Death Watch (7 page)

F
OR SILAS, LICHPORT WAS ONLY A NAME
, like that of a distant cousin or a dead relative he’d never met. Familiar but abstract. Even though Amos had told his son about Lichport many times, the town had always felt far off, a place that kept his father from him. Although he’d been born there, it was like a foreign country to Silas. Now that he could feel the night wind on his face, now that the car was driving swiftly in the direction of that otherworld, Lichport was becoming more real, part of an actual landscape that he was just beginning to be able to see.

What is it about traveling by night that makes even a short journey strange and a little wonderful? Momentary lights appear and pass across the windowpane so fast they burst suddenly into view before becoming patterns of the past, stars that grow ever more distant as they follow their opposite course away from the car as it hurtles on its way through the darkness.

As Silas rolled down the window, the smell of the salt marsh and the distant sea flooded the interior. He imagined his father driving this same road hundreds and hundreds of times. He could feel his father’s history like ruts worn deep in the road. He wanted to walk where his father had walked. Wanted to live where his dad had spent so much of his time.
That’s how you’ll find him
, he said to himself as he put his hand out of the car into the night air, feeling
the wind push against his palm. His mother was dozing and didn’t notice they had crossed from the town into the empty lands surrounding it. As the biting air buffeted his face, he realized he was holding his breath the way you do when going through a tunnel.

Everything was changing. Silas brought his hand back into the car and reached into his pocket, taking out a folded piece of paper, the last thing he’d taken from his desk before the furniture had been carried away. He opened it and read the words he’d written just before his dad disappeared: “Do It Now List. (1) Start on English paper, (2) CALL HER, (3) Talk to Dad about a car, (4) Get college application stuff.”

Not one thing on the list had been done. He’d passively ignored any plans to pursue college during his father’s absence. Silas put his hand back outside the window, holding the paper by the corner between two fingers. He watched it blow wildly for a moment in the night air before letting it go.

The car turned left down a road marked by a worn and bullet-riddled sign, briefly illuminated by the headlights as the car slowed. The sign leaned precariously toward the highway, as if it was about to fall over. The old white decorative letters could still be seen to proclaim with a misplaced funereal enthusiasm:

WELCOME TO LICHPORT—COME FOR THE DAY, STAY FOR ETERNITY!

The car slowed almost to a crawl as it drew toward dark shapes ahead. The moon was very bright and lit the town and surrounding country in a milky light. The first buildings of Lichport’s main street rose up in shadow ahead. Silas could see a church steeple in the distance and a hill curving upward like a bell. He knew—but could not see—that the sea flowed away to the east beyond the far side of the town.

On the left side of the car was some open ground, a millpond
with the moon reflecting on the water, and beyond it the salt marsh stretched out and faded away where a small, silhouetted line of reeds pointed up at the cold stars.

There was a light over the millpond.

As his mother softly snored, Silas saw it, flickering, hanging above the water.

“Could you stop the car, please?” Silas asked the driver, staring hard through the window.

“Sir, we’ll be at your drop-off point in five minutes.”

“I’ve gotta pee,” Silas lied. “I mean right now.”

The car pulled over and Silas got out. He walked past an abandoned shop, its windows long since boarded over, and made his way toward the millpond. The light was still there, like a candle flame, floating above the water. It gave no reflection, but as Silas approached, the light wavered and slowly drifted toward the bank where he stood with his feet almost touching the water. As the flame got closer, it grew brighter and smaller, a tiny star hanging low in the air, but as Silas reached out to touch it, the wind rose and the light dropped suddenly into the pond and vanished. Silas realized he had taken a step forward, and his right shoe was now half-submerged in the cold water.

In the distance, the long, searching cry of marsh birds sounded from among the reeds. As water seeped into his shoe, Silas looked down. It seemed that the bright reflection of the moon had somehow pierced the water. The small light now seemed to have settled at the bottom of the pond, where it illuminated various silt-covered shapes and a few pale sticks. A trick of the moonlight, Silas thought, and he leaned down until his face was just above the water. Something was moving at the bottom. A fish? Perhaps the rising wind rippling the water’s surface was stirring the silt on the bottom. The water seemed pretty shallow. Again,
maybe a trick of the light, but Silas thought he might be able to reach the bottom. He put his hand onto the cold surface of the water. He was about to stretch his hand below toward the objects that reflected the glow of the bone-white moon, when from behind him, the driver’s voice called out, “Sir? Sir?”

Silas walked quietly away from the millpond.

Below the surface of the water, something stirred, awoke, and watched him walk away.

A
BOVE THE WATER, SOMETHING LOOKED
.

Below the surface something saw.

She could feel him.

She wanted him and began to stir her mind up from the murk and mud.

I am here, where I was

I am Be
.

The high torches bring shadows

grasses turn, weave about, fold and flash, leaves above
,

some sink down

bright leaf, dark leaf, catching the torchlight
.

Even in dark nothing is still

little crabs move along all the white branches and I cannot sleep

eels thread through the hard sticks that are mine and I

cry because I am not with him

not warm

when jewels are in the water weeds it is quiet

nothing breaks the high still glass above

he has not been

once a time

anyone is not there

is not saying my name

I want to be

I want to be

I am again

but now and there on the glass

his dark moves

moves for me to be

to be with him

the dark on the glass is Solace

we will be

now in the bright time

he puts his face down to the glass

looks low for me

he is looking

looking down for me to be with him

he was again

I did not see before when my own blood men took the

thyme he gave me and put me in the cold bed and I

thought he left and always

forgot the thyme he gave me wild

from the mountain time

there was another

But I did not forget

that one did not want to be with me

But I did not forget

Even when the crabs and eels and the white things that

are mine were before my eyes and I saw little in the glass
.

But again

he wants to be with me

my Solace

the low places will be high places he will give me thyme

again

he will make cold bed into crystal fountain like the words

he gave me and upon it he will pile all the flowers of the

mountain

I will go

I will go

I hear that song again

he looked upon the glass

looked for me

I will go

I will Be

I will go and will hold thyme again

the thyme he gives me

our time will be

I want to Be

I will comb my hair

I will rise up

I will Be

and he will be with me

and I

will not

come back

to this

cold bed

alone
.

T
HE CAR PULLED UP TO UNCLE’S HOUSE
on Temple Street, and the driver removed the suitcases from the trunk and took everything up to the porch before opening the car doors for Silas and his mother. He told them good night without looking up, got back in the car, and drove off. Silas could see confusion on his mother’s face. Maybe Dolores had been thinking the driver was in Uncle’s employ, which they could both now see was clearly not the case. So much for Dolores’s hopeful plans of chauffeured shopping trips in the far more fashionable town of Kingsport.

Silas didn’t really care who had hired the driver, but he was wondering now if anyone,
anyone
, in his family owned a damn car. Didn’t people travel? Run errands? Maybe Uncle had a garage around the back and kept his car in there.

The house was criss-crossed with shadows from the high trees, and the moment Silas took a step toward his new home, he felt dizzy. It was like the time when he was young and had a high fever, and the margins of the room and the world disappeared. There were no walls, no floor or ceiling, just some infinite plane stretching out from him. He stood there, waiting on the sidewalk, convinced that when he took his next step, he would fall into empty space.

“Silas?” his mother said impatiently. She had already stepped onto the columned porch.

“Coming,” Silas replied. He took one step and held fast. He paused another second, while he waited for the earth to fall away from his feet. When it didn’t, he began to walk slowly up the steps to his uncle’s house, where he saw the massive front door open like a giant’s mouth. The iron door was ornate but impractical, and Silas could see the frame had long ago been reinforced to support it on large hinges. It certainly was much older than the house. His mother looked different in the light pouring through the doorway. Her back was straight. She walked right in like she lived there, without hesitating even a moment on the threshold.

It was long past dusk, but a whip-poor-will in the tree next to the house continued making its call, over and over, filling the night with its name.

To this lonely song, Silas slowly climbed the seven steps up to the porch of the house where his father was born. He paused at the threshold. His senses were floundering for associations, something to tell him,
You belong here
.

Silas stepped inside and heard the heavy door close behind him. To his right in the parlor, he could see that the windows looking onto the street had decorative shutters across them, with just a thin line open at the top to allow some moonlight in.