Up Through the Water (7 page)

Lila broke from him. “Look at the island,” she said, and walked barefoot to the other side. The view flashed of white cottages, small sailboats, a few motels, the community store, the bar, and even the beginnings of the beach—a hint of motion on the far side.

“It's like it's play from up here,” she said. “I think the lighthouse keepers were really afraid of water. I think they came up here, not really looking to the water for ships in trouble, but instead standing and looking over the island trying to see their wife's tiny hands in the kitchen window drying a dinner plate.”

Eddie wanted to say something. The wind keened around the lighthouse. Quickly he spidered his fingers up Lila's back and felt for the hook of her bra. It came undone easily, slackened, and fell lazily. Light pulsed on their mouths pressed like kissing fish. He and Lila kneeled together on the floor like children, then fell under the beams of strong light flashing above them and out over the sea for miles.

EIGHT

THE FOURTH

T
he firecracker
, tossed from the cracked door of the men's room, rolled like a cigarette, then exploded.

“Get ‘em out of there,” John Berry said from outside to the boy's father who lay flat out, bare-bellied, on the hood of his car.

“Let the kid have some fun. It's the U.S. of A.’s birthday,” he said, cocking one eye as he spoke.

John Berry shook his head. “Look,” he said. He smelled barbecue and Budweiser on the man's breath. “We're not on solid ground here.”

The boy in the bathroom opened the door. John Berry saw his thin arms and hands lighting the tip of another firecracker. John Berry lunged for him, but the boy tossed the cracker, slammed the door, and laughed. The firecrackers rang and smoked near the car's front tires. “Bring me some more matches, Pop,” the boy said.

“Get out of there, kid,” John Berry said. He pounded on the door, then looked pleadingly at the boy's father, who gave him a lazy stare and calmly tipped a beer to his lips. “I'd bet today must have been hell for a guy like you.”

John Berry stared at the father. He could see, even in the dusk, the white lines on his stomach that in the sun had been shaded by fat.

“Tell your kid to get out of there,” John Berry said.

The door cracked open and he saw the boy's face. “You don't own this boat,” he said. He lobbed a whole row of firecrackers past John Berry's arm and all the way to the railing.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
John Berry's neck tightened. He really didn't want to hassle the kid. He was afraid to see even a shade of that expression, the one Emily'd had before he threw the bottle—pretended innocence and then fear.

“I've got some sparklers,” he said to the boy. “Would you come out for that?”

The boy didn't answer and John Berry heard his feet scuffing on the tiles as though he was shadowboxing.

John Berry turned. “Yeah,” the father said. “We're driving straight through to Jersey tonight.” He gestured in the air with an open hand.

John Berry shook his head and walked down the metal steps. Opening his locker, he grabbed the sparklers out of the bag that contained his beer and cigarettes. The long red and white box reminded him of last year when he'd gotten off for the Fourth and Emily and he had gone to a cookout. He remembered her bare shoulders in a sundress and how, as it darkened, her skin blurred as if she were underwater. Most of the night she sat on a low-slung wooden porch chair with a floral cushion, talking to Tom's wife, and he'd sat across and watched her. Even then he was beginning to suspect that there could be others.

As he climbed the stairs back to the deck, he lit the end of two sparklers: long, metallic cattails that buzzed and threw sparks every which way. He stuck one into the crack between the boat wall and door so the boy would see tiny stars shooting into the men's room.

“This man brought you something,” the father said, his eyes still closed.

The door opened slowly. John Berry watched the kid, shirtless in cutoffs and tennis shoes, walk over and take the wire handle from him.

He wrote out words in orange cursive:
Bird, Sand,
a swirling
Water.
He announced each one.

Both flames went out then with a tired crackle and whiff. The boy eyed the box of sparklers in John Berry's pocket.

John Berry took three more out, lit them with his lighter, and passed one to the boy and another to his father, who put the handle into his mouth and shut his eyes. It made his face reddish and sparks tattered over the edge of his brow onto his bald head.

The boy wrote out his name, Billy, then his father's, Paul, then girls: Ann, Sue, Cathy . . .

John Berry tipped his and wrote
Emily
in the dark, etched it slowly, and saw it float there.

“Turn that shit off,” Birdflower said, his hands moving over the grill like a magician.

Lila walked over to the cassette player which was balanced above the microwave and ejected a tape. “You wouldn't think you'd be so grumpy, now that you got yourself a girl.”

Birdflower turned toward her and she thought she saw a smile edging up around his mouth.

The owner yelled out: “Three Fourth of July fish fries.” She hustled to the grease bin, dropped the frozen fish patties into the metal basket, plopped them down with a sputter. Birdflower was wiping his face with a bandanna and sticking little toothpick American flags in a line of burgers.

“I don't know what your problem is lately,” he said, shaking his head.

“I did it,” she said casually. She waited for him to move. His wet T-shirt clung to his back. After a moment he turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. “Did what?”

Lila walked over to him, leaned her stomach on the black knobs, and bent around, over the grill, so she could see his face. “You know,” she said.

Birdflower flipped a hamburger, rolled the hot dogs, and pressed the cooked onions into a tighter pile.

Lila got closer to his face. “I said—”

“I get it,” Birdflower said. “What do you want me to say?”

A kid screamed out on the porch and Lila moved away from him. “I don't know,” she said, reaching for the prongs to get the fish. “I just thought you should know.”

Emily wet a dish towel and put it on her neck and wrists. “There are millions out there. The seating list is two pages long. I never should have agreed to wait tables.”

“You'll make good money for just wiggling your tail,” Neal said.

She threw the towel across the counter at him.

“Very funny,” he said, rocketing it back. “Your platters will be up in a minute.”

Neal turned to check the scallops whitening in a skillet on the stove. The kitchen was damp with steam, and other waitresses hurried in and out without speaking to anyone.

She watched Eddie separating silverware into plastic canisters; knives, forks, soup spoons, the occasional long iced tea spoons all lay scattered under his hands. He'd worn jeans to work, and Emily knew that meant he was meeting Lila later.

The bell dinged and she walked over, set the broiled platters on the tray, twisted a lemon slice on each fish fillet, and grabbed a cocktail sauce cup for the shrimp. Over her shoulders she watched Eddie lobbing rinse tablets into the huge sinks. The water turned Caribbean blue in seconds.

Emily delivered the seafood and refilled water glasses. She saw about twenty old women in bright-colored pantsuits file into the dining room.

Some sat right down at the tables the busboy was pushing together for them. A few clustered around the entrance, rubbing their loose upper arms and pulling their jackets around them. Most of the women had gray hair tinted blue or purple and the styles were similar: short, with a loose curl on each side, and one lying like a little mouse on top.

She walked over and introduced herself to a few of the women at one end of the table and told them she'd be their waitress.

“We're the Georgia Songbirds,” a big-breasted woman said. “We gave a concert down in Morehead.” She was tanned on her forearms, as if from going onto the beach fully clothed.

Emily went around the table.

“My stomach,” the last lady said, fingers clenching the menu, “is thinking of jumping clear out of my mouth and searching down food on its own.” Emily wrote the order onto her pad. “Your tan is lovely,” the woman said, and laid a pale hand on Emily's arm.

The big woman motioned to the others. All stood in a slow way, as for the Gospel in church, and began singing. Emily looked around at the other customers, and most smiled and nodded toward the women. “God bless America,” they sang out. “Land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her . . .”

The other waitresses paused around the coffee maker. They put their hands on their hips and shook their heads. For the first time that night, a few of them smiled. Eddie came out and stood beside the waitresses. Neal leaned in the doorway and placed a hand over his heart. The hungry woman at the end of the table began the next song with a voice like a young child's: “Yankee Doodle went to London riding on a pony . . .” The rest lifted their arms to, gether and, with gusto, came in on the chorus, “I am that Yankee Doodle boy!”

“Usually I go down with my father in his truck,” Lila said. “He always tells stories of other Fourths.” They walked across a weedy lot toward the seawall. “How many pieces you got?” She pointed to the brown bag Eddie carried.

“Six,” he said. Above them, the first white lights of fireworks.

Lila seemed a little nervous; her hands flittered while she talked on the walk over, and she wouldn't look at him, as she always did, directly in the eye. “Do they always start at midnight?” he said.

“Ever since I can remember.” She held on to his arm and shook a pebble loose from her sandal, then she moved her hand. “Look,” Lila said evenly. She stared at a point just past his face. “Did you get some things yet?”

Eddie nodded, his cheeks flushed.

“Not that I'm worried or anything,” she said and kicked at the sandy dirt with the toes of her sandals. “I just wondered.”

Eddie smiled. “Yeah, I got them at the gas station, in the men's room. They're called french tickle—”

“I don't want to hear about it,” she said, and walked on.

A creeping greenish firework zipped up and burst.

They settled on the concrete sandbags—water nipped at their heels as they leaned their heads back so they could see the fireworks shooting up over the island. Eddie handed her a slice of watermelon. She took it in one hand and nibbled at the corner; a seed slipped off into the water. “Will we get drunk?”

“Maybe,” Eddie said, mushing a bite in his mouth. “We put a whole bottle in.” He watched the horseshoe crabs wading in the shallow water, some joined together, others resting, sand edged up on their shells. They reminded Eddie of space bugs because of the way they moved in that small horrible way, rattails rotating behind.

Three red spinners went crazy, self-destructing in the sky.

Lila ate down to the rind. She flung the green smile out into the sound; it plopped and was gone. “I'm kinda worried,” she said.

Eddie watched her eyes watch a few traveling sparks dissipate into the water. She had on a sleeveless white blouse, one Eddie knew had been her mother's. It had a stain up on one shoulder. She hugged her knees and rocked slightly. “Lila,” Eddie said. She didn't answer, so he handed her another half-moon of pink melon.

She took it, laid it wetly on her shorts, and pressed a hand to her hair. “You know?” she said, and looked at him. “You know what I mean?”

Birdflower sat up on his elbow and filled Emily's cup with champagne. Both lay long-ways on a quilt spread out on the van floor.

Emily paused to watch the dark sky bloom with three yellow wheels of hissing light. “We eloped on a Friday night. He came and got me like a regular date. We crossed over the line and headed into Tennessee. I imagined the baby already kicking. We found this justice that ran a gas station—what I remember was the back room, yellow pine and girlie calendars all over.”

Birdflower shook his head.

“Signed the divorce papers five years to the day,” Emily said.

Birdflower drank from the big green bottle and put his palm on her stomach. “Plan it that way?” he asked.

“No. Things turn out,” she said. “You know how it is.”

Fireworks whizzed up. Emily put an arm around his hips and pulled him forward. “Let's close the doors,” she said. “Let's do it here.”

John Berry swung himself around the dock post and splashed into the water. He moved his legs like riding a bicycle, treading water, watching the sky crackle and flare—the Fourth of July midnight finale was beginning.

From here he saw no one: no tourists cheering like morons, no locals or summer help who'd recognize him. He pulled his shoes off and threw them up onto the private dock, gulped air, and pushed his face under. He watched the last red, white, and blue gunpowder bursts from below the surface. Globes of light widening and shrinking, blurred and broken, like the image he'd seen when he jumped a minute earlier: his own face shifting in water.

NINE

THIS PLACE WAS REAL NICE

T
he bartender
, playing his fingers across the glass bottles like piano keys, said, “We have Ancient Age, Beam's Blacklabel, Century Brooks, Fighting Cock, Jim Beam, Old Crow, Old Fitzgerald, Old Forrester, Rebel Yell, Sam Sykes, and Jack Daniel's Number 7.”

John Berry's drink showed brown melting to clear, swirling like maple syrup. “Aw . . . just give me a beer,” he said. The bartender sulked over to the tap and tilted a glass. He set it down in front of John Berry, the glass curved in the middle like a girl's waist.

“How was your Fourth?” the bartender asked.

“Okay,” John Berry said.

“You back or just visiting?”

“Testing the waters.”

The bartender wrapped plastic silverware in napkins and stood the white cocoons up in containers marked
TAKE-OUT
. John Berry thought he was intentionally trying to act busy. He didn't want to hear it, especially now in mid-afternoon when he wasn't making any money. John Berry knew that hundreds of men had sat on these bar stools and talked about women. He saw their female faces on the mirrored beer signs, smiling, pouting their bee-stung bottom lips. It didn't matter that much because he wouldn't say out loud what he'd decided anyway—that Emily was the love of his life. And that to ruin things, as he had, without trying to set them straight again would make him mean, crazy, and drunken forever. John Berry knew the bartender didn't trust him. He called him Blackbeard, and once last year he'd shown a painting of a pirate and pointed out to everybody who came into the bar for days how much it looked like John Berry. And it was true he had Edward Teach's blue-black hair and rubied cheekbones. He had the body type too, a mass of solid squares and rectangles placed against one another.

“You know, you look like shit,” the bartender said.

“Why, thanks,” John Berry said, and laughed awkwardly. He watched the beer sign left of the ice machine and slowly rubbed his palms against his knees. “There was this beauty queen in Norfolk,” he started.

The bartender tucked a pencil behind his ear. “Is this some sleazy joke?”

“Nope,” John Berry said. “I saw her in the mall. Standing in front of some formal-wear store passing out coupons. She had on this sequined dress that kind of shook. I sat on the edge of the fountain to watch her. I half thought she'd rise up and the ceiling would split open or else she'd run over to the falling water, dive, and become some kind of a mermaid or something.”

“We don't see ‘em like that around here,” the bartender said.

“No. It was like she walked off the TV.” Smoke spiraled up from the glass ashtray and the TV was turned low to soaps. Light fell in squares on the wood bar, across John Berry's shoulders, one side of his face, and on his arm lifting the glass.

“You off today?” the bartender said.

John Berry watched the bubbles break loose and float fast to the top of his beer. “Yeah, well, half day today. We pulled in at twelve and I walked off. Hitched a ride with three kids in a rusty VW. I could see the road through little holes under my feet.”

The bartender shook his head. “So they just let you—”

“Tell me something. Who's she taking up with?” John Berry said.

The bartender picked up his empty glass. “I don't tell men who look as wild as yourself anything about their former women,” he said. “All I do is pour the beers.” He put the warm beer glass in a sink of water and John Berry heard it gently hit bottom.

“You can tell me who she's screwing,” John Berry said, lifting off the stool.

“I haven't seen her,” the bartender said evenly, drawing him another beer. “But I hear she's with that short-order cook from the Trolley.”

“That long-hair,” John Berry said. “For God's sake.” He sat back on his stool.

“If you're down to make trouble,” the bartender said, setting down the beer, “I'd think twice.” He held out an open palm. “Look,” he said. “Just because your sand castle washes down is no reason—”

“My goddamn life is not sand.” John Berry clenched his beer, foam slipping over his fingers, and took it to the back table. He shouted behind him, “Just bring ‘em to me when you see I'm empty-because that's your job.”

*  *  *

As he lifted the delicate spines from the flounder fillets that would be tonight's special, Birdflower daydreamed about trout fishing and how the first time he went he had waded in hip-high rubber down Black River in Michigan. Like any other hunter, he had searched, concentrating on dark patches of water. He could see them waving their tails in slow motion, cool pebbles on their bellies, giving a wide fish yawn. It had been his first time fly-fishing. He'd flipped the rod above his head, made it dance, and then, as his father told him, let the line drop just so, barely stinging the surface. Ahead, in the stream, his father looked over his shoulder and, as if from another world, smiled. And that was when he realized how alone he was and would probably always be. How the whole point of fishing was solitude. How his father had waited until he was old enough, until he saw him lying alone in his bedroom, eyes to the plaster swirls of the ceiling. He was
himself,
not his grade in school, his family, or his father. It was then that he realized he stood, taking up only the space—in the stream, on the land, and in the air—that he did.

“Six orders of strawberry pie to go,” the owner shouted, fishing hat held at his hip.

Birdflower opened the fridge door and took out a pie of whole berries floating in red gelatin, molded by graham cracker crust. He cut each slice, snuggled them on Styrofoam plates, and covered them with Saran Wrap. They looked like road kills, Birdflower thought, watching the owner bag them and call out the window.

All day today he'd been thinking about Emily. He remembered when he'd heard the rumor that she swam nude every morning out at the point. One day, just after sunrise, he hid himself in the dunes. Sea oats blew figure eights that rustled against him. He watched her hold her hands up to the sun and splash up walls of slap-dash water. Her face changed continuously, smiles into whispers widening to laughs. He watched as she somersaulted and twisted. It was then that he fell half in love with her, and decided he wanted her for himself.

The owner stepped around the corner.

“The rush is over; you can clear out of here,” he said, pushing his hat back on his bald head. He looked at him hard a minute. “I just want to warn you. These island guys. They're different from you or me. When they were growing up, they never saw cities with one-way streets or highways where you had to stay in your lane. You know what I mean? They've never seen a parking cop, a paddy wagon, or a big state pen from a car window. You've heard them . . . they all think they're pirates.”

“With no brains,” Birdflower laughed. He took out his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and checked to see how many were left. “When's the last time you had a girl?”

The owner winked. “Besides my wife, you mean? Oh, one hundred, maybe two hundred years.”

Birdflower smiled and opened the door into the dull sunlight. He walked out onto the back porch.

“Okay,” the owner called after him. “All I'm saying is those fellows aren't for messing with.”

“Uh-huh,” Birdflower said. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled one of the cigarettes out of the pack with his teeth. To him John Berry seemed almost comical, living on the ferry and existing on six-packs and vending machine candy. Birdflower shaded his eyes. He shouldn't have thrown the bottle, but God knows he had his reasons. Birdflower puffed his dangling cigarette and arched against the boards. He thought he understood. He knew Emily's body and how you wanted to climb into it. She had a lazy way that made everyday life fluid and easy. He pushed a cheek against the cooling weathered wood. Still, the bottom line was that only savages cut women. He flicked his cigarette to the sand and took the steps by twos, walking quickly towards Paolo's for a couple after-work beers.

*  *  *

The bar had filled—a guitar player sang Jackson Browne songs on the raised stage, and the waitress was lighting candles at each table. John Berry burped quietly. His empty basket, chips and pickle, rustled as he reached for crumbs. He was going through all the cottages on the island, remembering curtains, front yards, birdbaths or planters, trying to fade the nausea and loneliness of being back to a place you know completely but feel a stranger to. He was thinking of a time when he was a kid and he and his younger brother—who now lived off the island and was continually coming for vacations with some bookish woman who hated the sun but loved the people and wrote down everything obsessively in bound journals—had collected every can and bottle on the whole island. They nagged their father to drive to spots way up the beach road that they couldn't ride their bikes to. He remembered trading in these bottles and ordering from the back of
Life
magazine with the money. The ad showed a boy with a buzzcut and a happy face in an air-propelled minicar. When it came, they spent days assembling it, careful of every weight-conscious detail. The day finally came, and John Berry and his brother carried it out to the flat grass in the backyard all the time talking about the Wright brothers. They flipped a coin and it was his brother who solemnly stepped in and ignited the engine, and for one brief boyhood moment John Berry saw him, shoulders and head above the floating contraption and the slight lift and pause on that morning so many summers ago.

Over the bar the TV flashed a vampire movie. Dracula passed through a hanging fern. John Berry watched the count's cape flutter, blood dripped from his lips. He felt Emily's lips on his neck, then the tug and pull, till he was dizzy and his eyes would roll white. John Berry's head jerked to where Birdflower was ordering a beer with a nod at the bar. That long-hair was skinny; frying burgers didn't give you muscles. He could kill him if he wanted.

The bartender pointed back and Birdflower glanced over his shoulder as if alone at night and hearing footsteps.

People around him quieted, looked back, and shifted nervously in their seats. One woman took her baby from the high chair to her lap. The bartender walked over and said, “No bar fights. I swear I'll call the sheriff in a heartbeat.”

John Berry stared dead-eyed at his beer. “Tell that hippie I won't touch him. I just want to know a few things.”

“I'll pass the message on,” the bartender said.

“Before you shits got here, either raising your motels or working in them, this place was real nice.” John Berry sat across from Birdflower, who listened, his eyes tied to the tiny reflection of himself in his bottle. “I grew up in a house on Howard Street. You know what happened? Some idiot bought it from my mother. Painted it yellow. And is calling it the Canary Guest Cottage.”

“Why'd you throw the bottle?” Birdflower said.

“There's not a person I see in the winter months crossing that I don't know,” John Berry continued.

Through straggles of loose hair, Birdflower was looking him over.

“If you think this has nothing to do with you, asshole, you're wrong.”

Birdflower stood up. “Man, you're nuts.”

“Sit down,” John Berry said, standing and pushing him back into his chair. The bartender made a warning sign. John Berry held up his hand. “Okay, okay,” he said.

Birdflower stood. “Any other words of wisdom you'd like to lay on me before I go.”

Creepy Dracula music played and John Berry threw back his head like a crazy person. “She'll leave you, too,” he said. “You fucking guru.”

*  *  *

Alone on the road Birdflower counted his ribs carefully like a child doing scales. Headlights flashed in a parade of beach jeeps and trucks heading to the bar. He stuck his hands deep in his pockets and walked barefoot in the loose sand at the side of the road. He lost his balance and fell. Sharp gravel pushed into his palms and his knees grated against the asphalt. Standing, he brushed his hands and ran barefoot toward the restaurant.

Hidden by the low cedars near the storage shed, he watched her. The bright lights of the kitchen showed her arm ladling soup. He saw her face muted behind the screen's haze.

Nothing was wrong. Safe in the kitchen, she was working for Neal, who had an old boyfriend here for the weekend. She was even dressed in the cutoffs he had left wedged down in the covers of her bed. Birdflower lit a cigarette. They were going together to Norfolk in a few days. Things would settle. She was with
him,
not John Berry, who was just an ignorant old island boy way out of his league.

It was obvious to Birdflower that she didn't want John Berry, that her fascination with the backward lives of the islanders was over. Though he hadn't known her long, Birdflower convinced himself that they had similar desires, and that he was better suited for her because he understood free love.

Gnats circled his head: she would stay with him. Birdflower watched her put onions in an unseen frying pan—heard the snap and sizzle and imagined the blue gas flame. Moving back into the shadows, he watched her step out and head for the walk-in. Behind the veil of cold smoke she chose things. When she came out she gazed at the night sky. Birdflower looked up with her at a star showing through moving clouds.

“Just once,” John Berry said, pressing a hand on the wheel.

“No way,” Tom said.

“I won't get out of the car. I'll just see if any lights are on.”

Tom looked at him.

“Come on,” he said. “I'm begging you.”

“You'll come to my house then? Susan will fix up the couch.”

“Yep,” John Berry said, sipping the beer he'd snuck out of Paolo's under his shirt.

Tom shifted down and rounded the corner, then down once more as the car pumped onto the sandy street. They passed the two-trunked maple tree and the dilapidated shack where John Berry knew the island kids smoked dope. The other houses leading to Emily's were dark.

“Turn off the lights,” John Berry said as he hunkered down. His wobbly finger pointed through the glass. “Her cottage is there.”

“Nobody's home,” Tom said. “I didn't drive down here to chauffeur you around.”