The Black Hour (22 page)

“You’re selling it? All—” My voice twisted unexpectedly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kendall turn his head toward me. “All of it?”

“Not sure it’ll all go. But better to offer it up before the rust wins.”

“What’s—what’s in there?” I hadn’t been inside since long before he’d died, but I remembered the smell. Oil, sawdust, sweat. Hot Indiana summers, my grandpa had a six-foot-square industrial fan to keep the air moving. Even with the breeze, the place grew sweltering.

“The usual. Tools, parts. A tractor he bought to fix. Not sure anybody here will want it broken. They would’ve taken it—” He took a deep breath.

To him. To my grandpa. Anybody with a broken machine would have brought it to my grandpa’s barn. And now they sometimes brought it to my dad, though he didn’t take in tractors except to tinker for a friend. On the side, for a six-pack and gratitude.

Dad cleared his throat. “Now they got to take it into town and leave it for a month and a half. Half the season gone.”

Not for the first time, I wished I’d ever wanted something this simple, to fix things that no one else could fix and fast enough that everyone got their crops in on time. To be useful, to be practical and handy to have around. My grandpa had wanted something he could have. My dad didn’t have the same skills, but he worked well with his hands and could make a living doing what he liked to do. When you could work with your hands, you had options.

If I couldn’t hack it at Rothbert, my options—

I had none.

“But at a good price,” my dad was saying, “maybe somebody will take the tractor off our hands. Better than leaving it to sit there.”

A tractor always sat in there. The huge tire, the feel of the giant tread under my small fingers and a hand on my back as I teetered. I couldn’t remember reaching the top, only the urge to climb. Even knowing I could fall, reaching. I had never wanted anything within my grasp.

“When’s the sale?” I said.

“Next weekend. The town festival, so lots of folks will be in for it.”

“I could come help you.”

“You—you want to?”

“Is there something I could do?”

“Son, there’s plenty of work to go around.” He sounded pleased. Proud. I could imagine him telling the lady behind him at the A&P about this. “How will you get down?”

“A bus. I’ll figure it out.”

“Good, good. Nathaniel—well, then.”

“I’ll see you next weekend, Dad.”

“Have a safe trip down.”

I set the phone back in its cradle and looked at it. A long bus ride, the effort of lugging grimy tools and bits and pieces out of the barn, the whole day spent in the sun among strangers or, worse, at the town’s annual fall festival, where everyone I’d ever known would want to hear what I was doing with my life. A tedious, hot day spent explaining myself, the town crowded, and then another bus, another five hours back to Rothbert.

The phone rang.

“Aren’t you popular,” Kendall said.

I hoped for a moment it was my dad, calling back to talk me out of coming. The expense, the time away from my studies. But that’s not how my dad would think. It rang again. “Maybe it’s for you.”

“I only give out my cell.” He waved his phone in the air. “Since I only talk to people who live in this century.”

I picked up the phone. “Hello.”

“Who’s this?” a male voice said.

I hated people who did that. As though they’d called from the center of the universe. “This is the person you called. Who’s this?”

“Is that Nath? Nath, are you getting pissy with me? Dutch, watch the bottles—”

“Win?”

“We’re going out on the boat,” he said. “Do you have any booze?”

“Uh, no.” I found myself flattered he’d remembered me at all and wished I’d kept a bottle somewhere for the occasion.

“Come anyway. It’s a great sky night, and we have plenty.”

“I’ve never sailed before.”

“Dutch’ll do all the heavy lifting—”

I heard a protest rise up in the background, and Win laughed.

“He has to work off his indentured servitude to me. All you have to do is drink and hold up your end of the conversation.”

To be cool, in other words. Why did everyone expect me to be capable? A sailboat, on Lake Michigan, at night. My pulsed kicked. Was that even safe? But that was my small town, my small life talking. The true inheritance I’d received was a provincial mentality that did me no good anywhere else, that didn’t let me be anywhere else, and even when I clawed my way out, kept me begging to come back.

No, I have to study. No, I have to work on a special project. What a moron I was. “Where’s the dock?”

“That’s my man,” Win said.

There was no dock. I’d seen a beach on the south end of campus, but Win’s directions sent me down the dark lake path and an overlook, dark boulders below. The tide was low and quiet. Out a few hundred feet or more, a white light shone.

“Win?” I tried to see a way through the rocks. Was he crazy? “Are you there?”

“Ahoy,” Win cried from the dark. The white light bobbed. “Find the no swimming sign, and then climb out.”

He was crazy. The white light seemed impossibly far away. I felt my way out onto the rocks, slipping and almost twisting my ankle. Gentle waves lapped too close to my feet.

“Over here,” said a voice, below.

I peered into the shadows. A single piling stuck out of the water, an inflatable dinghy bumping against it. Inside, a big guy with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The oars dangled in the water. “How—”

I looked out into the blackness. Second thoughts, third.

“Come on,” Dutch said around his cigarette. “The beer’s getting warm.”

My foot found a flat expanse. I sat and stretched my legs for another hold. “Is there room—”

“Drop your foot down, you pussy. Worst thing, you get a little wet.”

“I can’t swim.”

“It’s a puddle right here,” he said. “My ass is scraping the sand.”

At the last second, I was sure I would drop into the lake, but I found the inside of the dinghy with first one foot then the other and let myself fall blind into the tight opening Dutch’s girth left for me.

“Are there any life jackets?”

He took up the oars and shoved us off toward the light. “How can you not know how to swim?”

“Not a lot of lakeside property where I’m from.”

“You never had a pool?”

I’d forgotten whose company I kept. Dutch was a resident of the Castle and had probably swallowed the silver spoon by now, along with a super-sized portion of entitlement, by the look of him.

“I grew up in the country.”

“Which country doesn’t have swimming pools?”

I gave up, concentrating instead on how far from the shore we were. It wasn’t just a foot deep here. Over my shoulder, Win’s boat grew. It had a white—body. I didn’t know the words for any of it, but I couldn’t help being impressed. For one thing, the boat was huge. A kid my age, younger than me, owned this. He could operate this at night. Two guys and beer, and they could still send themselves out to sea. And, I hoped, safely back.

I heard singing and listened for the tune.

What do you do with a drunken sailor? Er-lie in the morning.

We lurched in our little tub toward the white light until we were nearly under it, the boat looming. Dutch rammed us into its side. There was another piling here, a buoy bobbing next to it. He tied us to the piling and pulled us up to the boat. There, in large script letters:
Ladykiller
.

Win appeared, hanging from a rope on the deck. He spun around it as though on a playground, out over open water, his feet dangling, and back onto the boat before I hardly knew what he’d done.

“Ahoy, me Hearties!”

“Ahoy,” I said weakly.

“Prisoner for the brig, Captain,” Dutch said.

“He’s just joking,” Win said. “Come on up.”

My legs had gone loose. I hauled myself into the craft and fell to my knees.

“Jesus, Nath,” Win said. “What’ll you have?”

“Whatever.”

Dutch climbed over me and reached for a bottle. “He can’t swim.”

“I didn’t plan on swimming.” Win handed me a beer. I gulped at it to keep the bottle from shaking in my hand. “Unless you want to,” he said. “I’m up for anything.”

“No, thanks,” Dutch said. He sat on the bank of seats and started to kick back. “Do we even have to hoist the anchor?”

“It’s not sailing if you’re hanging out next to the dinghy,” Win said.

“There’s hardly any wind,” I said. If we stayed here, the most difficult task would be getting back into the dinghy. No—those rocks. But we were still within a few hundred feet of the shore. The blank of the lake felt heavy at my back.

Win took the empty bottle from my hand and shoved another beer at me. “Just a pleasure cruise down to the lighthouse and back. We don’t need much.”

“Lighthouse?”

“See, Nath? You haven’t seen the sights.”

Dutch heaved a sigh. “Weigh anchor,” he said and climbed back over me to crank at something. I dragged myself off my knees and up to the seat he’d left. It was a padded bench with only a thin silver rail separating me from the water. People did this for relaxation? I sat forward, my elbows on my knees.

Dutch hurried by again. Behind me, an engine began to purr. We glided slowly away from the dinghy and out onto the lake. A breeze kicked up. Dutch dropped the engine and scurried around, tugging at knots and pulling at ropes and talking to himself.

“You worried?” Win said.

“Is there something I should be—doing?” I didn’t see any life vests, but I couldn’t ask now, not again.

“Watch out for this,” Win said, patting a wide horizontal beam.

“Avast,” Dutch said without enthusiasm. Win ducked out of the beam’s reach as it swung around. A large white sail overhead flapped and filled.

“The boom,” Win said. “Easiest way for a landlubber to see the bottom of the lake.”

He seemed a little flippant on the topic, and for the first time I wondered how much he and Dutch had been drinking. A light at the front of the boat and behind—there were words for these things, I knew—did little to cut the dark. “How far is the lighthouse?”

“Be there before I have to piss,” Dutch said.

“South of campus, what, a few miles,” Win said. “You haven’t been outside since you got here, have you? ‘Do you know where the library is?’” His Midwestern twang was spot-on. “‘Has anyone seen the library?’”

Dutch laughed.

We were slowly moving south along the coast, Rothbert’s buildings lit up like jewels on a strand. The campus seemed small, like a doll’s house version of itself. Only an hour ago I’d made plans to get out of there, but now I couldn’t wait to get back. Dry land. Dry, steady land.

“Where do you keep the boat?”

“Marina down the lakeshore. We’ll put her in dry dock after the Night Sail.”

“Isn’t this a night sail?”

“
The
Night Sail,” Win said. “Rothbert tradition. The sailing club, faculty, anyone with a boat. We take them up the shore and back one last time before the season ends. An excuse for a party.”

An excuse for rich people to be rich people. “When is that?”

“Saturday. You could be on our crew, if you want.”

Dutch made a noise.

Win shot him a look. “You were no good to me last year, remember? Drunk by nine in the morning, you don’t get to be captain.”

I knew as well as anyone that no one but Win got to be captain. “What’s the occasion tonight?”

“Haven’t been out for a while. Classes get in the way.”

“Political science, right?”

“The father-approved major,” Win said. “Psychology?”

“Sociology.”

I could see Win nodding thoughtfully in the dark. “Do you know all the professors in the department?”

“Just Van Meter and, uh, Emmet this semester. I met another one, but I can’t remember his—Woo, maybe?”

More nodding, and then he stopped. “Emmet? The one who—”

“Yeah.”

“Have you been to, like, her office?”

I knew where this was going. Undergrads were so immature. First Kendall and now Win, who I would’ve given more credit. “Of course I have. I’m her graduate assistant.”

The disdain I’d tried to put into my voice must have gotten through. He let it go.

“What do you study, Dutch?” I said.

“Popular culture.” He belched.

“TV,” Win said. “Video games. Chinese takeout menus.” He hustled up more beers and passed them around. We’d switched brands. Change in taste or proof of progress?

“Emmet,” Dutch said. “That the one who took a gut shot last year?”

Win didn’t seem interested anymore. He hopped up and went to the back of the boat to stare into the dark, the lights of Rothbert getting small as we sailed toward the distant Chicago skyline.

I didn’t want to talk about Dr. Emmet, didn’t want to hear the half-truth version and try to convince the other side they had the story wrong again. To hear the story and care too much. Again. “Yeah,” I said.

“That dude was a dick,” Dutch said.

“Yeah.”

“A hot prof takes you downtown, and you blow her away—”

“Shut up, Dutch,” Win said.

Dutch wasn’t done. “That’s, like, shortsighted.”

“Shut the hell up, Dutch,” Win hissed. He pitched his beer bottle out into the lake. In the silence, the splash seemed large.