Glass Boys (7 page)
A shock of icy water had stabbed through his clothes, and Garrett was instantly numb. Twisting in the water, he saw the blackness below, shadows skittering, and above, a broken blue blanket. He floated upwards, mittens gliding over slick undersides of the pans, head knocking against a solid ceiling. Lungs bursting, only seconds until his muscles released, chest accepting the salt water, breathing it in and out like liquid air. Cold and scorching at the same time. Minutes passed, and he dozed in a limp sitting position, suspended in a dark place he could not describe. Where he felt nothing, no fear. Then, he noticed a bright window in the ice, and the face of a boy, plump cheeks, full lips, golden glowing halo around his head. Fingers of light reaching, reaching. Garrett turned away only for a moment, saw his father in the water behind him. Coming for him. But as much as he craved the comfort of his father's arms, it was nothing compared to the warmth the boy was promising. Garrett could not turn away from the light. Like a fish now, fins renewed, Garrett managed a kick. He felt his foot hooking into his father's neck, pinched for just a moment by his father's collapsing chin and shoulder. A second kick, striking his father's face with his boot, a burst of bloody ink snaking through the water.
Hands on his coat, tugging, yanking, some other force moving him up and out. The ocean agreeing to release him. The boy wanted to be part of Garrett, wanted Garrett to be part of him. Garrett felt it through and through and through. And after that, even though his mother repeated “'Twas only Morris Murphy,” Garrett clearly recalled this other boy, a child, asking him to wait a little longer. And instead of taking him upwards, he kissed life into him. Kissed him back home.
“Hey fellers,” Garrett hollered, hands to the sides of his mouth.
The boys stopped, looked up, yelled back. “What do you want?”
“Come here,” he called, scooping the air. “Come up here.”
“Says who?”
“Says... says... says me.”
Silence for a moment, and they gawked at Garrett, gawked at each other. And next, childish laughter galloping up on the wind. Tongues stuck out, and then one of the boys turned, bent, hauled down his trousers, flash of pink skin. “And who's you?” one screamed. “Who's you? Telling us what to do.”
Garrett felt his fever break. He was present again, fully inside his body. Shivering. He realized they were older than he had anticipated. Not children at all. Would not listen to him. Wouldn't understand. Only viewed him as a newly sprouted teenager, suddenly tall and sinewy and awkward. If they came closer, they would see his cheeks and forehead, covered with scabs and whiteheads, his face an oily joke he tried to hide with a mess of orange hair.
He turned, tucked his hands into his coat, strolled down over the rocky slope and up onto the laneway. He leaned against a picket fence, dipped his chapped hands into the pockets of his jacket. Inside the left one, his fingers found his small knife, a crumpled glove, a plastic bobber, three lumps wrapped in waxy paper. He pulled out a lump, removed the molasses taffy and popped it into his mouth. Then, in his right pocket, he retrieved the one item with which he would never part. Blackened edges, but no longer any trace of smoke. He pinched it between thumb and forefinger, looked only for a moment. Just enough to drive the cold out from his bones.
MRS. FAGAN DROVE up over the crest of the hill, pulled her car out onto the rocky cliff. Edging forward slowly, she stopped just as her front wheels touched the fat log. When she looked out over the dashboard, it appeared as though she were airborne, heading into the heaving sea. She wouldn't hesitate to admit (but only to herself, of course) that the thought was not altogether displeasing. But she wouldn't, wouldn't ever. Who would look after Garrett?
Taking a deep breath, she could smell the wet wool of her coat. Yes, her winter coat. Still. She hated spring, the false promise of it. How a bud or two swelled on the trees, teasing her, then, before she knew it, ice bullied its way down from the north, clogged up the harbor. Days or weeks of frosty gales, crystals in the wind, not a blue wave in sight. Icebergs stranded, wedged in by their girth beneath the surface.
Cold, cloudless days like this reminded her of troubled times. Reminded her of the day her first husband, Wesley, drowned. He had been trying to save Garrett, who had wandered out onto the broken shards that filled the harbor. Minute after minute passed, before Garrett was hauled out of the sea by their eight-year-old neighbor. She watched him lying there, crumbled on a drifting pan, clothes freezing to the ice. Life pushed back into his body through his willing lungs.
“A miracle,” she called it, but others weren't so sure. Ruthless rumbling that God had met the boy, rejected him. People wondered why. “Well, He liked Wesley well enough,” Mrs. Glass, as she'd been known then, offered in weak retort. Handsome and clever, she thought that man was, and he remained at large for several months. She maintained a foolish hope until the spring thaw, when his body, bloated and damaged, skin slipping like a loose wet glove, was finally spit up onto the rocks.
If she twisted in her seat now, she could just make out the form of her son. He wasn't down on the beach like she'd feared he would be. Not like those foolish children out jumping pans and squealing. No, he had listened to her, and was seated up high, on the cliff. She placed her damp mitten over her mouth, felt the sharpness of a burn mark in the wool. She couldn't fathom it, how her son might be feeling. To witness the arrival of something that nearly killed him. To be mesmerized by it. She could only dream of the sort of torment trapped inside.
CHEEKS HOT, HAIR standing on end, dozy Lewis Trench lay his head on the shoulder of his wife.
“Tell me the truth, Mrs. Wilda Trench,” he said playfully. “Tell me who you really are.”
“You're being silly,” she said, patting his hand.
“We've been married a year, now. Don't you trust me?”
“Of course.” It was easier to lie.
“Are you really a mermaid, Mrs. Trench?”
“Do I have a tail, Mr. Trench?”
“I believes you do. One perfect lovely sexy tail.”
“You'd better watch I don't swat you with it.”
He lay down, nestled his head onto her lap, and his breathing grew steady, reliable. She leaned back against the pea green chesterfield, and watched the reflection of the flames in the sheen on his forehead. May had been a cold month, and Lewis had lit a fire almost every evening. Used up the last of the birch. As she stroked his soft hair, she whispered a phrase from the children's story she'd just been reading from a thick book Lewis had owned as a boy: “Is your eyes awake? Is your eyes asleep?”
He smiled, but kept his eyes closed, and she tugged a blanket off the chair, smoothed it over him. Crackling fire, wind scraping a branch against a windowpane, but beyond that it was quiet. No one was asking for her help. No one was showing her what she'd done. Telling her she was responsible for a black stain in the mud. Perhaps here in this little house, surrounded by woods and gently rolling water, she might be able to lock away the past. Perhaps she should try. So, while he lay there on her shoulder, mind lost in deep sleep, she finally told her husband the truth. Part of it, anyway.
EARLY ONE MORNING, seventeen-year-old Wilda Burry stood smack in the middle of the only road leading out of Teeter Beach, her plaid skirt hiked to upper thigh. She was waiting for one of the few men who owned a car to pass. But no one was out for a drive, only Old Mackie, who edged up beside her with his creaky wagon, two dusty horses. “Put yer leg away, for the love of God,” he said. “I kin cart ye over to Spoonie Bay without none of that.” She hoisted herself and her father's kit bag, stuffed with a sealskin coat, up and over the wooden boards, and plunked herself down on a pile of freshly cut logs, bark skin still slick with a nervous sweat.
“Nothing wrong with cutting out, Wilda maid,” he said as he stopped near the stage and waited for her to jump off. He grimaced when the wind lifted her hair, and he saw the bruises on her cheeks, split bottom lip. He waved to his son, and Baby Mackie bounded up from the broad flake. “Ouch, maid. Who took der boots to ye?” Then, glancing up at Old Mackie, he nodded, said, “Lucky day, darlin'. 'Bout to aul 'er up for the winter.” Baby let her sit on the damp floor of his skiff, flattened kit bag beneath her backside, and she gripped the sides as they skipped and bumped over waves, skiff taking flight, striking water, salt spray coating her cheeks, stiffening her hair. Old and Baby understood she was leaving everything behind, and never coming back. And they didn't blame her, wished her the best. No child would be untouched after having a mother like she had, and witnessing her father stumble so brutally into the afterlife. Most agreed Wilda was as good as she could be.
She'd planned to keep traveling until she hit Florida or California or someplace warm. But she had little say in the direction of her journey. On the main roads, drivers slowed, eager smiles, and without any money she would oblige them with her small hands before accepting another fifty clicks of transportation or a night at Aunt Whoever's, or a motel just off the highway. Sometimes food from a cardboard dish or brown paper. Once a silver dollar hamburger from the lunch counter at a gas station.
Several days of travel, she headed south with a truck driver, and south some more with another, and then a bit east with a man and briefcase and a vacuum, and then south, and further east with someone named Dicky who had a wineskin that was always plump. “Wrong way,” she said or thought as she dozed, a hardened towel balled between her head and the vibrating window. Teeth clinking. But she never got out of the warm car that smelled of leather and cigarette butts and spilled whiskey.
When she reached the city, she tripped onto a sidewalk and soon realized the folly of her plan. November was not a time to take flight. In those couple of days, temperatures had dropped, skeleton trees now lined the neat streets, and powdery snow was drifting into damp corners. She blinked with the glare of sunlight on the harbor, kicked Dicky's car door closed with the thick heel of her shoe, and wandered. She had never been to the city, and she liked the bigness of the place. Each store window offering her something that might make her happy, from knee-high boots with zippers to oily fish and chips. But she didn't have any money, only a handful of change in a drawstring purse, now coated with eye shadow that had opened when jostled about.
She unzipped the bag, and the smell from the old coat, contained for days, assaulted her nose. Still, she slid it on, buttoned up against the cold, and walked quickly along the roads, thankful that the gusty winds tugged the odor away from her. Though she dared not admit it, she felt hopeful in this new place where nothing was known. Hopeful for the first time in her life.
Bells tinkled when she entered the jewelry store, but the man with the gray flannel suit and his daughter in the sweater set never acknowledged her. She tried fine clothing, musical instruments, timepieces, lady's shoes, yarn and fabric. But her inquiries were answered with clicking tongues, giggles, and once just a glare, shot out over the rims of lowered tortoiseshell glasses. Even in the shop where they sold milk, bottles of home made jam with cutesy labels, and lobsters carved from pine, the owner behind the counter shook his head, averted his eyes, covered his nose with the back of his hand. Said, “Maybe you should wash yourself first.”
She roamed, taking a street here, a flight of stairs there, another street, moving further away from the water, her direction unknown. Pausing in the shadow of an alleyway between two buildings, she crouched and touched the tips of her shoes with cold fingers, stuck her nose into the prickly lapel of the coat. Closed her eyes, and inhaled that musty odor, the scent of dead animal, hint of rot. Well, maybe more than a hint. The air was a mugging, as though someone had clapped a dead hand over her mouth. But still, she accepted it into her lungs. The coat had belonged to her father. Along with the rest of his belongings, she found it stuffed in a box, abandoned in the barn. Water had seeped in around the clothes, handkerchiefs, his khaki housewife, and nourished an orange mold that streaked all the fabric. She noticed evidence that mice had resided in amongst the folds, and when her fingers slipped through a tear in the lining, the back of the seal pelt felt soapy. Wilda still wanted it though. Wanted to keep something that belonged to him and treasure it.
When she was little, she would hide inside the coat. Opening the wooden closet with ill-fitting doors, she would step on old shoes and boots, worm her arms up and in, dangle, completely obscured by fur. Her mother might open the closet, jam her own coat or hat inside, never notice that Wilda had transformed. That there was a seal in the closet that was fatter and sillier. But her father would notice. Haul open the door, and she would hold her breath when he'd exclaim, in his melted way of talking, “Lor, Jays. Nev woulda fathomed.” Uncontrollable snicker when he squeezed the coat with his two big hands. “We got us-selves real live wilda-beast. Jessie, come see.” With that, her mother would strut over, yank open the front panels of the coat, surprise, child revealed. Smacks about the head. “Wilda Burry. Get your bloody arse out of there right this instant fore I tans your hide. Always at where you got no business.”
When she stole it from the box in the barn, she didn't allow an ounce of guilt to settle. It should belong to her now; it was an important feature for so many of her memories. Her father was always wearing it when she thought about him. Sliding down the back of Old Mackie's land, the two of them on a long wooden sled. Making perfect holes with the auger, lying flat on their bellies, foreheads touching, watching fish nibble pale worms. When she arrived at the woodpile on any given blustery afternoon, he would always wink at her, then abandon his crosscut saw for the two-man. Memories like this made her glad, and she ignored the fact that she could not recall ever seeing the coat on his back. Or that he never did any of those things, and was long dead when she thought them up. But they would have been real, she was certain, if he had of stayed around. If, as her mother always told her, Wilda had gone to find help, instead of running off to play on the beach.
