What the Waves Know (19 page)

“Don't touch the controls.” Remy wagged a finger my way and slipped onto deck. She wasn't going to answer me, not really. I could feel the truth tingling through me. She knew what had happened to my father. She was retreating and it was the first time I had seen her back away from anything. Watching her make her way toward the ramp from the window, I remembered what she had said about nobody's legs being built to run forever. I knew she was right about that.

When Remy finally dropped me back home exhausted and smelling of taxi fumes, Luke was not yapping to greet me. Inside, my mother's voice filtered toward the entryway.

“Okay, thank you. Please call us if you see him.”

I stopped in the doorway feeling the hairs prickle up on my arms and the bottom give way in my stomach. Then a thought came back to me like a rush of water. That morning when I had run back to find my Yemaya Stone, Luke had been on my heels. I'd tripped right over him, but in my rush to the cliffs I hadn't even paid attention. I'd just kept running. How many hours had I been gone?

“Maybe Izabella took him with her,” Grandma Jo said, her voice calm.

“No. She wouldn't have brought him down to Herman's with her. And they left straight from there for the ferry run. Remy wouldn't have let her take him back on the ferry. He
threw up the entire way over here. The police haven't seen him. They said they'd keep an eye out, but . . .”

“It's going to be okay. Dogs run. It's in their nature. They can find their way home from a thousand miles away.”

“He's not a dog; he's a puppy.”

“Did you call the vet for the island?”

“Yes. He asked if Luke had tags and if he'd been vaccinated for rabies. It seems there are a lot of foxes on the island, and with Tom's salt licks drawing them in . . .” Worry filled my mother's voice. “What am I going to do, Mom? I don't even want to think about how Iz will handle another loss. Shit!”

“It'll be fine, Zo. Someone will find him.”

“And what if they don't? The whole reason I got her that dog . . . What if . . . Any more loss and she's going to disappear inside herself forever.”

“There are no other ‘if's. They'll find him and Izabella will be fine.”

I crept to the kitchen doorway in time to see Grandma Jo brushing back my mother's hair with her hand. My mother was sitting on the edge of the counter like a teenager holding the phone in one hand. For a fraction of a second, I thought she looked like me. Maybe it was the way her hair fell down to hang off her shoulders, or the fact that I sat on the counter like that. Or maybe it was the tremble of fear in her voice that I might disappear and leave her behind. And for the first time in a very long
time, I believed that she didn't want me to. When she saw me, she slid down.

“Izabella! You didn't take Luke into town, did you?”

I shook my head, trying not to cry.

Was he here this morning? After I left?
My hands were shaking so hard it was difficult to write. She must have noticed the tears biting the corners of my eyes and my hand trembling because she quickly started repeating what Grandma Jo had told her.

“I don't remember. I don't think so. Okay, don't panic. It's okay. Dogs run all the time. He couldn't have gone far; it's an island—a very small island. Why don't you go get Remy to pick us up in the taxi? Maybe he followed you to the pier. I'll walk around here and look for him.” I glanced out the window at the darkening sky, remembering how scared he'd been during the storm. I'd made it across the bay twice without retching but now felt like I might throw up. I was like a giant walking eraser wandering through the world making the things I loved vanish one at a time. “Go!”

By the time
Remy answered the door she'd already changed into her tattered terry-cloth robe, her red hair exploding around her face like licks of flame. I pulled out my pad.

Luke's missing.

She sighed heavily. “Do you know I haven't even sat down yet?”

I looked at her pleadingly.

“Fine,” she huffed. “I knew that damnable animal would bring nothing but trouble from the moment he lost his lunch all over my boat.” She tried her best to be annoyed, but I could read a trace of concern on her brow.

Grabbing her keys, she did not even bother to get dressed before starting up the taxi and unlocking the passenger door. “I suppose your mother wants to tag along, too. Get in!”

The Purple Monster roared down the lane, stopping at the Booth House only long enough for my mother to hop in.

“Grandma Jo is going to stay here in case he comes back on his own,” she said, climbing in the backseat with a box of Milk Bones and rolling down the window.

“Who the hell are you,” Remy snipped, “Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail of food home?”

“I don't know. Just in case he won't come to us.”

“He's a dog. They come to dead carcasses, cat shit, and fire hydrants.”

“Well, I didn't have any of those handy.”

Remy shook her head, setting her hair dancing.

“I don't know where he would go.” My mother stuck her head through the window. I bit my lip, studying the darkness beyond. “Luke . . . Come here, boy!
Luke!”
She shook the box out the window.

“Well, my car still stinks to high heaven of poodle from this afternoon. If he's any kind of dog at all he'll follow the
scent,” Remy said, barreling around the bend fast enough to send shells flying in every direction. “Besides, we're on an island. He can only go so far before reaching water.”

I looked at Remy feeling my knees go weak. By 10:00
P.M.,
he'd already gone far enough that we could not find him, becoming the second member of my family to go missing from me on this island.

When there were no other side roads to bounce down, Remy dropped us off, promising to check the cliffs and orchard once more and call around the island in the morning. I felt my mother's arm around my shoulders as she drove off.

“He'll come back, Iz. Don't worry. Dogs can travel thousands of miles to find their way home. It's in their nature.”

I nodded, studying the moon overhead, fat and white as a winter frost, watching it shimmer and dance on the ocean below.

Come on, Be. Come dance with the moon. . . .
I pinched my eyes closed, pushing the memory back.

From the front walk, I could hear Grandma Jo break out in song to Joan Baez on the radio: “May you build a ladder to the stars . . . and climb on every rung . . .”

My mother rested her head on mine, chuckling. “You realize she's probably dancing around naked in there.” I couldn't remember the last time we'd stood so close. Usually one of us was pushing away from the other like a ship avoiding a reef.

“You made it to the mainland without throwing up?” my mother asked.

I nodded, lowering my eyes to trace the edges of the bushes for some sign of Luke, but they were still and dark.

“Telly still using the BMW as a lounge chair?”

I bit the inside of my cheek and nodded again.

On the edge of the cliff, Witch's Peak poked through the treetops like a cut of onyx in the moonlight, and I couldn't say that it wasn't a trick of light, but I swore I saw a shadow cross its tip, pause, and disappear.

“Let's go in.” My mother turned for the door. “I'll leave the window open and sleep on the sofa. If he doesn't come back by morning, I'll go back out and look for him.”

That night as
I sat staring out the window, searching for Luke in the moonlight, an orange fox made her way toward Mr. O'Malley's salt licks with her kit so near their fur touched.

Something from earlier that day came back to me. As Lindsey had stormed away with suds in her hair, she'd told me I was going to pay for what I'd done. Now images of her throwing rocks at the seagull were haunting me, and I was pacing the floor, trying to convince myself that nobody could be that evil.

I walked across the room pulling free the small blue satchel and did something I had not in a very long time:
I prayed. I prayed to Yemaya, God, the Nikommo, and anyone else who would listen to keep Luke safe. A shadow on Witch's Peak shifted, looking back at me—or maybe it was just a cloud passing in front of the moon. From a place deep and unexpected, a small sob broke out of me.

The next morning Luke was not back and my mother had just finished off a stack of posters that read, L
OST
S
HAR-
P
EI
P
UPPY
P
LEASE
C
ALL 335-9174
. With Grandma Jo's interference, my mother agreed to let me ride Remy's bicycle into town to pass them out and look for him—though she would not have if she'd known where I was headed. It was already eight o'clock. In two hours, I was due to help Remy run a bake sale, so I needed to hurry if I was going to find Lindsey beforehand.

I straddled the candy-apple Schwinn, tottering back and forth and trying to recall the last time I'd been on a bike as I steered it out of the drive. At the end of the lane, I found Remy pinching back mums in her front garden. Mr. O'Malley was standing shotgun with a spade balanced in one hand, a pot in the other, and his pipe balanced between his teeth like the tin man in
The Wizard of Oz
. I
pulled over to hand him a poster for the taxi stand, anxious to make it quick.

“Here's a helper,” Mr. O'Malley murmured around the mouthpiece of the pipe, trying to hand over the pot before I'd even gotten my feet free of the pedals. I was just about to take it from him, only to be pulled up short by Remy.

“Don't you take that!” she snapped, nearly taking my head off in the process. “The moment he reclaims his hands, he intends to light that pipe full of hell grass. Do you suppose I've been kneeling here so long my knees are broken to bits for no good reason at all?”

Mr. O'Malley gave her a soft kick in the rear end as I handed him a poster.

“He'll be back, don't you worry,” Mr. O'Malley assured me.

“Oh, Maynard Herman rang this morning, said the window will be ready this afternoon. Riley and his dad are going to set it, but he's expecting you tomorrow to paint the frame. Then I'll show you how to glaze it.”

Mr. O'Malley started to say something but instead broke out in a series of choking coughs that rattled all six feet three inches of him.

“Dad?” Remy relieved him of his clay pot then reached for his empty hand. She held it gently a moment before pulling herself to her feet and digging into his shirt pocket to pull forth a crinkled sack of pipe tobacco. He didn't seem to notice as she pinched a wad between her fingers and tucked it neatly into the stack of his pipe.
“Dad,” she repeated. “Here.” She struck a match on the toe of her boot and touched it to the bowl of his pipe, puffing on it three times so that sweet smoke spiraled out before poking it between his lips.

“What?” he answered, a big old grizzly bear pulled too soon from hibernation.

“If you're not careful your lungs will clear. Then I will be stuck with you forever and never receive my rightful inheritance.”

Straightening myself on the seat, I shook my head at the two of them and waved goodbye.

“You'll meet me at the bake sale by ten o'clock, right?” Remy glanced at me.

I nodded, making off down the lane.

It was early yet, but Remy had told me there was no school this week and I suspected if I found Riley I'd find Lindsey trailing him like a pesky burdock. He was probably already down at the docks.

The tires of the Schwinn made little trenches in the shell gravel, slowing me down until I hit the cobblestones of Main Street. Giving the handlebars a turn, I pulled down the rough planks of Steamship Wharf and finally leaned the bike against the wooden sea witch.

Telly was busy checking the roster inside the ticket booth, and I could see Riley on the upper deck fiddling with a loose rail, but Lindsey was nowhere to be seen. Snatching the bike upright, I walked it back down the pier past the Anchor Diner and headed for Merchant's
Hardware. I set it in the bike rack that Lindsey and Carly had been sitting on two days earlier and laughing at me as I worked at Mr. Herman's. It seemed to be their haunt.

But when fifteen minutes later there was no sign of them, I pushed the kickstand back up. I'd just swung one leg over the bar when the familiar pudge of Carly's butt backed out of the White Whale as she balanced an ice cream cone in one hand and a glass of water in the other. She tilted her head, nibbling at the bottom of the cone before sucking the ice cream through it as if it were a straw, when the door opened again and Lindsey came through it carrying a cup of water. Tossing the Schwinn to the cobblestones with a clatter, I marched across the street stopping both of them in their tracks. Maybe it was the look on my face, which said I'd just as soon clobber them as look at them, or maybe they were too busy eating, but neither one said a word until I was in arm's reach.

“Look, Carly,” Lindsey sang. “It's the little janitor.”

Glaring hard at her, I took the missing-dog poster I was holding and shoved it into her hand. She glanced down at it and I was surprised to see her actually reading the words on the page.

“Ohhh. What's the matter? Did you lose your puppy?” Lindsey dropped the poster, letting it flitter to the ground at her feet. Carly laughed, taking a bite of ice cream the size of my fist, which left a creamy smear of vanilla rimming her mouth. The fact that she was eating ice cream
for breakfast said something about her, even if I didn't know exactly what.

I picked the poster back up, shoving it at Lindsey a second time.

“Get that out of my face!” Lindsey snipped, tossing my hand aside and starting to walk away. I grabbed her arm, pushing her hard enough to plant her back a step.

When she tried to push past me a second time, I caught her by the wrist and leaned my shoulder into her to hold her still.

“Whh—wh—where?” The words fell into the inch between our bodies as nothing more than a whisper, but they were there just the same. Taking two steps back, Carly watched me with eyes as round as Wiffle balls.

“I don't know,” Lindsey said. I pushed harder with my shoulder. “I don't!” she snapped. “Jesus Christ, what do you think, I took him? I wouldn't do something like that!” Images of the wounded bird cowering away from flying stones scuttled to mind, and she must have seen that I didn't believe her because the sarcasm drained neatly out of her tone. “
I wouldn't!
”

She shoved me back a pace before throwing her full water into a trash barrel and storming away, abandoning a panic-stricken Carly for a moment before she regained her wits and scurried after her. Several people had stopped outside the White Whale, lingering to see if there would be any excitement. As Lindsey turned the corner, they
decided there would be none and walked lazily down the street, leaving me to wonder over the hurt tone in Lindsey's voice.

Glancing at the big brass clock on the bell tower of the Congregational church, I trotted over to my bike. I had one more stop to make before meeting Remy at the bake sale.

The Tillings Free Library was a three-story Victorian converted into a public building. A small sign tacked beside the double door read,
1778
W
ILLIAM
S
AXTON
H
OMESTEAD
. Tossing the bike onto the grass, I grabbed the flyers and bolted for the door before turning back to grab Remy's book.

The man behind the desk gazed up politely, taking the book from my hand. Flipping the back cover open, he tsked, wagging his head, and pulled the call card from his box. “Mmm hmm. Well, I guess it would be a miracle of unnatural sorts if Ms. Mandolin returned a book on time.”

I grabbed a piece of scrap paper from a stack beside a cup of pencils fit for the fingers of elves and scribbled:
She says she'll pay the fine in pie at the festival
.

“Oh, she does, does she?”

I nodded.

“Well, you tell her they'd better be baked with golden apples,” he warned playfully.

When he set the book aside, I handed over a stack of festival flyers and a poster about Luke.

“You ever consider a job with the postal service? People here usually take things out, not bring them in.”

I wagged my head no.

“Uh oh. We've got a puppy on the loose? Sorry to hear he's missing, but I'm sure he'll come back.”

A sharp pain worked its way up from my chest to the back of my throat.

Could you hang it up?

“I'll do you one better: I'll ask around and make copies to stick in the books people check out.”

Thank you
.

“You're taking that ‘No Talking' sign a skoach seriously, aren't you?” he asked.

I rubbed my throat, an old trick I'd learned to make people believe I had laryngitis.

“I see. Then I guess you've come to the right place to recover. Anything else I can do for you?”

I shook my head, starting for the door. I was almost through it before I turned around and went back to the desk to grab another scrap of paper and a tiny pencil.

Do you keep newspaper records?
I don't know what possessed me to ask or even what I thought I might find, but there was something in the way Riley seemed to hate me for no good reason that was eating at me. Something in the way people everywhere seemed to know who I was even though I hadn't set foot on this island since the day my father walked out. Their expressions changed when I was introduced.

Not that any of that would crop up in a news article.

“Of course. We keep them on microfiche upstairs in the reference section. But we lost a lot of the older films in a fire a few years back. We salvaged what we could, but I'm afraid they're in pretty rough shape. Anything in particular you're hunting for?”

Yes,
I thought.
More than you could possibly fit on all the microfiche in the world
. I held the pencil over the paper for a second, not sure where to start.

1966

The man whistled.

“That's a ways back, but let's see what we can find.” He came out from behind the desk and began climbing a narrow set of stairs to the second floor. We passed the display of Yemaya Remy had told me about. I paused to look at the array of cowry shells, pearls, books, and scrolls arranged neatly across the table. An oil-on-canvas nude of Yemaya took up the wall space behind it with golden drops of sun bouncing off her hair.

“Pretty, isn't she?”

I nodded, recalling that those were the exact words Remy had said about her mother.

“She's not truly a witch, but try telling that to folks around these parts! Ha! Still, it's true. She's an
orisha.
”

I nodded, biting my cheek. Grandma Jo was always right.

In the back of the second floor, he pulled out a chair at one of the microfiche readers.

“The films are over here, filed in chronological order. Here we go: nineteen sixty-six through seven.” He set the film under the clamps. “You just turn that little knob to scroll through. Good luck. I'll be downstairs if you need anything else.”

I sat down, peered through the lens, and began spinning through the articles. Most were melted and mutilated from the fire, but I slowed the film at October 1966, moving frame by frame until I got to October 4 and stopped. A gaping hole had been melted in the center of the article, but a corner of the accompanying image remained with a photograph of the sheriff holding his hat and wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist. A boy of seven or eight stood three paces behind him, staring straight ahead with an utterly lost expression on his face. What looked like the back corner of a fire engine was parked beside them, although it was hard to tell since that was where the hole in the film began. What was left of the caption read, S
HERIFF
J
AMES
O
'
M
ALLEY AND SON
R
ILEY WERE AMONG THE FIRST ON SCENE.

I flipped through the next month, but most of the film had been burned away. Scrolling back to the picture, I studied the expression on Riley's face. His head was tilted, making it hard to tell if he was crying, but he was clearly distraught. The background of the photo was little more than a sea of shadows except for several flowers arcing up beside Riley on tall gangly stems. I let my eyes linger on them. Peonies . . .

The memory brushed against me with the sting of a paper cut and I closed my eyes, trying to push it back.

Not shadows. Darkness . . .

Before I got
kicked out of school, my class had taken a field trip to the planetarium at Roger Williams Park. When the lights went out, there was nothing but a velvet dome of darkness with little holes punched through, sending pinpricks of light scattering overhead.

That's what it looked like that night, what was missing from the photograph. There must have been a million stars winking and blinking overhead and two had fallen to the field below in specks of red. They danced and dipped across the daises and black-eyed Susans like fairies, and I recall thinking it was the Nikommo. Stars. Taillights
. Take
meee. . . .
There was a scream. No, there were two. One from me, one from the field, and I thought I'd heard them; I'd finally heard the Nikommo.

Someday I am going to catch you a star.

A screech. Brakes.

Someday we are going to fly.

Silence. Silence. Silence.

Pushing away from
the microfiche reader I stood up gasping. My chest ached, wanting air. The memories were broken shards of mirror dipping in and out of my con
sciousness, like the salmon of Potter's Creek stitching their way upstream. I gazed at the film hanging out of the reader. I knew that look on Riley's face, knew something awful had not just happened; it had happened to
him
. October 4, 1966. I was here when it happened. But I'd only been six; it couldn't possibly explain why he despised me. Still, the lost look in his eyes tugged at something raw and real inside of me.

Walking over to the cabinet the librarian had pulled the films from, I took another film from a reel marked 1959 and stuck it into the empty canister for 1966. Once I had returned it to the cabinet, I slipped the actual 1966 film into my back pocket. I didn't know what I would do with it without a machine to read it, but it was at least one real thing about the night my father disappeared. Somehow I felt like it belonged to me, not the world. Grabbing my posters, I made my way downstairs more confused than I'd been before I'd come in.