Of Sea and Cloud (17 page)

Celeste's face quivered. Her eyes darted around as if she couldn't focus.

Bill rounded the table and put his hand on her shoulder. I know it, Celeste. I want to call them as bad as you, believe me. It's my dad in there. But Virgil's right. There just ain't no way.

Celeste still held the phone in her fist and Virgil still held his finger over the button. She turned and looked to Jonah as if to plead her case to him. She saw on his face that he agreed with Virgil and Bill. She slowly hung up. Again Virgil took her in his arms but she held her hands out to the side and would not touch him.

When he released her she said, Why not have police divers, then? If Bill can dive in there, the police could too.

Jonah spoke up. They're right, Celeste. The cops won't be happy with just diving. One thing will lead to another. I agree with them.

Virgil gazed at Jonah and they locked eyes and Virgil nodded once to him.

Bill said, Good then. I'm gone.

Jonah stood up to go.

Can I come? said Charlotte.

No, said Celeste. No you don't. You stay here.

It's fine, Mom, Charlotte said. I want to go.

And see Nicolas's dead body or skeleton or whatever they find? I don't think so.

I can go, Charlotte said.

Celeste turned the faucet on and held her hand under the stream until the water came hot. Do whatever you want, she said and squeezed dish soap into the sink. All of you. Just do whatever the fuck you want. I'll make your fucking dinner.

• • •

Jonah and Charlotte waited in the truck outside Bill's house. Jonah felt his leg and hip against hers and he suddenly forgot all else and remembered a moment months ago when all was good and she'd climbed into his bed with only her thin yellow underwear on. How dark her summertime skin had been and how bright the yellow was against the skin. He forced himself to look out the window but all he saw was yellow fabric and smooth skin and all he felt was the heat of her hip against his.

Snow covered the roofs and yards of the dozen or so farmhouses around them. Everything was quiet except for an urchin dragger idling in the harbor. He glanced at Charlotte and her lips were crimped tight and she looked as furious as she had the night before.

Are you okay? he asked. His voice was quiet. Did something happen last night?

No, she said. I'm fine. Just leave me alone about it. Please.

• • •

Minutes later. Bill turned the truck around and began toward the pound.

You think someone killed your father, Bill? Erma Lee said as they drove. She sat wedged between Jonah and the door.

I don't know.

Jonah didn't say anything for a while and he thought about the things Virgil had told him then said, Seems a bit like it. I mean, how the fuck else would he end up in there?

Yeah, Erma Lee said. What do you think, Bill?

I don't know.

That's what makes sense though, Erma Lee said. Don't it?

I just flat out don't know. For fuckachrist's sake. I don't know. Now everyone shut up. Please.

Jesus fucking Christ, Jonah said. He shifted his legs and hips and tried to make more room but all four of them were stuffed across the bench seat. All he could smell was Erma Lee's perfume and all he could see was Charlotte's angry face. The windshield felt too close as if gradually descending. His skin was tight and itching and sweating and trees blinked by one by one. He felt near panic. He fought the urge to elbow his way out of the moving truck and dive into a snow bank. He wrapped his fingers around themselves and drove his feet into the floor panel and sighed.

Charlotte looked over at him with disapproval and disgust and said, God.

It felt like it took an hour to reach the pound. Bill backed the truck up to the building and parked. He left the engine running and no one moved. Then Jonah said, Open the goddamned doors someone.

Erma Lee got out and Jonah piled out next and he walked over the snow bank and down the rocks to the water and he splashed his face and looked out over the harbor mouth. He breathed in and out several times. The names Osmond Randolph and Jason Jackson and Julius Wesley surged and confusion spread like sea foam in his head. He bent and splashed his face once more. He tasted the saltwater on his lips. It seemed that everything Virgil had said was true and every reason he could now think of to not call the police seemed petty and trite but even so he'd rather shoot Osmond himself and go to prison himself than be the one to make the call.

When he turned around he saw Charlotte standing on the bank above him. Her hands were locked at her waist and she lifted them toward Jonah in a gesture which he could not interpret. Virgil had arrived and she got in the truck with him. He had a cigarette going and he lifted his glass and drank.

Jonah crouched on the rocks and put his head in his hands. He spat salty white spittle onto the rocks. He pinched his eyes closed and said, Fucking Julius Wesley.

He climbed the bank and helped Bill pull his tank and weight belt on. Bill slipped into the water and fitted his mask over his face. Snow ringed the pound above the high water mark. He tested his air then dipped beneath the water and Jonah and Erma Lee watched his silhouette move like a bird through the water. They lost sight of him but followed his air bubble trail as he circled then he stood and said, I can't see shit. We got her all mudded up from dragging and them bugs are right riled. Give me that light.

Jonah fished Bill's dive light out of the bag and handed it to Bill. The tide poured out through the dam.

Tides going fast, Jonah said.

Bill glanced at the dam and nodded. He squeezed the dive light trigger and looked at the beam and pulled his mask down and dipped into the water.

After twenty minutes he came up with two leg bones. The bones were clean and beige like the skull and Bill said, She's clearing up some now.

He went back under and Jonah didn't touch the bones but stared at them and after another ten minutes Bill found the pelvis and torso. Erma Lee climbed up the ladder and walked past Charlotte and Virgil and disappeared down the road without looking back.

Bill stopped when he had what he figured to be his father's entire skeleton except for the skull. He pulled the weight belt and tank off and handed them to Jonah and pulled himself up onto the float.

This ain't right, he said.

Them lobsters you sold are half the old man, huh, said Jonah. He felt seasick but kept talking. Someone's gonna find a finger in their goddamned tomalley. That'd be enough reason for them to drain her out right there. Lobsters eating people ain't exactly appetizing.

Bill's eyeballs were big and round without his glasses on. That ain't exactly what I was thinking weren't right. He took a moment to breathe then said, You think we should call the cops, Jonah? Just let them drain her out? The gulls didn't drop him in here.

I know that. But what'n hell the cops going to do?

I don't know. Whatever cops do. Look for a weapon.

They already looked at his boat with a fucking magnifying lens.

We could call the FBI, Bill said.

Yeah, and like you said, they'll drain this whole thing and we'll be fucked. You want to lose your boat? You want to lose this pound?

I don't know. I just don't know anymore.

See what Virgil says.

Virgil's right ignorant drunk. He couldn't pull a sick whore off a pisspot.

Might be, said Jonah. Hell, I don't know.

Bill loaded his dive gear into the bed of his truck. Jonah stayed on the float. Their father's bones were piled on the wooden deck. Jonah stared at the bones and had a hard time understanding that the dismembered skeleton was his father and not some coyote-ravaged deer carcass.

When Bill returned he said, What'd you want to do with him, Jonah?

Jonah thought for a few seconds. Put him in his coffin? Next to Mom?

We ain't digging up a grave.

I guess not. I don't know, Jonah said and as he gazed at the bones the fact that this was his father suddenly penetrated and he fell to his knees and vomited.

Are you okay, Jonah? Virgil said. He stood behind Bill with a glass in his hand and a cigarette burning. Charlotte was still in the truck.

Yeah, said Jonah. He wiped at his lips and nostrils and tears flooded from his eyes. His entire head throbbed. Just puking.

Let's get him in a tote or something, Captain. Jonah, are you sure you're okay?

Yeah. I'm fine.

This is hard stuff, I know, and I'm sorry for that. You two shouldn't have to go through this. But someone needs to come back at low water tonight and see if that skull's out there somewhere and I'm too old and fat and crippled to get over those rocks. We'll take Nic offshore tomorrow and give him a proper burial.

I can do it, said Jonah and hacked and spat and stifled a sob. I can do it, he said again. He thought for a few seconds before continuing. But you really think he was killed, Virgil?

Bill pulled on a pair of blue rubber gloves and waited for Virgil's response.

Virgil swished his drink in his mouth and swallowed and his voice turned angry. What in the clamfuck sort of question is that? Why don't you tell me all the ways you think he might not of been killed?

I don't know.

Virgil breathed in and out. He closed his eyes then opened them and his voice was once more gentle when he spoke. Neither do I, he said. Neither do I.

I don't get it. Jonah blew his nose into the water then leaned down and sucked a mouthful of water and gargled the salt and spat it out. You think it's like you said, Virgil? With Japan and Jason Jackson and Osmond?

What's that? Bill said.

Nothing, Virgil said.

Nothing what? What's Jason Jackson and Japan got to do with anything?

Nothing, Virgil said again.

Fine then, Bill said as he put the bones into two fish trays. He moved slowly and the bones thudded against the hard plastic.

Virgil shook his head at Jonah then walked away.

Fuck you, Jonah whispered to the spot Virgil had occupied. He watched the empty doorway. Bill stood next to him. What's Virgil talking about, Jonah? Jason Jackson?

I don't know. He had some bullshit notion that Osmond done it.

I'd say bullshit is right. I'm more concerned for Virgil than Osmond anyhow, Bill said. He's drunk as hell lately. He ain't well.

I know it. I know it.

Bill and Jonah each carried a fish tray full of bones to the truck and as they crossed the driveway Jonah saw Charlotte in Virgil's truck watching him. She looked angry but she made no sign that she saw him and he didn't care at all.

• • •

That evening Jonah drove to the pound. He sat in his truck watching dusk settle as the tide receded and the last light flushed like dying embers over the rock and sand and seaweed. Even inside the cab he could feel the air turning colder. He smelled the saltwater and he watched the western sky. He closed his eyes and listened to the gentle work of waves on the shoreline. The methodic beat brought to mind the image of the pound as a heart only now his mind allowed the image to sculpt itself into a body that surrounded the heart. The body was neither man nor beast but a living coastline of rock and water and sky and Jonah saw himself and his brother and the memory of their father stuck within that cold flesh.

He made his way down the riprap and rockweed slope then over a patchwork of sand and boulders. A tongue of water poured out of the sluiceway in the center of the dam and ran in a small river into the harbor. The earth spun and darkness approached and far out at sea the tide shifted beneath the moon. Jonah waded across the tidal river and walked aimlessly among the rocks in search of his father's skull. He felt stuck within that body he'd imagined and it was solid and it was real. Every few minutes he'd look up at the line of sea and remind himself that he was actually out there on the rocks searching for a lost part of his father.

He paused at the tidemark and stood ankle-deep in the water. He faced the open ocean. He watched the crescent moon set in the southwest and all faded to black. The Two Penny buoy flashed and Drown Boy Rock spun and suddenly the ocean receded and left Jonah on bare rock. He looked around wondering where the water had gone and as he did so the sea surged back and nearly filled his boots but then again it receded as if the entirety of the Atlantic was subject to the maelstrom of humanity and not the strict order of the universe. Jonah whispered the word
Dad
out loud and his voice disappeared into the air. He followed the tidemark toward Burnt Island and climbed the ledges gone purple in the darkness. He turned toward the pound and as he crossed a bank of dead rockweed he saw the skull. He stood over it for a full minute before picking it up. The bone felt as if it had been at sea for years.

He slumped down onto the heap of seaweed and perched the skull on his knee and balanced it upright with one hand. He quickly remembered so long ago gripping that head in his arms as he bounced upon his father's back to the ringing of his mother's laughter. The skull glowed white and the eye sockets loomed like black holes large enough to encompass a fist. For much of his life Jonah had rehearsed the blows he would deal his father but now nothing would come as if the skull held the same power as the man. Jonah stared at the skull and wished he were stronger than he was.

The house was quiet when Jonah returned. He went straight to the guest room and stripped his clothes off and climbed into bed. He lay awake with images of skulls and lobsters and waves crashing through his head but soon the crashing ceased and the frenzied sound of thousands of feeding lobsters erupted like an infestation in his eardrums. He rolled and folded the pillow over his head but that was no help so he shoved a finger into his ear and wished he could sink it to the knuckle.

Finally he fell asleep but after only an hour he awoke to Virgil's horn. He dressed and when he opened his door Charlotte stepped out of her bedroom. She wore white flannel pajamas and her hair was in a ponytail and her skin was pale and blotched with sleep. Both stopped but neither spoke. He caught her eye for a moment and when she shifted he thought she would speak but instead she stepped into the bathroom and shut the door.