The Black Hour (39 page)

By the time I started for the tie-up, hundreds of people—maybe a thousand—had encamped along the shore. They’d spread out blankets, drawn up beach chairs. Picnicking families, the student radio station blaring strange, thrumming music. A few students had brought their books. Some sunbathers tried to entice the sun, but the sky rolled by, low and gray.

Poor weather for sailing, I would have guessed, but the lake was already decorated in bright sails. Students clung with bare feet on the painted rocks, dangling their legs into the water, laughing, chasing each other, leaping from boulder to boulder.

Watching them, I felt a hundred years old.

I hardly knew why I’d come. My first Night Sail, my last. I should have been back in my room, picking through the mess the cops had left. Packing, buying a bus ticket.

I’d never made it to the jazz club that Capone used to frequent, or the speakeasy they’d turned into a neighborhood pub, or to the museums to see how the city treated its dark corners of history. Which all seemed so silly to me now. All of this. I’d wasted a lot of time.

In the daylight I had no trouble finding the right spot, the outcropping of rocks on the other side of the no swimming sign. An extra-thick group waited here while a series of dinghies, rowboats, and canoes collected and deposited passengers to boats waiting out a few hundred feet past the buoys. I got an idea of Rothbert tradition by how seriously the rowers took their duty.

Phillip hurried along the shore toward me. He looked flustered.

“Surely it’s not a busy day at the office,” I said, gesturing at the tableau.

“Depression doesn’t take sunny days off.” We both glanced up at the roiling clouds. “Anyway,” he said. “We’ll be busy tonight when all these fools crash.”

“Win told me about the black hour.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“I’m not making a joke.” I tried to imagine the last time I’d been out at that time of the night, the morning. Whatever you called that between-time when normal people were asleep. I knew what that hour felt like: like the rest of the world had spun on without you. How little could tip someone over? Being awake too long? Being alone too long? How many nights back in my dad’s house did I have before I started thinking about the dull knives in the kitchen again? “Is that—from drinking too much?”

“From pretending that the day is sunny when it’s creepy and cold, from pretending to like the people they’re with all day, day in and out. Pretending to be happy when they’re not. It’s tiring being this age, this time, this place in the world.” He snorted, studying the crowds behind us as though he might pick out people he knew. “Not that the students here even know that. Everything’s fine in their narrow little world. It’s sunny inside their skulls.”

“If that’s true, they’d never call.”

His head snapped toward me. “They’re fine in the daylight. They’re fine as long as they’re surrounded by commotion and their so-called friends. They’re fine until they’re not fine. Cracked little vessels that let the bad stuff in, and they hardly know it.”

Including me. I was nicked crockery.

“You don’t look so good,” Phillip said. “Anything I can help you with?”

I’d agreed to go out on gray, choppy water with a guy I didn’t like, another guy who didn’t like me, and a sea captain who’d already nearly drowned me. A smarter me would have said no. A smarter me might have learned to swim.

“Everything’s OK with—” He thought it over, probably crossing out the dead ends he’d already encountered. Father, girlfriend, roommate. “School?”

“I’m dropping out.” I hadn’t said this to anyone yet, and not only because there’d been no one to tell. Now I knew why. Admitting it felt like a boot to the gut.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I had big plans for you. At the hotline.”

“Not sure that would have worked out. More likely I’d have been calling at some point, really.”

“What’s the plan, then? New place? New job? Get back together with your girl?”

I shrugged. I had no plan.

“If there’s anything I could do to talk you out of it,” Phillip said. He gave me a flat-palmed slap on the shoulder. “I think you and I could get some work done around this place.”

Traction. Everyone seemed to think I could make something happen.

“Is that Win?” he said.

I followed his gaze out to the lake. The boats all seemed the same to me, except Win’s, several lengths down the shore, which loomed larger than the others. He flew a bright Rothbert-red banner with a huge white R blazoned across it. At the helm, he could have been a Kennedy. When he saw us, he waved one arm in a wide, slow arc.

“Did you know that he’s part of the Rothbert family?” I said. “I didn’t even know there was a Rothbert family.”

“Not very often we get such an honor.”

I couldn’t tell by his tone if he was kidding, serious, or writing the next hotline brochure. We watched Win’s boat slicing toward us until my unease got the best of me. “I’m not sure this is the best idea I’ve ever had.”

“Me, either.” Phillip climbed down the last of the boulders to the line waiting for voyage, and before I’d gotten my bearings and joined him, he’d talked the two of us to the front of the line on the basis of our boat’s fast approach. The guy at the oars of the waiting rowboat wore fraternity letters and a sour expression. I knew better than to ask: no life jackets.

We drifted away from the rocks with a shove.

“How—” The boat lurched horribly as one of the others shifted. “How is it that the university posts no swimming and then allows this—this insanity?”

“No swimming allowed,” mumbled the oarsman.

“Like with most things, Rothbert students think they’re invincible,” Phillip said. “The university says it can’t stop it, but that’s not the truth. The truth is that anything that Rothbert students have been getting away with for a hundred years, they get to keep doing.”

“Bitter old dude,” the oarsman said.

“A little bit,” Phillip said with a chummy smile.

“I’m amazed no one’s been hurt,” I said.

“There’s always this year,” Phillip said.

“You guys are assholes,” our captain said.

“Fifty thousand a year in tuition and you haven’t learned to recognize a joke?” Phillip said.

“Ahoy, landlubbers!” Win cried from above.

He’d thrown
Ladykiller
in reverse to slow her, leaving the helm to help us aboard. Phillip reached for the boat, put one foot up, and leaned into it. He managed to push the rowboat backward. For a moment he was suspended between the two vessels, arms pinwheeling.

Win grabbed his arm and pulled him up.

“Thanks,” Phillip said to the deck.

I pulled our little teacup to the boat and launched myself, finding the deck with my feet and not my knees, and considered it progress.

“You lads see Dutch? No? I guess he’s facedown somewhere.” Win returned to the wheel and saluted the oarsman’s retreating back. “Not a man to pass up a facedown-somewhere opportunity, our Dutch.”

“Sorry to have missed meeting him,” Phillip said. He took one of the bench seats opposite Win—starboard? I would never understand it—and relaxed against the railing. I took the opposite bench, already a little green.

“Nath, as soon as we get out to sea here, you’ll need to pop up your seat and find us some liquid fuel. Give us some sea legs. We’re all legal here.”

“Except you,” Phillip said.

“Maritime law, sailor. Anyway. I have—diplomatic immunity.”

This seemed to confirm Phillip’s worst assumptions. He turned to watch the far city skyline to our backs. Though it was still early evening, the sky was losing light. The wind kicked up. We all watched as the sail snapped loose, then filled.

“Is it supposed to storm?” I asked.

No one answered. I popped the cushion off my seat and fished three beers out of the ice. Tomorrow I’d have to pack and turn in keys and say good-bye to Kendall. Maybe I’d look up Cara’s number and leave her a message. I knew I wouldn’t do that, but it was OK to think I might. Today I could pretend, as Phillip said, pretend to like the people I was with. Pretend to be a Rothbert student. Pretend that everything would be fine.

Win steered us a few hundred feet out from the buoys, but not so far that we couldn’t see the people on shore. A group of girls waved, woo-hooing as though we might stop for them. I saluted.

“A sailor’s life for you,” Win said.

“Must be that Lake Michigan water still in my lungs, yearning for home.”

We crawled along the coast, nothing to say. How long did we have to float around before we called it a night?

“If you don’t mind me asking, why did you jump?” Phillip said.

“I didn’t—”

“Not everybody has a death wish, Phillip,” Win said.

Now I was sorry Dutch wasn’t along to tell us all to shut up.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Phillip said.

“Yeah, why not do it out here?” Win said.

All I’d had to do was let Phillip go on this adventure on his own. What did I owe him? They could have pulled some sunbathers off the shore for their regulation number or called in some of the hotline volunteers, made it a team-building exercise. I could be packing now and out the door first thing tomorrow. Surprise my dad, explain in person. Explain as best I could.

I’d have to start with the article about Dr. Emmet. He wouldn’t understand that. I’d have to go back further. To that dark night on the porch, the stars wheeling overhead. No. Further back, to Mom’s last year and that awful afghan. Or back further still, to that day in Grandpa’s barn when I climbed the tractor wheel even though I knew I wasn’t big enough for it. I was just a
kid
.

Not everyone had a death wish. But some of us did.

But how far would I take mine? Stop before the trigger pull, I’d told Dr. Emmet. But that wasn’t the truth. I had the names of three dead students in my pocket, and I thought I knew who’d put them there.

I’d come onto this boat knowing that my name might get added to the list. Maybe I’d come to Rothbert knowing it.

“Hey, isn’t that your professor?” Phillip said, nodding toward land.

Dale Hall sat far back from the shore like a woman pulling her skirts away from the tide. I found Dr. Emmet by her awkward gait. She hurried along the path, bumping through a group of students.

“Shut up, Phillip,” Win said.

She wasn’t my professor anymore. I watched as she tore her jagged path toward us, moving fast enough that I thought she might leap off the high shore into the lake. She was fast, overtaking the woman ahead of her. But then instead of passing the other woman, she reached out and yanked her arm.

“Uh-oh,” Phillip said. “Girlfriend is in trouble.”

I stood up. Had she fallen? Had another episode? We sailed on too quickly. “Wait,” I said. “Stop the—drop the anchor or something.”

The other woman, a blonde, threw her arms around Dr. Emmet’s neck, but Dr. Emmet pried her off.

Win finally looked away from them. “Is Emmet going on the boat?”

I didn’t know which boat he meant. I watched the receding scene as long as I could see them, then fell back on the bench.

I knew that woman.

Win leaned behind me and fiddled with a rope. The sail let out and grabbed a deeper portion of wind. We were passing beyond campus now, picking up speed. Ahead of us, the lake spread out wide and choppy. And empty. I checked behind us. If we weren’t racing, why were we leaving all the other boats behind?

Phillip and I exchanged looks.

“Let’s just get some air,” Win said.

I raced to Dale Hall only to find the place empty. Reminding me of the night—

The young man at my shoulder.

A small voice at the end of the world. Oh no, oh no, no, no. Then—

Our office was locked. I raced back to the front doors, only then realizing that I’d gone up and come down the stairs under my own power, and quickly. Outside, the general movement of people rolled toward the lake. I followed, clacking along as fast I could.

I doubted the memory. Had it really happened that way? The other student coming before everyone else, then Corrine with her hand over her mouth.

Let’s get out of here, Cor.

Then I doubted it all. I doubted this curving path, never going the way I hoped. This gray sky. This next breath.

I hurried through parking lots, over grassy knolls that dragged at my cane. Around slow-moving herds carrying beach towels and lawn chairs. Doubting them all.

I tried to bring back those first few days, the weeks in the hospital or, better yet, my arrival home, and Corrine the only buffer between my sanity and the cliff over Lake Michigan I was nearing now. How had she done it? At my bedside, holding me up as we met with the reality of my apartment, not handicapped-ready. With the reality of the rest of my life and the slim likelihood that I’d ever be able to live it. Bringing me magazines and groceries, taking out my trash. Plumping up pillows and my mood when I started to think about the black room. Distasteful duties that should have fallen to someone who loved me, but no one did.

Except her.

I saw her ahead on the path and doubted the vision.