothing to do but wait. Men waited and stopped breathing. He holds his breath.

 

ON FRIDAYS in the summer and fall, he picks a bouquet of wildflowers for Faya, nothing fragrant or flashy, just a bundle of common blooms that grow in long stretches near the river. He yanks them up and trims the roots and wraps them in brown paper.

Faya has a vase ready when he walks through the door.

“Darling, here's a bit of color,” he says.

“Thank you,” she says. “They'll be lovely on the table.”

“I wish I could bring you orchids,” he says, “or long-stemmed roses.”

All this, she knows, is part of their custom. “These are more beautiful,” she says.

“Perhaps another time,” he says. He kisses her, smells the fragrance of her soap, and feels the exquisite softness of her skin. “How are you today?”

“The same,” she says. “No heartburn. No sickness.” She fills the vase with water and tries to coax the flowers into some sort of arrangement. “The doctor said it may not happen again. I'm thinking he's right.”

“How's Dorian? Was he out raising Cain?”

“Yes,” she says.

“That's good.”

On another afternoon, home early from Bay City, he sits at the kitchen table and watches Faya knead dough and wash vegetables. He drinks coffee and takes comfort in the economy of her movements, the lightness of her step. He says the house with her in it is a rare island. Only the water – being out on
the water – promises the same magic. He guarantees Faya a ride on Saginaw Bay, on Lake Huron, though for now he has no boat.

“Stop your staring,” says Faya. “You'll distract me and I'll make a mistake.”

“You'll have to suffer it,” he says. “Watching you calms me down. I like the hush.”

“You'd think you'd be through with silence by now,” she says.

“The store isn't quiet,” he says. “It may often be empty, but it's not quiet.”

Dorian rushes in and the screen door slams, breaking the spell.

“What's for dinner?” says Dorian.

“Biscuits and chicken soup,” says Faya. “But you're a little early.”

“Do I need to wash?”

“Not if you're running out again. But if you're staying in, then march to the mudroom and use plenty of hot water and soap.”

Dorian downs a glass of milk and goes out the way he came in, the screen door slamming.

Faya smiles. “Time goes fast,” she says.

“I can't imagine this kitchen without you,” he says.

She moves away from the chopped onion, smiling, blinking back tears. “The kitchen is just the kitchen, with or without me,” she says. “We're getting old. And you're getting sentimental.”

 

HE WAITS in the shadows, in absolute silence, between a stack of crates and a large downspout. He listens for any change in the landlord's step.

He watches the man walk by, looks at the face without seeing it, and glances at the back of the head – at the hairline just above the fur collar.

He steps out of the shadows and hooks his arm around the landlord's neck.

With the accuracy of a surgeon, using a quick upward motion, he thrusts the blade of his bayonet between the top of the spine and the base of the skull. The kill is immediate and without sound.

AT THE height of the season, with sailboats dotting the bay, he enlists Dorian to do some dusting, sweeping, and window washing at Halyard & Mast.

An old woman and her son walk into the store not long after opening. They nose up the aisles as if they were taking inventory and then stand like sentinels in front of the cash register. They insist that the store's merchandise is the property of Uncle Sam.

“Roosevelt needs metal and rubber,” says the sturdy young man. He wears a scar that starts at the corner of his eye and runs down his cheek. “You should do your part.”

Glaring at the young man, he says, “I did that before you were born.”

The woman grunts and takes her son's arm to steady herself and the two of them march out in a show of consternation.

That evening, having closed the store, but waiting for a truck to pick up a downstate order, he notices – and Dorian does, too – a faint scratching sound at the front door. He investigates. He expects to find a trucker waiting for a package. Instead, he catches by surprise the scar-faced young man, down on one knee, attempting to break in with a crowbar.

He curses at the young man and grabs him by the collar and yanks him into the store, the boy pulling and jerking like a snagged fish. “So you're a thief,” he says, gripping the crowbar, wrenching it free, and tossing it aside. “You'd steal from me.”

“It's for the war effort,” says the young man, clenching his fist and swinging.

“You're no patriot – you're a punk.” He catches the boy's fist in his hand and slaps him three or four times across the face.

“And you're giving aid to the enemy,” says the young man, the scar on his cheek pulsing with blood. “You're a coward. You're afraid to fight.”

Like a trigger, the words set off an explosion – a knocking down of partitions and doors. He squeezes the boy's hand. “There's no shame in being
afraid,” he scowls. Then he pummels the kid's face until the kid collapses on a coil of rope. Using the side of his foot, he kicks him once in the stomach.

The boy groans and wheezes – his windpipe closing.

Finally, in a last surge of fury, he raises the kid up from the floor and throws him belly-down into the street.

He closes and locks the door. He glares at Dorian, who hasn't moved a muscle. “Look at you,” he says. “You're a pillar of salt.”

Dorian is tongue-tied.

“Find your feet, boy. It's late – and your mother's waiting.”

 

HE CHECKS the alley in both directions. Time to go, he thinks. He leaves the landlord facedown, blood flowing from his ears and nose, blood running between the bricks, trickling through the vents of a manhole cover.

The military taught him this manner of killing. They made him practice and perfect the technique using pumpkins mounted on poles. They taught other young men the same thing.

He cleans the blade. He will live outside of time until he's able to sleep, to dream, until the clock wakes him the next morning and he hears the sound of his mother making coffee.

 

ON THE way home, he tries to get Dorian to say something but the effort proves tiresome. They stop at the greengrocery and see nothing unusual on their way into the store, but as they depart, each carrying a full bag, they run into an unshaved man who, with a miniature flag in his left hand and a Bible in his right, appears to be preaching to patrons and passersby. “You must shun all forms of passion,” says the man.

A woman in a white coat with a little boy at her side puts a coin on top of the man's Bible.

“A big stick starts early,” says the man. “It breeds contempt and indifference.”

From behind his bag of groceries, Dorian peeks at the man's face. No one coming or going stops to listen, but the man continues as if he were addressing a loyal congregation.

“The miseries of a lifetime live in your body,” he says. “They grow, waxing and burgeoning, roiling in your guts and chest, gathering in lethal concentrations just under the skin.”

The rest of the drive home is uncomfortably warm and silent. Insects splatter on the windshield. In the air is the smell of approaching rain. The transmission thumps, then the engine hesitates and whirs.

 

HE SEES the light in his mother's face, the rush of hope, when the landlord fails to knock at the usual hour. He watches the newspapers and listens on the street for rumors. Weeks pass and the landlord leaves no evidence of his life except a house filled with antique furniture and a closet stuffed with fine clothes.

The apartment building falls to auction and the new landlord turns out to be a woman. She often comes by for tea. A touch of confidence returns to his mother's eyes. She smiles.

 

IN THE newspaper is a picture of Winston Churchill drinking tea. Faya clips it out and tapes it to the icebox. Dorian seems to like it. He mentions it each time he grabs a snack.

“How Dorian goes on about Mr. Churchill,” says Faya. “He thinks he's a great man.”

“Dorian thinks too much. I catch him staring.”

“Staring?” says Faya.

“Yes,” he says. “When I catch his eye, he turns away.”

“A boy studies his father,” says Faya.

He agrees but neglects to mention that whenever he arrives home, even as he takes off his hat, gloves, and coat, Dorian gives him the once-over. And then it's the scraped and swollen knuckle, the split lip just under the mustache, or the bruised and puffy cheek that his son scrutinizes with particular interest. He makes excuses, blaming the injuries on clumsiness, on a box or a piece of equipment that tumbled from a dolly or the hand truck.

Dorian seems nervous and vigilant, watching for the dark expression and listening for the heavy stride.

He tries to reason with his son. “The current is changing,” he says. “Business is good.”

Dorian says nothing.

“There's plenty to do. Enough for both of us.”

“I'm doing extra work at school.”

“Fight me if you must,” he says.

Dorian folds his arms. “I won't.”

“It doesn't matter,” he says.

Dorian wants to stay calm. “What do you mean it doesn't matter?”

“Fight or not,” he says. “There's no winning.”

After a long silence, he talks about Saginaw Bay and a lifetime of boats. “If you're given a gift, use it,” he says. “But respect it, too. Don't trade it for something cheap.” He thinks the boy should be happy, exhilarated at the prospect of inheriting a wealthy kingdom. “I built this business,” he says. “I made a life for myself, and for you, too.”

 

IN TIME, with the first money from Halyard & Mast, he buys a summer cottage in Port Austin.

He buys a powerboat but finds it noisy and unnerving. He trades it in for his first sailboat, a sleek hull with one mast that he rigs for singlehanded racing.

When he isn't competing, he takes out Faya and Dorian. They sail beyond the bay in clear weather, the blue water of Lake Huron stretching to the horizon.

Dorian will learn to sail, he thinks. He'll see why it's necessary, as a crewman or a singlehander, to keep everything in its place.

 

HE STARES at the luminous dial.

The station he'd been listening to has drifted into silence. He reaches for the tuning knob but hesitates and changes his mind. He clicks the radio off and the dial goes dark. That's enough, he thinks, no more noise for a while.

He opens a window. The sun'll be rising soon. He starts making a list of chores but it doesn't help.

In the first turning of most days, waking from sleep, or in the last moments before closing his eyes and drifting down, he thinks of his mother, the apartment, and the battered door with the dead bolt thrown. He couldn't stay with her and at the same time live the life he'd imagined, but slipping away was impossible, unless he could guarantee her safety. His hope then was to leave her with a settled mind. He considers the problem again, the fact that he chose an available course, the only course that seemed possible. The effort now is to keep it buried. It takes discipline, a cold vigilance, to absorb and manage the cost. But he left her in the beauty of unbroken silence. Left her with the firm belief that the landlord had lost interest. At the end, she lived and died without worry. He gave her that.

HE REMEMBERS the boat heeling, the light at Port Austin Reef, and a cold wind from the northwest making him shiver.

“There's no face,” his father says again. “I'm telling you, it isn't there.”

He remembers feeling sick, having turned out at midnight to set sail. He was called Jason then. He had no other name.

“Jason,” says his father. “I don't want you going below. We're nearly strapped, and I need you to give a hand.”

He knows that Havelock's not in the cabin. Havelock's not in his berth. No face, he thinks. How can it be that Havelock Moore has no face?

He looks up. Barely visible is a low ceiling of gray clouds. No moon. Not a single star. The sky shudders from one horizon to the other. He listens to the hull slicing the lake. On a run like this, time gets cranky. It slows down or speeds up. It ebbs and flows. The conditions – fair weather and a spanking breeze – make all the difference.