“It’d been a long day.” We moved out onto the open water, the boat just lolling along, back toward the Scissortail and her place. I wasn’t in any hurry to finish the trip.
Overhead, a nighthawk darted in a jagged line, hunting insects. Both of us watched it, and the conversation lulled. Andrea threaded her fingers into her hair, bracing her elbow on the backrest and leaning on her hand. “So do you still have family down there, in Alpine?”
“Some.” It crossed my mind that the conversation tonight was more about me than usual. The better everything got here in Moses Lake, the more I wanted to leave the past a few hundred miles down the road, shake it off like west Texas dust.“A brother and sister-in-law and their three girls, another sister-in-law and her three boys. Some aunts, uncles, cousins on my mama’s side of the family – that sort of thing. We generate a pretty decent crowd at holidays.”
But the truth was that those holidays had always centered around my mother. Now that she was gone and the old house had been sold off, nobody seemed to know what to do. Get-togethers reminded everyone that Shawn, Aaron, little Mica, and now Mama were missing. There were too many holes in the fabric for it to hold together anymore.
“Sounds nice.” Andrea’s comment fell like a ball in left field, dropping a long way from the glove.“I always wanted to come from a big family. Growing up, we just had my mom, my dad, Megan, and me . . . and my grandmother and grandfather, and one uncle sometimes, but my mother and her brother never liked each other much. My dad was an only child, and his parents were gone by the time I could remember.”
“Be careful what you wish for. Growing up as part of a passel isn’t any picnic, either. Nothing’s ever your own, but you learn not to be late to the table – that’s for sure. You show up late when you’re one of four boys, you’ll starve.” My mind was so far back in the past, I didn’t even realize where I’d gone until I’d opened the door.
“That must be something, being one of four boys,” Andrea clicked her tongue against her teeth, like she was trying to picture it as we came into Larkspur Cove. “What was that like?”
“Wild. Car trips were always fun. Mama didn’t even bother to figure out who’d started the fight. She just reached in the back and started smacking.” I could’ve told her stories, but we were closing in on the dock, and I knew time was about up. Like it or not, pretty soon I’d be saying good-bye and heading home to the raccoon. My wildlife rehabber was recovering from a post-surgical infection, so the little bandito was still with me. I’d thought I was rid of him when I’d dropped him at the vet clinic on my way to do flood duty, but no such luck. The minute I was home, the vet wanted me to take the little troublemaker off his hands.
“Seemed like my mama spent half her time patching skinned knees and the other half out at the willow tree, cutting a switch. She grabbed me by the ear and tanned my hide many a time, that’s for sure. But I’ve gotta say, I had it coming. She was a good God-fearing woman, and she was bound and determined to make sure that none of us went the wrong way.”
We were within a few feet of the dock now, and I turned the wheel, pulling the boat alongside and tossing a line on. When I looked back, Andrea was still in her seat, her face turned toward me. “So one of your brothers lives in Alpine. Where do the rest live?”
It hit me like a right cross, then – that feeling of being backed up against the cold stone wall of stuff I didn’t want to talk about. I could either slide out of there in a hurry, try to change the subject, or crack open old wounds right in front of her. On the other hand, if you want to get to someplace new, sooner or later you’ve got to take a step in a different direction
.
“There’s just my middle brother, Jay, and me, anymore. My oldest brother was killed in Afghanistan, and my baby brother passed a few years ago. It’s one of those stories that’s tough to go into. I’ll tell you about it sometime, but not right now, all right?”
She nodded, her shoulders tucking in, like she was embarrassed to have brought up something painful. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”
“It’s okay,” I said, and I felt her hand slip into mine, small and warm. Her face turned upward, her eyes dark in the moonglow, like liquid. Slipping a thumb under her chin, I tilted it upward, looked into her in a way I never had in all the years of hits and misses, and girls I’d dated but never got too attached to. I’d always been satisfied to keep my issues to myself and let other people keep theirs. With Andrea, things were different in some way I didn’t even understand yet.
I leaned over and kissed her, because we’d talked long enough.
When the kiss was over, we stood on the dock and talked some more – longer than we probably should’ve. She asked about how I felt when my daddy left, and so I told her. “For a while, Mama just kept telling us he was gone working, but then she finally sat us down and let us know they were splitting up. There she was with teenagers to raise, and she must’ve been worried about whether she could handle everything, but she didn’t let it show. She just told us we were still a family, and it’d be okay, and we believed her. She made it all right, even though she had to earn a living, and she never knew for sure when my daddy would drop by or whether he’d bring money. Mama just told us that what he decided to do didn’t have anything to do with us or with her – it was him that was broken, and he’d have to work it out.
“But I think the best thing my mama did was not take any excuses. She let us know that everyone’s got struggles, and she still expected us to say
yes, ma’am
and
no, sir
, and keep up in school, and do our best not to embarrass the family name – which wasn’t to say we were always successful at that. We were boys, after all.”
I left off before adding that sometimes what Mama had to say wasn’t what we wanted to hear, but you could count on her to give you her opinion anyway. The last thing she’d said to me, when she was thin and pale as a ghost in her hospital bed, was
It’s time to quit
hiding under the blanket, Martin
. At first I thought she was cold and that she wanted a blanket, but then I got the message. She was telling me I needed to quit holing up in the grief over Aaron and Mica. It was time to shuck off the blanket, get out of bed, and get busy with the hard work ahead.
Those were tough words to hear, but she was right. I wasn’t hanging on for Aaron and Mica; I was doing it for me. Now it was time to move on – not just a little, but all the way out from under the blanket.
I walked Andrea to the edge of the dock and kissed her goodnight, then watched as she headed up the hill to the house. I waited until she was inside before I got in the boat and went home.
For once, my cabin was in one piece – the little bandito hadn’t found a way out of the cage. To make things even better, there was a message on my answering machine from the rehabber. He was in shape to take in animals, and he’d be coming by to pick up Bandito tomorrow, which meant I’d be a single guy without a roommate again.
I went to bed, thinking I was actually gonna miss Bandito a little bit. But just a little bit.
By the next day, I was ready to throw him in the lake. He’d chattered and carried on most of the night, upset that he couldn’t get the cage open. One thing about raccoons – when you make them mad, they stay mad. I hadn’t gotten a nickel’s worth of sleep.
I showed up at the Waterbird for morning coffee looking rough enough that even the docksiders noticed. Sheila gave me the hawkeye while I was paying for a doughnut. She tried to pawn off a breakfast burrito on me, but I’d learned to stay away from those things. With Sheila in charge, there was no telling what you’d find hidden in there – healthy stuff that might shock a meat-eating man’s system and cause him to do something weird, like listen to opera or watch figure skating when there was a perfectly good football game on.
“You look awful,” she pointed out, like I didn’t know that for myself. “Long night?”
“Not so bad.”
“You work on the lake after you left here?” For some reason, Sheila was on me like a tick on a back-porch hound. I wasn’t in the mood for it, really. I had a headache, and I was kicking myself for not asking Andrea on a real date when we were together last night and the mood was right. It was time to quit sneaking around in the dark, like there was something wrong with us seeing each other.Time to move on with life. I was even thinking of telling Reverend Hay I’d take that little part in his next theater production. There wasn’t much reason for me to avoid Hay anymore, since sometime in the wee hours of the night I’d promised God that, if He’d just make that raccoon shut up, I’d go to church. God could probably get through to a lot of wayward folks if He’d just send a raccoon to keep them up thinking all night long.
“Quiet evening out on the water after it got dark. Not much to do,” I said, and waited while Sheila dragged her feet about getting napkins and gave my doughnut dirty looks. She was wishing she could talk me out of that thing and into one of her tofu burritos. Fat chance.
“I noticed there wasn’t much traffic.” Finally she found the napkins, then took the time to put some in the basket on the counter before delivering a couple my way. “You catching anyone fishing without a license up in Larkspur Cove?”
In the docksiders’ booth, Nester choked on a swallow of coffee. I checked over my shoulder and caught Nester, Burt, and Pop Dorsey watching me. They had a couple of the regulars with them this morning, too – Charley from Catfish Charley’s and his brother, Herbert. I got the idea that I’d been the hub of conversation before I walked in. Leave it to Sheila to be watching the lake at night.
“Saw your lights headin’ across-water in a hurry when I put the dogs out.” Nester tossed in his two cents. “Figured you was after somebody. You apprehend any dangerous felons when you left Larkspur, did’ja?”
Burt snickered again, and Dorsey joined him. It didn’t take a genius or a fully awake man to know what they were getting at. I felt my ears going hot. “It’s way too early for this,” I said. “Hand me my thermos. I’ll go fill it someplace where the clientele’s not so windy.”
Nester belly laughed. “Whew, listen at Romeo, there! He’s breakin’ out the five-dollar words now.
Clientele
. Been hangin’ around in Larkspur, gettin’ all high-tone.”
“Y’all . . .” Sheila jumped in like a schoolmarm hushing a couple troublemakers, but the word came out in a laugh, like
ya-ha-hall
. She grabbed my thermos and headed to the coffeepot to fill it up.
“All right, that’s it. I’m heading out,” I said, then moved down the counter so I’d be ready to hit the door with my breakfast. Not that I minded the ribbing so much, really. It was probably the push I needed to get on with asking Andrea for a real date. Looked like everybody knew about us anyway. It was so obvious that even the docksiders had figured it out. If I didn’t do something in public with her now, the boys would have me pegged as some kind of waterborne Casanova, sneaking around under the cover of darkness.
I pointed a finger at their table while I was waiting on Sheila to cap my thermos and hand it over. “Next time I catch one of you yay-hoos over limit on fat bass in your live wells, I’m gonna throw the book at you.”
Nester, Burt, and the others roared, but Dorsey’s smile faded a little. “Guess I’m safe on that one,” he said when the noise quieted down. “Since Sheila won’t let me get near the water.” He scowled toward the counter, like a prisoner looking at his jailor.
Quick as a flock of sparrows, the laughs were gone. Sheila huffed and set my thermos on the counter. I grabbed it and my doughnut. “You give us a few more days, Pop. We’ll get that dock fixed up to where even Sheila can’t find a reason to worry.”
“We’re gonna use my welder and some scrap iron this evening to get Pop’s boat hoist in shipshape,” Burt added.
Sheila rolled her eyes, huffed, and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Guess we got rid’a her.” Nester chuckled.
Pop gave me a grateful look. The docksiders started talking about the hoist, and I headed out while the conversation was on something other than Andrea and me. Before I started down the hill, I called to see whether Andrea would be up in Chinquapin Peaks around lunchtime. I suggested lunch at the park – my turn to bring the food – and she took me up on it.
“I’ll grab something at Catfish Charley’s so we don’t have to eat alfalfa sprouts and goat cheese,” I told her. “Sheila’s on a nutrition push again.”
Andrea laughed and said, “I don’t mind alfalfa sprouts.”
Lunch in the park wasn’t really the date I had in mind, but I figured I still had a couple days before the weekend – enough time to come up with something good to do this Saturday.
We went on like that for the rest of the week – I called her in the morning, found out where she was going to be around lunchtime, and we met for lunch. The only thing that bothered me about it was that, whenever I cycled the subject around to her plans for the weekend, she found some way to change to another subject – any other subject. We talked about life and movies, and favorite TV shows when we were growing up, where we’d gone to school, the fact that we’d both spent time around Moses Lake.
I told her why I’d wanted to come back, and while we sat listening to the Wailing Woman and the mockingbirds, I told her about losing Aaron and Mica in the boat accident.
“That must be hard,” she said, slipping her hand over mine. “I can’t imagine.”
“It is hard,” I said. “It really is hard.”
“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m a good listener.”