Adrift

Chapter 13 Peggy

The light is falling away as we leave the country road and walk down to the brown fringes of the water.

Sammy is dragging his feet. Do his shoes look that big?

I am shocked those boys called him names.

Although I suppose it was mild compared to what happened to me when I was little.

Nuns too quick, and keen, to use corporal punishment.

I am not sure Sammy could have handled that.

I stare at the pale strip of skin below his hairline as he walks in front of me.

The innocence of it. The way I still sometimes kiss him just there in the morning after he wakes up if he does not have time to push me away.

Thank God those kids were only calling him names.

There is a sense of walking toward something.

It is not just our home, not just an isolated, unseen stretch of canal; it is the scene of an accident.

You walk home on a cold day as it is growing dark and you expect to have a spring in your step.

The anticipation of returning someplace safe and warm.

None of that here. The opposite. Will the forensics tent still be in place?

Is that what it was? Will Drew be in a good mood?

Sammy points out a red fox on the far bank, scurrying, its nose flat to the ground. My boy looks hypnotized by it. Oranges morph into grays as we begin to lose sight of him. And then he is gone as if into vapor.

The tent is also gone.

The deputies are gone.

Two boats: one of them now unoccupied.

Sammy peers at me and I say, “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

The sweet scent of smoke as we approach. An artist’s charcoal line of it rising diagonally from our chimney pipe.

We skirt around the area where Mr. Turner’s body was laid out earlier this day. We do not stray there.

Drew appears from the engine room and steps onto the dew-slicked bank. The small figure of Amber follows him.

“Who did you see?” says Drew.

“Pardon me?”

“Out in town. See anybody?”

“We went to the museum. Then the diner. The butcher shop.”

“Who’d you talk to?”

“Each other,” says Sammy, looking up at me.

“You have much to say, boy?”

Samson lifts Amber and holds her in his arms, stroking her, fussing over her.

“Has she had some food, Dad?”

“Wrong question.”

“Can we get food for her from his boat?”

Drew nods. “Deputies said that that’s fine. But not to remove anything.”

Sam takes her over to Mr. Turner’s boat to feed her.

“Don’t get any fancy ideas,” says Drew. “We don’t need another mouth to feed.”

I yell, “When you come home, Sam, come in through the engine room. I don’t want filthy boots on Nanna’s rug.”

“It’s our rug,” mutters Drew.

I step aboard.

“Lamb chops,” I say. “Sammy’s favorite. A treat.”

“Not tonight, Peggy. I want your grilled cheese after you mentioned it last night. I’ve been expecting it.”

Frowning, I take my coat off and hang it up.

“But he’s a bit lost, Drew, to be honest. Jeff Turner was his friend. He’s quite cut up about it. Can I cook him the lamb chops?”

He steps closer and there is a chill inside the boat. I am pressed up with my back against the kitchen sink, against the tiled work top, and the floor is ice-cold.

He leans.

“Grilled,” he says. “Cheese. Bouillon cube crumbled on top of the cheese the way I like it. Tomato soup on the side as usual. He’ll eat it or he’ll go without.”

His hazel eyes look almost orange in this light. Each iris a riot of fire and silent fury.

“OK.”

The tension in his shoulders eases.

“Fuel man came earlier. Left a sack of coal. It’s on the roof.”

“We’ll be needing it by the look of these skies.”

“You see any police in town?”

I shake my head.

“Leave me to sleep tonight, will you? Not like last night. I’m not complaining, it’s just I’m well into act one now and I have to get the words down, and then I need good sleep. All right?”

“Of course. I didn’t… I mean, I wasn’t even sure…”

He stares at me.

“Of course, Drew. I’m tired anyway. Did the deputies stay long?”

He walks over to his desk and starts unlocking one of the compartments. I think it is the small cupboard at the top where he keeps spare wheels for his word processor.

“They stayed awhile. I helped them with questions, taught them a thing or two about the canal, and then they took the old man away. Two of them checked over his boat, took photographs.”

I light the burner.

“Turner’s nephew came around before they took him. Odd looking fella, you seen him before, have you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Looks like a deviant. Biker jacket, our age, strange face like he’s been in an accident. Burnt, maybe. Walks around like a queer. Skinny queer in a biker jacket with dyed black hair.”

“Will he come and collect Amber?”

“He’d better.”

I slice cheese into strips and take six slices of bread from the bag. After I lay the cheese on the bread I crumble over two bouillon cubes and place each sandwich in the pan.

“That doesn’t smell like lamb,” says Sammy.

“Over here,” says his dad. “Now.”

Sammy walks to him.

Drew screws his face into a tight ball. “You’re lucky you got supper at all. Kids in the next town going hungry tonight, they are, last night as well. Trailer park kids not eaten all day. Boys out on the farms working till they bleed. You’re sulking cos you got grilled cheese and soup.”

“I’m not sulking.”

“Where did you leave the bitch?”

“Amber? She’s on Mr. Turner’s boat. She’s on his bed. She’s upset, Dad.”

“Upset.”

“Can I bring her on here tonight? She can sleep with me on the dinette bed. Dad, please.”

“You lost your mind.”

“She’ll be no trouble.”

“I’m writing act one. You know what act one means, Samson? The first third. The opening of the entire story. And you want to bring Turner’s bitch in the same room as I’ll be working in.”

“She might prefer to stay home, Sammy,” I say, moving the pan, making sure the bouillon cubes melt into the cheese. “Familiar smells, her own bed. She might prefer to be there tonight.”

“I wanted her close to me,” he says, his voice cracking.

“Well, the universe doesn’t much care for what you or I want.”

Sammy swallows hard and then says, “We miss him.”

Drew turns to me and lowers his voice. “If I hear any more of this I’ll… I swear I will, the day I’ve had. Man doesn’t need to be hearing nonsense before supper. I’m going to shave and when I’m back there’ll be no more talk of dogs.”

I wipe down the sink.

Sammy listens to his Walkman and stares out the window as I finish making the meal.

Mine will be cold by the time Sammy’s has melted.

If the dinette was converted into his bed I am sure he would dive under the comforter and hide, but he has no bed.

There are no hiding places on a boat like this.

I know he misses having his own room, his own posters on the wall.

The wind blows and the fire roars in the little woodstove.

Raindrops tap against the windows, and where the frames do not fit properly the wind drives moisture into the boat and it streams down the walls and collects on the counter.

Three plates of grilled cheese, three bowls of tomato soup, three glasses of milk.

Goldilocks, corrupted.

Drew comes out from the bathroom, his head and face shaved so close he is shining. Smooth as a peeled egg. He says the act of scraping his razor over his skin, cleansing it, removing the hairs at their roots, the dead skin cells, sets off something creative inside him.

“More bouillon cube next time,” says Drew. “More bouillon. Get it meaty.”

I nod.

“This mean we can have lamb chops tomorrow, Mom?”

I glance over at Drew and, without looking up from his food, he gives a subtle nod of his head.

“Yes, love.”

We eat on. The glow from the far end of the kitchen intensifies with every gust of wind and the boat is at once too hot and too cold.

The uncomfortable sound of cutlery scraping across porcelain.

“Walk the bitch after dinner,” says Dad. “Walk it well, wear the damn thing out, I don’t want it howling all night. I need you all silent.”

“I’ll walk her, Dad.”

“Careful you don’t fall in,” I tell him. “It’s slippery.”

“I’m a good swimmer,” he says. “It’s a shame Mr. Turner couldn’t swim to the bank. I wish I’d heard him last night. I wish I’d have…”

“Well,” replies Dad. “You didn’t. No point wishing this thing and that. I told you he was too frail to be on the water, especially with liquor inside him. Canals are for fit men, not old folks. He should have kept to his bungalow.”

I finish my dinner.

“He was keeping an eye out for us, Dad.”

“Look how that turned out for him.”

He stands up to check the fire and I clear away the dishes.

Sammy goes out in his raincoat to walk Amber.

I scrub plates, staring through the steamed-up glass. Water falling into water. Darkness. Howling wind and nothing good out there to rely on. Just the three of us again. The one who holds me down and the one who keeps me up. Me in the middle trying to work out how to save us. Day after day of it.

“More bouillon cube next time.”

“I heard you.”

“You think you did. You might have expected me to say it, that’s one thing. But you never heard me because this is the first time I’ve mentioned it. You answer me back again like that and see where it gets you. You want my book to fall on its backside?”

I look at him, exhausted.

“What?”

He’s cleaning his nails with the tip of his pocketknife. Doesn’t look up to meet my gaze. “You want me to write to my best ability, best I can, finest work I can put together?”

“Of course I do, Drew.”

“Sometimes I doubt it. Sometimes I sense you’d rather I fall short.”

“You know what I think. You’re capable of the greatest things; I know it in my bones. I believe in you; I always have done and I always will.”

He breathes out through his nostrils and with each exhalation he calms himself. My words have soothed him and his torso has eased.

A hollow bang inside the woodstove.

“Not keeping the bitch, Peggy. I’m making that clear now. We’re not taking in a dog.”